[00:00:01] Due to the themes of this podcast, listener discretion is advised. Lock your doors, close the blinds, change your passwords. This is Secrets and Spies.

[00:00:24] Secrets and Spies is a podcast that dives into the world of espionage, terrorism, geopolitics, and intrigue. This episode is presented by Matt Fulton and produced by Chris Carr. Hello everyone and welcome back to Secrets and Spies. Russia may be struggling to defeat Ukraine on the battlefield, but it's doing much better in the war for Western public opinion. That's the argument at the heart of A Spy at War, a second novel from former MI6 officer turned author Charles Beaumont.

[00:00:54] It's a brilliant tale about the conflict around the Ukraine war and Russian influence operations inside Western institutions, the disinformation narrative seeded into Western media, and the compromised elites who've been helping Moscow whether they realize it or not. Charles joined me to talk about all of it and where his story goes from here. Just a note, his voice and appearance have been altered to protect his identity. Here's our conversation. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. Take care.

[00:01:21] The opinions expressed by guests on Secrets and Spies do not necessarily represent those of the producers and sponsors of this podcast. Charles Beaumont, welcome back to Secrets and Spies. It's so great to have you. Well, thanks for having me back.

[00:01:47] Sure. So you were previously a guest of ours almost two years ago now with Chris to talk about your debut, A Spy Alone. You're now back with the sequel, A Spy at War. I'll hold it up for anyone watching. That's what it looks like, at least the U.S. version. It takes us on a much more ambitious canvas against the war in Ukraine.

[00:02:13] Before we get into the book, I wanted to give listeners who are new, maybe new to you or your work a sense of who you are and what you bring to the genre. So you spent roughly two decades in British intelligence before becoming a novelist. Obviously, there are hard limits to what you can discuss thanks to the Official Secrets Act.

[00:02:36] But within those constraints for anybody whose entire perception of MI6 is, you know, James Bond, what can you tell us about the reality of living and working in that community? Well, Matt, thanks so much for inviting me on. And yeah, I mean, I think if people are already listeners to this podcast, that suggests they've probably got a fairly realistic perception. I hope. Who knows?

[00:03:03] But, you know, I worked in the human field, human intelligence field, and I was mostly running human sources. And I know that you've also spoken to CIA officers who have a similar kind of background. So that, you know, it's a long way from James Bond. There's no car chases, no gadgets. Your job is to identify, to recruit, to cultivate, and then to run sources, run what some people would call them agents.

[00:03:32] And these are not employees of an intelligence service. These are the people that are working with us, in our case, the British government, giving us access to information and intelligence that helps the government make, we hope, good decisions in what it does in the world. And that is what most buying is about in terms of human intelligence. It's about those human relationships that exist at the heart of any kind of espionage activity. Yeah, thank you for that.

[00:04:00] And it's a smaller service, too, more traditionally focused on like a nuts and bolts of running agents. That's right. So the CIA is obviously, as one might expect, a big organization. And it has, you know, it has a paramilitary division. It has extensive technical capabilities. It has a whole range of sort of wider activities.

[00:04:21] Whereas SIS, the Secret Intelligence Service, given its official name, only really does agent running. It doesn't, for example, the CIA has an analytical branch, which is a significant element of that. SIS regards that as the role played by other parts of the UK government that are in specific kind of structures that exist for intelligence analysis. Yeah, great. Thank you for that.

[00:04:49] So there's a lineage of former intelligence officers and analysts who've gone on to become successful novelists. John LeCarré, Grand Grimm in her own time, of course, David Niklosky, I.S. Berry, yourself. And I think that's in large part because intelligence work is fundamentally about understanding human motivation. And that exercises some great muscles for writing fiction.

[00:05:15] But I think what you and David and Ilana are doing goes beyond character study. There's like a civic function to the modern spy novel right now that I think feels more urgent than it did 10 or 15 years ago. Like translating classified the secret world into something that an informed public can actually grasp. Do you see it that way? Is there a responsibility that you feel attached to the genre at the moment at all?

[00:05:44] Yeah, that's a really interesting question. I haven't heard it phrased that way, but actually, now that you say it, I do kind of see what you're getting at. And I think, I mean, clearly we're living in a very disordered world at the moment. Lots of structures and norms that we thought were in place have proved not to work. And I was certainly inspired at the beginning to write my first novel because I felt that a conversation needed to be had with the public.

[00:06:11] And, you know, as a private citizen, albeit one who has worked in a relatively unusual job, there are limited ways that you can push that conversation forward. And it's also the fact that, you know, more people read fiction than they do read long, dry nonfiction or academic work or whatever.

[00:06:33] So it struck me as quite a good way to try to engage in a conversation and in a way that I was able to do without breaking commitments that I had made in terms of secrecy and, you know, not revealing classified information, which, you know, is something is clearly a red line. So I think, yeah, I think as a way of engaging in a kind of public discussion about some of the things that are happening in our world.

[00:07:01] And these are both sort of, you know, issues writ large, big global questions about security and, you know, the rights and wrongs of certain countries' actions. But also questions perhaps slightly more internal, you know, my books, I hope, look a bit at the way Britain is managing its kind of, its postmodern experience, if you like.

