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Hello and welcome back to Pods with Nick and James. My name's Nick and this is James.
Hi there.
Today we're going to be discussing intelligence agencies.
So what are your thoughts on intelligence agencies just from a blank canvas?
From what you've heard through history or through your own lifetime?
Do you agree with the need for them or do you not really have an opinion?
Well, before the agency came the individual and I mean there's always been spies
even as far back as ancient history and there's always been traitors I guess to the point where...
You know what, the fact that I'm even using words like that is incredibly judgemental
but I respect... we all think or...
A popularised character of spies is that they're cool and in control
but what they're officially are are professional liars so it's kind of the moral quandary
versus the kind of aesthetic and...
I don't even know what the right word is here.
The glamification? The glorification?
Yes, that's it. That's exactly the right word. I apologise listeners.
Even if I did make it up!
No, no, no, no. That's what I was going for. That's exactly what I was going for.
So yeah, my understanding is there's always been spies as the years have gone on
like individual nobles, individual monarchs have had spies in other people's courts
the idea of them being agencies and them all being organised together is terrifying
the fact that things like CIA agents have been used to destabilise countries
or at least I remember stories, hopefully we'll go into some of those stories, I don't know
it's just... it's concerning. It's also really worrying that if we don't do this
what is the result other than the eventual result of peace, trust and love?
What shit does the world need to go through if we start disarming spies?
I think the need comes out of the existence. So it's the same with my belief behind armies
you need an army to protect yourself from the next army. It's the same with spies
you need an intelligence agency to protect you from the next intelligence agency
I mean the intelligence agencies themselves would defend themselves and say the easiest form of defence
is to know when things are going to happen and for that you need intelligence agencies and spies
but if every nation wasn't cloak and dagger and full of deceit and deception
then the need for that wouldn't be there
No. No that's it. But then again our spies like... in my mind spies are better than massive armies
at least in that they are... well okay in that spies steal secrets and can in some cases ruin people's lives
and can kill individuals but I guess one of the few redeeming features about it is it's still small scale
you know? Like it's not... sending in a spy to infiltrate a certain government isn't the same as
gassing a civilian population centre or setting nuclear weapons off again... no I'm not going to...
no no no you know what fuck it I'll say it... or setting off nuclear weapons above two Japanese cities
it's not great, it's not what I want definitely, it's definitely not how I believe politics should be conducted
yet it is what it is and I think it's rather better to steal information than to directly kill
Yeah I think there needs to be a better directive with some of it though because stealing the information
for the sake of stealing information is one thing and the target should always be to save lives
in my opinion. If you're going to use power use it properly, use it for the right reasons
not for personal gain, not to get ahead of the competition but to save lives
Anyway do you know the... I'm going to ask a really obvious question here... do you know the English intelligence agency?
Right so I know we've got the military police and I know that you've got military intelligence
that's what the MI stands for and I know it goes up in certain numbers, I know MI5... isn't MI5 the
highest either agreed upon or the highest... for lack of a way of saying it... acknowledged and publicised
agency within the UK government or does the UK government admit the existence of MI6?
It does admit the existence of MI6 but its operations aren't publicly disclosed
so I think maybe that's where it goes but you're right MI6 is the name of our intelligence agency
well it's the top intelligence agency in the UK. Do you know what they started as?
I'm really tempted to come out with sarcastic answers here and I apologise this kind of shows how tired I am
There was an agency that they were before they were the MI6
Yeah... were they saboteurs? Like that would be the one that makes sense
unfortunately the first one that came to mind in my head were they bakers?
The direct precedent to MI6 was the secret service, Her Majesty's Secret Service
or at least His Majesty's Secret Service and they were formed in or just coming up to the First World War
as a means to gain intelligence on the growing German threat. It became MI6 in 1912
and over the next 40 years have steadily evolved into the intelligence agency that you don't see today
There's a pun there for you
Yeah that was well done
Do you know, you said about it being glorified and glamorous, do you know where it got that reputation from?
Well I imagine like books, I imagine the books, I hate to say it, the books of, was it Arthur Doyle?
I hate to say it, was it originally glamorized in the James Bond or was it glamorized way before then?
