Speaker 1: If an action is blatantly obvious and is implausible deniable.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm thinking Russian alleged attempts to poison dissidence
Speaker 1: in Salisbury, for example, in the UK, when it was
Speaker 1: so obviously them and although another chock means of poisoning
Speaker 1: so wildly implausible, which that made us think, Okay, what
Speaker 1: does that tell us about the role of secrecy in
Speaker 1: some of these operations? How deniable does it have to
Speaker 1: be to be covet action?
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, welcome to episode three hundred and eighty something
Speaker 2: of the Team House. I'm not exactly sure where we're at.
Speaker 2: Maybe eighty seven, maybe eighty eight, we'll see, we'll see.
Speaker 2: It's a surprise today on the show. We have two
Speaker 2: academics really happy to have on the show today, Agna
Speaker 2: Long and Rory Kormick. Magna received her doctorate from ks College, London.
Speaker 2: She's a research fellow at a few academic institutions in
Speaker 2: the UK and US. And Rory Kormick is a professor
Speaker 2: of international relations at the University of Nottingham and Rory,
Speaker 2: if you could bring us up to speed both of you, please,
Speaker 2: are there any additional publications that you want to mention
Speaker 2: because I think Rory you wrote a previous book about
Speaker 2: this subject. But mainly what we're going to be talking
Speaker 2: about tonight is this book COVID Action National Approaches to
Speaker 2: Unacknowledged the intervention. There any other books that you want
Speaker 2: to point out to people, Well, it would be rude
Speaker 2: not to uspose.
Speaker 1: Thanks ever so much for having a son, And yeah,
Speaker 1: we're delighted to talk about the book that we credited
Speaker 1: with a couple of other colleagues. So I'll just give
Speaker 1: a quick shout out to Jen Lester, Mark Stouts, and
Speaker 1: Damian van Pouvelt on this kind of comparative international approach
Speaker 1: to action, which kind of came out of numerous discussions.
Speaker 1: I mean, it came about me and Mark plan a book,
Speaker 1: and then Damien was planning a similar book, and then
Speaker 1: Magna and Jen were planning a similar book, and we
Speaker 1: decided it would just makes sense instead of competing to
Speaker 1: join forces. But seeing as you asked, Jack, I also
Speaker 1: wrote another book a couple of years back, which is
Speaker 1: a kind of overview of a synthesis of cop action,
Speaker 1: academic research and the latest thinking on it, but hopefully
Speaker 1: distilled in a accessible way for the general interested reader
Speaker 1: and it's called how to Stage a Coup.
Speaker 2: I have the book on my shelf in the new office, Rory.
Speaker 2: To my shame, I have not read it yet, so
Speaker 2: don't hold it against me, Megna. Anything else? Do you
Speaker 2: want to talk about any previous works that you published
Speaker 2: or anything you're working on now?
Speaker 3: Well? Relatively new to this world. I'm only just finished
Speaker 3: my PhD about two years ago, so I have not
Speaker 3: published as politically as my esteemed colleague Rory Kormak, who
Speaker 3: I feel like publishes the book every two years, which
Speaker 3: is amazing. But there are Currently I'm working on several
Speaker 3: articles and on a book of my own about American
Speaker 3: COVID action after the Cold War. So I'm looking at
Speaker 3: six different presidents and how they use COVID action and
Speaker 3: what's changed in American COVID action and how is there
Speaker 3: something new that we need to learn about from their experiences.
Speaker 3: So so hopefully that's going to be coming out at
Speaker 3: some point. And currently I look at more of a
Speaker 3: shadow side of state craft, how governments secretly shapen world
Speaker 3: events using spies, mercenaries or criminals as tools of power,
Speaker 3: and how their COVID alliances shaped global politics and below
Speaker 3: the threshold, threshold of war. So that's what I'm working on.
Speaker 2: I'm excited to read it. And so this book Covert Action,
Speaker 2: as you pointed out, the two of you edited it
Speaker 2: with a few others, and there's probably like what close
Speaker 2: to twenty authors in this book, and each chapter describes
Speaker 2: a different country's approach to covert action. So you get
Speaker 2: in the book, you know some of the ones you'd expect,
Speaker 2: United States, Canada, Australia, France, Iran, North Korea, or maybe
Speaker 2: Iran is not in there, but China, Russia, North Korea
Speaker 2: is in there. But then additionally, there's a whole bunch
Speaker 2: of countries that really aren't commonly written about in these
Speaker 2: types of books. Palestine, Israel, India, Lebanon, Brazil, Turkey, South Africa,
Speaker 2: and Nigeria, Bulgaria, a bunch of other different countries and
Speaker 2: their approaches to covert action. And that's what for me
Speaker 2: personally made this book really interesting and had new information
Speaker 2: in it that I wasn't aware of. So I appreciate
Speaker 2: you guys going the extra mile to take on such
Speaker 2: a have you worked.
Speaker 1: Well, it was, it was It was tricky because we
Speaker 1: deliberately wanted to be provocative, right, And we did really
Speaker 1: deliberately wanted to try and push that the envelope of
Speaker 1: the historiography and say, look, everyone uses America as the
Speaker 1: reference point, particularly historically. I think we say in the book,
Speaker 1: you know, the CIA dominates the history books and Russia
Speaker 1: dominates today's headlines, you know, And it's that is the particularly,
Speaker 1: the US is the reference point for all discussions about
Speaker 1: covert action. It's all rooted in the so called CIA
Speaker 1: Golden Age of coups in the nineteen fifties, and that
Speaker 1: that intellectual baggage shapes our understanding. And one of the
Speaker 1: questions we asked ourselves, which I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: a bold or a silly question too provocative, was is
Speaker 1: this actually a thing? And is this is this a
Speaker 1: part of secret staycraft or is this just a uniquely
Speaker 1: American tool which has grown out of a uniquely American
Speaker 1: political culture or can we say that there is comparison
Speaker 1: between the US, China, Russia and and can we go
Speaker 1: about stage further and say does Brazil engage in covit action,
Speaker 1: does Lebanon engage in covi atte action? And what does
Speaker 1: that tell us about covid at action, and we came
Speaker 1: it was a bit sticky at times, trying to compare
Speaker 1: maybe not not quite like for like, And then we
Speaker 1: got into all of these debates about well, when does
Speaker 1: covert action become repression internal policing. For example, if an
Speaker 1: authoritarian regime is going around murdering or kidnapping dissidents who
Speaker 1: happened to be living over seas and the primary aim
Speaker 1: is to protect the regime by you know, wiping out
Speaker 1: and disrupting dissident movements, is that covert action as we
Speaker 1: in the West or the US would understand it, or
Speaker 1: is that about you know, domestic or transnational repression? So
Speaker 1: it got quite quickly. It sounded like quite a fun project,
Speaker 1: and it was a fun project and we really enjoyed
Speaker 1: doing it, but quite quickly we came into some quite
Speaker 1: sticky questions about state craft and who does what and
Speaker 1: the relationship between different you know, tools of the dark
Speaker 1: hearts or how how did you put it back? The
Speaker 1: sub sub threshold secret state crafty dark artsy stuff is
Speaker 1: a technical technical.
Speaker 4: Term technicult technicult, yes.
Speaker 2: So much a great uh jumping off point because I
Speaker 2: wanted to ask the two of you how you define
Speaker 2: COVID action. And that may sound like a kind of
Speaker 2: pedantic question of some of our listeners. They think assassination, recruiting, spies, sabotage,
Speaker 2: things like that. But you did come up with like
Speaker 2: a fairly narrow explanation of what fits in that kind
Speaker 2: of framework of COVID action. If you guys could explain that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, so I'll take this one simply because I
Speaker 3: studied the United States more when it comes to COVID activities,
Speaker 3: and I think one of the challenges that we had
Speaker 3: at the very beginning was trying to stay away from
Speaker 3: the American definition of COVID action, right, which is an activities,
Speaker 3: a activity, an activity or activities of the US government
Speaker 3: to influence political, economic, or military conditions abroad where the
Speaker 3: US government is not intended to be a parent or
Speaker 3: acknowledged publicly.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: So that's a very strong definition from very bureaucratic. You know,
Speaker 3: you have different separations of powers you have over so
Speaker 3: there's so much kind of punched into that. But then
Speaker 3: we decided, well, we can't apply if we're looking broadly,
Speaker 3: if we're looking at different countries and how they view
Speaker 3: COVID action and what COVID action means to them, we
Speaker 3: can't apply the definition of COVID action from the US
Speaker 3: to this. So we came up with something that, as
Speaker 3: Rory explained, we went back and forth that is a
Speaker 3: little bit more nuanced, and it gave us an opportunity
Speaker 3: to also include transnational repression abroad as part of COVID activities.
Speaker 3: So we framed it as politically motivated and unacknowledged interference
Speaker 3: by states or state related entities in the affairs of others,
Speaker 3: which is designed to influence conditions in a favorable manner. Essentially,
Speaker 3: we focused on unacknowledged as opposed to deniable, which is
Speaker 3: in the American definition right to open it up a
Speaker 3: little bit more precisely for the reasons that the Rory
Speaker 3: had explained. In in a sense, how do we you
Speaker 3: know domestic.
Speaker 4: Repression versus foreign repression?