[00:07:28] And, you know, there are some challenges there and I try to sort of address those head on. Well, it holds a mirror up to Britain in, I think, the same way that Licari was doing during the Cold War in a lot of respects. The sort of post-war malaise. Yeah, and, you know, it's obviously very flattering to be compared with him. But I think in the sense that, yes, I would like to think that an espionage novel is quite a good way both to understand, as you noted earlier, Matt, the sort of human dynamics,

[00:07:55] but also wider questions like the role of a country such as Britain with perhaps a bigger past and we have a future, if you know what I mean. And what that means for all of us, you know, whether we're actors in this kind of secret world or just, you know, concerned citizens. Yeah, for sure. So let's talk about the book itself.

[00:08:18] So A Spy at War came out in March of last year in the UK and only recently is December here in the States. Some of the passages about like transatlantic strain and pro-Russian sympathies among certain Western policymakers has aged scarily well.

[00:08:39] And as I was reading it, I kept wondering, like, when you wrote it, like when you were really in the guts of this story, like when what was that time frame? Most of it was written in the first half of 2024. OK.

[00:08:55] And so this was just in the period where the election campaign was happening in the US and clearly there was a choice on the table there about which way the US might go. And it felt to me that there were some risks in that for Ukraine particularly.

[00:09:17] But also it's not just about the US, you know, there are there are as we keep finding ourselves looking at this question, there are a range of approaches and attitudes towards Russia and Ukraine across the Western alliance.

[00:09:32] And the degree to which the degree to which those sort of those questions are being litigated, both in sort of public political circles, but also the way that it causes ripples, whether it's in foreign policy, whether it's in the behaviour of certain businesses, whether it's in energy politics, all kinds of things.

[00:09:51] And, yeah, so what's been interesting is writing that book before the events of 2025, 2026 and a fairly profound cracks emerging in the transatlantic alliance.

[00:10:07] Yeah. I mean, so how much of what's playing out now, Trump's turn, the Oval Office meeting with Vance and Zelensky, the Greenland catastrophe, how much has that surprised you at all? How far it's gone in even just a year? Yeah, I'll be honest. I think it's gone further than I imagined.

[00:10:27] So what I thought was likely, and I think that the book sort of bears this out, was a shift fairly quickly to reduce support for Ukraine on the part of the Trump administration and to weaponise certain attacks on Ukraine, some of which are unfounded, some of which have a foundation of truth.

[00:10:50] And obviously, as you'll be aware of that plays into the plot of the novel, the weaponisation, for example, of corruption allegations in order to give an excuse for not backing Ukraine. But, yeah, I mean, the more extreme stuff like threats of, you know, outright force against a NATO partner in the form of the Greenland threats.

[00:11:15] But also, I mean, you know, even with Canada, I mean, we don't quite know where that's going, but something's going on there. As we're speaking today, Matt, there's been reports from, I think, credible Reuters sources that the Trump administration has drawn up a kind of, whether you call it a revenge list or a response list to their perceptions of NATO partners' attitudes to war in Iran.

[00:11:41] And that includes, for example, some kind of retribution against the UK's claim to the Falklands Islands, which one would argue is kind of settled international law ever, you know, for some time and certainly since the conclusion of the war in the 80s. So stuff like that, that I think is moving further and faster than I had anticipated. Yeah. So the novel is mostly set in the summer of 2022.

[00:12:08] The Russian invasion has faltered a bit and there's this sort of belief, like, if we can just sort of keep this going and press the Ukrainians on a bit more, like, we'll get to the finish line and it'll be OK. While these darker forces at home bubble up to threaten that. The novel, however, opens in Kiev in February of 2022, the day before the invasion begins.

[00:12:31] And we see that persistent denial within Ukraine that this catastrophe was very much around the corner. It's since been reported extensively that CIA and SIS were in lockstep on warning about what was coming and ran into, like, sustained skepticism from Kiev and several European NATO partners.

[00:12:53] That warning, I think, is arguably one of the great recent success stories of the US-UK intelligence partnership. Both services in total alignment, pushing an assessment that many allies didn't want to hear. I'm curious, why do you think they were so confident? And what does that episode tell us about what the transatlantic alliance is capable of when it's firing on all cylinders, respects one another and with professionals at the helm?

[00:13:22] Yeah, it's such a good example, isn't it?

[00:13:52] It's just couldn't bring itself to believe that. But to its credit, both the UK and the US and Intel services, as you say, working in lockstep, called it right. I think, you know, in terms of what, on what basis that they were able to make that determination. I mean, there's been some reporting, you know, in open source, and obviously we're not here to divulge anything secret.

[00:14:16] But I think it's a combination of some very good, to be fair, you know, not just CIA, but wider intel agencies. So NSA, SIGINT, GCHQ, which is the UK partner, the SIGINT agency. I think it's a mixture of really good analysis, fusing different sources. There appears, it appears quite possible that there were some high up sources, human sources reporting probably inside the Kremlin.

[00:14:46] But again, you know, those are the sorts of things that are kept very quiet. But there are, you know, there have been various reports of the CIA needing to resettle some high level defectors and things like that. So these are all things that together form a picture. And I think that's quite interesting, because it's a reminder to people that quite often in fiction and in, you know, representations of espionage stories, there's a desire.

[00:15:14] And it makes a neat story to have a single source, maybe, you know, a single agent high up next to the president or whatever. And that can be the case. But actually, in many cases, it's a combination of factors that you'll have indications from different sources, different aerial surveillance, all those sort of things coming together, which allows you then to make a determination. But I think in terms of then of, yeah, it shows the power and the potential of the transatlantic alliance.

[00:15:42] And the fact that, in a way, what is slightly tragic and unnecessary about what's happening at the moment is that these are countries that are desperate to work with each other. I mean, UK, US, but we talk about Denmark. You know, the US has almost no better friend than Denmark.

