#83 Former MI6 Chief Sir Alex Younger: Putin's Miscalculations Invading Ukraine

What this episode is about

Former MI6 Chief Sir Alex Younger discusses the strategic miscalculations made by Putin in invading Ukraine, highlighting how the conflict has inadvertently unified Western responses, increased military spending in Europe, and may have diminished Putin's domestic support due to economic strains. He also examines the broader geopolitical implications for China, particularly regarding Taiwan, in light of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the ongoing situation in Ukraine.

Key takeaways

• Spycraft: not about gadgets, but the power of relationships and human connection.
• Curiosity isn't just for cats; it's the secret weapon for spies navigating complex geopolitical landscapes.
• Putin underestimated the West's unity; a fractured Russia now faces a world pulling together against it.
• Emotional intelligence: the unsung hero in intelligence, transforming relationships into vital intelligence assets.
• In the intelligence world, creativity trumps size; outsmarting the opponent defines success more than sheer force.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Lynn Tomlin (Host) · 12 min speaking
• Sir Alex Younger (Guest) · 29 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: Sir Alex Younger, MI6, War and Peace
2. 5:00 – 10:00: War and Peace
3. 15:00 – 20:00: Bletchley Park

Notable quotes from "#83 Former MI6 Chief Sir Alex Younger: Putin's Miscalculations Invading Ukraine"

• And Columbia Lynn tomman hi everyone it's Lyn toen welcome to another episode today I'm excited to be with sir Alex younger former Chief of Britain's legendary secret…

  about Sir Alex Younger · at 0:21

• Making a difference sometimes a small difference sometimes a big difference when I was young a historical determinist I read War and Peace and tolto and I was very suspicious…

  about War and Peace · at 2:30

• What they for and where they belong and it's actually quite a subtle and tricky balance in Striking that it's very different I you're essentially saying that the world of mi6's…

  about Bletchley Park · at 16:28

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Sir Alex Younger — Person · Main guest · 1 mention · first at 0:28
  Former MI6 Chief interviewed about modern intelligence, hybrid warfare, alliances, and Russia/China strategy—especially Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
• Lynn Tomlin — Person · Host · 2 mentions
  Introduces the show and interviews Sir Alex Younger, framing questions around Ukraine, sanctions, alliances, China/Taiwan, and intelligence transformation.
  Hi everyone, it's Lynn Tomlin welcome to another episode...

Books & papers

• War and Peace — Book · Referenced work · 2 mentions · first at 2:36
  Mentioned by Sir Alex Younger in the context of his early views on history and individual agency.

Companies & orgs

• MI6 — Company · Affiliation · 1 mention · first at 0:49
  Sir Alex Younger's former affiliation and the focus of his expertise in intelligence.
  And Columbia Lynn tomman hi everyone it's Lyn toen welcome to another episode today I'm excited to be with sir Alex younger former Chief of Britain's legendary secret…

Places & events

• Bletchley Park — Place · Referenced location · 1 mention · first at 16:38
  Mentioned as a historical example of intelligence success during WWII.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 welcome to the three takeaways podcast which features short memorable conversations with the world's best thinkers Business Leaders writers politicians scientists and other newsmakers each episode ends with the three key takeaways that person has learned over their lives and their careers and now your host and board member of schools at Harvard Princeton and Columbia Lynn tomman hi everyone it's Lyn toen welcome to another episode today I'm excited to be with sir Alex younger former Chief of Britain's legendary secret intelligence service MI6 he served as a career intelligence officer for 30 years in Europe the Middle East and Afghanistan he was appointed director of counterterrorism in 2009 and then Chief from 2014 to 2020 he was the longest serving head of MI6 in 50 years I'm excited to get insight into the world today including Russia China cyber and Technology and I'm looking forward to finding out how