Speaker 3: You know, if you're thinking about it, by nature of
Speaker 3: activity abroad, you're already violating sovereignty of a state, right,
Speaker 3: So is that already COVID action. You're already influencing perceptions, cognition.
Speaker 3: So there's so much going on there, so how.
Speaker 4: Can it not be COVID action.
Speaker 3: So this new definition that we not new definition per se,
Speaker 3: but you know, broader kind of emphasis on on on
Speaker 3: what we would include as COVID action helped us put
Speaker 3: together so many chapters in so many countries with different
Speaker 3: approaches to this particular problem.
Speaker 1: And I think that's really it's really important because on
Speaker 1: one level, when two professors start talking about semantics of
Speaker 1: definitions and stuff, you know, there there's there's a risk
Speaker 1: that it that it becomes that becomes this kind of
Speaker 1: professorial pontificating about isms and stuff. But Magda's spot on
Speaker 1: because these definitions and how we set the parameters have
Speaker 1: really significant real world consequences for you know, what is
Speaker 1: in scope and what's outroscope, what's included in the book
Speaker 1: and what's not included in the book, How can we
Speaker 1: compare different states? And I think the point about deniable
Speaker 1: versus unacknowledged. On one level, again it sounds a bit,
Speaker 1: potentially a bit professorial pontification, but Magda is exactly right
Speaker 1: that it gets to some I think, really interesting significant questions.
Speaker 1: For example, we've heard loads in the last ten years
Speaker 1: or so about particularly Russian covert actions, many of which,
Speaker 1: particularly before twenty twenty two, commentators seemed to think of
Speaker 1: as being quite successful. Russia was quite good at disinformation
Speaker 1: and sabotage and dare I say, to lecture interference. And
Speaker 1: yet these, if we use the American definition, were not
Speaker 1: remotely plausibly deniable. They were, in fact wildly implausibly deniable.
Speaker 1: And this, I think chreates a really significant question about
Speaker 1: if an action is blatantly obvious and is implausibly deniable.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm thinking Russian alleged attempts to poison dissidence
Speaker 1: in Salisbury, for example, in the UK, when it was
Speaker 1: so obviously them and the novel Chok Means of poisoning,
Speaker 1: the ridiculous interview that the two suspects gave where they
Speaker 1: literally read off the Wikipedia page saying, oh no, no,
Speaker 1: we weren't there to poison anybody. We were there to
Speaker 1: see the and I quote three meters high spire from
Speaker 1: Salisbury Cathedral. Whatever it was this is, it's so wildly implausible,
Speaker 1: which then made us think, what does that tell us
Speaker 1: about the role of secrecy in some of these operations?
Speaker 1: How deniable does it have to be to be covert action?
Speaker 1: And in fact, that's one of the kind of big
Speaker 1: questions that got me interested in this subject twenty twenty
Speaker 1: five years ago, now, God, I'm getting old, was around
Speaker 1: the CIA's operation working with the Mudjie Hideen against Soviet
Speaker 1: occupation in Afghanistan in the nineteen eighties. You know, it's
Speaker 1: a famous example of covert action and one which is
Speaker 1: widely deemed to be successful and yet wasn't remotely applaused
Speaker 1: with deniable. Everyone knew they were at it, So that
Speaker 1: raised the question was it covert? What does covert mean?
Speaker 1: Does it have to be deniable to be successful? Probably not,
Speaker 1: And so by grappling with you know, the definition, that
Speaker 1: opens up I think quite some quite important debates about
Speaker 1: the role of secrecy in the kind of conflict that
Speaker 1: we're seeing around the world right now.
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Speaker 2: You know Rory as you're speaking, if I recall correctly,
Speaker 2: you just published a white paper about sabotage operations, didn't you.
Speaker 2: I did, Yes, I did, And I think that that
Speaker 2: subject kind of teases out exactly what you're speaking to
Speaker 2: is that the Russians are doing sabotage operations, the West
Speaker 2: is doing sabotage operations, and everyone knows exactly what the
Speaker 2: score is, right, ye.
Speaker 1: Yes, So what do you mean by what do you
Speaker 1: mean by the role of cables? Another great example which
Speaker 1: mocked the nice more about an audition you might want
Speaker 1: to up rate is what's going on with with Trump
Speaker 1: and cove att action Venezuela right now, where you've got
Speaker 1: the presidents literally telling everybody that he is doing covert action. Now,
Speaker 1: how on earth does that play in with our understandings
Speaker 1: of secret staatecraft?
Speaker 2: What on earth do you make of that?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: So, so this is this is one of the you know,
Speaker 3: when I when I think about secrecy, when I think
Speaker 3: about what COVID action is intended to do, and I
Speaker 3: think our book really kind of hammers the hammers. This
Speaker 3: point is that there are a lot of times it
Speaker 3: is not just about influencing foreign posts. It's about signaling, right,
Speaker 3: It's about sending a message, you know, And in this
Speaker 3: particular instance, there are so many different reasons why why
Speaker 3: these things are happening, And you know, I'm not quite
Speaker 3: sure I can say them all in a in a
Speaker 3: public forum without you know.
Speaker 4: Getting into trouble back at home.
Speaker 3: But the reality of it is, you know, is it
Speaker 3: COVID action? Has it already happened before he announced that
Speaker 3: he was doing COVID action? Is it is a COVID action?
Speaker 3: If the Special Operations Forces are doing it, you know,
Speaker 3: are they doing it under Title ten or our Title fifty?
Speaker 4: Are they sheet it? I don't know, you know, the.
Speaker 3: Reality of it, there's just so many different avenues. But also,
Speaker 3: you know, we're so we're so into this, you know,
Speaker 3: are we doing COVID action Venezuela? Are we doing COVID
Speaker 3: action in Mexico and other countries where we've designated these
Speaker 3: cartels and stars.
Speaker 4: But the reality is.
Speaker 3: We've been doing this all, you know, for decades. We've
Speaker 3: been doing this since the end of the Cold War.
Speaker 3: This is nothing new, except that we are talking about it,
Speaker 3: and we're signaling, and we're threatening and we're bullying. You know,
Speaker 3: whether it's the particular nations that are we're having this
Speaker 3: kind of signaling with, or whether we're telling the rest
Speaker 3: of the world. But there's a lot of signaling and
Speaker 3: messaging going on here and Whilst they may be new
Speaker 3: to Americans and American COVID action in terms, but it's
Speaker 3: not new. If you read our book, you'll see this
Speaker 3: is nothing. This has been going on for decades, centuries,
Speaker 3: if you will, since we started using COVID action. So
Speaker 3: I think, you know, in those terms, the scope is
Speaker 3: much broader, and it kind of realistically, it also gives
Speaker 3: us not just you know, a broader picture of what
Speaker 3: we're talking about here, but also potential options how to
Speaker 3: mitigate streats from from from from such operations. You know,
Speaker 3: if you don't know, if we call it COVID action
Speaker 3: and you say, well, it's not COVID action because X,
Speaker 3: Y and Z, let's send the law enforcement or let's
Speaker 3: send the militaries in operation people to do this, because
Speaker 3: it's not really intelligence. Well that's a problem too, right,
Speaker 3: because now we're separating it according to how we understand
Speaker 3: COVID action to be, when in reality, our adversaries couldn't
Speaker 3: care less whether we have Title ten or Title fifty,
Speaker 3: you know. So, so I think it's you know, it's
Speaker 3: like the rest of the world doesn't operate on our
Speaker 3: wavelengths in these terms or in this particular space so
Speaker 3: I think we need to be a little bit more
Speaker 3: open minded about this.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I've had some interesting conversations with people in
Speaker 2: India's Special Operations Units, you know, especially when when r
Speaker 2: AW is allegedly whacking people in western countries, you know,
Speaker 2: the big incident in Canada. There's been some rumors about America.
Speaker 2: I'm like, hey, man, like this is bad news. Like
Speaker 2: you can't be just like shooting people in the United States,
Speaker 2: like it's gonna or Canada. That's going to create a
Speaker 2: huge international blowback. And they just kind of shrugg like
Speaker 2: it doesn't it doesn't resonate the same to them. The like,
Speaker 2: So what you guys tried to sanction us in the eighties,
Speaker 2: how'd that go for you? You know, it's just seen
Speaker 2: through a completely different lens.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, it's almost like baiting. You said, what are
Speaker 3: you going to do about it?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And it's essentially it's not just I mean,
Speaker 3: there's how dare you tell us what to do if
Speaker 3: you're not doing it yourself? You know.
Speaker 4: So there's all the these things.
Speaker 3: You know, we're talking about COVID action and attacking ships
Speaker 3: and you know, killing people in boats. But at the
Speaker 3: same time we're telling others, oh, you know, human rights
Speaker 3: violations and violations of international laws.
Speaker 2: The way the way they perceive it is that we're
Speaker 2: harboring Calistani terrorists on our soil. So it's legit, you know,
Speaker 2: but that's how they view it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, this is going. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So let's if only to sort of like juxtapose the
Speaker 2: larger conversation about covert operations, I'd like to ask each
Speaker 2: of you about sort of your your areas of specialty.
Speaker 2: Rory about the UK and Magna about the US approach.