[00:16:01] And it's not that there isn't an open door, you know, that there is so much willingness and enthusiasm for collaborating and working with our friends over the pond. And it's just very difficult that we're dealing with this kind of unpredictable partner now. Yeah, for sure. Clock's ticking on that. Not fast enough.

[00:16:32] So this what you said you wrote most of the book in in 2024. What made you want to go back to summer of 2022? Like that first six months of the invasion as like your landscape to set the story. And why? Why? Why then? Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, part of it was was that I was it was a continuation novel of the former novel. But of course, you could always have little gaps in time.

[00:16:56] And to me, it felt that there was something about those early months of the Ukraine war where things shifted so dramatically. And we all remember there were those first days when I think most people and that, you know, including actually CIA and SIS. So as we both noted, they called the invasion right. They saw it coming. They called it right. What they didn't call right was Ukraine's ability to resist. Yes.

[00:17:24] And I'm not criticizing because, I mean, no one saw that. And I remember messaging people I knew in Ukraine and not not in any kind of means of saying, oh, I'm sorry, you guys aren't up for it. But just sort of, you know, what will you do? And getting responses from people I know that say, yeah, we'll fight on. And that was, you know, an extraordinary moment.

[00:17:52] And they stood up to this, you know, Russian onslaught. And also then, you know, Russian tactics were poor, both militarily but also intelligence tactics. There was this idea, and I try and weave a bit of this into the novel, that there would be a sort of coup. There would be effectively the top layer of the Ukrainian leadership would be taken out as well as a military campaign on the ground. And the fusion of those two elements would result in Russian control.

[00:18:21] And neither of those things, you know, worked out. And so, yeah, so for me, that choice of having quite a compressed period of time but one of great intensity. And also, you know, we haven't talked about the characters, but the main protagonist of the novel, Simon, who's somebody who he himself is sort of, he's trying to escape something.

[00:18:44] So there's this sort of strange irony that he's gone to Ukraine from Britain almost to escape the maelstrom in Britain. But it's a maelstrom that's personal to him. So this odd idea, and it's something that, you know, I've encountered in my professional life of people for whom war zones or very unstable environments are somehow a safer environment in one weird way than, you know, the kind of normal environment that most of us choose to live in.

[00:19:12] And very early on in the book, Simon, the character you're referencing here, has a conversation with a U.S. Marine who's joined the International Battalion. Almost is sort of like, this is what I do. These are the kind of environments I live in. Like, here I am, you know, like sort of on tour. You know, I think you're saying. Yeah, exactly. And there is that. There's a certain people who have spent a bit of time in these environments. You kind of see the same people. And it may not, you know, not literally necessarily.

[00:19:37] But, yeah, there are certain types of people, you know, it tends to be military veterans, people working in security, media, NGO. And all of those people, you know, clearly they're all unique individuals. But there tends to be a common thread of people who perhaps find it easier to be in that intense environment than to be back home, you know. Yeah, for sure.

[00:20:00] You also really showcase a lot of what has made this war so unique just in the history of warfare, whether that's drones or this sort of eclectic patchwork, uneven nature of the Russian order of battle. Just the very radically different way that this war is prosecuted in terms of like the war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria, et cetera.

[00:20:28] One of those that I've always been really interested in and was glad to see this when I started reading was the Katarovsky, the Chechen forces. And so I wanted to ask about Chovka, your Chechen assassin antagonist. So I think he's doing something important that could be easy to miss.

[00:20:50] You flag that his name echoes a man who, in the official Russian account, is a notorious terrorist, a scapegoat for the 1999 apartment bombings, which helped Putin consolidate power in the early days of his reign. Take us into how Chovka came together as a character and what he represents. Yeah, well, thank you for asking because it's a really, to me, an interesting question.

[00:21:17] And yeah, so the role of the Chechen, both in the kind of Russian cultural mind, but also I think to some extent in the Western mind, is a kind of slightly sort of faceless, nameless group of vicious assassins. And if someone says, oh, he was killed by Chechen gangsters, I mean, it's not normal. It's not a normal event, but you sort of think, oh, yeah, that sounds about right. And we don't really stop to think about, well, what's Chechnya?

[00:21:46] You know, why is this place apparently full of people who are willing to do these things? And so I try to give this person a bit of a backstory. And of course, Chechnya, as you note, was, you know, tried to secede from Russia and was embroiled in incredibly vicious war between the Russian, federal Russian army and the kind of separatist forces.

[00:22:13] And there's a thread that takes us all the way back to 1999 when Putin came to power and a series of bombings that occurred that were blamed on Chechens. And I think not most, well, maybe most people, anyway, many people would regard almost certainly false flag operations by the Russians in order to create this Kassus Belli.

[00:22:31] So what I'm trying to draw on here is this idea that you have an embattled and also embittered population, which is a minority, a Muslim minority in a country that's got very strong views about the role of Muslims. And there's all kinds of prejudice and trauma and Chechens' own family. His story comes through that. So, yes, he is an assassin.

[00:23:00] He's definitely a bad guy who's done some bad things. But, you know, he's also someone who has his own life story and he may have reasons for the choices he's made.

[00:23:10] And certainly the way that the, as you mentioned, the Kalarov, so this is named for Ramzan Kalarov, the ruler of Chechnya, who's a kind of, you know, he's an extreme autocrat and rules this place like a sort of emirate with his own private army. And, you know, they were involved very much particularly in the early stages of the war. I think a lot of them probably are dead now.

