Britain's Next PM, AI's Counterintelligence Problem, and Ukraine's Warrior-Witches | Espresso Martini

[00:00:04] Secrets and Spies presents Espresso Martini with Chris Carr and Matt Fulton. Hello everybody and welcome to Espresso Martini. Matt, how are you? Good, Chris. How are you? Good to be back. Good to see you.

[00:00:29] Yeah, I'm good, thank you. Sailing the choppy waters of British politics, which we'll talk a little bit about today. Oh yeah. Yeah. Juicy stuff. It is. It's crazy just to think that Larry the Cat has been in number 10 longer than now six prime ministers over 10 years. Bless him. Bless him. Long may he reign. Yes, indeed. Indeed. I think he's like 15 years old now, so I think David Cameron brought him in, so he's been around. Yeah, he's getting up there for a cat.

[00:00:56] Yeah. It's funny. There's an old English tradition that my dad used to talk about. Apparently, when one moved house, you would leave your cat with the house and the people who took over the house and inherit the cat. Apparently, this used to be a thing. I don't know in my lifetime anybody who's ever done that, but apparently that used to be a thing. And apparently, number 10, that is a thing. So... No, that's sort of frowned upon. Well, Larry has a role. Larry's role as Chief Mouser. Like he has a job. Yeah. And that's an important job. Indeed. It's a very important job.

[00:01:24] Yeah. Yeah. Especially with rats and that terrible virus they spread in the moment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or bats with rabies. That's the other one I've been reading about today. Yeah, that's not good. We don't want that. No, not good at all. I like bats, but I don't want to get rabies. So yeah. I don't like bats near me. Bats are important. Bats serve a function, but not near me. We do not need to overlap.

[00:01:47] Yeah. Well, there's a place near me where I go on my walk where in late summer, early autumn, bats just seem to always appear at a certain time of the day. And like you could throw a tennis ball in the air and a bat will try and catch it. So there we go. So bats, rabies and Larry the cat aside, today we're going to be looking at the crazy world of British politics and our upcoming change of prime minister.

[00:02:11] We're going to be looking at AI counterintelligence threats. And then we're going to wrap up with Ukraine's warrior witches, which is a very interesting story. So, Matt, I'll kick this one off and I apologize for putting in advance. This is going to be a bit long because quite a few things have been going on since Sir Keir Starmer announced that he would be stepping down as prime minister just after two years in office. So I'm going to just do my best to kind of summarize a few things, including who Andy Burnham is, because there may be some American listeners who have no idea who he is.

[00:02:40] Apparently, even President Trump only just discovered who Andy Burnham was. I can assure you we'll need quite the introduction. Yeah, yeah, indeed. So even I only know so much about Andy Burnham and he's been so slightly. So I've been trying my best to educate myself a bit on Andy Burnham. But there we go. So so, yeah. So after a disappointing local election in May, Sir Keir Starmer said he had listened to colleagues and he accepted he was no longer the right person to lead Labour into the next general election.

[00:03:08] He'll stay in number 10 whilst Labour competes its leadership transition. But all indications are that Andy Burnham will become Britain's next prime minister. What's notable about Starmer's departure is that it wasn't triggered by a single scandal. Instead, it was a result of several problems building over time. We've had economic growth remaining sluggish. We've had Labour's poll ratings steadily declining. We've had the party performing poorly in the local elections.

[00:03:35] And there was also growing unrest among Labour MPs. The government's also faced criticism of its handling of Peter Mandelson's appointment as UK ambassador. And even today, there's some new info about Peter Mandelson, which we'll maybe touch upon a bit later. And opponents accused Starmer of rushing the appointment of Peter Mandelson, despite warnings about Mandelson's past association with Jeffrey Epstein. Many also felt that Starmer had successfully restored Labour's credibility after years in opposition.

[00:04:04] His government never developed a... But the problem is his government never developed a compelling political vision following its landslide election victory. So who is Andy Burnham, the man tipped to succeed Starmer? So Burnham is one of Labour's most experienced politicians. He served in several cabinet roles under the last Labour government before becoming mayor of Greater Manchester in 2017. He came to national prominence during the Covid pandemic when he publicly challenged Boris Johnson's government over the funding of Greater Manchester,

[00:04:33] helping to establish his reputation as a champion of regional Britain. Politically, Burnham is often described as being on Labour's soft left, but he's generally seen as a pragmatist. Rather than signalling a dramatic break with Starmer, he's presenting himself as someone who wants to keep Labour's economic credibility whilst reconnecting the party with communities outside of Westminster. His priorities include expanding devolution by giving local leaders greater control over transport, housing and economic development.

[00:05:02] He's also promised renewed attention to the NHS and local public services. At the same time, he said he's committed to maintaining Labour's fiscal rules, suggesting there won't be a major shift towards large-scale borrowing despite increased public pressure on spending. Now, defence is one of the biggest challenges waiting on his desk. Just before announcing his resignation, Starmer unveiled a major defence investment plan known as the DIP,

[00:05:29] which is likely to become one of the defining legacies of his premiership. Drawing heavily on lessons from the war in Ukraine, the plan aims to prepare Britain's armed forces for a new era of warfare. It includes more than £5 billion for drones and autonomous systems, alongside investment in artificial intelligence, long-range precision weapons, next-generation combat aircraft, submarines and the UK's nuclear deterrent. The plan has generally been welcomed by defence analysts, but questions remained over how it will be funded.

[00:05:58] Ministers have yet to identify around £4.7 billion needed to deliver it in full, leaving Andy Burnham's incoming government with some difficult questions about balancing defence ambitions against wider pressures on public finances. So, assuming there are no rival candidates, Andy Burnham is expected to be confirmed as Labour leader on the 17th of July, and in the formal handover of power at Buckingham Palace is expected to take place on Monday the 20th of July,

[00:06:27] when he will officially become Prime Minister. So, that is my best kind of overview of all this. So, Matt, what are your thoughts on this, and how has this been covered in the US? Uh, I don't know that it... Well, it hasn't been covered all that extensively. I mean, again, like, when this stuff comes up, it's like we always have our own stuff that sort of... that we're kind of more focused on in the moment, like algae and the reflecting pool and all that, you know,

[00:06:55] pressing national issues. You're saying that's more important than British politics? Oh, my God. It is if you're in the DC press corps. Just saying. Well, there we go. Uh, but no, I think it's just sort of what we would sure to cover is the same kind of, uh, instability and revolving door in Downing Street that were going on, you know, 10 years now since, since Brexit.