Speaker 2: And Rory, when I was reading your chapter about the
Speaker 2: UK approach to covert action, you know what actually kind
Speaker 2: of jumped right out at me. Your conclusion is very
Speaker 2: similar to I have you ever seen the documentary The
Speaker 2: Mayfair Set. Nuh, you should. It's a Robbert Curtis documentary,
Speaker 2: and he concludes that the British used the sas to
Speaker 2: sort of keep the empire going in a more covert
Speaker 2: and discreete manner as it was kind of imploding on itself,
Speaker 2: and during a time of social turmoil and rising leftist
Speaker 2: sentiments in the UK, that this was seen as sort
Speaker 2: of like a callback to the nights of the roundtable
Speaker 2: sort of mythology that you have this small group of
Speaker 2: tough men that will go out and do this. But
Speaker 2: you mentioned in your chapter about how COVID action was
Speaker 2: used as sort of a coping mechanism as the British
Speaker 2: Empire was sort of collapsing inward on itself.
Speaker 1: That's entirely it. And I can't remember if I included
Speaker 1: the quote in the chapter or not, but there was
Speaker 1: a wonderful line where it was end of the end
Speaker 1: of the Cold War, so you know, as you know,
Speaker 1: exidential crisis for intelligence agencies in the West Water. What
Speaker 1: are we doing now? What are we for? And the
Speaker 1: Queen Elizabeth's private secretary went to visit the chief of
Speaker 1: MI I six and said, what what is m I
Speaker 1: six four in the nineteen nineties? What can I report
Speaker 1: back to her majesty? And the chief of m I
Speaker 1: six said, tell her majesty that her secret service is
Speaker 1: the last per number of her empire. And I think
Speaker 1: that quote just sums up exactly what you're what you're
Speaker 1: getting at, that there is a there is a service
Speaker 1: out there operating in the shadows to try to protect
Speaker 1: and promote British influence against what has essentially been long
Speaker 1: term decline and what we've seen looking back over the
Speaker 1: last one hundred years.
Speaker 2: Or so is, you know, the UK.
Speaker 1: Has declined dramatically in terms of its military power, it's
Speaker 1: economic power, it's political power, but it hasn't given up
Speaker 1: on its perceived global responsibilities. British leaders still talk about
Speaker 1: obviously the UK still has a seat in the UN
Speaker 1: Security Council, so it's not just an illusion, but they
Speaker 1: still talk about global power, global interests, working in the
Speaker 1: Indo Pacific or wherever it may be. And I think
Speaker 1: it's hangover from imperial days now. The problem is that
Speaker 1: the UK does not have the economic might, or the
Speaker 1: political might, or the particular the military might these days
Speaker 1: to back up a lot of a lot of that.
Speaker 1: And because the UK is effectively a bit skint at
Speaker 1: the moment, we are seeing more rhetorican, more emphasis placed
Speaker 1: on the role of secret intelligence, to roll of special forces,
Speaker 1: to act as a force multiplier, to act as a
Speaker 1: way of bridging this gap between what UK leaders perceive
Speaker 1: Britain's global role to be and the actual pounds and
Speaker 1: muscle and equipment which UK has or doesn't have to
Speaker 1: do it. Because you see, for example, during the during
Speaker 1: the Empire, the imperial days the nineteenth century, when the
Speaker 1: UK wanted something done, it would do a bit of
Speaker 1: gumboat diplomacy, you know, send the gun chips out, intimidate
Speaker 1: the intimidate the locals and get its own way. Or
Speaker 1: you know, colonialism was so wrapped up in political influence,
Speaker 1: covert and otherwise bribery here, a bit of something else
Speaker 1: somewhere else, and it was kind of normal. Now as
Speaker 1: the empire dwindled and the UK was rightly unable to
Speaker 1: overtly manipulate local populations by messing around with constitutions or
Speaker 1: whatever it may be, that political power has gone and
Speaker 1: they realized that if they wanted to carry on doing
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, they would be accused, not unreasonably,
Speaker 1: of meddling in neo imperialism. And so they turn to sis,
Speaker 1: to secret staatecraft to try and to try and bridge
Speaker 1: that gap. And I think we've seen that all the
Speaker 1: way through since the Second World War, and I think
Speaker 1: we're seeing that dramatically at the moment as UK forces
Speaker 1: and military gets cut over the last twenty years. Who
Speaker 1: is the one piece of the UK security state which
Speaker 1: is seeing investment. It is the secret Services and special
Speaker 1: forces broadly defined, because they are seen, rightly or wrongly,
Speaker 1: as a way of using smoke and mirrors to try
Speaker 1: to maintain as much influence as possible. And even just
Speaker 1: today the chief of SIS, the new chief of SIS,
Speaker 1: was talking about the role of MI six as a
Speaker 1: soft power instruments around the world, and I think increasingly increasing,
Speaker 1: the increasing the roles a it's a stop gap. It's
Speaker 1: a way of plugging that gap between capabilities and responsibilities.
Speaker 2: And MAGA. If you want to speak a little bit
Speaker 2: about the American approach, you know the difference. I guess
Speaker 2: one of the big differences between the UK and the
Speaker 2: US is we have a constitution which governs, it governs
Speaker 2: some of these things, but it doesn't really prevent us
Speaker 2: from doing anything in the field of COVID action as
Speaker 2: near as I can tell. Do you want to talk
Speaker 2: about that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So obviously the US has had its you know,
Speaker 3: fair share of bad experiences in the seventies that led
Speaker 3: to all this legislative kind of straight jacket if you will,
Speaker 3: of COVID activities and that the CIA was doing. And
Speaker 3: you know, as a liberal democracy, we we want to
Speaker 3: hold people accountable. We want to prevent presence from saying
Speaker 3: I didn't know this was going on. I want to
Speaker 3: you know, we want to see people held responsible for
Speaker 3: activities that they were that they were undertaking on the
Speaker 3: behalf of the great American nation. And the problem, the
Speaker 3: problem is that when a nation goes through something that
Speaker 3: you know, we went through nine to eleven changes It
Speaker 3: changes the risk calculus, It changes how we think about,
Speaker 3: you know, legislation, it changes how we think about what
Speaker 3: what COVID action is. You know, I'll give you I
Speaker 3: think I have three examples for you. So the first
Speaker 3: one was, even before nine to eleven, Clinton was trying
Speaker 3: to get the CIA to authorize the CIA to go
Speaker 3: after Bin Laden. There's a lot of kind of is
Speaker 3: a law enforcement is it? You know, do we can
Speaker 3: we capture him? But can we capture without killing him?
Speaker 3: If we kill him, is it assassination? It's like all
Speaker 3: the kind of raetoric back and forth, right, but after
Speaker 3: nine to eleven, and it was held back mostly because
Speaker 3: he couldn't make up his monk, but it was I mean,
Speaker 3: the presidential finding to to go after Bin Laden. But
Speaker 3: essentially after nine to eleven he goes online, he goes
Speaker 3: to and talks to the media basically saying, I authorize
Speaker 3: people to kill him. We hired people to kill him.
Speaker 3: It was all about killing, kill, kill, Like he used
Speaker 3: the word kill at least.
Speaker 4: Three or four times in that sentence.
Speaker 3: And then you have you know, Bush the quote dead
Speaker 3: or alive, you know poster, you know, so he kind
Speaker 3: of goes a little bit a little bit crazy there.
Speaker 3: And then you also have him saying international law what
Speaker 3: international I don't care what international lawyers are saying. You know,
Speaker 3: we're gonna kick some ass here, right, And then you
Speaker 3: have I think he was when bin Laden was finally
Speaker 3: gone down in twenty eleven, we have Obama saying justice
Speaker 3: has been done. You know, this is how we're supposed
Speaker 3: to do. And it kind of, you know, juxtaposes the
Speaker 3: what we think about American COVID action all kind of
Speaker 3: putting its own little box and you kind of, you know,
Speaker 3: as I said, straight jacket and said, you will only
Speaker 3: come out when we tell you to come out, versus
Speaker 3: this narrative where we now see as users as a
Speaker 3: form of the terrence against you know, enemies, both state
Speaker 3: and non state actors. Right, So it's no longer this
Speaker 3: you know, tool of foreign power, foreign policy. Only when
Speaker 3: we can't use military and diplomacies not enough, it's suddenly
Speaker 3: become this aggressive. What did Rory will remind me again,
Speaker 3: do you remember what what did John Rizzo say? A
Speaker 3: tool of vengeance or something something along those lines, Right,
Speaker 3: it's in his book, John Rizzo, the lawyer, longtime lawyer
Speaker 3: for the for the CIA. So so it kind of
Speaker 3: changed the perspective of what COVID action was. And now
Speaker 3: we've reached yet another stage. You know, never mind cyber
Speaker 3: operations that we have. That's a completely different kind of
Speaker 3: worms right where we don't even most of the time,
Speaker 3: I don't even know if the CIA is doing these
Speaker 3: COVID activities in cyberspace, it would probably be the the military,
Speaker 3: right and cyber Command. No cyber Command, it wouldn't necessarily,
Speaker 3: but yeah, actually cyber Command may very well be doing it.
Speaker 3: Or on the other hand, we have you know, President
Speaker 3: Trump going around, you know, using COVID action as a
Speaker 3: tool to threaten people and to say, you know, we're coming.