[00:23:37] But the way, the degree to which they were associated with some very credible reports of extreme violence, war crimes and all kinds of things. So I don't shy away from portraying some of those things. Yeah. And there's this subtle, like, reminder that runs through the book. Chechnya is part of this, but it's not entirely with him alone that, you know, how Russia isn't a homogenous mafia state of loyal, like Putinist drones.

[00:24:07] You know, it's a colonial empire with a long history of grinding up its own minorities from Chechens in the 90s, if you said, to Buryat's Siberian ethnicities, Dagestanis, even African mercenaries being fed to Ukrainian farmers' fields.

[00:24:27] Now, I think it was just it was it was good to note how, you know, these are like this is the meat that gets ground up into Putin's gears for this war machine. Yeah, absolutely. And that's, you know, it's difficult to to hold those thoughts when we see the things that, you know, the Russians are doing. And of course, particularly the way in which the elite around Putin, they do these things as the same time as enriching themselves with billions and so on.

[00:24:57] But to me, it is an important point because it is, you know, there's a truth there. And of course, there's a truth about the degree to which, for example, Western powers made promises to Ukraine about its own security, Budapest memorandum, that kind of stuff back in the 90s, which we then failed to honor. So, you know, there are I think these these these stories are complex, which is not the same as justifying. There's no apology for anything that the Russians have done. But I think the complexity is important to include. Yeah.

[00:25:27] Yeah. There's also to this point, there's a line in the book from a character, Carmen Patel, your Kremlin sympathetic Downing Street national security advisor. And you talk about him a bit more if you'd like. But I really love this line. He remarks in the book, contrary to the West assessment at that point in 2022, he says that the Russians aren't losing the war. They're just fighting in their way.

[00:25:55] Their willingness to suffer is greater than any country on Earth. If you don't believe me, look at Bakhmut. And it's a chilling line because Patel is right. That sort of strategic patience, that willingness to absorb punishment is a real feature of Russian society and an asset to the regime. And I think it's often missed by us. But it omits who actually does the suffering.

[00:26:19] You know, it's almost always the poor and the ethnic minorities, not like the elites in Moscow and Petersburg. How do you think Westerners can better understand that dynamic and how it helps Putin's Russia endure? Well, maybe one good idea is to, you know, read some Russian literature. Read Dostoevsky. Yeah, Dostoevsky. Because, yeah, because ultimately there is this, you know, it's it's.

[00:26:48] Is it something to do with the geography? You know, there's a country whose vastness is sort of almost beyond our understanding that, you know, it's way bigger than Canada or the United States. And yet the population is really not big at all. Is it something to do with the fact that it is an imperialist land empire that has grown out and absorbed and suppressed all kinds of minorities? There are so many elements to that.

[00:27:18] But there's certainly if you look at Russia's history and a lot of wars, they have tended to start with sort of disasters. And they have often ground out victories.

[00:27:31] Now, I'm not here saying that I think the Russians can necessarily be victorious in Ukraine, but they've certainly they have they've certainly broken a lot of people's expectations in terms of if you look at that initial surge to try and seize Kiev and other key cities. And then the failure of those first advances in 2022 to where they are now, whether. Yes, they're not they're not making progress. Progress or if they are, it's really incremental.

[00:28:01] Yeah, but nor have they been defeated. And that's quite interesting. You know, having lost now more than one and a half million killed and injured. And I honestly think, you know, if you or I had gone to any super well-informed analyst and said back in, say, 2021, they'll be down on one and a half million men, we'd be told, oh, don't be ridiculous. You know, there's no way the Russians would put up with that. But they have. Yeah.

[00:28:30] And again, we constantly being told that their economy is on the point of collapse. And, you know, it's not that I disagree with the data that I'm seeing, but, you know, their willingness to keep grinding out. And, you know, when I say willingness, it's a willingness of a leadership that has no regard for the humanity of its own people. But that is what it is. And it has an impact. I mean, I remember when the sanctions first hit very early on in the war and, you know, there were going to be bank runs in Moscow and everything.

[00:28:59] And like thinking like, yeah, man, it's going to be a couple months and it's going to fall apart. And that's going to be it. And we're four years into it now. And that has not been the case. There's this almost like there's an asymmetric advantage that they have in how we are sort of the West is sort of structurally incapable of matching that kind of pain tolerance, you know? Yeah. And I think the other thing is the way that they've restructured their economy. So it's become a war economy.

[00:29:26] And, you know, the thing we have in the West is that we're we're living a peacetime lifestyle, which is good, right? You know, nobody wishes for them and their children to be living in a war. But it means that whilst we have we're economically far more productive than the Russians, clearly. Actually, we're not productive when it comes to producing sufficient quantities of weapons.

[00:29:55] And, you know, even the mighty U.S., with the combination of its conflicts in Iran and, you know, other engagements, is running a bit low on some pretty important stuff. And, you know, that's quite something. Yeah.

[00:30:08] You have these I think really all of your antagonists in the book, now that I think about it, are sort of like they're either sympathetic to a degree, but they're, you know, murderous, psychopathic assassins like Chovka. Or you have someone like Carmen Patel, who's a useful idiot, essentially. Ideological to an extent, but I think essentially a useful idiot.

[00:30:36] And there's a few other characters as well who definitely, I think, fit that definition better. How do you as a from like a craft standpoint, how do you approach writing characters like that without making them, you know, caricatures? Yeah, it's tricky. And I think a little bit of caricature can be fun for the reader because, you know, you want it to be engaging.