1:02 confident he thinks the Russians are militarily since they seem to be having some trouble in Ukraine and if he thinks Putin made a mistake invading Ukraine since it seems to have unified the US and Europe pushed Europe to spend more on its military and also potentially reduced Putin's base of support at home both from people on the street seeing Bank runs and inflation as well as the support of oligarchs who can no longer travel internationally and whose foreign assets are frozen I'm also curious to find out how he thinks the United States is disastrous exit from Afghanistan and the world's response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine influences China's thinking about Taiwan welcome sir Alex and thank you so much for our conversation today h nice to be here Alex what do you like best about being a spy there's an irony which doesn't come out in the fiction but whilst we're obviously professionally

2:04 cynical because we have to be we're Romantics at heart at least the Western version by which I mean that you don't join an intelligence service unless you want to make a difference to the things that you believe in and crucially you believe that that difference can be made through individual actions and as a human intelligence professional you see the power of an individual taking a situation into their own hands and making a difference sometimes a small difference sometimes a big difference when I was young a historical determinist I read War and Peace and tolto and I was very suspicious about the kings and queen view of History thought it was overdone and that it denigrated the sort of impersonal social and economic forces that have shaped our history but my career has shown me what well motivated individuals Brave individuals can do and that's been an enormous privilege be image of MI6

3:01 agents for many people comes from James Bond films what qualities to MI6 and other intelligence agencies actually look for in their agents you've just talked about desire to make a difference are there other qualities as well yeah there are and they're only I'm afraid spoiler alert partially exhibited by James Bond which is one of the the problems with the genre although I can't complain we get more publicity than Pepsi out of that franchise people in the MD least think there's an MI6 officer behind every Rock You know it's golden in that sense but the solution to most of the intelligence problems I've encountered in a long career is very rarely to shoot up the room it's more complicated than that it's all about relationships so when we look for people of course who wish to be consequential we look for people who share and care about the values of the organization and our country but then if I was to isolate

3:54 one feature would be curiosity curiosity about the world curiosity about people because your job is to be interested to listen not to preach and it's that Curiosity that drives you including in some very very difficult circumstances and whilst we recruit from a very diverse base and all sorts of different people are attracted that's what unites us and it makes for a fascinating career because people are just intensely interested in people and their surroundings to what extent is emotional intelligence and the ability to develop trust and relationships important it's fundamental and it's interesting because of course we are trained in those aspects and we're trained because it has a direct bearing on our ability to carry out our mission but I note that it's far more useful than that and I have the privilege to being given a lot of input and a lot of education but crucially just a lot of time in practice to

4:55 develop my understanding essentially of human psychology not in academic terms but in Practical terms and I noticed that that's just fabulously useful in numerous walks of life and accounts for the fact that many people from my profession go on to do all sorts of interesting stuff including unfortunately running the Russian Federation which is an example I would rather skate over but it leads me to conclude that being more thoughtful about relationships and other people and the effect we have on each other has got far wider utility than just the business of human intelligence I know that you can't talk about any specific operations would you be able to describe one of the most exciting or interesting ones you've been involved in well of course I'm heavily circumscribed but I would say that a real pleasure is that no two operations are the same and there's actually to an extraordinary degree a premium on

5:56 creativity we in our business are never going to prevail through size we're going to Prevail through outthinking the opposition and there' been times in my career where been been confronted with new problems that happened to me very early on in Yugoslavia where Europe was really inqu equipped to understand this genocidal force that had been Unleashed in former Yugoslavia and where we were dispatched in an environment of really imperfect knowledge and frankly immature moral Frameworks to deal with this problem but it remarkably fell to people like me to just devise ways of getting inside those networks and providing the intelligence that was needed at one level it was tough because it was extemporization but it's incredibly satisfying when those sort of things come together and particularly given the intensity of the problems that you're up against and in this case and this wasn't me particularly but the opportunity to

6:50 bring visit consequences on bullies and war criminals is profoundly satisfying how has Intelligence changed in the last 10 or so years well that hasn't changed in its Essence it's still about the development of relationships of trust across forbidding cultural and linguistic boundaries and it always has been about that but the uh environment in which we operate has been fundamentally disrupted by technology specifically the ubiquity of data which on the one hand has meant that all the ways we used to do stuff Have Become obsolete because everyone's visible in the data in a way that they wouldn't have been before but it's also presented a whole set of new ways of doing stuff and New Opportunities so the premium has been on adaptation and crucially in an environment where a storied history is no accurate predictor of a successful future indeed in some ways the more successful organizations have had the