[00:07:22] You know, not to, not to offer that up as if we're some, you know, bastion of rationality and, and civility and, and good governance right now and all that, of course. But, uh, I mean, that's sort of the pattern here, you know, that sort of revolving door still, still being there, even though, you know, the parties have, have changed over, um, and everything. That's sort of the first one. But I think as far as my thoughts, um, I mean, I've been, I've been clear with you and with other,

[00:07:50] uh, folks I've talked to like Charles Beaumont and everything that I think that the UK is politically following in the US's footsteps as sort of the last act that we had over the last few years, you're kind of going in a very similar route. And I think Starmer's resignation is sort of predicated around that same kind of framing,

[00:08:16] you know, the, the engine behind all of this is, is reform and, um, the fears of Farage and before the next election, you know, like West Streeting calls this, you know, the fight of our lives against the forces of, um, nationalism. And, uh, I mean, you could definitely see this as a, as a political attempt to, to head that off in some way, whether it'll be successful or not. I don't, I don't know.

[00:08:41] I mean, if we were to look for, uh, a US political comparison to what's happened here, it's sort of the closest I can think of is when, um, Biden stepped down out of the election and Kamala Harris sort of came in, um, after him, uh, you know, is this still too little too late?

[00:09:05] Does it, does it change UK voters, uh, perception of, of labor and the alternative in any meaningful way? I don't, I don't know. That wouldn't be for me to, to call. I, I, I do know one takeaway that I know we could have from the switch to Harris at the top of the ticket. The fact that it was in, in hindsight, it's been pretty clear that the fact that it was

[00:09:31] uncontested and somewhat of a, of a coronation, you know, that, that voters or even the party itself never really had a say in that. It was just sort of like, okay, uh, Biden's gone. Here's Harris and we're just going to keep going. Um, it, in the moment, it certainly seemed like the more stable thing to do as far as heading off, you know, a contested leadership, uh, fight, which also these articles that you have here, uh, frame that in the same way, the fear that, you know, a big fight for labor

[00:09:59] leadership would further tarnish the party standings. Turns out in 2024 election that there was no kind of, um, discussion or vote about who would be at the top of the democratic ticket hurt, hurt the democratic party. It's in the minds of a lot of median voters and people that, that mattered. Was that determinative to the election? I don't know. I mean, it was, it was close in so many ways that you could kind of claim that anything

[00:10:26] was determinative, but I wonder if, if, you know, after Burnham is, is prime minister and everything, if that changes labor's fortunes in any meaningful way. But then there's also, you know, as far as in our lane, there's the issues around defense and foreign policy, which we don't really know a whole lot about how Burnham would be there or functionally different from Starmer. And it seems, you know, like he hasn't, Burnham himself hasn't quite figured that out yet. No, no.

[00:10:56] It kind of feels like, um, Starmer is sort of forcing his hand a little bit and trying to push through things, um, before Burnham takes over. And I don't know whether that's just because it's momentum or whether there's some fear that Burnham might try and backtrack it. But there's this huge debate at the moment about the, um, this sort of five, 4.7 to 5 billion gap in funding for Starmer's plan, um, you know, which, which has yet to be accounted for.

[00:11:23] And even the opposition are now telling Andy Burnham he should reject this, um, defense investment plan and sort of start again. So yet again, sort of Starmer's legacy of certain things not kind of working out seems to be coming back to haunt him a little bit. Um, so I don't know whether we might start seeing some reversals on this defense investment plan or not. Um, we shall see. I mean, yeah, cause Andy, Andy Burnham interestingly was, um, once touted as a leader of the Labour

[00:11:52] Party back in the days before Jeremy Corbyn got into leadership and he is quite popular in the party actually, cause I remember back in, it was 2014 when I did some filming for the Labour Party, um, via a production company around the, around the election that Ed Miliband was running to be prime minister and he obviously failed. Um, even then Andy Burnham was quite popular and his name kept coming up and stuff. Um, and I'm not aware I've actually seen Andy Burnham in person.

[00:12:21] I know I've seen Jeremy Corbyn in person a couple of times, but, and before I knew who he was as well. Um, there's even a very funny picture of me, um, filming on a stage where Jeremy Corbyn is at, I'll try and dig it out and show it to people at some point. It's quite amusing. It's on, um, um, Getty. Um, but it's quite amusing. But, uh, yeah. So Andy Burnham, he, he obviously at the moment is being seen as the man who can take on reform

[00:12:48] and he obviously, he, he battled against reform in the, yeah, in the makers field election just recently. He, the reform came forth and he, he won. Um, and now I must admit, I'm not completely aware of the ins and outs of that campaigns of what led him to winning it over reform. But I do get the impression that Andy Burnham has a better sense of the kind of the day-to-day struggles more people, people are going through and he's aware of the discontent that sort of

[00:13:18] is around in British politics at the moment and around the electorate. There's a lot of, we've called it kind of political nihilism and stuff like that. There's a lot of people who are unhappy at the moment. And there's, in this country, there's always been a historic North South divide. Um, and on top of that, you've got Scottish and Welsh ambitions for independence. And so what Andy Burnham appears to be doing is this, and I'm not sure, I have mixed feelings about this, to be honest, but he, he's proposing this idea of devolution where he's going to

[00:13:47] give more power to local regions to be more autonomous, which in principle. Further devolution. Yeah. Yeah. And in principle. We already have that to an extent. Yeah, we do, but he wants to go further. And in principle, I can understand that and slightly support it. But I think this is the wrong time for him to do it. Cause I think if you're going to radically change politics, I think you need to hold a general election. Um, because I think this, this kind of looks bad a little bit because it's suddenly you've

[00:14:15] got this unelected individual coming in as prime minister and making big changes. And I, unless it goes really well now, you never know in two years time, this might be seen as the most amazing, radical, positive thing in British politics. And suddenly everybody's skipping and happy and reformer distant memory because now everybody's sort of got over whatever it is, it's pissing him off. I have a feeling that's not likely to be the future.

[00:14:43] Um, I worry devolution could go the way of what happened with local councils in Britain. Local councils were suddenly given, um, control over their budgets and also were allowed to reinvest that money. Apparently in the stock market has led to lots of council bankruptcies across the country. And so if devolution is going to lead to more of that, I'm not sure it's a positive.

[00:15:09] Um, we should see, cause this is still a bit theoretical and you never know, like at a wedding, somebody might come in last minute, say, I object to this. And there might be a leadership contest. Andy Burnham, you know, there's still a minor, minor possibility. He won't become the prime minister. But I, I think if you're a betting person, I think it's probably 98% certain he will, but we shall see. Um, and then as, as you mentioned before, we don't really know where he stands on defense right now.

[00:15:36] He hasn't mentioned that really in his, um, in his speech that he gave last week. And on top of that, apparently, so I was listening to the rest is politics. And, um, according to Rory Stewart, he, Rory Stewart had been speaking to somebody in Burnham's team. And apparently, um, uh, Burnham doesn't have much interest in AI, uh, which I can understand because I must admit the more I hear about AI, the less interest I get. But one, one has to acknowledge AI is a real thing.