[00:30:57] But I think one of the things that I, and it comes back to what we talked about earlier, that the role of perhaps having worked in human intelligence as a profession, transferring that background into working as a novelist,

[00:31:12] is that often you are running a source or, you know, working with someone who's providing intelligence, who probably is the last person you choose to spend time with. You know, I mean, sometimes these are wonderful people and they are, and you feel that your values align and you're on the same page.

[00:31:35] All the time that's not the case. And you're dealing with someone maybe who has got blood on their hands or who is ideologically in some way quite extreme or, you know, I don't know, has attitudes to women's rights or whatever it might be. And so I think it's that thing of trying to see the person, which doesn't mean that you necessarily appreciate them as, you know, you want them to be a friend or whatever.

[00:32:02] But it's that you still have to understand someone if you want to run them successfully as a source. And I think that's, and in a way, as a novelist, I think it's the same. You kind of have to understand the character to write them, even if they are, as you say, a psychopathic assassin. Yeah. Well, I mean, to that point, I mean, everyone is the hero of their own story, whether that's a Cheshan assassin or some sort of, you know, developmental agent.

[00:32:29] And whether you're writing that assassin or trying to pitch that agent, you got to figure out what that is and see the world through their eyes and, you know, justify their worldview for the short time that you're within their head, if that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's very well put. And I think it's that point about, you know, it's a sort of classic thing within sort of psychology that, you know, someone's perception is their reality.

[00:32:59] It's not just like, well, that's what they think. No, that is their reality. And again, it's a tool that people use when they're trying to cultivate and recruit a new source, because you're trying to understand that person's reality, whether or not you agree or, you know, or recognize it. And again, I think that that can be quite useful to a novelist. Mm hmm. Let's take a break and we'll be right back.

[00:33:43] One of the clearest arguments the novel makes is that Russian disinformation isn't just sort of a side story to the war. It is the war or at least a decisive front in it that, you know, this war won't be won or lost in the Donbass. It'll be in the battle for Western public opinion. And there's a lot we could talk about that with now.

[00:34:06] But the book shows us sort of what that looks like in practice with the Ukrainian corruption narratives being pumped into Western media to erode support for Kiev. I was wondering if you could walk us through the architecture of that sort of disinformation machine. And in the years sort of since the invasion, has it gotten more sophisticated or cruder or?

[00:34:29] Yeah. So it's there's a basic narrative, which if you look at people who are critical of Western support for Ukraine, whether they might be in British politics or in the US or in, you know, continental Europe, you see certain themes coming up again and again.

[00:34:51] And part of this is that there are very few people who would come out and say that they appreciate what Russia is doing. So even even like the most kind of tiny exceptions, but the most kind of right wing populist sort of Moscow mouthpiece is never actually going to say, well, I think the Russians are doing a wonderful job in Ukraine, because it's just it that just doesn't work as a disinformation strategy.

[00:35:17] So you have to find ways to undermine Ukraine. So one is, as we've already touched on, is this corruption idea.

[00:35:24] Another is the idea that we, the West, are being dragged into a war with Russia that we shouldn't have and that we could just collaborate with them and, you know, build some economic benefits for everyone, which, of course, is to ignore the fact that if you were to say, God forbid, well, give Russia the Donbass as the price of peace.

[00:35:50] Well, what are they coming for next? You know, we only have to look at the map and, you know, they've invaded Georgia, they've invaded Ukraine, they have troops in a bit of Moldova. You know, we can then just start to discuss where we think they're coming next and the idea that they would make promises, you know.

[00:36:07] So I think, so to me, coming back to disinformation, what's so powerful about it is that ultimately, I think it's perfectly possible to argue that the material shift which has occurred in the United States government approach to Russia is a function of disinformation. Yes.

[00:36:28] You know, because we see that not just President Trump, but, because some people, you know, clearly we could go down the road of what's President Trump's relationship with Russia, which is an interesting discussion. But even if we put that on one side, it's not just him, is it? J.D. Vance, who no one thinks J.D. Vance has been, you know, confirmated in a Russian hotel. Oh, he, he, he, he, he, so God forbid, with a sofa. But no, sorry, let's not go there. But you know, no one thinks that, you know, and Pete Hegseth.

[00:36:58] So we've got a whole load of people in America who have signed up to this. And of course there is, you know, some stuff has come out, you know, that there are particular media channels where people are being paid to promote Russian propaganda. I think some of it is far more subtle. But going back to the sort of disinformation, I mean, I heard a fascinating thing of where a rumor went around that President Zelensky, you know, the allegation is that he's fabulously wealthy as a result of all the corruption.

[00:37:29] And we, the Western taxpayers, are effectively making him rich. You know, and we're all schmucks for doing that. And that's kind of what President Trump might tell you. A rumor went out that Zelensky had bought the kind of country house, manor house of our king, King Charles' house, called Highgrove in the west of England. A beautiful house, as you might imagine.

[00:37:52] And I even heard a thing where there was a, some kind of Russian propaganda TV channel was trying to interview people in the town near that house and sort of say, have you heard, you know, President? No, it's complete fiction. But what's so interesting about that is the degree to which they are willing to put boots on the ground, as it were, media boots on the ground, to push these stories.

[00:38:17] And ultimately, yeah, if Ukraine is forced to effectively surrender to Russia and cede territory and maybe cede the right to join NATO, cede the right to choose whether it is neutral or not. Well, that will be, I think, in large part because of the success of a disinformation campaign and the impact that has had on certain political circles, particularly in America.