7:45 biggest problem coming to terms with the fact that the rules have changed and the thing that made my time as Chief fascinating was that we had to enact that transformation and what I've discovered now I'm a private citizen is of course the challenges like fac felt special but they're in fact highly generic you know everybody anyone who's LED an organization or business or an intelligence service or a bit of the government faces the fact that they're operating in an entirely new domain and for us the digital world as I say represents just such a new domain and it presents a whole set of new tools that can be used by US or against us but it's really important to note this is a self- serving observation including because it's now my business but it's not a technology problem it's about the way in which humans and Technology interact which makes it all the more fascinating it's all term computers attacking us as

8:39 people using computers attacking us and the same is true of defense and it's easy to sort of feel infantilized and ill equipped to deal with these new problems but I think when you strip them away the familiar human dilemmas acted out in the digital space no more or less interesting have Partnerships become more important than they used to be yes they have I think we've entered into notoriously the era of hybrid Warfare and hybrid Warfare is a function of the boundaryless world so you know we used to be in the analog time able to distinguish between War and Peace or International and domestic or cover and over and the twin forces of digitalization and globalization have served to erode those boundaries and a lot of good has come from that but those erosions are also exploited by our opponents and also confer advantage on organizations that aren't stove piped and can move quickly but if for the sake

9:38 of our argument you're a state probably an authoritarian state that doesn't really care about the difference between peace and War you've immediately gotten Advantage you can maneuver in a way that prosecutes your security aims but keeps you below the retaliation threshold for instance particularly in cyberspace so we've been taught some lessons about this and I think on we found ourselves regularly on the back foot and the organizational cultural challenge to Western Security entities and more broadly is to generate that sort of agility so that we can be as effective online as offline in peace time as in Wartime and crucially that we can join all that stuff together the secret source that we have got in doing that is partnership and don't forget autocrats have the agility and the central decision making that give them a certain advantage in the new hybrid space but we've got this we've got alliances and

10:34 those I would say for instance at the moment as we respond to Vladimir Putin's aggression are completely decisive so I came out thinking that if you are to Prevail in this modern security world you need to know what you're for you need your values you need agility but most of all you need to use the thing that we've got that no one else has got which is partnership and alliances and that is a sort of relatively obvious conclusion to come to but I can assure you the culture involved in going from an environment where most successes were individual successes albe it against a common purpose to an environment where very few successes didn't have a lot of authors it's a very very different world and the anthropology of that is very different so interesting I had a conversation with Kevin Ry the former prime minister of Australia and a China scholar for three takeaways and he said something very similar what he said

11:32 about China is that China has one Ally North Korea and that the Western countries including the UK and the US have over 40 allies he also stressed the importance of Partnerships it's one of the reasons I'm so Keen to talk to you as a means of spreading a message as an affectionate Outsider to the American people that even for a country as prodigiously powerful as the United States it still has to be invested in the success more broadly of the alliance system and I know the reasons that I can understand there's an increasing strain in US political discourse that wonders whether these alliances represent more of an encumbrance than an advantage but I tell you emphatically they are our key advantage and when you look at what we have been able to do together to visit consequences on Putin I don't think you need to look a lot further exactly as you've just said it used to be that you could go anywhere do anything and say

12:34 anything and that nobody would be in a position to know or to second guess you but now with data capture everywhere that's no longer the case how is that changed intelligence well it means that things that used to work don't work anymore that's the bad news it also means that tools that we didn't have available to us in the past we now have available to us so I don't think there's any need to lose confidence and then there's a slightly juvenile tension set up between you know technical and human means of collection and ones up and ones down and that again misses the point that I've just been spelling out which is that the new world is about integrating a set of capabilities so I don't think anyone needs to feel they don't have a role in this new future and I think creativity is at a premium we've always been people who have taken what we've got and done something with it normally in extreme