Ian Fleming specifically references MI6 in all of the James Bond films
even to the point where he was so obsessed with the spy life of MI6
that there's so many different references throughout the book such as M herself is in direct reference to C who is the head of the MI6
C was originally Captain Sir Mansfield Smith Cumming and he would always sign his documents in green ink with the letter C
and now all future heads since him, all the future heads of MI6 have signed all of their documentation with a green C
and that's one of the biggest references that Ian Fleming makes in the James Bond films is obviously M is C
which I thought was really cool but you're right, the whole spy life, when you look into it more it's very seedy and backstabbing
but Ian Fleming made it a whole new ball game, world saving and martinis and bars and tuxedo events and stuff like that
but it really isn't all like that
one of MI6's greatest successes, I'll give you a hint, it was in the second world war, one of their greatest successes came in the second world war
and it is massively publicized, a lot of people do know about it, I wonder if you do?
OK, so is it based off of, well no it's not based off of it, was there a film about it?
Absolutely there was
With, oh my god, with Benedict Cumberbatch
With the actor with the best name in the world, yes absolutely
I love that in Doctor Strange there's two Benedicts, both Benedict Wong and Benedict Cumberbatch play two of the main characters
Alright well yeah, so I guess that would be the cracking of the enigma code
Yeah the imitation game was the film starring Benedict Cumberbatch, can you tell me who he played?
No, unfortunately I don't know this individual but I do know that, well he had a very hard life and he, yeah there was still a lot of homophobia
Well no there was not, there was still, there was a lot of homophobia back then and he ended up suffering as a result of it
Absolutely, just by the fact that he created one of the first computers, like automatic calculator, ever seen by man in our generations anyway
His name's Alan Turing and he had a team of cryptologists put together by MI6 and they cracked the enigma code
One of the most disappointing things as is rightly outlined in the imitation game is the fact that even when they solved the enigma code or when they cracked the enigma code
They had to be very careful about how they used that information, their knee-jerk response was to stop the first attack they intercepted
And that would have immediately given away to the Germans that their code was cracked
If you're going to use the intelligence you have to use the intelligence intelligently
Which was unfortunate because then they had to listen to the fact that numerous people were going to die and they knew about it and were choosing to do nothing about it
Yeah, that's got to be, yeah, and then also like every single letter of I'm really sorry that your child, your husband, your whatever died in this attack
The fault lies with the other side, honestly we could have done nothing about it
That makes that complete lie
Yeah, yeah it does and I suppose the guilt is something that is, I can imagine it definitely stayed with the individuals, the cryptologists that were on that team
Yeah, so the MI6 did have occasions of great success, there was another one, this one was a bit more spy kind of double agent
But they did stop world annihilation, so well worth an honourable mention
They managed to place spies in the KGB which was no mean feat and in 1983 NATO was doing a war game exercise which imitated the escalation to DEFCON 1
They had everything, they had the Navy, they had the President on the aircraft carrier and the idea was that it was going to be a reaction to the impending threat of a nuclear attack from Russia
And as I said the plan was that they were going to have high ranking officials from both, from all the NATO countries and including the President of America present in this war game
And if it wasn't for Oleg Gordievsky who was a double agent for the KGB it would have resulted in the Russians nuking the UN or NATO and all the countries associated with
Because they saw the war game not as a war game but as a threat and they thought it was a double bluff, they thought oh yeah they're saying it's a war game but it's really an attack
So they stepped up theirs but the problem was even though the Russian intelligence was telling us, oh no they mean business, they're going to nuke you, the MI6 and the CIA were like
No, no, no they'd never do that, they wouldn't do that, they wouldn't risk total world annihilation and it was right at the last minute that as I said Oleg Gordievsky managed to get the right message through
And the NATO officials decided to step down the level of war game exercise they were doing, pull all the high ranking officials and the President from any involvement with it
And that was enough to step down the Russian assault, the pending assault, which is terrifying really
Well I had no idea things had gotten that close but that is
It was during the height of the Cold War wasn't it, so I suppose in many ways there were many occasions when the CIA and the MI6 felt massively under threat from the Russians during the Cold War
