Sir David Omond is visiting professor at King's College London and former director of G.C.Q.

The UK Government's Intelligence and Security Organization.

He's author of the recently published book How Spies Think,

Ten Lessons in Intelligence.

Sir David Omond, thank you for joining us.

It's a pleasure.

Well, let's begin with the book here.

What prompted you to write the book? How spies think?

I started writing this book after seeing how, first of all, the British Brexit referendum

and then the 2016 US presidential election were being reflected in social media.

And I was getting increasingly cross at the way that I saw this rising tide of half truths and distortions trying to persuade

us online of what we ought to think and want, not to mention some outright falsehoods and deceptions, and not just coming from Russia

aimed at widening divisions in society and increasingly setting us at each other's throats.

Well, the book sets up a framework that you all used in British intelligence that you maintain is useful for all of us as we try to deal with this

Misinformation quite often can you take us through I mean how does someone trained the way that you were approach this sort of information?

I've coined an acronym C's SEES for the four kinds of output that rational analysis can give a decision maker.

And the first essence in C's is situational awareness, facts on the ground,

what is going on, when and where, those sort of questions.

That's an essential first step. And of course you can't always trust what you see.

We have to guard against deception. We have to take into account that some of the information we have is bound to be wrong

or it's fragmentary or it's incomplete but that's the starting point but facts on

their own tell you nothing. It's only when you explain them, when you put them in a context that they actually have meaning for us.

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