13:27 circumstances this this is no different I think there is though one big and broadly welcome cultural change which is that intelligence in the past has been kept very much within what we call within the wire and we have a rather hubristic phrase the high side which refers to the sort of classified world and the reality now is that states no longer have a monopoly on the sort of capabilities that I would have taken for granted during my career and when you look for instance at privately held open source intelligence capabilities they are absolutely formidable and basically I think this is great if a task can be carried out in that way there's no conceivable reason to take the cost and risk of using State means to achieve the mission and I think these organizations are getting so good now that it's becoming increasingly hard for governments but particularly authoritarian governments to do things

14:22 and and expect to get away with it so what that means is there needs to be less of an idea of the hard shell high side behind the wire and much more of an idea of a mission jointly held across government private sector Academia and the reason I think that's fine is thankfully I've discovered contrary to some rather sort of juvenile exchanges between Tech and the government in the past that basically everybody is on the same side and we are all within a spectrum of views invested in the successful Healthy Future of liberal democracy and I think everyone can see that they have a role in that so I see increasingly constructive and sensible story of cooperation in the space and I think that's timely because we may come on to this but my prediction is that in an increasingly divided and vulcanized World Tech is going to be the key competitive area and we need to all be working on the same side so intelligence

15:19 sounds like it's much like the business world now in the sense that in the business world the platform companies are now seven of the 10 largest companies in the world as opposed to the individual product companies with their walls and it sounds like something similar is happening in the intelligence world yeah I think that's a very good way of looking at it I mean you want the platform approach most importantly you want to be able to integrate different capabilities depending on what the problem is in a way that doesn't admit the issue of ownership or what the C badge is or whatever it is we need to show a fluidity in just taking whatever it is that we need to do the job across the Spectrum and putting it together to have an effect and in all of the Innovations we have in you know National Security councils and other things that's all about integration to effect but it's sometimes quite hard for

16:13 democracies to do we draw lines we create legal distinctions we get tribal loyalties in play and the life of a modern security leader including my former life is about breaking that stuff down while allowing people to remember what they for and where they belong and it's actually quite a subtle and tricky balance in Striking that it's very different I you're essentially saying that the world of mi6's famous Bletchley Park success cracking the German Enigma code has changed yeah in some ways there are some parallels of course it's an extraordinary episode of creativity such as I would love us to be able to generate today and of course although it was all done behind the wire in ability secret environment we took the best talent across the entire population and the Allied population into that effort so in some ways it's sort of a direct example of how we should be performing today but the difference now is that

17:16 formidable research and operational capabilities exist across the private sector for lots of different reasons and success the sort of modern equivalent of the Enigma success would be a much more Federated approach where we were able to share the problem across the public private boundary before we talk about Russia and China what other threats such as cyber do you see and how can we mitigate or counter them there's a range of new threats that kind of are the Cory of the positive of globalization and digitalization we've seen one which is pandemic disease I think you've spoken of the other key one which is arguably the other pandemic that we've had which is cyber which is attack tax on digitalization that we simply have to pay and there's a risk that it's a threat that we don't see it ones and zeros and the extent to which we sit on an increasing digital liability is not really apparent to us so I worry about

18:13 that vulnerability and it's pretty rickety stack security wasn't designed into the internet at its Inception and we've been trying to catch up ever since so there's some basic vulnerabilities there but equally I also have faith in the capacity of human Innovation and there are Technologies AI blockchain that may actually knit out as game changers when it comes to the stability of this system but of course I really worry about that let's talk about Russia it's certainly a Hot Topic today how confident are the Russians militarily they seem to be having trouble in Ukraine the short answer is that they by which I mean Vladimir Putin were overconfident so I um have come up against Putin on a number of occasions in my career and learned to develop a wary respect for his capacity to calculate the geopolitical odds and to be focused on an exit strategy frankly in a way where I've always thought we

19:11 could learn because those aren't things that we've been particularly good at he has done those things and of course going into this therefore I assumed that we were going to see a bit of that Putin even if I couldn't quite see how he expected to get away with this one I think it's now clear that we're dealing with a very different person and that his judgment's been clouded by a number of factors of course the isolation that he's in his length of time as an autocrat which has meant that there's no serious challenge or no individual that can say no to him I was very struck by the way he treated the inner members of his security cabinet at that ridiculous public National Security Council that took place just before the invasion but the dressing down he gave to my former counterparts siskin was eyering and of course a subject of some mirth on our side but it actually much more seriously demonstrates that there's nobody who's