[00:38:46] Not just America, but in America particularly. Why do you think, and I don't ask this to suggest that we're in the west somehow better or immune to this disease because we're absolutely not. Every day is a reminder of that. But why do you think Russian disinformation is so pervasive in the global south? Yeah, that's a really good question. I think part of it is that actually we in the west have ceded some of that territory.

[00:39:12] I'm not talking obviously physical territory, but, you know, let's take the example of the BBC World Service, which is one of the most trusted media outlets ever. Another one, Voice of America. You know, both of them for different reasons, but both of them have had their funding cut considerably in recent years.

[00:39:28] I mean, you know, it's crazy that you have these incredible engines of soft power, trusted, full of very professional journalists, journalists who are, you know, come from the best possible training grounds. And actually, you know, the gift of the English language, which, you know, it's just the luck of geography and history that it's a universal language. And yet we're ceding that ground to these kind of propaganda channels such as RT.

[00:39:57] I think the other thing is actually the Russians are, have been doing this for a long time and they're prepared to put real resources into it. And so the way that they, you know, I've seen reports about, for example, Sudan, where they sort of weaponized certain Facebook groups that were drawing in millions of members and users to undermine the now sadly failed democratic experiment in Sudan.

[00:40:24] So I think there's a willingness to really sort of be on the front foot, which the Russians have shown. And this kind of slightly, this sort of kid gloves approach, which Western countries have tended to show, certainly in the post-Cold War era. And I think there is a, we could go back a bit more and, you know, Western countries thought, well, we won the Cold War, so we kind of don't need to worry about this stuff anymore. And, you know, we're now living with the results of that. Right.

[00:40:54] You know, to that point about soft power, I would add also USAID to that list. I mean, that's not doing like information, but it's, it's hard to believe a mysterious X post or some WhatsApp telegram thread or whatever saying that, you know, this country is inherently evil or they're doing all this awful stuff when, you know, they just built the new school up the street or they put running water in your village for the first time.

[00:41:22] You know, it's sort of, it seeds that cognitive dissonance that does push back on that disinformation a bit.

[00:41:56] Yeah, that's a, that's a great point. People's, you know, confirmation bias will kick in and people say, well, this, this looks like what I'm seeing.

[00:42:31] Yeah. But there's a risk of sort of thinking that people are simple, not that you're doing that at all, but that they don't understand, well, what China brings. Don't people understand that China brings all kinds of assumptions and power relations and so on. But ultimately who else is offering to put the water in because USAID have just cleared off, you know, so, so people are naturally willing to, to look at alternative options. Yeah. Yeah. Any port in a storm, you know? Yeah.

[00:43:00] So we've all heard about the St. Petersburg troll farms by a certain chef. May he rest in peace. Yeah. And the 2016 elections, plenty at this point, but the, here anyway, but the UK has its own vulnerabilities in this space as well. Media ownership, lobbying rules, the peerage system and the abuse of it, certainly in, in recent years, previous years.

[00:43:28] Where's the British front in this disinformation fight right now? And is anyone serious about contesting it? Do you think? Well, right now, I think we're seeing a lot of attempts to kind of recreate a certain environment that may have existed in the US sort of in an earlier iteration. So, you know, one is, is very partisan, you know, TV news channels, which historically we, we've not had partly because of stronger regulation.

[00:43:58] I mean, I think that there is regulation in the US, but it doesn't seem to have necessarily worked very well. Yeah. But partly because of that and partly because actually of a, of a more kind of aggressive approach by certain media owners. So I think that's one element.

[00:44:18] But I think the other element is that is, is the, you know, below the radar media, it's, it's the Facebook groups, it's the WhatsApp groups, it's, you know, it's, it's all those kind of social media channels. And there are clearly, you know, we have a right wing populist movement in this country, in the UK, which has, well, it has both overt connections.

[00:44:44] You know, there was a senior figure from the Reform UK party who was found when he, you know, criminally charged with carrying out propaganda activities paid for by Moscow. So that's a thing that's happened.

[00:45:27] And yeah, I think there is an under-regulated political finance area. So that's another element of this. And, and there is, you know, a lot that could easily go wrong. Now, what's being done about it? Because you asked that. I think there are, there are, you know, I, I credit the BBC with, with, with still sort of holding the line. And, you know, people trust the BBC. And it's a lot of people criticize it both from right and left.

[00:45:54] I think on, on the left, people feel that it's, it's sort of caving into the right wing narratives. And on the right, they feel it's already caved into the liberal narrative. It's just a classic thing. And I think there are attempts to, to sort of have greater media literacy to sort of encourage people to think critically. And we see some of that. But I think there is, just as, as you see a lot in the US, you know, that a lot of people have just given up on regular media altogether.

[00:46:22] And they're existing in these bubbles of misinformation. And, and you'll, you know, you'll overhear people, conversations or whatever. And you think, wow, this, this person is, has, has, has, has left the reservation. But that seems more and more common. You know, people are believing conspiracy theories and other, other narratives. Casual about it too. Yeah, exactly. It's just, oh yeah, that's definitely a thing, you know. And we don't seem able to sort of stop that. Yeah.

[00:46:48] Both of your novels now, and potentially the third, we'll talk about that in a second, are arguments about how Western elite institutions have been fundamentally corrupted. Whether that's, you know, oligarch money by ill-advised relationships with Russian officials, by useful idiots and their affinity for Kremlin narratives, by kind of, you know, cynical decadence at the top.

[00:47:13] A decade ago, and even when the novels set in 2022, that thesis was still kind of contrarian. Now, I think, you know, four years into the war in Ukraine and with the ongoing, you know, Peter Mandelson, Epstein fallout, Prince Andrew, Lebedev peerage questions. I think it's clear that you've had a point all along in your career here as a writer.