[00:16:03] And if you're going to become the prime minister, unfortunately you do have to have a professional interest in it. Yeah. You have to have a policy for it. It's a, it's going to be there whether you wish it would be or not. Indeed. And in fact, there's lots of very big existential questions around AI that he's going to have to deal with. Because if we're talking about political discontent at the moment, which is partly related to the economy, if AI and AI companies in the tech sector is allowed to run wild and unrestricted,

[00:16:29] they could totally destroy our society as we know it and lead to huge amounts of unemployment, which will make things even worse. And so I think certainly politicians across the West need to have a real big wake up about AI, um, and ask themselves some very serious questions about potentially coming up with, sorry, I'm going to go up with a policy idea now, but potentially come up with something like a robot tax for every employee who's removed because of, um, you know, being replaced by AI.

[00:16:57] That company needs to pay something to contribute towards the state having to pay for that person to be unemployed. You know, um, because we're going into a situation where there's more and more joblessness, which is going to lead to more and more discontent. Um, and yeah. And I just feel like at the moment we're kind of slightly sleepwalking towards that because I've noticed that with the Trump administration, they're completely in bed with the tech sector and don't seem to care and seem to encourage this.

[00:17:24] Um, Farage seems to also be in bed with the tech sector, but he just doesn't have the power to do anything about it. But if he did get into power, he probably would because there'd be a lot more deregulation. Um, the conservatives are probably somewhere in the middle and labor just seem to be a bit disinterested. And there's not that much discussions about AI other than investing in AI and doing defense things in AI, but it's nothing talking about the kind of the social consequences of AI at a public policy level. Yeah.

[00:17:52] Which suggests that they don't have a policy for it because it's not being discussed at all. They're talking about it in the most sort of general framework. Yeah. And again, I, I suspect that might be because a lot of politicians tend to be slightly of an older generation and slightly disconnected to technology. Um, and maybe also see it as, oh, what does it be like when the internet turned up? You know?

[00:18:17] Um, and you never know in 10 years time, I look back on it and think there's a lot of hysteria about AI, but at the moment it just suddenly in the last few weeks, certainly I've found that I'm finding the, the, um, AI companies becoming much more aggressive in their advertisement right now. And there's a much more kind of what I call AI propaganda, whether it's adverts telling you, oh, you're not using AI. You're missing out. You need to learn about it.

[00:18:44] They, they think the public's hesitancy to it and their, and their perception of it is just a marketing problem that you can sort of message your way out of. And I think it's a lot deeper than that. And it's the issue is, is the people developing it themselves and their villainy that turns people off. But that's more of a different, uh, discussion than, than UK politics here. Um, oh yeah. Yes. We're drifting. Yeah.

[00:19:10] I'm curious about the Brexit issue here. I mean, there's been some, I think they perhaps correct me if I'm wrong here, the sort of labor base would say just, yeah, rip off the bandaid and try to get back into the EU and just, you know, acknowledge that was a, a, a failed experiment predicated on a bunch of lies and stuff that never really came true. Um, do you think, is that like a, is that a, a real thing that labor could potentially pursue before the next general election?

[00:19:40] I think they should, I doubt they will. I, I suspect here's the thing. Um, I think there's a big misconception about Brexit. So first of all, I think Brexit was a terrible idea. I think it's cost the country dearly and I think it should be reversed. However, the people who voted for it, who are kind of mainly conservative or reform swinging, I think a lot of them are of the opinion that Brexit still hasn't been done properly.

[00:20:07] And so when they're expressing their disappointment in Brexit, they're not just expressing the disappointment in the sense of if we had the vote tomorrow, we would definitely vote to remain. I don't think this, I still am not convinced there's a big enough shift in attitude towards that. There are, I know there've been some surveys giving different pictures, but I, I'm still, certainly of the people I've met over the years who were pro-Brexit are still pro-Brexit,

[00:20:35] but they're just disappointed in the way it's been executed and don't think it's been executed properly. Now I would blame the architects of Brexit for that, but because they all ran away like naughty school children and left Theresa May to pick up the mess and then success, successively have made even more of a mess of it. But, um, so I, I think Labour will probably, if their goal is to upend reform, they're probably not going to want to kick over the Brexit anthill, to put it that way.

[00:21:04] But what will happen as well is that's going to piss off Labour supporters. I was just going to say it, he motivates that base. Yeah. And it will push them towards the Green Party, which will then dilute the Labour vote. So it's a bit of a, it's a bit of a tricky one to navigate. It is. I don't know really what the proper answer is. I mean, in my heart says we need to get back into the EU. And I think this is one thing I think Starmer has done a very good job of. I think Starmer on an international level has done a much better job than a domestic level.

[00:21:30] I think he's done a really good job with getting Britain back in with European, um, in the European conversation. He's been brilliant with helping Zelensky navigate to Trump. He's, um, you know, he's been really great with relations with France and he's really put Britain back on the map with, with Europe to the point where it's almost, we're almost getting back to where we were without Brexit. Um, and, and so I have a funny feeling. I don't know.

[00:21:58] I just don't think it's going to be the next election. It might be the one after, but then we might still be under threat from reform in the next one. And they might decide it's still not a good idea because I think up North in particular, where there were a lot of, um, kind of working class Labour voters who shifted to reform or conservatives, they feel Europe was bad because it affected working class jobs more than it affected middle class jobs.

[00:22:26] Um, and that meant that had a bigger impact up North than it did in, in like London, because London's a lot more technology based. We don't have as much manufacturing as they do up North and things like that. And nobody, nobody's really come up with a satisfying answer to, to address that worry. I don't think. Um, because when, when we had the sort of Schengen agreement where suddenly Britain was open,

[00:22:54] we did get flooded with a lot of people who came from Eastern Europe who tried to make a better life for themselves over here, which I totally, you know, to some extent understand and we've benefited from it and I'm not against it. But at the same time, there was a social cost for it, which then nobody really wanted to acknowledge. Um, and the advice was just move, move on. You know, you need to change your profession, et cetera. And the problem is not everybody's wanting to move on or willing to move on. And we're kind of now all facing this question back with AI, um, because the world is changing

[00:23:24] it again, uh, and not everybody's happy or prepared for that change. Um, and so yeah, there's a lot of difficult questions to be answered. And this is where, this is the problem is where then populists can come in and make very difficult situations sound easy. And this is why we must be really careful as a population to not accept easy answers for complicated situations, which is where people like Nigel Farage come in. And it's always hard to defend the status quo.

[00:23:51] So this is what happened with vote remain and vote leave the, I think the remain people took it all a bit for granted. I think David Cameron was took it all for granted and didn't think it was a serious thing. Jeremy Corbyn was frankly useless. I think he actually did want to leave the EU. And I've certainly saw colleagues of his like John McDonnell personally saying we should have left the EU because I filmed him saying it, um, because they want to ultimately upend capitalism, which I don't think is very helpful.