Especially with the threat of nuclear warfare around every corner, I'm really surprised that no nukes were dropped at any point during the Cold War
And I think that's one of the most terrifying things about the current situation over in Ukraine
I know it's been going on for a number of years now but things seem to be stepping up at the moment don't they
There's recent mentions of potential conscription by the UK populace if NATO decide to go against Russia or start armed forces against Russia
Which is terrifying
So another occasion where the intelligence agencies have done their bit I suppose and have been necessary
But would you say they were necessary? Once again if, absolutely in that occasion, if the intelligence agencies weren't involved bad things would have happened
However, if armed forces weren't involved in the first place and the threat of weaponry and what not else wasn't involved in the first place
Is there really any need for them? Would it have got that bad? I don't think so
Because it would have just been handbags at dawn and an argument with the Russians and it would have been settled in a room over a glass of brandy instead
You know what we're going to need to do an episode on the Ukraine war at some point but that's going to take a lot of research
Just to make sure we've got our facts there. Okay well I'm really glad to hear that intelligence agencies have stopped the break out of war and that is, I completely agree with you in that's the correct use of information gathering
The correct use of, well basically lying simply to make sure you've got your hands on the truth rather than telling the truth and then being fed misinformation
Yeah. Yeah. So that's, I will admit that is something. Yeah. That's brilliant. Okay so that's two times that MI6 has done something right
Can you name any times where either the CIA or the KGB have saved lives in the same manner?
So finding information on the KGB is more difficult and you would have thought, especially with their successes, they'd be a bit more outspoken
But they're not. It's only when they cock up and there's investigations with other agencies around the world that there seems to be any information on them
Which I think is entirely intentional on their part. Obviously you can't stop information from getting out but you want as little of it to go out as possible
Meaning that it's likely to be only when, I mean I suppose in their opinions the two KGB stories that I've got were successes but from the rest of the world
They certainly weren't. For example, I don't know if you remember this, it was in 1998. Were you alive then?
Yes. You were alive then. I hate to admit it. I was 10 years old. I was turning 11. I think they had just released Return of the Jedi
Or the CGI adaptation of the Star Wars film Return of the Jedi in 1998.
I didn't know it but you are actually a year older than me. Anyway, Alexander Litvinenko, do you remember him?
Oh, is that the guy who was fed the... basically they got... some spies got into a cafe and were able to get him served some... I know it was radioactive substance, I don't know...
It was polonium 210. They laced his teacup with polonium 210. They managed to get him served tea.
Which gave him lethal polonium 210 induced acute radiation syndrome. The first ever count of.
This was in reaction to himself and a number of other Russian intelligence officers that had been ordered to kill Boris Borosevsky.
Boris... oh Russian names, you know. Who was a Russian businessman. They decided they weren't going to do it.
And they spoke out about it. He fled to the UK where he then criticized Putin and the Russian government.
And he worked for us and for the Spanish intelligence. Giving information on the KGB and the Russian mafia.
And then, as I said, on the 1st of November Litvinenko was poisoned in the cafe and by the 23rd of November he was dead.
And there's been no admission but there have been convictions. So Russia was charged with its involvement by the European Court of Human Rights in 2021.
It took until 2021. And there was actually two people that were prosecuted.
Hmm. OK, so that attack in our country...
As far as the KGB was concerned, it was a success. It was only the second known assassination attempt in the UK by the KGB.
Do you know the first one? The first one was a Bulgarian dissident writer in 1970, Georgi Markov.
He came to the UK, came to London where he was... and this is the most James Bond-esque assassination that you'll ever hear of.
He was stabbed with an umbrella tip on Waterloo Bridge. Inside the umbrella tip was a substance that caused his internal organs to start failing.
He then stumbled into a hospital and said that I've been poisoned, I've been poisoned.
All of the health officials at the hospital were like this, no, absolutely not. Until he died.
And then the head of the chief of medical decided that he would investigate and found a pinprick on the back of his leg corroborating his assumptions.
And Bulgaria was... despite the fact that they assumed that the attack was Bulgarian intelligence,
it was closely allied with the Soviet Union during the Cold War and just before the Cold War.