[00:47:41] How are you seeing that problem in 2026 now? Have we sort of reckoned with it to a degree? Are we learning lessons? Or is, you know, Moscow's idea that anyone in the West can be bought still correct? No, I think you're right to notice there's been quite a shift.

[00:48:00] And basically, you know, like the case I mentioned where this guy was, you know, was charged with having carried out Kremlin propaganda lines for money. People are much more suspicious of it. And I think one of the other elements of this is that if you're a right-wing populist politician in Britain, you may get a lot of support.

[00:48:28] But one sure way to lose support is by saying positive things about Moscow, because the average Brit is Team Ukraine. And that's one of the really heartening things. You see Ukrainian flags flying all over the country. And that's not because some Ukrainian has put them there. You know, that's just a thing that has grabbed British culture, which I think we can be happy about. But so I think where that leaves us in 2026, I would say two things.

[00:48:53] One is it means that where this stuff is going on, continuing, it's much more hidden. And we might then need to work harder to identify it and sort of drag it into the light of day.

[00:49:06] But I think there's another question, which is perhaps a more painful and difficult one, which is that for a long time, what we had was we had a series of Western democratic countries whose institutions were under this sort of insidious attack from particularly Russia. And particularly this, you know, you iterated there, the surrogate money and useful idiots and media and so on.

[00:49:35] And in a way, what we're looking at now is a different threat, which is much more over, which is that the whole thing is flipped. So that you have a Moscow sympathetic president sitting in the White House or you have somebody elected in, you know, less than two years from when we're talking as prime minister of this country. Or you have a far right populist elected in France.

[00:50:00] And now, obviously, some people might say, well, this guy, Charles Beaumont, just doesn't like the right wing and that's his problem. No, no, I'm not trying to say that. I'm talking about a protection of our fundamental values. Yeah. Because with each of those events, we know that, yes, of course, some people voted for that and they did it knowing what they were getting. A lot of people may not have known what they were getting. But I also think with each of those events, you know, the champagne bottles are being opened in the Kremlin and that's something that we should all be worried about. I think that's a good point you make.

[00:50:29] It's really not a this is not a left or right thing that we're talking about here. I mean, we're this we're not talking about Reagan and Maggie Thatcher right now at all. We're in a different world from that for sure. I've talked about this with Chris offline before. I think you guys are a few years behind us. I think in the last here, at least I think in the last six and nine months, the vibe shift has been very real. And I think a serious correction is is is coming.

[00:50:58] It's going to take a long time to get out of it still. But I think. I don't it doesn't give me any pleasure to say this. I don't think you guys are through the worst of it yet. No, I think you might well be right. And I think obviously, quite often, it's the case that whether as a as a nation or as an individual, you have to experience something fully before you decide you don't want to do it. And we might all say, well, it would be better not to try that. But sometimes it just doesn't work that way.

[00:51:26] And clearly, you know, I follow U.S. politics with great interest. And I listen to your podcast, obviously, often. And it does seem that a lot of people, including people who were very sympathetic to Trump, are looking now and thinking, wow, this was this was really. Now, some of us might say, hang on, this was always obviously going to happen. But that's not important. You know, what's happening is that a lot of other people are now seeing with their own eyes. And it certainly it feels as if, yeah, as you say, a vibe shift is underway.

[00:51:56] But I think here in the U.K., no, we're still we're still going up that hill rather than coming back down the other side. Sometimes they just got they just got to touch the stove. You know, it's really unfortunate that they tied your hand to theirs before they did it. But, you know, at least they're admitting, oh, ouch, that was hot. That's not fun. And it's I mean, I think it also goes back to this sort of disinformation stuff that we've been talking about and how pervasive that is.

[00:52:21] Is that where some people, I mean, you could point out how this stuff is is wrong all day long. Like there's to take an example from the novel, there's a bit of Russian disinformation about a potential Ukrainian dirty bomb that that is put out in the U.N. Security Council.

[00:52:41] And it sounds convincing if you know nothing about a radiological dispersal device, you know, or or how nuclear physics works or any of that. Like it sounds legit, but it's just like technically physically impossible what they're alleging here. But they just do it confidently and without shame and to a degree that it sounds good to a layperson.

[00:53:04] And it's it's it's hard to get through that if you already have the suspicions of like, I think the Ukrainians aren't aren't as aren't as good as, you know, the BBC or CNN tells me they are. You know, you can't get through it. And I think you can make the same point with domestic stuff domestically here or in in the UK. You know, you could say this is a bad idea all day long.

[00:53:29] They will not listen to you at all until they do it and they see it and they learn for themselves. Oh, that's a mistake. We made a mistake. We're not we. We shouldn't do that. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I think, you know, what's interesting about some of these things is that, for example, that, you know, the dirty bomb stuff that in a way that the people who know it's nonsense and makes no sense. We're already talking to one another and sharing the fact that it's nonsense and it makes no sense.

[00:53:57] And we're not very good at being in touch with the people who are who are thinking, wow, yeah. Or even they might be thinking, well, that sounds a bit extreme. But what are the Ukrainians doing? You know, and this is the power of this disinformation stuff that you don't even need everyone to believe you. The fact that some scientists can come on TV and say, well, this is all lies. I mean, it reminds us a bit. Well, it certainly reminds me a bit of the COVID stuff, whereas, you know, most people were prepared to hear Anthony Fauci or the guy with the same job here in the UK.