20:05 going to say no then I think he's caught up in hubis he's had a very good run and as I say in his interventions in Crimea and in Syria has calculated the odds really effectively not a master strategist but an excellent tactician a good player of Poker if not chess he's believing his own publicity and he's been lulled into a false sense of the superiority not just of his approach but of Russian capabilities the reality though is the Russian army really hasn't been tested in any of those scenarios and I think more importantly he was captured probably on the back of the crime experience by the idea that he was on the right side of history and pursuing a historical Destiny for himself and for Russia and I think genuinely didn't conceive that he would encounter this level of resistance now we to be fair to us told him I told him we all told we all went on the the airwaves and said this is going to be bloody and whilst

21:02 that was a message that suited the West descend it was a sincere one and we have some experience of getting into walls that are easy to start and hard to finish we have some experience of being unable to find an exit strategy we were essentially putting that experience at his disposal but he didn't listen so he has massively overreached due to isolation and hristic overconfidence he has massively overestimated his capacity to win through military means and what makes this particularly dangerous is he staked his personal prestige on Victory and in manufacturing a cause for war that just didn't exist before he's personally completely wedded to the outcome of this and the reason I labor this point is that that gives this whole thing a tragic Dimension because I don't see that he's got a reverse gear and now that he has encountered such extraordinarily inspirational dogged resistance I think he will switch from

21:59 crier to grossy and he will use all of the weapons at his disposal and you can see that happening today it's still remarkable how poorly the Russian military have performed and there's a whole conversation we could have about that but if your question is with this amount Putin somehow giving up I don't think he can afford to do that what do you think the military outcome will be I think it's now really clear that he has overestimated his capacity to Prevail and what that means is he doesn't have available the prospect of the full military subjugation of Ukraine so even if you were to grind down kav and kiv and put in a pkin government and that is possibly it's possibly even the most likely scenario well there's every day passes becomes less lightly with 200,000 troops and an irredeemably hostile population and some pretty inspirational leadership by Selinsky and others he is never going to be able to subdue that

22:57 country he's going to face an intractable long-term Insurgency which is why I can't see what his exit strategy can be because he will have to retain forces committed to suppressing that Insurgency otherwise whatever slender gains he thinks he's made will be quickly reversed so he's fixed imposition now and I think that's becoming a fact almost regardless of where at the point at which he chooses to declare Victory how do you see the sanctions and other measures taken by the west and which actions do you think have the most impact on Russia and on him I think the two things that have been game changers so he basically lost momentum last weekend and I think history will show that that was a phenomenally important moment there was a turning point so firstly it's allowed the ukrainians to generate a degree of resistance that no one predicted that in turn has captured the public imagination across the west and inspired people to

23:57 support UK Ukraine and given us a glimpse of Russian vulnerability and also of course shown us the horror of the type of techniques that the Russian military can potentially employ so this has all hardened the position in the west to the point that I think Western policy makers have much more leeway to impose the top end of the sanctions choices than they might have had and that just produced these astonishing decisions over the weekend which I freely admit I didn't expect so the sanctioning the central bank which is absolutely the top of the economic sanctions ladder and then the incredible 180 turn in Germany repudiating Decades of security policy which must have been utterly shocking to Vladimir Putin what that amounts to is an incredible affirmation of the power of our alliance and something that while I hope for didn't expect which is us coming together in a way that really visits serious consequences we're using our

24:56 strengths we're not seeking to be the Russians this is are we beating the Russians but it nonetheless is consequential and we've basically drawn the Contour of a new economic Cold War we've done so incredibly powerful in a way that validates our strengths our alliances there's an irony that Putin in trying to bully NATO has actually reminded NATO what it's for as you said earlier dramatically increased defense spending and made us ready to support Ukraine including with military assistance all the things that he claimed were going on before he not which weren't he's now brought to life that's some strategic genius but what it means now is the stage is set for even if he semi prevails in Ukraine for a prolonged period of economic isolation for Russia and I think one of the reasons for that is the West while we are disunited and argumentative and fractious our openness has being confused for weakness in Vladimir