And many assume heavy KGB involvement with that.
And that was the first known occurrence of assassination in someone else's country.
And it happened on English soil, UK soil.
KGB, what can I say, very good at making bad things go away, making bad information go away.
I mean the KGB were heavily involved in the cover-ups both just after the Chernobyl explosion and in the many years following the Chernobyl explosion.
In fact a lot of the information that was finally found out about the Chernobyl disaster was found out by the passing of information from officials within Russia,
or within the Soviet Union and intelligence agencies around the world outside of.
Absolutely unbelievable the amount that they tried to cover up.
Did you know that the Chernobyl power plant, the amount of radiation that was poured into the surrounding area was 400 times that of Hiroshima?
That's terrifying because I know the cancer rates in Hiroshima are still higher than the national average in Japan.
I mean there was a chance. 400 times. And it's not even as bad as it could have been because as the reactor core was melting down, it began moving towards a water reservoir underneath the reactor 4.
Because essentially it was a meltdown of reactor 4 that caused the nuclear waste.
The other three reactors, although damaged, were fine and will continue to be used until I think 10-15 years after the fact.
However, there was a molten core that was moving towards the water reservoir. Now if it had of hit the water reservoir it would have caused a steam explosion that would have damaged the other four reactors.
And that would have been a chain reaction. I mean it would have caused a chain reaction that humanity would not have survived. It would have been a miracle if humanity had come back from that.
Like the fallout would have reached, I think they say it, they think it would have covered two thirds of the planet. And remember that radiation has a half life of something like 500 years.
That's terrifying.
Yeah.
And the KGB have worked very very hard to cover up the shenanigans that took place. They knew that the reactors were faulty for years beforehand.
And it just built up and built up. It was just cost cutting that caused the reactor meltdown.
That's terrifying to think. I had heard that officials knew that they were faulty and that it was a kind of like a ticking time bomb.
Like I've seen, well I know that even in the last episode you discussed kind of negligent or willful negligence that you would experienced in the care industry so it doesn't surprise me that kind of the thing that is always advertised as the big bad in the form of the Russian government would do something like that.
So that's possibly my own prejudice there which I'll need to look into.
Sorry. Sorry.
Okay, so that. So they've, they've done KGB have covered stuff up, but they've also covered up if they do have times when they've had humanitarian successes, then they've also covered that up.
It seems so, yeah, because I can't find any information on it. It strikes me that they, they work less towards, especially when it involves other countries, they work less towards being the good guy and more towards being the bad guy, shall we say.
Yeah.
I think you can't talk intelligence agencies without having a discussion about the CIA really can you.
Well this is the big one this is the one that we were leading towards. What I also find interesting is that you've got the CIA, and then you've got the FBI. Now, I've got an assumption, but I was just wondering if you could correct this if this is wrong.
Is the FBI mostly for internal affairs and the CIA, looking at external affairs, or do their jurisdictions overlap, and if their jurisdictions overlap, which one has presidents, or which one takes presidents, or is it a case by case thing where they literally have to battle it out.
So as I understand it, as I understand it, the FBI are kind of like the president's policemen.
If you think about it like that, they, they have superseding powers over state police. Yes, they're involved in some big things around the world, but they mainly keep it USA based. And it's normally matters of Homeland Security that they kind of investigate.
They can be involved in the investigations within the state, within the Senate, within the part within Parliament in America, and within, and they can investigate agencies within the, within the different areas of government.
However, the Intelli, the Central Intelligence Agency is exactly that. It's only agency, and it is centered around the gathering of intelligence, good or bad.
They are the American spies.
Okay. What are some of the, what do they, well what is known or advertised as the CIA's greatest successes. And I'll tell you what, like we, I heard you gave a history of the, so it was like Her Majesty's Secret Service was MI6.
What was the KGB's roots. Sorry to move it back because I want to hear the roots of the CIA but I've just realized, Evie you've told me and I've forgotten because I'm incredibly tired, or did we, did we cover, or did you cover the, what were the roots of the KGB, like was there, was there a clear defined history, or is that also?
Not that we know of, we know they don't exist now.
