So Alex, you've been at the service
for 30 years, 30 years of being a spy, and then a chief spy.
What is the reality of life as a spy?
I think that there is a big intellectual curiosity thing.
I mean, our job is asking questions a bit like yours.
Every day you are learning something new.
Frankly, it's just fascinating.
And then there's the business of espionage,
which is pretty esoteric.
But the irony is it's done in plain sight.
It's done amongst normal life.
So, you know, unlike soldiers who are on a battlefield
and know there's a war going on, our work
takes place in pubs and bars and supermarkets
and shopping malls.
And it's a curious juxtaposition.
And sometimes it can lead to a sort
of loneliness within the crowd.
Sometimes it can be exhilarating.
On a personal level, when I was serving in the Middle East we
were seeking to get inside an organisation that was
proliferating nuclear weapons.
And I had to go and approach someone and talk to them.
And we did it in a shopping mall.
And as I went up to this person I realised I was in familiar
environments and had been in that place with my children
the weekend before, so I'd gone from talking about Pingu
to talking about proliferation.
And it's just...
it's an extraordinary contrast.
And it is...
it's intrinsically interesting and satisfying.
Knowing what you know, what keeps you up at night?
So in contrast to my counterparts
in authoritarian regimes it's not my job to big up threats.
That's not what I am for.
I think if my job as exactly the other way around.
It's for us alongside our colleagues in MI5 and GCHQ
to deal with the threats that face this country so
that people can go about their normal lives
and be the best they can be.
But I do see myriad challenges.
My background is in counter-terrorism.
And of course I have spent 30 years in fear of failure.
And I'm, of course, as we have discussed,
we're in a position where terrorism is still
a lethal and present threat in our societies.
But I'm also extremely proud of what we have achieved on that.
But you are only as good as your last operation.
And necessarily that is a big preoccupation.
And now we see the counterpart threat of attempts
to reduce trust in our institutions
through disinformation by hostile state actors.
And again, I think that is something
that we shouldn't inadvertently big up.
We should quietly work against it,
so that this country has got the space to develop and thrive.
And my fear would be that this narrative comes to dominate
and we lose confidence in our institutions which are strong.
And I don't want that to happen.
We've just been faced with an unprecedented crisis.
We're still living it in the form of a pandemic.
Does the pandemic change the way that you
think about national security?
Well, first of all, to make the obvious point,
our business is talking to people.
So in terms of us as a capability and what
we do it clearly has an influence.
We've had to be pretty creative and flexible in working out
new ways of carrying out our traditional mission.
And actually, I think by and large we've
been pretty successful at that.
And there's quite a lot of things we
do now which I wouldn't change.
We will keep.
So it's been, I think, for many...
like for many organisations, it's been a transforming
experience and not necessarily for the worst.
But it's certainly also changed the mission.
It's changed the things that I think our country is
most concerned about.
It's changed our scheme of prioritisation.
And at the end I think that boils down to something
that I basically regret, which is that something
we knew was coming has been accelerated,
which is the sort of steepening of geopolitical rivalry
in the world.
I think the response to pandemic has broadly
been characterised by a national response,
by protectionism, by opportunism.
And I think we all regret that.
And that has accelerated the sort of steepening sense
of international rivalry.
I think we as a country should work to mitigate that.
But I also think that it kind of...
it is what we as a service were brought into play
to do in 1909, to give our government
the strategic insights that it needs to maintain an advantage
to keep the country safe.
And I think that kind of most traditional of our missions
has been redoubled in importance as a result of all of this.
Would you do it all over again?
Yes, I would.
I think...
I actually think that the next 30 years
are going to be even more interesting than the 30
years just gone.
I've already said I think people joining are lucky.
They can do something about the things that
worry people in this country.
I also think that intelligence services,
Britain's covert capabilities, are kind of
closer to the middle of government capabilities
than they were when I joined.
The overt and covert have blended.
It's a boundaryless world.
There's more ambiguity.
And there's, generally speaking, more call on our services
as part of the sort of broader national security team.
So I think we play a much more central role
in responding to the things the government cared
about than we would have when I joined in 1991.
And of course, the real reason why I would do it again
is the people.
And the privilege of my life has been to live amongst the people
of MI6 and the honour of my life has been to lead them.