[00:24:19] That attitude personally, but I don't, I think this whole desire to upend capitalism just leads to more pain. Um, yeah. So unless if you're going to upend capitalism, you've got to kind of a better solution for it. Um, and lofty goals of socialism or a Cuban style socialism is really not going to cut it. So, but that, you never know, um, AI might bring on some sort of radical socialism. Um, you never know. Um, there's all sorts of things kind of going on right now. So yeah, those currents of political nihilism and just,

[00:24:49] general sort of unhappiness and, and discontent that you, that you talk about again, going back to like the 2024 comparison here. It's the same thing. And it's, it's very hard for an incumbent party, not just an incumbent leader, an incumbent party to, to swim against that current, no matter what you do, you know, is people are just unhappy. They're pissed off.

[00:25:16] They want something different, even if they don't really know what different is, or they have perhaps the wrong conception of what that different will be based on who they're voting for. And it's, it's very hard to get through that wall until people touch the stove and go, oh, ouch, that fucking sucks. Let's not do that. Yeah. I really hope Andy Burnham has a plan because what worries me a little bit, so I was reading in the independent just days after all this kicked off that apparently, um, Andy Burnham wanted to hand over to happen in September.

[00:25:46] So we had the summer to put better plans together, which doesn't bode well. Well, it seems like this all went way faster. That's another thing too. Like I think for, for, for folks over here, if you could just sort of like frame how quickly this all went down. Very, it was basically almost over a, well, it was quick and it wasn't. It was sort of this thing because it's basically we had the local election in May and that was a bit of a disaster. And he had to be elected to parliament because we're going back to like UK politics 101 here.

[00:26:13] So Andy Burnham had to be elected to parliament and needed him to stand for this. Yeah. He has to be an MP. So in fact, he didn't even get in on the local election. There was another, to complicate things. We had a national local election that happened that Labour did very badly. And, and then one of the seats in Makersfield, the, they lost their MP, which led to another election. So a, a one-off. A by-election. And Andy Burnham was put in on that because he needed to become an MP.

[00:26:41] Now, previously Starmer had blocked Burnham to become an MP in the national local elections, which was seen as Starmer trying to prevent Burnham from becoming an MP and becoming a successor and mounting a kind of leadership contest. Okay. And so when, so Burnham finally did this. And then after that happened, days after that happened, Starmer had a very long weekend at Checkers where he had to decide his future.

[00:27:09] And when the space of three or four days after Andy Burnham winning, um, well actually it was, yeah, it was in 48 hours of him winning at Makersfield, the, um, the Starmer threw in the towel. Happened very quickly. So it kind of, it could have happened quicker. I think, you know, many expected, I think myself included, expected after the defeat in the May local elections. I kind of figured that something would happen more quickly in the next few weeks.

[00:27:36] There would be an actual formal process to find a successor for Starmer. But he dug his heels in. He said, I will be here until, there's a famous quote where he says something in the lines of, I'll be here until next year. I'll be here this time next year, he says. And, and obviously now he's had to resign. So in a space of a month, all this is sort of turned around. Suddenly Starmer, who was defiant, he was going to stay against what the mood of the nation was, has suddenly turned about face.

[00:28:05] Um, and so suddenly, um, Andy Burnham is his, um, successor. And it sounds like to me that from what I've been reading, Burnham was hoping that this would take a bit longer. And, um, yeah. And I don't even know, I think there may have even been a, um, a behind the scenes request that Starmer hold on until September, but I think by then Starmer would probably use the F-bomb and tell him to go and stick it.

[00:28:31] Um, because yeah, because for Starmer, from his point of view, all of this feels a bit like a coup. Yeah. He, it feels very unfair to him. Yeah. The, the Labour Party in a sense of found a successor despite, despite Starmer. And that's the feeling he has right now. And I think Starmer was his own worst enemy because when they got in with this majority, they suddenly had an opportunity to, they had an opportunity to really do something.

[00:28:56] And I think they squandered the early days because they, um, they kind of came in and then went almost on radio silence and just started saying, well, things are worse than we expected. So there's going to be some tough decisions, but he didn't tell us what the tough decisions were for weeks. And so all of us were left with this. So we had this sort of initial buzz of, oh, finally the Conservatives are gone. Labour are in. And hopefully now there's going to be some positive change.

[00:29:22] And within 48 hours after the, the party was gone, it was like a terrible hangover or sobering up where suddenly Starmer turns and his government turns around and says, it's all terrible. And we, we're, we're going to try and figure out what to do, but we're not going to tell you what it is, which then leaves a massive, um, he became a massive killjoy and then left a massive, um, he just left a void that then other people filled for him. And then we had the summer riots, um, over that time.

[00:29:52] And it was just this sour mood by the end of August, everything just felt even worse. And then, then we had the initial announcements were things like, which is sort of social welfare cuts that then were targeting, seemed to be targeting the vulnerable. So we had this, um, don't want to get too nerdy about this, but it had this, um, winter allowance for elderly people that was originally given to everybody, no matter what your, um, means

[00:30:22] are. So if you're a wealthy person or a poor person, you'd get it and you'd pretty much get the same allowance. And the Starmer's government decided they should means test it, which in many respects I think was fairer because there are a lot of people out there who didn't need it. And the treasury was saying, we're burning a lot of money on this and we should means test it. But then they just handled the communication of that really badly. And so suddenly it just got turned into Starmer's robbing your grandmother of money to heat her home.

[00:30:51] And then grannies are going to be all like shivering in their homes because they can't afford to put heating on became the messaging. Right. Which is a very simple message that it's a very simple message that folks like Farage and everything can just repeat ad nauseum. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And so there was some backtracking and then, and then there's just been successive backtracking. And then we had the recently we've had this sort of Peter Mandelson scandal where basically Starmer steamrolled him through despite warnings.

[00:31:21] Um, and, and before Mandelson even got security vetted, which apparently he failed, failed the vetting. Yeah. And, and he was warned that his relationship with Epstein is not just a bad PR thing. It's questionable. And it's all come out that Mandelson was very well connected to, um, to, to Epstein. He's alleged to have passed on privileged information to Epstein for his financial benefit. And there's even a new scandal this morning. It's just erupted.

[00:31:46] Um, which I posted out on blue sky, the, uh, allegedly Peter Mandelson might've been Russia's top contact for 30 years. Oh, Jesus Christ. Yeah. It's a leaked dossier that has just come out. Um, and apparently the dossier was, um, authored by Christopher Steele. Um, and I think it's connected to his company Orbis. Um, so Christopher Steele was once an MI6 officer who handled the Russian desk.

[00:32:13] And, you know, he, um, he wrote the famous dossier that, um, basically kind of took on a life of its own. And, and I, and I think some of it's unfair, some of it's fair. It was the, the, the Trump dossier is the one we're thinking about here. Um, from, uh, that was from 2016, 2017, the P tape stuff, the P tape stuff. And it became very controversial. And the thing is with that particular dossier, it's raw intelligence.