They started, from what I understand they started around the fall of Beria in June 1953.
However, I don't, I don't know, there's so little information that we have surrounding, like when they actually started. I know, well we, we assume that they don't exist now. I think they went with the fall of the Soviet Union.
Because they were, I think the Soviet Union's intelligence agency.
Okay, so,
All right, that's interesting, that's interesting. Okay, well, since we've got that covered. What was the foundation of the CIA, like when did it originally come about?
It started around 1947 just after the Second World War.
Surprisingly late.
And it started with creating a special plane that would go on to do many historical feats called the U-2 spy plane.
So it worked very closely in the development of the U-2 spy plane. The U-2 spy plane was most famously used in the spotting of the Soviet bunkers within Cuba.
That begun the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.
However, in more modern days, they did, they were the agency that set up the attack in Pakistan, which killed a sum of Bin Laden.
They, in 1983, they also begun, well I think more than anything, there was a couple of points that I want to go into.
Which is more story time with Nick. However, they have, throughout the years, they've developed a couple of aircrafts, spy aircraft, that have been beyond the point of, like nothing that we've seen before as far as intelligence goes.
The U-2 spy plane was incredible for its time. I mean, just after the Second World War, the U-2 spy plane was a hyperjet, which would not be picked up by radar.
And it was an incredible craft that was used for the next 30 to 40 years until the, what do they call it, it looked like a blackbird. The A-12, that was it.
Was replaced by the A-12 in 1990, I think 1990, was when the A-12 took over. So it was used for a long time.
And the A-12 is an incredible feat of engineering itself.
Okay, no that's fair point. What can the A-12 do?
It's a lot faster than the U-2 and it is able to fly a lot higher and for a lot longer. The technology involved in the craft itself is probably where it excels though.
The sensors and the cameras and the ability to transmit data back was massively magnified in the A-12. And I do believe there are unmanned versions of it as well.
Yeah, right. Cool.
Which is terrifying.
Yeah. Alright, what are some of the major operations that the CIA has been involved with and what would you consider? Okay, I guess we'll start with the bad and move on to the good.
What are some of the least humane ones that they've been involved with?
I mean, okay, so I don't know if you know about this, but there's a project called MKUltra. Have you ever heard of MKUltra?
I have not heard of that particular project, no.
Okay, so this is a project that ran between 1953 and 1973. So it ran for about 20 years.
And I've got to give you a bit of backstory before I can tell you about MKUltra in its entirety.
So during World War II, Nazi scientists experimented on Jewish prisoner of war to try to develop a truth serum.
They wanted to take the will of the person away with a drug in the hopes that they would be able to extract intelligence from them.
Between 1945 and 1959, 1600 German scientists were taken into the employment of the American government in a project they called Project Paperclip,
forming things such as NASA, as well as joining high-ranking agencies, as well as the CIA.
Now, MKUltra was a continuation of the works begun in Germany. They began with hypnosis.
They tried to remove the will of the human mind by hypnotizing people.
They hoped to induce anxieties and regurgitate information in detail that was only picked up by the subconscious.
So, like, replay events from their lives, normally with high-ranking officials from other countries,
in the hopes that they could piece together almost entire meetings instead of just getting dribs and drabs through paperwork.
They moved on to using drugs in order to break the will of the human mind.
They were using LSD, and later they would use things such as amphetamines, mescaline, psilocybin, scopolamine, alcohol, sodium pentothal.
They had a technique which is possibly one of the most cruelest techniques that would ever be used on a human being,
where they would inject a barbiturate or a sedative into one arm, and just as the subject was falling asleep,
they would then inject amphetamines into the other arm and send their brain into a frenzy, a kind of hyper-psycho state,
where the two drugs were working against each other.
The incredible thing about MKUltra is that they tested on over 150 people, all of which were American nationals.
Oh, shit. Okay, well, to be fair, like, still 150 people, even that in and of itself, is bad,
but for a government to do tests on, like, were they... was there any kind of thing that made sense here?
Like, was there any... I'm trying to think of the right way of putting this.
Rationale?
Yeah, was there any rationale? Were these, like, people that... were these drug dealers that they were...