Speaker 3: I've authorized the you know, COVID action to come and
Speaker 3: beat the living daylights out of you. So so I
Speaker 3: think it's gone from one end to another where we
Speaker 3: kind of saw it packaged and neatly with a little
Speaker 3: bow and say you will only come out and play
Speaker 3: when we tell you to. Nine to eleven, where it says,
Speaker 3: unleash the CIA for crying out, allow, let it fight,
Speaker 3: let it do all these things. But also the CIA
Speaker 3: is not enough. We give some power to the Special
Speaker 3: Operation Forces too, so they can play together. So we've
Speaker 3: seen a massive change in how, you know, COVID action
Speaker 3: kind of changes from it goes essentially from this from
Speaker 3: one end to another.
Speaker 4: And we very rarely talk about this.
Speaker 3: You know, we focus so much on the Cold War
Speaker 3: and what COVID action was under the Core War that
Speaker 3: we forget to, you know, examine how we have changed
Speaker 3: and how intelligence community, the intelligence community in the US
Speaker 3: has changed since.
Speaker 1: Margat Do you think just on that, because I think
Speaker 1: it's it's so interesting the point of comparison between the
Speaker 1: US experience and the British experience when you've got two
Speaker 1: states both with global interests, although one clearly with more
Speaker 1: power than the other, but working traditionally hand in glove
Speaker 1: when it comes to intelligence cooperation and the ason. But
Speaker 1: they're so very, very different and do you think that
Speaker 1: the neatness of American definitions, the fact that they write
Speaker 1: it all down in a way the British don't, the
Speaker 1: fact that they have the as you mentioned earlier, the
Speaker 1: difference between Title ten and Title fifty, and it's all
Speaker 1: very neat on paper anyway, which the British don't. The
Speaker 1: Bridge had a much more flexible and nimble approach and
Speaker 1: there's no definition, and the Britishish use euphemisms like intelligence
Speaker 1: effects or my favorite from the Cold War were nocturnal operations,
Speaker 1: discrete operations, machiavellian operations, just any kind of euphemism. And
Speaker 1: that's been the British way, you know, nimble, flexible, muddling through,
Speaker 1: making it work in an agile way. Looking across the
Speaker 1: Atlantic and seeing the CIA get bogged down in legal
Speaker 1: definitions and having to do legal gymnastics about who was
Speaker 1: actually authorizing it because of Title ten, Title fifty and
Speaker 1: it's all blurred and horrible. Do you think I was
Speaker 1: really strug by what you're saying?
Speaker 2: Then?
Speaker 1: Do you think that the that neatness of rising everything
Speaker 1: down has actually posted on eleven kind of come undone
Speaker 1: and it's been a bit of a problem for American
Speaker 1: practitioners and maybe, dare I say it, the Brits were right.
Speaker 3: But this this, this, this is in the end of
Speaker 3: the day. This is all about whether the Brids were
Speaker 3: right and Americans are wrong in their approach.
Speaker 4: You see, Jack, this is how it works.
Speaker 3: We always get there. This is how all our conversations
Speaker 3: and conversations go. Well, listen, I think we're definitely experiencing something.
Speaker 3: You know that that is that is challenging and definian
Speaker 3: and you know, legalese of of whether it's COVID action
Speaker 3: or whether it's military authorities are definitely being challenged.
Speaker 4: But that is to say, you know, they.
Speaker 3: Were there for domestic purposes and the domestic political climate
Speaker 3: has changed, so they're not as restricting as they used
Speaker 3: to be. There's there's wiggle room in there, right, you know,
Speaker 3: like whether we define assassinations targeted drone strikes or UAV strikes,
Speaker 3: whether those are termed assassination or not. So there's always
Speaker 3: been wiggle room here because this is legal language, right,
Speaker 3: There's always been a little bit bit of change there.
Speaker 3: So I think we're definitely struggling with it. And you know,
Speaker 3: I'm actually writing a chapter on the future of COVID action,
Speaker 3: and this is one of the things that I want
Speaker 3: to want to look at, you know, do we need
Speaker 3: to change things? You know, is what we have enough
Speaker 3: to constrain policy makers, whether they're well in this particularly
Speaker 3: in Stince frankly, the president from abusing his power. It's
Speaker 3: not the Congress can approve or you know, reject COVID
Speaker 3: action proposal, but they can create trouble if they don't
Speaker 3: agree with the the presidential finding that the Presidence wants
Speaker 3: to wants to enact. So so I think it all
Speaker 3: kind of depends on a domestic political climate and where
Speaker 3: we are in Congress and you know, who rules what house,
Speaker 3: who's winning and all that kind of stuff. So a
Speaker 3: lot of it is really just for domestic posturing political posturing.
Speaker 3: If I'm honest, I don't think it's precluded the CIA
Speaker 3: from acting in any particular way definition or no definition
Speaker 3: or special operations from you know, assisting on the title
Speaker 3: fifty and you know.
Speaker 4: Getting being shipped.
Speaker 3: So there's there's that. So I'm not saying we were wrong.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying you were right. I'm just saying it's complicated.
Speaker 2: So let's I'd really like to dive into some of
Speaker 2: the chapters on some of the not lesser known countries,
Speaker 2: but not their intelligence services are not written about quite
Speaker 2: as prolifically as we do in the Western world. One
Speaker 2: of the two of the chapters actually that I really
Speaker 2: enjoyed and learned a lot from was there's one about
Speaker 2: Palestine from nineteen seventeen in nineteen forty eight, and then
Speaker 2: you know post after the creation of Israel and the
Speaker 2: rise of Massad. That's another chapter that's very interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I should give a shout out to so Stephen.
Speaker 1: Stephen Wagner wrote the Palestine chapter, and I really really enjoyed.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed that chapter for the same reason as you, Si, Jackie.
Speaker 3: Don't.
Speaker 1: You don't read about it much in the literature, which
Speaker 1: raises that question of well, is it Covet's action as
Speaker 1: we as academics and commentators would understand it. But there
Speaker 1: are clearly some interesting parallels around. I mean, Stephen writes
Speaker 1: about disinformation, he writes about assassination. But the thing that
Speaker 1: really stood out for me from that chapter was the
Speaker 1: learning and invitation between different actors, because then, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously the Palestine mandate was very complex and messy, affair
Speaker 1: involving the Brits and Palestinian Gorillas and Zionists and evolved
Speaker 1: over twenty odd years. But what Stephen points out is
Speaker 1: that some of these taller statecraft are ever present, and
Speaker 1: that the different state or different actors are learning from
Speaker 1: each other, passing on skills as one side to training
Speaker 1: the other. And then it's witch allegiance and these ideas.
Speaker 1: You start to see the transfer of techniques, tactics, ideas
Speaker 1: and thinking. And I think that's another theme from across
Speaker 1: the book, which is particularly from that era, from World
Speaker 1: War two and just before World War two and enduring
Speaker 1: and immediately afterwards. You start to see the transfer of skills, ideas, tactics,
Speaker 1: and doctrine a cross different groups as these ideas have
Speaker 1: become institutionalized and trained. So yeah, I'll let the magic
Speaker 1: to comment on the on the Israel chapter, but I
Speaker 1: thought that was a great chapter from Stephen.
Speaker 2: I just want to point out, I mean, what I
Speaker 2: thought was very interesting speaking to what you were just saying,
Speaker 2: is that the kind of early pre Israeli but I
Speaker 2: guess you say, like Zionist or Jewish intelligence networks in
Speaker 2: the in the region kind of got their influence from
Speaker 2: two places, one from from you guys, from the British,
Speaker 2: and then the other It mentions that a lot of
Speaker 2: the people who were going there were Russian Jews that
Speaker 2: had grown up during the Bolshevik Revolution and immediately after,
Speaker 2: and so they grew up in a culture of conspiracy
Speaker 2: and political assassination and they brought that skill set with
Speaker 2: them to their intelligence service. Yeah, and we read more and.
Speaker 1: More about the long history of Putin and Russia kind
Speaker 1: of political culture of active measures, COVID action, coercive interference, group,
Speaker 1: call it what you like, and more and more scholars
Speaker 1: are tracing what we see now puting's up to all
Speaker 1: the way back to Bulshary Revolution and indeed and indeed
Speaker 1: before and some of the Chekha and the and the
Speaker 1: Cyrus regime. And what I think we forget sometimes and
Speaker 1: why this chapter is I think so fascinating, is that
Speaker 1: that's not just a direct lineage to be traced in Russia,
Speaker 1: that those ideas actually are exported as people, you know,
Speaker 1: flee exiles, emigrants, wherever they may be. And you start
Speaker 1: to see this, uh, this, this this lineage branch out
Speaker 1: and I think that's a wonderful example of that checkist
Speaker 1: ideas and conspiracy theorists and assassinations as part of everyday
Speaker 1: state craft start to come to come to play, and
Speaker 1: particular conflict.
Speaker 2: Yet, Magie, you want to go on the Massad chapter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, So I worked with Melinda House on this
Speaker 3: and it was just it was a fascinating, you know,
Speaker 3: chapter to read. And of course we hear about Mosades
Speaker 3: operations quite often, and you know, they're not very shy about,
Speaker 3: uh saying that certain operations were conducted by them. But
Speaker 3: that's the part of their strategy, right, It's this you know,
Speaker 3: they're targeted killing approach. Whether it's a scientists or whether
Speaker 3: it's you know, other types of adversaries. It's about the
Speaker 3: strategically important psychological goal. It's it's not necessarily just about
Speaker 3: doing the COVID actually not just about stopping these people.