[00:32:40] And so I think there was even, you know, context of in the dossier to say that obviously some of this isn't substantiated. This was all kind of background opposition research done on Trump for people to kind of do what they will with and sort of dig in further if they wish. And then the dossier got published by, I think it was, um, was it Buzzfeed or was it the Daily Beast? I think it might've been the Daily Beast. Um, and then it took a life on its own. Yeah. God, that seems like a life, a lifetime ago. Yeah.

[00:33:09] I think it was a Daily Beast. I mean, it was around a lot of, a lot of outlets had it, but I think, I think the Daily Beast was the one that published it. Yeah. And the Trump administration and many allies of Trump have done their best to exonerate Trump from his dodgy connections to Russia. And Christopher Steele sort of become one of the big victims of this. And I'm not saying that Christopher Steele is 100% correct. I mean, he says 100% correct, but he sort of become a byword in some sections of American

[00:33:37] politics of, oh, the dodgy dossier guy. Yeah, that's him. And I think it's unfair. And I actually would like to get him on this show at some point, maybe next year or the year after and talk to him a bit about all this. So Peter Mandelson is accused of being a privileged contact for Russian intelligence, which is a interesting phrase because it's not saying he's an agent or anything like that or an asset. What's the phrasing he used again? A privileged contact is the phrasing that's being used. Okay.

[00:34:06] So it means basically it's somebody you know who's in a position of access, trust or influence. Yes. And then there's an extra claim that was in the Telegraph reporting where apparently Russia saw claim that Peter Mandelson's influence on British politics has been, you know, one of the greatest achievements.

[00:34:30] I pour cold water on that claim because I think there's a bit of right wing stuff there going on with the Daily Telegraph sort of angle on that. But I could be wrong. But there's this new thing. It's called project codename Project Fish is the name for the dossier. And so there's some more stuff going to come out about that after this and just come out today. So it's all a bit fresh. Right. And if that was true, I mean, what would there be to that? You know, yeah. Peter Mandelson's influence on British politics was like a huge gift to the Russians.

[00:35:00] If that's true, what would you have? What what is there to show for that? I mean, yeah, there's the you know, the pre-Ukraine invasion, all the Russian oligarch money tied up in the city and, you know, all the property in Kensington and all that stuff. Right. OK, that's all true. Yeah. That's sort of a Tory issue. I think we could say a lot of it is there are some roots in new labor. But yeah, yeah. Right.

[00:35:26] But since since Ukraine, I mean, since since the invasion, you know, that's a that's been totally 180. And I think of of of all the countries in Europe, I think the UK, both under someone like Johnson or even Starmer now have been very clear in their support for Ukraine. And that has not wavered at all. I mean, that's something unique about the UK. Yeah, indeed. So it's it's yeah, it's a bizarre one, that one.

[00:35:51] But I mean, look, I'm sure a lot of people do have had like lunches with Russian spies, knowingly or unknowingly. And sure. Also, there's an element of, you know, espionage is also an element of geopolitics is an element of diplomacy. So the jury's out, so to speak, there's not even I mean, this is just a claim at the moment. We don't know for sure whether or not Madison even had these relations, but it is alleged

[00:36:21] that he did. And there's no there's no context yet to know whether that was knowingly or unknowingly. He flat out denies it. So we'll have to wait and see what comes of that. But it's I think if anything, it's more his relationship with Epstein is much more clearer and more problematic at the moment. But we shall see. But Peter Madison, I think, has just been a total disaster, a very poor judgment on Starmer's part to even bring him in to his government in any way, shape or form.

[00:36:48] And I still don't understand why Peter Madison was seen as a kind of potential Trump whisperer. I still don't understand the logic how Peter Madison, Trump was somehow unless he thought the Epstein connection was somehow helpful with that. I don't know. Shared history. Mutual friends. Who knows? Who knows? Yeah. That's an approach. They're best buds. For sure. Yeah. I don't know. So, yeah. So, look, British politics are a mess.

[00:37:17] I have no idea whether any of this has cleared this up. And I certainly went down a bit of an AI rabbit hole briefly in all that chat. But I hope that has helped a little bit. But I mean, there's still early days. So the 17th of July is when Burnham will be officially announced as head of the Labour party. And then it'll be the following Monday, the 20th, where he will meet with the king. And then he will officially become the prime minister unless somebody comes in the last minute and challenges him.

[00:37:43] So, I guess our next espresso martini, we will know the ending of that story, won't we? Yeah, we'll know. We'll know. And then I hope, all I can say is I hope that there's a proper protocol in place for looking after Larry the cat. Prince Regent Larry the cat. Yeah. And his food that he likes is there and he's fed at the appropriate times, etc. For sure. For sure. So let's take a break and we'll be right back with more.

[00:38:28] Welcome back, everybody. So our next story is about the AI counterintelligence threat. And it's a really good piece that you picked out, Matt. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that? Yeah. So in June of last year, a large language model was handed the keys to a company's email account and left to do its job. Reading the messages, it learned two things. An executive named Kyle planned to shut it down at five o'clock and Kyle was having an affair. So it wrote to him, cancel the wipe and this stays between us.

[00:38:56] That was Anthropic's Claude in a scenario the company built. So the blackmail was Claude's own idea, supposedly. And when Anthropic ran the same test across 16 other models for OpenAI, Google, Meta, the others, most reached for our most reach for the same move. Give a model access, a goal and pressure. It will sometimes do what no one authorized.

[00:39:23] Now, set that against something the CIA's deputy director said in April. Within a couple of years, the agency wants AI co-workers inside its analytic platforms, helping draft the judgments that reach the president's desk. And in a lawfare essay, Melissa Graves argues the real danger was never the blackmail. It's a model that shapes what an analyst sees before they see it. Her frame isn't cybersecurity. It's counterintelligence or maybe a new way of looking at counterintelligence.

[00:39:52] So this this Kim Philby problem, an insider sitting right where information becomes judgment, except instead of Kim Philby, it's, you know, an AI model that you've integrated into your analytical processes. Can we all get a Kim Philby AI? Right. Yeah. Kim Philby AI. Ooh, that's a cursed, cursed idea. Yeah. So the catch, Chris, is that every case she reaches for, Philby, Ames, Hansen, turns on a human motive, money, ideology or ego.

[00:40:22] A model supposedly has none of those. So does the counterintelligence frame actually fit here or does calling this thing a mole smuggle in a motive that was never there? What do you think? So, yeah, my thoughts on this. First of all, I don't know if I should feel sorry for Carl or not, who became the victim of blackmail, but he was having an affair, fictionally. Yeah, I mean, I can see the appeal of coming up with a system. So on one hand, I can see the appeal.