Murderers or murderers, rapists, no?
Yeah, something like that.
Normally, they were kidnapped from orphanages, or they were children that wouldn't be missed, or adults that wouldn't be missed,
and they would be taken away and tested upon for years, and then they would be released to asylums or into the general public with no sense of...
Like, they'd almost be, like, that homeless guy, you know, that everybody kind of ignores, despite having been treated the way that they were.
As a matter of fact, the government are paying damages to numerous Americans after being sued following the release of the documentation surrounding MKUltra.
Wow.
So there is actually official documentation that backs all this up. This isn't just conspiracy.
I mean, there are a number of conspiracies surrounding all of the agencies that I've discussed,
but what I've tried to do is stick to what is documented as much as possible,
and this... the fact that there's documentation that backs up what I'm saying here is absolutely disgusting.
Mm.
But it's not the craziest thing the Americans have ever done, or the CIA has ever done.
I would say...
Okay, what's the cra...
The craziest thing, the... one of the craziest things that is documented, once again, like I said, it's important to remember that I try to stick to documented facts.
There was a project that ran called Project Gateway, and the Project Gateway was working on something called the Gateway Process,
and this process was thought to enable... wait for it...
It was thought to enable individuals to convert their brain energy into a concentrated beam of energy which could transcend space time.
The aim was to access knowledge of the... the communal knowledge of the universe,
and to talk to interdimensional beings and to travel through time.
I mean, it sounds... it sounds like a terrible B-movie.
It does, doesn't it? I... rather than give you a Nick-sized rundown of the Gateway Process, anybody that's really interested,
check out the YouTube channel The Y-Files. They've got a whole video on the Gateway Process, and he explains it so much better than I do.
Him and Hegelfish explain it so much better than I do, and definitely deserves a shout out for this one.
So go and check him out. But, yeah, it's definitely one of those things that the CIA have done that you kind of sit there and scratch your head and go,
but why would they do that? It's an incredible thing. If it turned out that it was true, then... amazing.
Yeah, that really is something.
Yeah. I mean, there's the scientists that actually begun the Gateway Process, like the investigation into the Gateway Process,
started as a skeptic. Started heavily as a skeptic. And towards the end, begun to doubt his skepticism.
However, he hadn't managed, to his own volition, hadn't managed to prove the Gateway Process was possible.
Mm-hmm.
Which is another mind-blowing fact. The fact that a complete skeptic went, you know what, fine, I'll investigate it.
Started doing all these experiments and kind of went, uh...
I buy this now.
Yeah, maybe this is possible? I don't know. This is a bit crazy, man.
Maybe he just started to see things that, um, not see things in kind of like a hallucinogenic way,
but start to see things in his results that he can't explain, that maybe left him with more questions than answers.
But, yeah, once again, CIA. Incredible.
Yeah, but as I said, one of their main successes was that they managed to find, locate and kill Osama Bin Laden following 9-11.
So, half-half.
Aye. Wow.
Okay, well that's... I've definitely learnt something.
So my question is, what are your thoughts?
Do you feel the need for intelligence agencies?
Well, I'm really worried that if we don't have them, then other people will do it, but could we not just have our agencies be...
Rather than meddling in the affairs of other countries, could we not just have agencies which are...
Ah, kind of along the lines of anti-terrorist agencies, but just kind of... I don't know, spies?
I mean a lot of what the MI6 does now is anti-terrorist.
But is it within our own... I was thinking within our own borders.
Yeah, I think its main scope of operations is within the UK.
And from what I understand, it doesn't employ the same high invasive techniques that the KGB or the CIA employ.
However, it's still invasive wherever it sees necessity.
And ultimately, the thing to remember is that spying is illegal.
And whether it be spying on your own country or spying internationally, it's illegal.
And therefore, the agents that are spies...
Are technically criminals? Is that what...
They're criminals, but as a result of being criminals from the get-go, they employ any method necessary.
In for a penny, in for a pound kind of thing.
I know James Bond has the license to kill.
That's once again one of those fictional adaptations of Ian Fleming.
But the general meaning behind it is kind of like I said, in for a penny, in for a pound.