Speaker 3: But again, like I mentioned, you know in previous, like
Speaker 3: I said previously, a lot of these countries are signaling
Speaker 3: to their adversaries and saying, hey, stop messing with us,
Speaker 3: because this is what we're going to do. But what
Speaker 3: I found also very interesting with the with the Israel
Speaker 3: chapters is this this notion.
Speaker 4: Of red lines.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like you can push push, push, push push,
Speaker 3: but we don't know when you cross the red line,
Speaker 3: when when Israel is going to Mozat is going to react.
Speaker 3: So kind of this strategic ambiguity is a massive, massive
Speaker 3: play for for for Israel and keeping ambiguity as to
Speaker 3: you know, the operations that they're doing or whether whether
Speaker 3: you know the nuclear ambiguity and this this red line
Speaker 3: policy is actually I find that fascinating because you constantly
Speaker 3: you may just do one thing and it's gonna, you know,
Speaker 3: create a reaction, or you may be doing repeatedly different
Speaker 3: things that will create create reaction. And one of the
Speaker 3: other things that I also liked about this chapter, it
Speaker 3: also shows that you know, the difference is in how
Speaker 3: COVID action is perceived and what happens to a country
Speaker 3: that is that feels, you know, always at risk. It's
Speaker 3: existential right for the for them, it's so it kind
Speaker 3: of pushes the kind of into a particular frame of
Speaker 3: mind where you know, they feel that they have to
Speaker 3: be aggressive in this it's no longer just defense. We're
Speaker 3: no longer and it's no longer just influenced in politics
Speaker 3: in another country. It's become much more I want to
Speaker 3: say savage frankly in a sense that you know, you're
Speaker 3: trying to you pretty much get rid of anybody who
Speaker 3: could potentially be a threat. But then you also have
Speaker 3: this other side of it, whereas you will work with
Speaker 3: anybody and everybody, you know, even with your adversaries, you know,
Speaker 3: to get to the goal. So it's kind of you know,
Speaker 3: it shows you the pragmatism of the situations that you know,
Speaker 3: and no two situations are the same. And it also
Speaker 3: depends where we you know, where we're talking seventies, where
Speaker 3: we're talking about you know, eighties, nineties, what other geopolitical
Speaker 3: issues are happening, and you know, you see this other
Speaker 3: side of them rescuing people, you know, Jews from various
Speaker 3: other countries and trying repeatedly to you know, come to
Speaker 3: terms with with countries that they wouldn't usually cooperate with
Speaker 3: or work with, just to save these people. So so
Speaker 3: I think it was it was an interesting point where
Speaker 3: you know, obviously you know they're well skilled, as we know,
Speaker 3: and uh, but they're also very creative, the exceptionally well created,
Speaker 3: and clearly they they you know, they've they think about it.
Speaker 3: I wonder where I mean I don't wonder. I know
Speaker 3: the reason that they do things the way they do
Speaker 3: and that they think is simply because for them, you know,
Speaker 3: it's existential. And then I think that forces the frame
Speaker 3: of mind in a different direction and makes them approach
Speaker 3: COVID activities in general much more seriously, uh than you know,
Speaker 3: if it's more of a you know, something that's that's
Speaker 3: less existential, for instance.
Speaker 1: So yeah, like Canada and Australia. And I think that
Speaker 1: was because that was one of the really fun things
Speaker 1: about the book to be able to do this comparison
Speaker 1: about state's approaches and what the different drivers were between
Speaker 1: across states who aren't normally examined.
Speaker 2: So as mad to.
Speaker 1: Say, as Israel, it's very much geopolitics surrounded by enemies
Speaker 1: and a real sense of exidential threat, which leads to
Speaker 1: an aggressive use of cover at action and also a
Speaker 1: pretty implausibly deniable use of covert action to go to
Speaker 1: the state digitic combanguity point. And that's a lovely comparison
Speaker 1: to say Canada, who have traditionally not had those levels
Speaker 1: of anywhere near those levels of threat, and therefore you
Speaker 1: can see almost geopolitics has shaped.
Speaker 2: The Canadian approach.
Speaker 1: It's only more recently has become more involved in cyber
Speaker 1: issues more remotely that they've become a bit more engaged.
Speaker 1: Say with Australia, you know, no exidential threat, no real
Speaker 1: threat place World War two, and only is the rise
Speaker 1: of China affected them in the last fifteen years or so,
Speaker 1: has suddenly cover at action risen back up the policy
Speaker 1: agenda and say, by comparing these different states, you get
Speaker 1: a really nice window into what drive states to be
Speaker 1: doing these kinds of tactics.
Speaker 3: I think the Jackie also one of the one of
Speaker 3: the other things that you can you know, you'll probably
Speaker 3: notice with with other states, medium or small sized states,
Speaker 3: how it's not constant. Their decision to use COVID action
Speaker 3: is not constant in changes you constantly depending on on
Speaker 3: on geopolitical stituations, but also for their domestic purposes for
Speaker 3: that So if you look, for instance, one of the
Speaker 3: chapters that I engage with was Turkey. You know, if
Speaker 3: you look, there's like three different stages of Turkish operations there, right,
Speaker 3: you know, you have your World War one, World War two,
Speaker 3: and then you have the you know that period from
Speaker 3: the fifties to two thousand until edge gun comes in
Speaker 3: and then after that how it changes. And it changes
Speaker 3: because well, because of domestic political situation, because and use
Speaker 3: they use COVID activities, not simply because you know, for
Speaker 3: foreign policy, but also to balance different sides, you know,
Speaker 3: to balance their adversaries as well as their you know,
Speaker 3: allies and kind of keep the peace in many respects.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: So even if they did this in Australia, right to
Speaker 3: keep the peace during the Cold War, it will all
Speaker 3: blow up. So Turkey does exactly the same thing, kind
Speaker 3: of trying to balance adversaries and allies, and then you
Speaker 3: see as a situation around them in their region gets worse, Uh,
Speaker 3: they become much they've become very aware of the fact
Speaker 3: that they are now probably one of the key players
Speaker 3: in the region. So that also influences how they start
Speaker 3: using code action abroad. Right, So it's no longer about
Speaker 3: who's controlling the intelligence organizations, who's pulling the strings. It's
Speaker 3: more about, huh, what can we do to you know,
Speaker 3: to create a situation or create a scenario where Turkey
Speaker 3: has an advantage in the region and is considered one
Speaker 3: of the key key players that that can influence things
Speaker 3: to its to its advantage. So I found that very
Speaker 3: very interesting to see kind of this evolution and different
Speaker 3: different aspects of it.
Speaker 2: Let's jump into India next, if that's okay. I think
Speaker 2: that's an interesting chapter because you know, they had this
Speaker 2: not non aligned policy during the Cold War. I think
Speaker 2: technically they still do. But I feel like in a
Speaker 2: you know, much has been written about the collapse of
Speaker 2: world order and the rise of a multipolar order. I
Speaker 2: feel like we're seeing like a very different India as
Speaker 2: reflected through their intelligence operations in recent years.
Speaker 3: Rob, do you want to grab this one. I'm not
Speaker 3: very very very good with India stuff, except for the
Speaker 3: more contemporary things. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well again, I shout out to Paul mcgarth at KCR
Speaker 1: who who wrote this chapter, and I think it's a
Speaker 1: nice example of the evolution. As Magda was talking about Turkey,
Speaker 1: similar point applies to India. You see this, this this evolution,
Speaker 1: particularly you know in post post independence, where it started
Speaker 1: off with, perhaps because of the political culture of political history,
Speaker 1: a sense of caution, where covert action was a bit
Speaker 1: of a bit of a dirty word in the in
Speaker 1: the immediate you know, post imperial space. You know, he
Speaker 1: wants to differentiate themselves. I'm paraphrasing Paul Farty simplistically, but
Speaker 1: the essence of it is wanted this different differentially themselves
Speaker 1: from some of the dirty tricks that the imperious British
Speaker 1: had been playing on them, wanted to differentiate themselves from
Speaker 1: some of the Cold War tactics that they were now
Speaker 1: kind of enmeshed in.
Speaker 2: Didn't want to be.