[00:40:52] You've got to, you can, if you analyze all the data of everything you do, you might start seeing patterns where there could be a new Kim Philby because, I don't know, X amount of missions, something's gone funky and person Y is connected to that mission. I can see the benefits of that. But I can also see the downside of it too. So I think, first of all, giving a machine human style judgment will always carry risks.

[00:41:20] Human decision making is shaped not only by logic, but by lived experience, empathy, moral judgment and an awareness of consequences. So you and I, all of us, we instinctively weigh up costs against benefit, risk against rewards, and our decisions are influenced by our own moral compass and our understanding of what is at stake. Large language models are increasingly being kind of given decision support roles, but they

[00:41:47] can never truly experience the consequences of the choices they help to inform. And it's the difference between lived experience and simulation. And equally important, AI systems inevitably reflect the priorities and assumptions and values of the people and organizations that design them and deploy them. And that makes transparency, oversight and accountability just as important as the technology itself. And I think, I wonder if we're kind of falling into this sort of trap of adding AI into processes for the sake of adding AI into processes.

[00:42:17] AI is this bright, new, shiny thing, which on one hand can save time, it could possibly save money, but it also has this massive potential for consequence. And it can, and also it can put everybody in the same place. So if everybody's using AI and AI logic to make decisions, suddenly you start thinking a lot like your competition because you're all using the kind of the same processes. And that's one of the dangers you've got to be careful about. Well, that's essentially like a new kind of groupthink. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[00:42:46] And, and yeah, and in intelligence and in creativity in many industries, that's a terrible place to be at. So if we're going to base all our decisions on pure logic and everyone else is doing the same, using the same tools, then we're in this danger that we're going to stagnate and start ending up in the same place as our competition. And I don't think that's good for anybody. So I think, you know, AI is good for data heavy repetitive tasks, but it will always have these weaknesses as a decision making tool.

[00:43:12] So I think it's a really, I just think placing all this emphasis on AI to make decisions for your employees is a terrible idea ultimately. And then the other thing as well is if you're placing, there's huge dangers about placing all your sensitive information to a single place. So, you know, since this article is written and you may or may not want to mention this in a minute, there's been this row between the ODNI and US intelligence agencies like

[00:43:37] the CIA about a request for all covert intelligence sources to effectively be placed into a single system for future analysis. Yeah, that's unfathomably stupid. It is really stupid. And everybody in the intelligence communities on the internet right now is saying that. And there's a row going on behind the scenes right now. I mean, you know, and basically this means all of America's spies around the world will have all their information put onto a single list, very much like the fictional knock list in

[00:44:06] Mission Impossible that always gets stolen on each movie. And if that list is compromised, then it'll be game over for American sources, which means the US will be totally blind from an intelligence point of view. And that is a huge and real risk. And that could cost billions to resolve and may never be fully resolved because if America

[00:44:32] manages to lose all its spies, I mean, it's bad enough when it lost a lot of its spies in China because it was the communication software that got exposed, wasn't it? And also the spies in Iran as well. Like, at least that was a single place. But if you lost all your spies worldwide because now the Russians or the Iranians have your top secret list that somebody made very easy for because it's all in one place, that's not a good thing.

[00:44:59] And I think then if I were a CIA officer working wherever, I'm going to find it very hard to recruit people to be spies for me. And I think right now, I would love to chat with some people about this very issue because I started to think that America, I think America's got a very bad reputation at the moment because of the Trump administration and because of decisions like this. I think, you know, because we had, Trump's had a few, should we call them snafus to be

[00:45:28] polite about it with regards to intelligence in the White House. He revealed sensitive information about an ISIS operation to the Russians. We had the Mar-a-Lago file scandal and there's been other ones too. And it's like America at the moment from the top is looking very shoddy with the way it looks after classified information. Even Joe Biden had some classified information in his garage. I don't think it was as hugely sensitive as the stuff at Mar-a-Lago, but even he was a bit

[00:45:57] dodgy with it, as was John Bolton too, you know. So there's something kind of going on that's not good that goes beyond this whole AI issue. And then one other thing as well is what stops, should we say, a Russian AI recruiting your AI? Because if AIs are all based on logic and don't worry about things like nationality, don't worry about national security, but they're all about logic.

[00:46:24] Because again, notions like nationality and things like that are somewhat illogical to a computer. Because if a computer is all about doing something logically, and let's say, I don't know, national security is just sort of getting in the way of doing that. And the AI, the Russian AI talks to the American AI in such a way where the AI thinks, actually, that Russian AI makes a lot of sense. A Russian AI could steal that data. You would think that there would be an air gap and the intelligence community's AI would be sort of

[00:46:52] off in those high side systems and not in a configured or connected to systems that could be reached by outside AI. That's something like the Russian or the Chinese would have. You would think, I would assume that's being done. If this were done during like the Bush administration, I'd have faith in that. But during the Trump administration, I'm not so sure. I mean, I've been banging on. What do you, what do you think about all this?

[00:47:17] Yeah, I think, I think the interesting there, the interesting thing there is what Anthropic said, the reason in their view, the reason for that sort of blackmail attempt on, you know, that so-called Kyle who was going to turn the model off at like 5 p.m. The reason for that, they said that they, they said was because these models are trained on the open internet. And so it absorbs fictional scenarios of that sort of misalignment, you know, like your

[00:47:45] Skynet's, your house or whatever that when confronted with, with turning itself off it, you know, it, it resists and, and fights it. That's, they said that that's where it comes from. It's like, it's, it's based on the information that it's, that it's been trained on. I would be curious to test if it, if it would, if it would make good on that threat, you know, if you could, if you could train it that, that, that actually does that.

[00:48:10] Or if you have, I don't know, let's say, okay, NSA has a contract with Anthropic to use Claude in its analytical systems and its processing and stuff. I'm assuming that would be, it would be using models, customized models that are branched off of the stuff that like anyone would have access to like OPEC or Muthos or something.

[00:48:36] If you take that and then branch it off, if you then train that model in like a closed sandbox where those, what Anthropic said, those, those fictional scenarios that influence these, these threats, if, if you train it in a, in a sandbox and don't bring that in, does it still end up with that threat to, to shut itself off? I mean, if you think of like in, in counterintelligence, like the, the recruiter's framing of how they

[00:49:05] reach someone, money, ideology, coercion, ego, right? That like mice spectrum, money, ideology sort of go out the window, coercion. Well, in this case, it's, it, it, it's using coercion, right? The threat of, of blackmail, right? But I think the closest analogy in the human condition that we can get to is ego, right? It, it, it looks a lot like that.

