Now is a time where we are seeing Russians who are totally appalled by what they're seeing done in their name in Ukraine and therefore is a moment where people are looking to come and help us.

The head of Britain's Foreign Intelligence Service has been known for a hundred years as merely C, a tradition dating back to the

founding of modern secret intelligence gathering and the roots of Ian Fleming's fictional

character M, dispatching agents, including James Bond, to daring

do and danger in far-off places, and every chief signs official communications in distinctive green ink. Sign Official Communications, Communications, Indistinctive Green Inc.

I'm Anne McElvoy and I'll be hosting

Politico's new global podcast called Power Play coming Up in the Fall.

Today we hope to warm up your interest with a special introductory offer

with someone who definitely wields power on the invisible front.

I'll be asking today's British spymaster, a key ally of

the US about why he believes the West is involved in a pivotal battle for freedom as the

war in Ukraine intensifies, and how that has changed the balance of power

between old enemies of the Cold War. And to do so I headed to Prague, a city where I covered the fall of communism in 1989, but also

where an uprising against the Soviet Union 55 years ago sent shock waves around the world and brought to life the threat of

invasion by Moscow's troops.

The 1968 Prague Spring of hopeful reform of communism was brutally crushed.

It's also a city at the heart of espionage throughout the Cold War. Now as a new war rages on the

continent of Europe we'll hear an insight into the thinking of a man who very

rarely speaks about the threat posed by Russia and China and perhaps the most impenetrable secret ahead

of all of us how to live and to spy in a world where AI is a new and controversial reality.

This exclusive interview for Politico

was recorded in front of a live audience at the British Embassy in Prague.

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