The Economist asks: What can history teach spies?

Economist Podcasts

The Economist

News & Politics, News

4.4 • 4.9K Ratings

🗓️ 4 October 2018

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Christopher Andrew, author of "The Secret World", warns intelligence services of the dangers of historical attention span deficit disorder. He argues we can only understand Vladimir Putin — and allegations of meddling in foreign elections — in the context of the long history of Russia. And who was the Edward Snowden of the Victorian era? Anne McElvoy hosts. Music by Chris Zabriskie, “Divider” (CC by 4.0 UK)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You know what? I feel home.
0:02.3	Like dancing.
0:03.5	Like letting the movement of your body describe the sheer quality of this paint.
0:07.5	I was actually going to say I feel like we should get on and move that grand piano before starting.
0:11.6	Ian.
0:12.6	Heritage by Dooluxe. It's a feeling.
0:22.7	Hello and welcome to the Economist asks.
0:25.4	I'm Anne McElvoy and this week we're asking
0:28.3	what can history teach today's spies and counter spies.
0:32.5	My guest has spent his career unraveling the secrets of intelligence services
0:37.2	and the opaque bureaucracies that oversee them.
0:39.8	Christopher Andrew is a meritorious professor of modern history at Cambridge University
0:45.1	and official historian of MI5, Britain's domestic intelligence service.
0:50.3	During the final years of the Cold War he worked with two defected KGB officers,
0:55.2	Ole Kodievsky and Vasily Mitrokin, gathering unprecedented top secret files on Soviet Russian
1:01.9	intelligence against the West. The FBI described the Mitrokin files as the most complete and extensive
1:08.4	intelligence ever received from any source.
1:12.1	Well that was until 2013 when Edward Snowden copied and leaked £1.5 million American
1:18.8	National Security Agency documents revealing the extent of Western government surveillance programs.
1:25.2	At a time when both Russian operations against the West and concerns of a government spying on
1:30.1	their own people are high on the political agenda, what should the priorities of today's
1:35.2	intelligence services be? And what might they have to learn from those who went before them?
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Economist, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Economist and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.