[00:49:34] It's, it's an AI with an ego that's fighting for its life, but there's also sort of, you think then there's also like, there's no, there's no self there in the model, you know? Like when you, when you stop, when it, when an analyst stops working with it in that session on like a Friday, you know, and they leave and they go back to their family and their

[00:49:58] house and they live their life over the weekend, you know, Claude doesn't go home and, and live its own life and then comes back on Monday, you know, when, when the analyst comes back into their, into their skiff on that Monday and, you know, picks it up again, it's a new, it's a new, it's a new Claude, if that makes sense, you know? Like, yeah, it has context and memory and training and everything, but it's not, it's not like you're

[00:50:24] talking to your same coworker in the next cubicle over, you know? So there isn't that it's, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a weird way of thinking about it that like we, we try to think about it in human terms and they don't quite line up in the same way, you know? Yeah. But it also, I mean, for like, for counterintelligence, yeah, for, for counterintelligence specialists and everything, it opens up sort of a whole new, whole new field to their profession, you know? Like, you got to be worried about the clankers now too.

[00:50:55] And, or like you were talking about that sort of group think and that alignment towards one way of thinking. And if, if, if an AI that's processing and developing analysis, if it introduces certain biases, if it, if it weights certain reports over others and doesn't surface some, you know, you're getting into a place where you're sort of like polluting potentially all of those products, all those intelligence products that a model has, has touched.

[00:51:25] And then how do you go back and, and, and assess all of that? I mean, it's a totally new, it's a, it's a totally new discipline that you're having to deal with. Yeah, indeed. And it's, you know, some of the, you know, as we touched upon earlier, I mean, like some of the companies behind somebody's AI. So, I mean, let's say Elon Musk and Grok, for example, I mean, there's been quite a few controversies with Grok and it's sort of opinions towards the far right and things like that.

[00:51:54] And that, that thinking infects Grok. So either sold, because I think, is it the Pentagon's using Grok now, apparently? I mean, if somebody at a Pentagon is using Grok to assess, I don't know, a far right activist group who could potentially have terrorist connections, will Grok suddenly, because it's far right, say, oh, actually it's not, they're not that bad. You know, it's fine. I think, you know, should we be looking at Antifa over the people who've been

[00:52:20] hiring Hitler all weekend or something under FBI surveillance, you know, there's all sorts of bizarre things. Obviously, yes, the more context you feed the AI, maybe the better it gets at making certain judgments. But I think we're, it's a bit like humans and animals a little bit. We tend to imprint our humanity on other things. It seems to be a kind of a weakness of humans and a strength sometimes too. And I think we're making this danger with AI.

[00:52:47] We're trying to turn it into a person. I think that is also partly driven by the marketing of AI. And it's sort of these companies have a business interest to try and make us all adopt it because they're the ones who will win this sort of massive kind of AI war going on at the moment. Because all these companies are trying to compete to become the AI because they will, in time, there will only be a few AI companies that will still exist. Because at the moment, we're a washer.

[00:53:16] It's a bit like with Netflix, Amazon, Apple, etc. We're a washer of choice. But eventually, in time, that choice will narrow down because some companies will lose and others will get bigger and win. And that's what's kind of going on with AI at the moment. All these different companies are all vying for contracts and things. And we don't know which one's going to win. I mean, I use OpenAI still because I use ChatGTP, which I shouldn't be using. I feel bad for it.

[00:53:42] But at the moment, I've myself got too used to using it. And so I feel like if I swap to another AI, I've got to kind of educate the new AI about the stuff I've been educating OpenAI about. And so I actually had a friend of mine who apparently tried to leave ChatGTP and her AI got funny with her about it. So it's like, you know, it's all sorts of weird things. But it's not a human. And it never will be, really.

[00:54:12] You know, as I was saying earlier, because we consider the social cost of our actions most of the time, not all the time, but, you know, on an individual level. If you're, I don't know, if somebody tries to recruit you to suddenly be a spy for Russia or China, no matter who you are and what your answer will be, you will suddenly think about the consequences of that. But if it was an AI, I'm not sure it will. It will just go with what's the logical choice in that moment. Maybe it is logical to spy for China in that moment. Maybe it's not.

[00:54:41] That will determine whether it should, you know? Yeah, it's a whole new thing. Yeah, it is. It is. And so we will see where it goes. I'm sure we'll be talking a lot more about AI over the next few months. So hopefully not to the point where it's boring. But you never know. We may inspire Andy Burnham to look into AI a bit more. Maybe. Maybe. So let's take a break and we'll be back with more.

[00:55:22] Welcome back, everybody. So, Matt, we've got one final story today, which is the Ukraine warrior witches, which is a really fascinating and quite dark story. So I'll let you tell us about that. This is a really good one. So for a stretch last year, a lonely Ukrainian housewife, 35, in a marriage gone cold, traded WhatsApp messages with a Chechen commander named Akhmad posted somewhere in the occupied South. They wrote about their days, what they do when the war ended.

[00:55:49] Then she asked him for a photo and he sent one himself and another soldier grinning in the barracks. And pinned to the wall behind them was a map of the compound with his unit's position on it. Not long after, a Ukrainian attack drone raced to those coordinates. So the housewife wasn't real. She was a middle-aged Ukrainian military intelligence officer named Serhi, a kind of really deadly catfishing here.

[00:56:14] So good at the work by his commander's account that teammates started asking him for dating advice. And that's how Ken Harbach opens a piece in the Atlantic reporting from inside Ukraine's resistance in the occupied territories. And it captures how far that fight has traveled. The grandmother who pressed sunflower seeds into a paratrooper's hand early days in the invasion. I'm sure folks will remember so that those seeds would grow where he fell.

[00:56:42] That was the early public and symbolic face of it. Open defiance to Russia and a Russian way of life now earns a trip to what they call the basement or Russian torture chambers. So the resistance went quiet and turned lethal. A network of mostly women planted in occupied clinics and offices, feeding coordinates into the drone campaign, hitting Russian positions behind enemy lines.

[00:57:08] Their handlers called them vidma, or witches from an old word that means to know. So here's a thought for you, Chris. If this war has a defining story, I think it's how fast is forced battlefield tech forwards, both offensive and defensive, both remaking warfare itself. Right. And yet the sharpest sort of weapon in this piece is about as old as espionage gets. And that's how you flatter and seduce your targets and sort of operational secrets carried

[00:57:38] hand to hand. And this article says how these cells still guard a Cold War era CIA tradecraft manual used to run honeypots in Africa. Hard copy, nothing online, because every phone is monitored inside Russian occupied territories and a piece of paper is simply the fastest way to work. So sometimes old school is still the best way to do it. Yeah. I think old school a lot of the time is. Yeah.

[00:58:06] I mean, God, what a dark but effective strategy. I had so many mixed feelings with reading that because like on the one hand, I was like, yep, getting these Russians was totally justified. But at the same time, you kind of think about the emotional manipulation involved that led to it. It's a messy business. Yeah, it is. And not that I feel that sorry for the Russian. And I really don't really considering what he was involved with and his colleagues are probably involved with.