Speaker 1: Seen as a as a battleground for superpower covert action,
Speaker 1: which I think wrongly is how a lot of the
Speaker 1: kind of history literature sees India as a almost a passive,
Speaker 1: a passive battleground where the Soviet and American rivalry covertly
Speaker 1: played out, particularly in particularly in propaganda contests, and then
Speaker 1: so so it came late to covert action. I think, well,
Speaker 1: Paul thinks, and I agree, as a as a consequence
Speaker 1: of of colonialism. But then gradually, as you know, the
Speaker 1: decades have gone past, and it's become shaken off those
Speaker 1: colonial bonds. It's becoming more muscular, it's becoming more confidence,
Speaker 1: it's dominating the region, it's the leadership has been quite
Speaker 1: open in the India first approach, and I think what
Speaker 1: we've seen then is an evolution from the caution circumspection
Speaker 1: in the early late ninety forty ninety fifties through to
Speaker 1: the example that you open the conversation with Jack about
Speaker 1: the alleged you know, attempts to bump off various dissidents
Speaker 1: in North America. And I think that's a that's a
Speaker 1: journey as a country becomes more confident, becomes more muscular,
Speaker 1: maybe more ease with itself, shakes off some of those
Speaker 1: fears of consequences of colonialism as a really nice example
Speaker 1: of how a state isn't tied to its geopolitics, it's
Speaker 1: history wherever it can be. I think one of the
Speaker 1: danes of banged On Abot strategic culture is that it
Speaker 1: doesn't allow a state to evolve. It always seems that
Speaker 1: it's kind of rooted in this one particular mindset. And
Speaker 1: India is a great example of moving from the immediate
Speaker 1: independence mindset towards what we're seeing now when it is
Speaker 1: quite an aggressive actor in this space, not just with
Speaker 1: with the alleged assassinations and assassination attempts, but also in
Speaker 1: long ish history, with covert competition, with with with with Pakistan,
Speaker 1: with activity around Bangladesh, various allegations of meddling in Sri Lanka.
Speaker 1: So we're seeing the evolution of a much more muscular
Speaker 1: postures as India becomes more confident.
Speaker 2: I think, I'm let's jump over to South Africa. So
Speaker 2: this is like, this is a very interesting chapter and
Speaker 2: it gets into the intelligence service, the so called Civil
Speaker 2: Cooperation Bureau, and I think South Africa is one of those.
Speaker 2: And we're talking about apartheid era South Africa really in
Speaker 2: this chapter, to be clear, and I think that's a
Speaker 2: really interesting case of where there wasn't any separation between
Speaker 2: church and state, so to speak. Like all these sorts
Speaker 2: of restraints and laws and things we talk about, none
Speaker 2: of that seems to have existed in apartheid era South Africa.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll start maybe here. I think one of the
Speaker 3: things that, yeah, I might have mentioned is to you
Speaker 3: when we started this conversation. The first thing that struck
Speaker 3: me when I started reading that chapter when Kevin O'Brien
Speaker 3: sent it. And Kevin has written on this prolifically, so
Speaker 3: if you love learning and reading about South Africa, I
Speaker 3: would encourage you to look some of some of his
Speaker 3: other work. But essentially, one of the first things that
Speaker 3: came to my mind was like, there's no good guy here.
Speaker 3: They're all bad this this is just there is no control. Essentially,
Speaker 3: everything goes and as much as they tried to, particularly
Speaker 3: by the time that Boss came to the intelligence organization
Speaker 3: that was running COVID operations, by the time they came
Speaker 3: to power or they were founded, I think there was
Speaker 3: just may where I both domestically UH and abroad. But
Speaker 3: I think at the same time, you know, in the sixties,
Speaker 3: you don't see much going on simply because neither the
Speaker 3: the South Africa UH nor no revolutionary forces actually have
Speaker 3: the capabilities to to to to do COVID activities. But
Speaker 3: then you see from the seventies and then through the
Speaker 3: nineties through to the nineties, their activities on both sides
Speaker 3: evolve and grow. But one of the reasons why they
Speaker 3: do is because they have all these wars around them
Speaker 3: at the same time and their UH, their their resources
Speaker 3: and their capabilities and their knowledge in counterinsurgency UH and
Speaker 3: count and counter terrorism essentially growing. So they're applying all
Speaker 3: these in in their in their counterinsurgency efforts. But the
Speaker 3: problem is it just became and it wasn't just essentially
Speaker 3: they didn't just do paramilitary operations. They were doing a
Speaker 3: whole host of different COVID COVID activities, including propaganda or
Speaker 3: psyops in their parlance, but it was just brutal on
Speaker 3: all accounts. There were a lot of people were killed
Speaker 3: and you know the brutality of it. So once the
Speaker 3: revolutionaries were trying to to to get UH too, to
Speaker 3: find the traitors within their ranks, they became just as
Speaker 3: horrible as a South Africa and they were treating people,
Speaker 3: you know, just as just as equally bad, if you will.
Speaker 3: So there's just no good side here. It was just
Speaker 3: mayhem and violence on on.
Speaker 4: On every front.
Speaker 3: But what you see towards the end of it is
Speaker 3: that the government is losing all the politicians are losing
Speaker 3: UH control, completely losing control over this and they are
Speaker 3: just so so now now it's no longer about just
Speaker 3: keeping South Africa within its you know, and protecting South Africa.
Speaker 3: It's more about you know, protecting themselves and growing their capabilities,
Speaker 3: growing their riches, attacking, killing, you know, threatening, and obviously
Speaker 3: you know, a great many paramilitary companies or mercenaries if
Speaker 3: you will, had come out of that period, and I
Speaker 3: think South Africa is still struggling with it and struggling
Speaker 3: with it past because of it, simply because there was
Speaker 3: just I think towards the end in the eighties they
Speaker 3: had I want to say, over was it over forty
Speaker 3: different outfits doing COVID action. It was just it just
Speaker 3: got absolutely ridiculous.
Speaker 2: There are also allegations that, like within CCB and some
Speaker 2: of the other structures, that they started killing their own
Speaker 2: people exactly. Yeah, some pretty grizzly stuff. It's like the
Speaker 2: machine just has to keep eating, and that's what you
Speaker 2: were talking about, you know, where this gets completely out
Speaker 2: of control.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, So I mean even in that period, you know,
Speaker 3: by the time the problem they couldn't It's almost like
Speaker 3: one of those things, COVID action forced them to the
Speaker 3: negotiating table, but then COVID action also took them away
Speaker 3: from the negotiating so it was like it was working
Speaker 3: against itself almost, you know, they were attacking each other
Speaker 3: from within, and it just I feel like it became
Speaker 3: a tool of vengeance and revenge and powers and riches
Speaker 3: and run than you know, what was intended to be.
Speaker 3: And even by the nineties, this game was not over.
Speaker 3: They just you know, went into private world or you know,
Speaker 3: they continued proliferating into you know, into these mercenaries who
Speaker 3: provided services throughout Africa and you know, weapons smuggling. There's
Speaker 3: all sorts of criminal activities.
Speaker 2: What's a jump if we can to something a little
Speaker 2: bit different Brazil, totally different geopolitical context that they exist in.
Speaker 2: You guys want to talk about that one a little bit.
Speaker 1: Well, if I remember correctly, Magna, correct me if I'm
Speaker 1: if I'm wrong that the this isn't a nice example
Speaker 1: of a state where the political history and culture helped
Speaker 1: to shape approaches to COVID action.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and during the.
Speaker 1: Authoritarian regime, co action, like with many authoritarian regimes, ed
Speaker 1: from cover at action to domestic control and repression. And
Speaker 1: it's just you know, it's a similar story with apartheid
Speaker 1: South Africa. That Magna was just just relaying, where does
Speaker 1: where does covert action start or stop? And killing a
Speaker 1: dissident who happens to live across a contested border begin where?
Speaker 1: Where where's the line? So for people living in Brazil
Speaker 1: under under dictatorship, COVI attraction is a means of state repression,
Speaker 1: not dis similar to you know, the perceptions of intelligence
Speaker 1: services in Argentina for example, not quite as bad, but
Speaker 1: it still has that that connotation. And so when states
Speaker 1: such as Brazil moved towards democracy, there's a a reluctance
Speaker 1: about about covert action, reluctance to engage because it's seen
Speaker 1: as a tool of oppression. And I think it's a
Speaker 1: point that actually applies to intelligence services more broadly as
Speaker 1: part of democratization, that the new governments have to win
Speaker 1: over the trust of the people because intelligence in an
Speaker 1: auquitarian states it's it's it's a byword for repression and
Speaker 1: torture and misery. And so when new states transitions to
Speaker 1: democracy and wants to become and wants to have an
Speaker 1: intelligence service which engages in action, as you know, as
Speaker 1: many democratic intelligent services do, it has to win over
Speaker 1: the trust of the people. And I think Brazil was
Speaker 1: no exception. And another example of that would be West
Speaker 1: Germany's approach to cave attaction, you know, the exactly and
Speaker 1: coming out of the horrific legacy of Nazi Germany and
Speaker 1: repression and torture and holocaust, the West German States was
Speaker 1: for obvious reasons, very very reluctant to engage in in
Speaker 1: any kind of dark arts and COVID operations. They didn't
Speaker 1: they want to want to be white and white because
Speaker 1: of the because of that's history. And I think one
Speaker 1: of the findings from the book is that political history
Speaker 1: helps to explain whether certain states have, you know, an
Speaker 1: unusual level of restraint when it comes to covidt action.
Speaker 1: And maybe Brazilian if I remember correctly, and certainly West
Speaker 1: Germany might be might be examples of that.
Speaker 2: I won't make you guys go through each of them
Speaker 2: individually for brevity's sake, but I would like to just
Speaker 2: take a second to talk about Russia, China, and North Korea,
Speaker 2: the authoritarian states that you look at in this book,
Speaker 2: and sort of what the findings were of how these
Speaker 2: states approached COVID action versus, you know, all the others
Speaker 2: we've spoken about. Basically, it's it's.
