Secrets and Spies Podcast: Espionage | Global Issues | Current Affairs

Amanda Mason, Senior Curator of Contemporary Conflict at the Imperial War Museums, joins Chris to discuss *Spies, Lies and Deception*, the IWM's major exhibition exploring the history of espionage and military deception. From Operation Mincemeat and Noor Inayat Khan to Cold War spy rings, Bellingcat...

Mossad spent years grooming a former Iranian president to topple the regime from within — until he lost his nerve. Chris and Matt on the Ahmadinejad plot, the nuclear bunker even America's biggest bomb can't reach, Japan's Russian spy problem, and the violence fraying Western politics.

Every few months, a rumor or prediction suggests Vladimir Putin is finally cornered — a purge, a battlefield setback, a grim Victory Day parade. Former senior CIA officer Sean Wiswesser, author of Tradecraft, Tactics, and Dirty Tricks, says the West keeps mistaking Russia's elite infighting for weak...

For most of its history, Germany's foreign intelligence service was built to watch, not to act — a constraint rooted in the country's experience of the Gestapo and the Stasi. A sweeping draft law would change that, letting the BND conduct sabotage, covert interference, and offensive cyber operations...

Chris and Matt examine the political fallout from Keir Starmer's departure as Prime Minister, the prospect of Andy Burnham taking over, and what it means for Britain's defence and national security. They also explore AI as a new counterintelligence threat through Anthropic's Claude experiment before...