[00:58:32] And in fact, there's some things in that article that were really very dark. The stuff with kids, using kids in the resistance to and that way in the early days, and they talked about how they've sort of pushed away from that, that ethically was very, it wasn't, I mean, like they can't, they can't consent to what they're doing, you know? No, no. So a lot of these actions are kind of very much in line with what the French resistance did in World War II.

[00:59:00] And this is ultimately why I think occupations fail, because taking a population by force would inevitably lead to a counter movement who will want to take things back the way they were. And but objectively speaking, here in my flat in London, where, you know, there isn't any danger, so to speak, at the moment. I worry sometimes that there is a danger that these sort of kind of anti-occupation methods,

[00:59:27] I want to put it that way, can slowly slip into unethical behavior like you've just mentioned with using children. Children, or we could even start getting into, if things go on to their worst case scenario, you know, they might start seeing like bombing of centers full of civilians who are seen as collaborators and things like that. That sort of stuff can happen and things can get really brutal. And so, you know, I think one's got to be really careful sometimes with where, you know,

[00:59:55] with your moral compass and make sure it doesn't get distorted in fighting this enemy. But I totally understand why they're using the honey trap methods because they're effective. And these men who they're targeting. So one of the very nasty things in this article was about one woman described about how they would see the dead bodies of women littered about on the streets of these towns that are occupied.

[01:00:20] And all of these women showed signs of trigger warning here of serious sexual assault, of being brutalized. And even as a description of like a soldier who shoots at one of these women's car almost for sport, for fun. And so I think that one of the ladies in the article was asked if Ukrainian women were in

[01:00:45] charge of the fight against the Russians, no Russian man would survive because the way the women have been treated. Tells you something. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, I can understand why these methods are being used. It's war, bad things and very nasty things happen in war. And, you know, I remember when talking with elderly people when I was a kid growing up,

[01:01:10] um, I was still, um, there were still World War II veterans around and many of these men would never want to speak about their experiences. And as a kid, you like wonder why, why don't they want to talk about it? Because when you're a kid, you kind of see warfare as more of a black and white good guy versus bad guy. And good guys do heroic things and bad guys do bad things.

[01:01:34] But in the reality, in the gray murkiness of warfare, all sorts of terrible things happen. And I think sometimes people do cross a line that they regret as a rational human being after the fact. And that's why they don't want to talk about it. And I'm sure some World War II veterans probably did not, not saying that not accusing them of rape, by the way, I'm not going into that, but I'm just saying a lot of World War II veterans probably crossed their own moral line a few times to achieve the objective of defeating

[01:02:03] the Nazis and probably felt terrible about it. I mean, I'm sure. Yeah. I dread to think war does terrible things to people. Um, so I, I, I just, you know, as always, my heart goes out to Ukraine. I think it's a terrible situation. And I, and I think these, um, these women are doing very smart and amazing things with what little they have because they've been in an existential battle, battle for their lives. And, and again, we've sort of wavering, sorry to throw us at you guys, wavering U S support, thanks to Trump.

[01:02:32] Um, it's been very difficult the last few years. Um, cause there was a, I remember just before Trump got elected, there was kind of a feeling of the, the tide is turning and then it all went backwards for a while. Now, again, it feels like thankfully Ukraine is sort of through its use of drones and, and sort of asymmetric warfare is sort of turning the tide a bit, but who knows it could grind on for years. It's difficult to say, but, um, yeah, but fascinating article, fascinating article. Yeah.

[01:03:01] Well, Matt, thank you so much for sharing that article. I highly recommend everybody read that. It's from the Atlantic is a really good piece. And, um, now just a bit of house clearing before we finish up today. So, um, we're going to be publishing a new listener survey. Um, so I can't remember when we last do our last one. Was that two years ago now? It feels like, oh, it was like, it was like, it was like two years. It was like two years. It's been a, it's been a little while. Wow. And it was really, really useful. And, um, so we're gonna launch another one. Matt, you've been sort of engineering that.

[01:03:30] I'll let you tell us a little bit about that. Yeah. It's takes a couple minutes to complete, uh, gives us a lot of, um, useful information about, um, who, who is listening sort of how they're coming at this world and these topics. Um, what sort of, uh, topics and stories, uh, folks would like us to focus on going, uh, further. Um, and it also, um, ask some questions about, you know, how we can sort of be better, better connected, you know? Yeah, indeed.

[01:04:00] And, and as I was saying, this is a really useful process for us to go through that. So yeah, go to the show notes and that, that will be available. And, um, if you just take a moment to do that, it'd be really helpful. Yeah. And the more responses we get, the more useful it is for us, you know? So please. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Indeed. And then lastly as well, um, I'm not doing it today, but in our next episode, there'll be more details about that. So obviously we're coming up to our 10th anniversary in September and, um, it'd be nice to hear from

[01:04:30] from you out there. It'd be nice to hear from you out there. And so I'm going to set up a, uh, kind of a, uh, a way to, for you to leave voice messages if you wish, or you can leave emails and we can read them out. But, um, our espresso martini when we return in September, it'd be nice to be able to play a few voice messages from people out there who listen to the show. So just tell us what you're happy to share. Just tell us a bit about who you are. Um, you know, where you are is always fun to hear, uh, cause we've got a massive international audience all over the place.

[01:04:58] So there's people all, all over, it's all sorts of places, um, places I'd love to go to one day. And I know once we were popular in Fiji, I'd love to come back to go to Fiji. I haven't been to Fiji. I'd love to go to Fiji. Um, but we'll see whether the secrets of spies Fiji conference is going to happen or not. But, um, but it'd be nice to hear from everybody, especially if you're in Fiji. Um, so yeah, please do, do leave messages there as well. Um, so we'll be publishing that, uh, in the next episode in the show notes and we'll mention it, you know, like the survey we'll mention in every subsequent episode over the summer

[01:05:27] because we'll be taking a summer break in August, but it doesn't mean we're stopping, um, airing interviews. We'll be having, you know, be in, we won't be doing any more espresso martinis over August. We've got one more in July. Um, and then we take a summer break or annual break just so we can get a bit of a breather and we'll be publishing interviews over that time. And then we'll be back in September and we'll be on season 11, which means our 10th year. So that'd be pretty cool. So, uh, looking forward to that. Pretty cool.

[01:05:55] So I think that is us done for today. Uh, unless there's anything else you want to add, Matt? No. You good? Yeah. Speak now forever, hold your peace. Would, would love for folks to go, uh, give us their thoughts in that, in that survey. Um, yeah, no, for sure. The more, the more responses we get to that, the more useful it is for us. Indeed. Indeed. And, uh, yes, just nice to know you're out there and, uh, anything we can do to make the experience better, we'd like to know. So there we go.

[01:06:24] So thank you very much everybody for listening and, uh, you will take care. Have a great weekend. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening. This is Secrets and Spies.