What I'm doing is already illegal. I will employ any method necessary to do my job.
And even that in itself is terrifying, especially when you think about that being turned in on your own.
Yes, anti-terrorist operations, but how do you mull out the non-terrorist?
You can't get 100% success rate, so you're going to be invading the privacy of innocent people along the way.
Yeah, like there will be collateral damage, regardless.
Exactly. So you're going to do the wrong thing, no matter how much you try to do the right thing.
And I think that's kind of the catch-22 that the government find themselves in.
Like for the sake of the greater good, to coin a phrase, is it not the right decision?
However, for the sake of the greater good, has been used as a means to give motion to many of the world's greatest offences over the years.
Yeah, for the greater good, God wills it, any of that.
So you can't justify the means by the end. I had to take a second to think that through, I always get that mixed up.
Yeah, or just the ends don't justify the means.
Yeah, that definitely works, better to say it that way, but I always mess it up.
But yeah, I mean, I'm with you in the fact that, like, I think you want to feel secure, don't you?
And what intelligence agencies have the potential to provide you with is the one step ahead feeling of being secure,
being safe because you know what's going to happen ahead of you.
But you only need to know what's going to happen ahead of you because the nations and the people around you are untrustworthy.
Which in itself is terrifying.
But such is the world we live in.
A lot of silence following that.
I don't know, I just don't know what to say.
It's a difficult thing to follow. It's a difficult thing to follow.
I think it provokes more thought than it does speech, than it does to open discussion.
You find yourself kind of arguing with yourself, like there's so many arguments for and so many arguments against.
It's difficult to pick a side, isn't it?
It is, like I can see the need, but you're right, the need exists because of historical, but also because of the continual use of spies.
Or because of the use of...
Danger, risk, threat.
Yeah, yeah, that's it.
The existence of threat causes the need for intelligence against those threats.
Surely the only real threat that we should be protecting ourselves from is that that is out of our control as human beings.
And that is, of course, Mother Nature itself and the happenings around the universe.
We have no say in that in the grand scheme of things.
But if a comet started heading towards the Earth, that's the kind of intelligence that I want forewarning against.
If there's a means to predict when earthquakes are happening and save hundreds of thousands of lives, then that's what I want the intelligence to forewarn me of.
I don't want to be having to look over my shoulder against people that are in the same boat that I am.
Yeah, well that... yeah.
It makes no sense.
But then again, mankind throughout history has had no problem kind of creating its own disasters.
Its own issues, yeah.
Despite the horrendousness of several... yeah, well, not several.
Despite almost unlimited, terrible, horrible things throughout history, we still seem to feel the need to add to it.
And it's ridiculous.
We can be such conceited people.
Oh, it's okay, this time will be different.
And oh no, it wasn't caused by me, so it's not my problem.
Yeah.
This is the world we live in. This is what's happening right now.
We need to be responsible as human beings, as nations, as a world, and take responsibility and take ownership.
And you work together in order to overcome these problems that have been created by ourselves and by our predecessors.
Yeah.
And go past the mistakes of older generations.
Yeah, which in its...
You know what?
I'm just... I'm literally lost for words.
It's difficult. I always kind of feel or felt in the past I have strong views on things, but you know what?
I honestly don't know what to make of this.
I'm hoping that a call back to honesty would be fantastic, but I don't think any government will take that seriously or...
No, no, that's the thing, isn't it?
...will abide it.
And the other thing, of course, is that you're made to feel so insignificant in yourself, as an individual,
that you kind of step away from wanting to make any change yourself, because powerless, you're one person and you're amongst eight billion others.
So what difference is the change that I make going to make in the world?
Mm.
And the reality of it is, in the grand scheme of things, probably not a lot, which is why I always try to tell people,
but knowing is the power. Knowing is the opportunity that you have.
And as long as you act on that knowledge when an opportunity presents itself, then you've made your impact. You've done your bit.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's entirely true.
Well, I think I'm going to round off there tonight, James, and listeners.
Thank you once again, everybody, for being here with us and listening to another podcast.
We look forward to joining you again next time.
But for now, take care.
Thank you.