25:50 Putin's mind and actually we've demonstrated real strength and we can see that if he were allowed to Prevail in what he's done the consequences would reach far far further than Ukraine so there's been a rigor to our response which actually I think was predictable but is nonetheless extremely pleasing it does take us to a very dangerous phase so my experience of authoritarians is they're more dangerous on the way down than on the way up I think two things we need to be really careful about one is doing everything we can to persuade the Russian people that the privations that they would experience as a result of these sanctions are the responsibility of Vladimir Putin and not a hostile West and don't forget the Russian governments still dominate the information domain in Russia so there's real risks around that and then secondly as Putin experiences the weight of our response he will become more desperate and dangerous and

26:41 we need to think about what conceivable off ramps might exist at this point I squarely put the challenge on China his new best friends his new alliance but where China despite the fact they have to support him in public can't be happy about what is happening and have almost as much to lose as the rest of us from this going wrong it's a time for them to use their influence and show that they can have a positive effect in the world and I would advise them to do that it would be a positive development before we talk about China has Putin also harmed his own base of support in Russia among people on the street who are seeing High inflation and can no longer travel outside of Russia as well as among his supporters the wealthy oligarchs who asss are now blocked and who also can't travel internationally so the answer to that is yes but I'm not sure he cares I think one of the reasons we've got to this

27:37 position that he's broadly isolated from an indifferent to public opinion in Russia and that's because he's very effectively destroyed all vesage of domestic political opposition ending of course with the imprisonment of Alexa Nani who by the way I see tweeted today and continues to show extraordinary bravery but I think he's indifferent and my Ence to support that is he took absolutely no care to prepare Russian public opinion for what was going to happen next and continues to downplay the war and its consequences in a way that must be becoming incredible now I think he underestimates the risk in the longer term of doing that but actually in the short term he's probably right I think he has pretty well emasculated any form of domestic opposition and his security apparatus has a tighter grip than ever and in fact the information regime is starting to resemble it isn't there yet but it's starting to resemble

28:31 the sort of control that the Chinese government are able to put in place do you think that Russians are yet seeing impact through runs on banks through higher inflation prices from the drop in the rubble yes this will be becoming evident but in a sense that's not the point the question is who they blame and they will be being encouraged assiduously by state media I notice it's now an offense punishable with 15 years is imprisoned to spread in inverted Commerce false Rumors in Russia you know State media will be seeking to dominate this narrative and place the blame at the door of the West and I'm bound to say that this is often an unintended consequence of sanctions so a category problem for us is to find ways to let Russia know that this is not this is not aimed at them how do you see China I think more broadly first of all there is the feature of our modern world is one where alization has peaked and I say

29:30 that because it's now really clear that the idea probably the premise on which China entered the World Trade Organization has proved to be incorrect the idea that Russia would become more like the West as it got richer was essentially the China sorry more like the West than it that hasn't proved to be correct and on the contrary now it's pretty clear that China whilst they have historically admired the democratic system increasingly think we're in terminal decline and as she sincerely now and increasingly in public extols the relative virtues of socialism with Chinese characteristics over the Democratic alternative so you see a widening ideological Gulf and consequent loss of trust and an environment where all of the various blocks now see vulnerability and the integration that exists between them and I describe this situation with great regret because I'm not a manic and I think the biggest

30:26 problems in the world can only be solved through through common Endeavor but just CU I don't want it to happen doesn't mean that it isn't and I think the worst thing we can do in the west is ignore this or think that it's consequence free because we are now in a more competitive world and we need to act like we mean it if we're to ensure that our children have got the same choices that we have had so I don't want to talk us into the fuses trap but I want us to recognize that in the direction China's going the bulcan isation of Technology space the promot of indigenous capabilities at the expense of foreign ones some of the geopolitical risks the now essentially self-imposed isolation of Russia we see the world carving itself up into blocks in a way that feels dangerous and feels like a backward step but again is a world we got to recognize just because we want it to be other doesn't mean it

