C's speech to the International Institute for Strategic Studies

The Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) Richard Moore spoke about human intelligence in the digital age.

Good morning. I am delighted to be here for my first public speech as Chief of SIS – or MI6 as it is popularly known.

We have come a long way, since the 1980s when I first joined MI6, as John noted, and the identity of ‘C’ was still secret.

But it is still unusual for the holder of this office to give public speeches. This is something that I want to change, judiciously, for 2 reasons.

First, it is an important part of the way we hold ourselves to account, within a democracy, of how we retain public support for what we do, and – I hope – how we inspire people to want to come and join us.

Second, the changing nature of the threats that we face requires a greater degree of openness from a modern intelligence agency. There is a paradox in play here, one I will try to explain more fully later in my speech. It goes as follows: to stay secret, we are going to have to become more open.

There will always be limits to what I can say. MI6 is an organisation that deals in secrets. Indeed, one of my few specified responsibilities under the 1994 Intelligence Services Act is not to disclose our information on an unauthorized basis. But, that said, I will share with you this morning as much as I can about our work to protect the security, and advance the interests and values, of the United Kingdom.

In my 34 years with MI6 I have seen extraordinary change in the strategic environment: from the Cold War to today’s starkly contested era, in which nation states and non-state actors, such as terrorists and organised criminals, compete across the domains of the virtual and the physical in a world of, at times, bewildering complexity.

There are elements of continuity, Russia, China and Iran, and for instance, have long been 3 of what I might informally call the ‘big 4’ priorities within the intelligence community; the fourth being the threat from international terrorism.