Speaker 1: Tricky because we've one of the one of the main
Speaker 1: findings is that lots and lots of states engage in
Speaker 1: this kind of activity, but they wouldn't see it as
Speaker 1: as cover action.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Our China chapter explicitly says that the Chinese don't have
Speaker 1: a word for co att action or a translation for
Speaker 1: cover att action, and therefore you know, are we misguided
Speaker 1: when we start talking about Chinese co atte action? Is
Speaker 1: that just a ridiculous phrase which means nothing to Chinese government,
Speaker 1: Chinese people and doesn't actually help want us analyze what
Speaker 1: the Chinese doing and to help people in the West
Speaker 1: build resilience against some of these things. So what I
Speaker 1: think we see is we certainly know that Russia engaged
Speaker 1: in a lot of this activity. We know that China
Speaker 1: engaged in a lot of political influence operations, whether that's propaganda.
Speaker 2: Or through.
Speaker 1: We've seen the UK, We've seen Canada, Australia, New Zealand
Speaker 1: put out alerts through their intelligence services that China is
Speaker 1: trying to deniably influence internal democratic processes, and we've seen
Speaker 1: numerous numerous inquiries into that. But they do it in
Speaker 1: a different kind of way. Because this is one of
Speaker 1: the big lessons from the book. We just take the
Speaker 1: American definition of covert action and transpose it onto China
Speaker 1: to then understand what the Chinese are doing, you're not
Speaker 1: going to get very far. So we see the Chinese
Speaker 1: allegedly working through the diaspora or coercively, wittingly or otherwise
Speaker 1: to try and on a low level shape the parameters
Speaker 1: of academic debates sensor what universities can and come out
Speaker 1: write about or or try to shape economic climate or business.
Speaker 1: And we've seen leaders in Australia over the last ten
Speaker 1: years say that, you know, it's a low level, widespread
Speaker 1: drip drip drip of blur in the line between what's
Speaker 1: legitimate and what's illegitimate, between what's overt and what's covert,
Speaker 1: and between what is broadly acceptable and as political lobbying
Speaker 1: and what is not as coercive interference. And I remember
Speaker 1: one com remember it was ahead of the Australian intelligence
Speaker 1: or a former politician. So one day you wake up
Speaker 1: and you realize that the political system has changed because
Speaker 1: it's happened on this gradual drip drip drip of semi
Speaker 1: covert political influence. And I think if we take the
Speaker 1: American definition and apply it to Russia and China, we
Speaker 1: overplay the focus on secrecy, and I think we overplay
Speaker 1: the focus on a neat, compatmentalized approach to government, whereas
Speaker 1: in Russia, in China, you know, it's it's much more
Speaker 1: of a whole of government approach engaging in this kind
Speaker 1: of activity, certainly on the intelligent side of things. With China,
Speaker 1: it's much more, much more industrialized. And when it comes
Speaker 1: to Russia, what we're seeing, I think is a lot
Speaker 1: of activity. The Chief m I six today, instead of
Speaker 1: doing the usual six tour of the global threat perceptions,
Speaker 1: just focused specifically on Russia, calling them out as being
Speaker 1: a hardcore hostile state actor. And previous previous British intelligence
Speaker 1: chiefs have quoted Russian intelligent services as having gone feral.
Speaker 1: So we're seeing a widespread increase in activity. But I
Speaker 1: think Man that you wrote about this the it's low
Speaker 1: level what scholars including Mander have called gig economy approach
Speaker 1: to recruitment of saboteurs and spies, and I think Mago
Speaker 1: Nephew will elaborate on that. I think that's been a
Speaker 1: change and is something more distinctive to Russia compared to
Speaker 1: say the US.
Speaker 2: That's that's that is a big thing. And Megdal, I'll
Speaker 2: let you take it. I just want to say, in
Speaker 2: some of my work as a journalist and talking to
Speaker 2: counterintelligence people and an intelligence personnel who have come under surveillance,
Speaker 2: that foreign intelligence services are going on these like gig
Speaker 2: websites and hiring just like a door dash guy to
Speaker 2: do surveillance on somebody. Like it's crazy how it's how
Speaker 2: it works. But anyway, I'll let you elaborate.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, I think one of the things that we
Speaker 3: realize very quickly is that well, most of these operations
Speaker 3: that Russia and you know, other adressary adversaries were undertake,
Speaker 3: you know, sabotage were in particular throughout Europe, had roots,
Speaker 3: you know, in the Cold War. That they're not that
Speaker 3: different in a sense, they're attacking the same kind of
Speaker 3: targets and infrastructure that would have been the target anyway.
Speaker 4: Right, What we.
Speaker 3: Realized quickly is that the the type of people that
Speaker 3: were doing this and who were being employed to do
Speaker 3: this is not the same anymore. So it's not your
Speaker 3: typical agent, you know, with an age intelligence you groom them,
Speaker 3: you you know, you train them, or intelligence officers in
Speaker 3: the end of the day, you know, you work with
Speaker 3: these people, you train them, you know who they are,
Speaker 3: you know, you know you can command them, you can
Speaker 3: tell them what to do. But now what we're seeing
Speaker 3: is that they don't necessarily because a lot of Russian
Speaker 3: intelligence officers and diplomats have been kicked out of Europe
Speaker 3: and you know, and other states, and they don't really
Speaker 3: have the capability to do these the number of operations
Speaker 3: that they do, so they turn to this gig economy approach.
Speaker 3: Employment of individuals who have never done these things, who
Speaker 3: may think of themselves as the next John Wick or
Speaker 3: you know, your adjacent Borne, and they think they can
Speaker 3: do this. They whether they have allegiances to Russia or
Speaker 3: not is irrelevant, whether they have ideological sympathies, whether they've
Speaker 3: ever done this, and frankly, in some cases they don't
Speaker 3: even know they're doing it for Russia, right, they don't
Speaker 3: even know to whom they're speaking. So essentially what this allows,
Speaker 3: the gig economy approach is is not something that Russia
Speaker 3: has invented. You know, if you think about transnational criminal networks,
Speaker 3: they've been doing this kind of stuff for years, you know,
Speaker 3: just hiring an odd person for this task or that
Speaker 3: task here and there, right, and one side doesn't know
Speaker 3: what the other side is doing, so it gives you
Speaker 3: much much broader approach. You know, in some instances, like
Speaker 3: we've seen in London, for instance, a chap who.
Speaker 4: Was recently errol do you remember what was his name? Again?
Speaker 1: Do you remember Rory Errol.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, no, this is a kid who burned the
Speaker 3: organized the burning of the storage facility in the UK. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he was. I think it's er something, but it's a
Speaker 3: young kid, he's never done this kind of stuff. He
Speaker 3: gets contacted by somebody, uh working for Russian intelligence services,
Speaker 3: so potentially I think in the end it turned out
Speaker 3: that it was a Wagner link there says you know,
Speaker 3: we want you to hire several people to burn down
Speaker 3: the storage facility. They're giving specific instructions and in the end,
Speaker 3: what happens that he didn't follow the instructions they were given,
Speaker 3: that he was given, so they didn't pay him as
Speaker 3: much money that that that that they said they would
Speaker 3: and because he didn't burn it to the Wagner standards.
Speaker 4: I mean, this, this is how sick this is.
Speaker 3: And these people, I mean their kids most of the time.
Speaker 3: And the UK is not the only place you know
Speaker 3: where this happened, you have it happens in Poland. I
Speaker 3: think in Poland they one of the individuals was from
Speaker 3: somewhere from Latin America, uh, and he was told that
Speaker 3: he needs to take pictures of a bus depot in Germany. Well,
Speaker 3: why well for insurance purposes, and you will get you know, paid,
Speaker 3: whatever amount it was. And sometimes they don't even get
Speaker 3: paid frankly, but this one was like, you will get paid,
Speaker 3: you know, a minimal amount. Just go take some pictures.
Speaker 3: It's an insurance thing. And the next thing, you know,
Speaker 3: you know, the bus DEEPI that catches fire or there's
Speaker 3: an explosion going on, and this this these kinds of things,
Speaker 3: you know. Sometimes they are refugees just trying to earn
Speaker 3: a quick buck. Sometimes they're teachers, so they have no training,
Speaker 3: they're quick, they're cheap, and in the end of their
Speaker 3: Russia doesn't give them. What happens to them, you know,
Speaker 3: and whether they caught or not, like prove it. So
Speaker 3: essentially it opens up a kind of worms to type
Speaker 3: of individuals you can hire us through this approach.
Speaker 2: The last kind of big question I want to ask
Speaker 2: the two of you is kind of concluding thoughts I
Speaker 2: suppose about all of the things we've been talking about,
Speaker 2: and how it seems that we are moving into more
Speaker 2: of a multi polar worldview where we're going to have
Speaker 2: a number of different states that all see themselves as regional,
Speaker 2: if not world powers. Things seem to be getting increasingly chaotic.
Speaker 2: The old you know, Moscow rules and those types of
Speaker 2: concepts seem to be off the table completely. It's like
Speaker 2: anything goes. What are your thoughts about the future of
Speaker 2: COVID action and where we're heading in the next ten
Speaker 2: to twenty years. Chats from that.
Speaker 1: Okay, out there first, and you can have the fun.
Speaker 2: You can have the fun of word because you you.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: The thing that struck me.