31:17 is it does feel dangerous what impact do you think that the disastrous us withdrawal from Afghanistan and the world's response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine will have on xiin PING and China and their aspirations with respect to Taiwan I think she has thought for a while that the West is in Decline I think the financial crisis was the thing that galvanized that although you could argue that China's entry into the WTO and the global economic system is one of the things that ironically that that actually brought about that crisis but nonetheless I think he sees increasing weakness I think the move he made in 2008 time in the South China Sea to reinforce the islands despite having promised President Obama that he wouldn't do it was a reflection of a feeling that he could now assert himself against a weaker West I think he went too early I think by the way that was an underestimate and if he had his time

32:17 again he would have bided his time but there's a sense I think of our Decline and his ability to assert himself that makes this dangerous that's why the Ukraine thing is so significant China would really resist any parallel between the two it actually sincerely believes that it's wrong for states to interfere in the Affairs of other countries so it's in a difficult spot when it comes to what its new ally Russia is doing in Ukraine but of course famously it doesn't believe that Taiwan is another country she as a part of his political perspectus seeks to restore China to Greatness and has explicitly said that can't happen while while Taiwan remains a separate entity he's been really clear about his longer term ambition to achieve this so he's looking carefully at what's happening in the Ukraine one of the reasons I think America thankfully has remained so closely engaged is that they too can see the

33:06 precedent that this would make for China if Putin's allowed to succeed and then what data does she get when he looks at what's happened and I think it's quite interesting so he sees something that rather confronts The Narrative that we're in terminal decline which is an incredibly successful operationalization of our alliances such as we've just been discussing he sees I in sanctions on the central bank and the use of foreign exchanges and the dollar or at least the Western Financial infrastructure as an instrument of power that will make him extremely thoughtful and of course he sees the risks of an ill-conceived military Adventure which crossing the Taiwan state for an invasion would definitely be so I actually think there will be plenty of food for thought in all of this even if I hesitate to draw direct links between the two I also think by the way that at the moment his priority is to keep stuff quiet he this

33:59 year wants calmness safety and stability or Safety and Security that is the motto he's placed on this year because of course he wants a smooth Prelude to the party Congress that he hopes will anoint him essentially as president for life and that's one of the reasons why I think he finds Vladimir Putin's Antics particularly not useful at the moment Alex before I ask for the three takeaways you'd like to leave the audience with today is there anything else you'd like to mention what should I have asked you that I did not no if I have done something to get us to accept the world as it is rather than how we want it to be I think I've succeeded and I suppose though I would add and I haven't really emphasized this I think we also need to understand how potentially strong we can be there's a narrative of weakness and Decline and argument in the west and certainly we need to recognize we're in a multi-polar

34:53 and more complicated world but when you think of some of our huge strengths our political systems which confer real legitimacy our alliances as we've discussed and then cruly our capacity to innovate based on our political culture far more quickly than potential adversaries we have got enormous strengths and I think we're being infantilized we are blaming our problems on the rise of China or an aerod dentist Russia or whatever it might be in a way that risks removing or weakening our ability to take responsibility for our own problems and recognize that most of them are self-generated so to go back to something I was saying to you before which was a lesson that I learned as a human intelligence officer I think we need to have a bit of a belief in agency and recognize that our future still belongs to us it hasn't been taken away and that there's a vast amount to be confident about but we need to kind of

35:43 operationalize mobilize ourselves to take advantage of it what are the three takeaways you'd like to leave the audience with today they largely relat to that because as you might have been able to tell I'm fundamentally despite being a hard-bitten spy of an optimistic disposition so my takeaways are derived from my time as a leader of a complex organization doing an important thing where I have made plenty of mistakes of course but where I have come out first takeaway with the conviction that if you trust people life gets a lot easier so that may sound paradoxical coming from someone of my background but in a highly complicated fast moving situation there's two ways of dealing with it and I was the director for counterterrorism so I speak with some Authority here one is to try and do everything yourself check everyone else's homework impose strict control on everything that's going on and ensure that you've got your

36:40 arms around everything and that is a very human response particularly when you bear responsibility including for some really forbidding outcomes the other is to trust people to assume that they're in the jobs because they know what they're doing to have taken the time to understand them and to ensure that they understand what they're there for but to recognize that you're surrounded by high quality people and whilst one time in a 100 you might have someone who shouldn't be trusted who doesn't deserve the confidence you place in them 99 times out of 100 you'll be so much more capable as a leader if you are prepared to delegate and let people be their best so my first takeaway is to trust people and the second and third the second takeaway is to trust yourself I think this if you think you're right you generally are and I say that not to encourage hubis or to suppress curiosity or to make it any less likly that you're

37:34 going to learn from other people I say it because as someone who's worked in government I recognize the appalling drag represented by hierarchy and there's a terrible idea that knowledge and Status are correlated and when you're at the bottom of an organization you're somehow less qualified to call something than when you're at the top but in an incredibly Dynamic environment I have found that the knowledge and indeed increasingly the wisdom actually is to be found at different places in the hierarchy and to the extent you give more influence to decisions and knowledge at the top you're slowing yourself down so one of the things I have tried to do and it relates to my first takeaway is to give people the power give people closest to the problem the power and recognize they're likely to know the right answer but crucially to persuade them that they're likely to know the right answer and then my third takeaway is very

38:26 British it relates to a on python film that you may not be familiar with but the catchphrases always expect the unexpected and that would be the third one and the reason I say that is that when I look back on times I've made mistakes or we have made mistakes they've generally been in circumstances that we didn't expect and there's a reason for that because if you're in circumstances that you do expect you normally thought about them in advance and crucially created a set of rules or a structure that allows you to deal with whatever risk comes up by definition when something's unexpected that doesn't happen and the point therefore is that rules don't help when you're in Uncharted Territory what helps is values and principles that's what guides you for all of the waffle that attends the whole creation of values and living them and all of that I do fundamentally believe that you need to pay particular

39:24 attention to really defining and articulating what your basic principles in life are what the basic principles of your organization are because when the heat comes on and when you're in an unfamiliar novel environment that's all you've got to guide you and you really need to make sure you've had that conversation in advance so always expect the unexpected so Monty Python's John C has actually been a guest on three takeaways wonderful Alex thank you for our conversation today but also thank you for your service and intelligence and for helping keep us all safe thank you I very much appreciate that and a thing I would like to say as we end is that our relationship with the United States has been a thing that have been utterly decisive to our success and while I think I'm proud of the contributions that we've made to US National Security no one should understate the enormous contribution that's come to Europe from our alliance

40:19 with the United States and we're profoundly grateful for that I think as you mentioned we are all profoundly grateful for our allly and the importance of allies in today's dangerous world so thank you thank you ly if you enjoy today's episode and would like to receive the show notes or get new Fresh weekly episodes be sure to sign up for our newsletter at 3 takeaway.com or follow us on Instagram Twitter and Facebook note that 3 takeaway.com is with the number three 3 is not spelled out see you soon at three takeaway.com

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "#83 Former MI6 Chief Sir Alex Younger: Putin's Miscalculations Invading Ukraine"?

Lynn Tomlin (Host), Sir Alex Younger (Guest).

What is "#83 Former MI6 Chief Sir Alex Younger: Putin's Miscalculations Invading Ukraine" about?

Former MI6 Chief Sir Alex Younger discusses the strategic miscalculations made by Putin in invading Ukraine, highlighting how the conflict has inadvertently unified Western responses, increased military spending in Europe, and may have diminished Putin's domestic support due to economic strains. He also examines the broader geopolitical implications for China, particularly regarding Taiwan, in…

What is mentioned in this 3 Takeaways episode?

5 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Sir Alex Younger, Lynn Tomlin, MI6, War and Peace, Bletchley Park. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "#83 Former MI6 Chief Sir Alex Younger: Putin's Miscalculations Invading Ukraine"?

The episode runs 41 min; the transcript is about 7,152 words in 44 timestamped sections.

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