Speaker 1: Doing this project is that this is not new, and
Speaker 1: that states have been doing this for literally millennia before states,
Speaker 1: before states even existed. Obviously they wouldn't have called it
Speaker 1: cob to action. But these same kinds of principles and
Speaker 1: means and tactics and objectives go back literally literally millennia,
Speaker 1: and far more states do it and have done it
Speaker 1: than I think we give credit for in our writings
Speaker 1: and in the in the press and in academia. And
Speaker 1: that's not to create false equivalents. Russia, clearly, as Mago
Speaker 1: just outlining, has a very very different approach compared to
Speaker 1: say the UK where I am now that said, lots
Speaker 1: of countries engage in this kind of of activity, from
Speaker 1: Brazil through to Chile through to Saudi Arabia, Turkey, you know, books,
Speaker 1: chapters we couldn't find authors for in the book, and
Speaker 1: chapter we couldn't write the book because would have been
Speaker 1: outrageously long. So I think we need going forward to
Speaker 1: understand that this is a part of international stake craft,
Speaker 1: that coercive unacknowledged interference is something that states do. They
Speaker 1: do it for different reasons, they do it different levels
Speaker 1: of oversights, they do it with different levels of intensity,
Speaker 1: but it's something that lots of states do, and we
Speaker 1: need to acknowledge that this this exists and account for
Speaker 1: it in our in our thinking. And some of these
Speaker 1: some of these middle powers and smaller powers, have their
Speaker 1: own agency. They're not just being not just pawns being
Speaker 1: manipulated by Russia or China or the US. These states
Speaker 1: have their own intelligence agencies and are trying to to
Speaker 1: manipulate in shape stuff themselves. And I think we be
Speaker 1: wrong to wipe out their agency by just assuming that
Speaker 1: Russia is meddling in post imperial Africa and the you know,
Speaker 1: the poor post imperial Africans don't have any say in
Speaker 1: that and an ability with their own in Tigian agencies.
Speaker 1: So I think we'll see more we'll see it. We'll
Speaker 1: see the trend continuing of more states engaging in this,
Speaker 1: more states trying to find their own way, playing different
Speaker 1: powers off against each other, trying to manipulate. I think
Speaker 1: that it will become more chaotic. I think that it
Speaker 1: become noisier. I think it will become more intense. I
Speaker 1: think the fundamental principles will stay the same. States use
Speaker 1: these tools for particular reasons. They have particular trade offs
Speaker 1: when using sabotage and other kind of forms of COVID operations.
Speaker 1: That hasn't changed. But the speed, the intensity supercharged by
Speaker 1: technology super cher but interonnectedness will just make it all
Speaker 1: more intense, noisier, more chaotic, and I think state will
Speaker 1: see more of it because states will just do more
Speaker 1: stuff to try and drown out the signals. But I'll
Speaker 1: hand over to Magda, who is currently thinking about these
Speaker 1: things in a much more intellectual.
Speaker 2: Manner than me.
Speaker 3: Not quite, but thank you very much for thinking that.
Speaker 3: I am well. I actually agree with you very much so.
Speaker 3: And the one thing that we are neglecting in a
Speaker 3: manner of speaking, is that the character of COVID action
Speaker 3: is changing. And I think that the states are it's
Speaker 3: not just about rapidly deploying people anymore. It's not about
Speaker 3: technology necessarily. I think it's about realizing that and of
Speaker 3: course those things are very important, but I think it's
Speaker 3: about realizing that we may not necessarily be talking about
Speaker 3: traditional kinetic warfare. I think we're talking about dirty warfare here,
Speaker 3: and you know, in your hybrid space and in your
Speaker 3: gray zone or hybrid warfare space. And I think non
Speaker 3: state actors are becoming prolifically important in in in this
Speaker 3: next phase. So for instance, you've you know, we've talked
Speaker 3: about UH India a little bit. You know, India use
Speaker 3: criminal actress to commit these assassin issues. China uses the
Speaker 3: tryads to you know, control the population and for transnational repression.
Speaker 3: Russia uses criminal actors in their approach to this UH
Speaker 3: to this two in COVID activities. So you're have in
Speaker 3: more and more states doing this. I mean, Venezuela is
Speaker 3: also doing exactly the same. I think the criminal actors,
Speaker 3: paramilitary companies and private security companies are becoming extremely important
Speaker 3: in this particular in the next stage. And I think
Speaker 3: we're we're seeing the change in you know, even in
Speaker 3: the US. Obviously we've always been using you know, PMC
Speaker 3: is maybe not in COVID action officially, but we've always
Speaker 3: been using officially, I said, we've always been using proxies,
Speaker 3: you know, and affiliates and auxiliaries. But it is it
Speaker 3: is getting to the point where every state is now
Speaker 3: dipping into this pool. And uh, these non state actors
Speaker 3: do not care about allegiances, They do not care about ideology.
Speaker 3: They care about power, money, prestige. Right. So I think
Speaker 3: we're seeing we're going to see quite a lot of
Speaker 3: change in that particular space. I think that it's getting
Speaker 3: more dangerous. So because intelligence agencies, you know, people who
Speaker 3: work there, you know, they at least have some uh
Speaker 3: some similarity in the way they think and the way
Speaker 3: they feel about their country, some ideology, some respects, some
Speaker 3: desire to serve their nation.
Speaker 4: What are you going to say.
Speaker 3: About you know, proxies like like criminal actors. So I
Speaker 3: think that's going to be a major change. And judging
Speaker 3: by how the US has been acting and you know,
Speaker 3: calling cartels terrorists, I think it's a game changer in
Speaker 3: the international affairs, there's going to be it's going to
Speaker 3: get more complicated.
Speaker 2: Is there anything that you guys would like to cover
Speaker 2: before we get going tonight. Are there any questions you
Speaker 2: wish I had asked about the book or anything else?
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know what I've missed when I went offline.
Speaker 3: Sorry about that, but it sounds to me like you
Speaker 3: were talking about.
Speaker 1: You missed me filibustering while you're off screen for two minutes.
Speaker 2: That's what you missed the professional We were just discussing
Speaker 2: how authoritarian states approached COVID action as opposed to others.
Speaker 4: And talked about Brazil.
Speaker 3: We talked about have we we tackled most of the states?
Speaker 4: I think that they were.
Speaker 2: There, haven't gotten into Nigeria, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia. There's a whole
Speaker 2: chapter about like Greeks during the Peloponnesian War that we
Speaker 2: haven't talked about. That was kind of cool. But I
Speaker 2: just want to open the floor. Let you guys talk
Speaker 2: hit up whatever subject I may have missed that you'd
Speaker 2: really like to talk about.
Speaker 1: Not from mine. And I think I think we covered
Speaker 1: We covered. We covered a lot that an't we Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I think we cover some of the key you know,
Speaker 3: of the key ones and key changes, and you know
Speaker 3: why states do what they do. You know from the
Speaker 3: Nigerian perspective, I think, you know, they do a lot
Speaker 3: of CTS kind of stuff, and you know, so that
Speaker 3: it's not necessarily COVID in the same aspect that we
Speaker 3: would talk about and we talked about with with other
Speaker 3: nations of other countries. So yeah, I think I'm fine.
Speaker 3: I don't think we need to go into into the
Speaker 3: remaining ones.
Speaker 1: I think we name check most of the if not
Speaker 1: in detail, we named check most of the most of
Speaker 1: the chapters. And I kind of made a passing reference
Speaker 1: to the ancient Greek stuff in that in that final answer,
Speaker 1: where as Jeff as Jeff said that we've been doing this,
Speaker 1: these kind of activities are familiar to us, to go
Speaker 1: back literally millennius.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we've I think.
Speaker 1: We've pretty much take most of the chapters.
Speaker 2: So the book is Covert Action National Approaches to Unacknowledged Intervention.
Speaker 2: You can go and find it today. Where's the best
Speaker 2: place for people to go and buy this book?
Speaker 3: So the book can be purchased on Amazon dot com
Speaker 3: or or Georgetown University Press website and yet holiday reasonably
Speaker 3: fro It's a great holiday gift.
Speaker 2: And we will have links down the description on this
Speaker 2: podcast or YouTube video wherever you watch. It's some links
Speaker 2: down below where you can purchase the book. Thank you
Speaker 2: both of you spending some time with us to talk
Speaker 2: about this subject in your book. And I think this
Speaker 2: is like a great you know, we we mostly on
Speaker 2: this podcast interview people who are military veterans or intelligence
Speaker 2: agency veterans, and it's really cool to get those anecdotal experiences.
Speaker 2: But it's also cool to zoom out once in a
Speaker 2: while and get the forty thousand foot view of it
Speaker 2: all as sometimes you guys cover things in your research
Speaker 2: that we missed. Yeah, but that much work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, more interesting than us, hopefully, Hopefully it's been a
Speaker 1: it's been a it's been an interesting listener, but I've
Speaker 1: certainly enjoyed the conversation. Say, thanks ever so much for
Speaker 1: inviting us on Jack.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, yes, thank you so much for having us. This
Speaker 4: has been fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I appreciate it. Thank you guys, and for everyone else,
Speaker 2: we will see you next time. Have a happy holiday.
Speaker 4: Thank you night bye.
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