[00:54:26] But there were some people for whom didn't matter what they said. That was just more proof that these people were lying to you. Yeah. Yeah. What do you think a sort of serious response from Whitehall and or Washington to this sort of institutional rot would actually look like? Like, do we have the institutional muscle for that even still? I refuse to believe that it can't be done because it seems to me that we, you know, we've done so much. And why should we not?

[00:54:56] And what's interesting is that when we look at other areas of human endeavor, you know, Western democracies are still pretty shit hot. I don't know if I'm allowed to use language like that. Please. You know. You listen. We do it all the time. Yeah. So, yeah, you know, creating incredible vaccines in a tiny number of months for a new illness or actually, you know, the AI revolution, which, of course, has all kinds of risks.

[00:55:23] And I'm not going to, you know, we don't have time to debate all that. But just in terms of the sheer technological brilliance of what's happening, it's a reminder that we have this capability. So I don't see any reason why it can't be done. And I think, you know, there's a whole range of things. One is actually to put real muscle into institutions like Voice of America, BBC World Service, USAID, to actually recapture some of that self-confidence.

[00:55:47] And, you know, because interestingly, quite often, you know, someone like Trump, who spends a lot of time talking about making America great and we're the hottest country on earth and all that. But, of course, the other thing he does is he's constantly attacking American institutions, ones which have existed for decades or longer, and saying how bad they are. And so actually it's stopping doing that. Same here in the UK. You know, we have to back up our institutions. Of course, that doesn't mean that we're not critical when they fail. I think that's one element of it.

[00:56:17] And I think the other element is actually is to stop playing into Putin's hands. So one of the things that, you know, Putin has learned that if he escalates most of the time, we will back down. But when we actually confront his escalation, he backs down. And there are so many examples of this. And yet we sort of have this unwillingness to we still keep playing by his rules, whereas we need to make him play by our rules, I would argue.

[00:56:45] Yeah. Well, if you look at like. This sort of. I don't want to call it the allure, but. The slide in Western countries to something like Putinism, you know, that sort of model or Orban's illiberal democracy, you know, sort of a thing.

[00:57:07] If you look at, you know, Russia under Putin or Hungary under Orban or other examples and you think, you know, OK, that could our institutions have this rot has set in, whether that sort of, you know, decadence or disinformation and all that. And those problems are real here for sure. But for all of those issues that we have, I think to look at those examples and say, therefore, we're just as susceptible for that. I think you're sort of comparing apples to oranges to a degree.

[00:57:37] I mean, we've. Your democratic traditions go back to the Magna Carta, you know, ours. We've always had it with hiccups for the civil rights movement, internment camps during World War Two, Nixon, what have you. I mean, we've we we don't know anything else. And I think it's just it's a lot harder to snuff that out. You know, I mean, you guys were ready to do it right after Dunkirk. You know, you're ready to go. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:58:07] I mean, it's interesting. And I think the again that the in a way there's a weird thing where where populists have taken on this mantle that they're the only people to really celebrate a country and sort of be proud.

[00:58:43] And they're the only people to be proud of America or Britain or whatever. Yes. You know, no member of the Trump family has ever served. Right. I mean, or and you just know that he would never dream of any of his kids doing that. And and and yet the the the sort of liberal West is still not being very good.

[00:59:09] It ought to be easy because these people tend to be they tend to be slippery. They tend to be in it for themselves. They tend to be on the take. And yet somehow they go around saying, well, we're the patriots and you guys are, you know, you're sort of globalists and you don't care about your own country and all that kind of nonsense. Yeah. Well, I mean, you could sort of apply that same sort of logic to Putin. Right.

[00:59:29] I don't think it's it's patriotic in a Russian sense to send a million Russians to die in a Ukrainian field over, you know, inches of blown out territory. You know, I don't think it's patriotic to totally loot the country's industries to put a stripper pole in your palace on the Black Sea. I don't think it's very patriotic. Yeah, no, absolutely right.

[00:59:55] And again, it's what's interesting is when when the populists are very threatened, it's often actually from somebody who has managed to capture that sort of patriotic. It may be nationalist without being right wing populist. And, you know, look at the guy who defeated Viktor Orban. He's he managed to sort of take that mantle. And you could argue, you know, a controversial figure. But Alexei Navalny was a Russian nationalist. Yes.

[01:00:25] But for that reason, very understandably of reasons I appreciate a lot of Ukrainians, you know, they didn't shed a tear at his passing. But actually, sometimes you need that model to be able to sort of tackle those types of politics. I think that's why Navalny or why Putin saw Navalny as such a threat. Exactly. Yeah. Let's take a break and we'll be right back.

[01:01:02] Back to the novel and your and your fiction work here. Sure. So any any updates about book three to this trilogy that you that you want to share with us? Well, actually, it's the timing is is is opposite because I have only just sent off first draft to my editor. So we the third novel, I can say a little bit about it.

[01:01:27] But the first thing I did was I did a bit of a sort of time shift in the sense that as as you noted, Matt, that the the. The second book, the spy at war ends on a bit of a cliffhanger. And I want to assure readers that the cliffhanger does get resolved, but it doesn't get resolved right at the beginning of the third novel, because we actually have a bit of a flashback. And we touched on the events of 1999 in Russia in our discussion.

[01:01:55] And the third novel starts then in Russia in 1999 at a time, of course, when Vladimir Putin is about to seize power and the sort of story of those events. So it's it's a book that, you know, having written a book about the way that the sort of the British ruling classes had got corrupted by oligarch money. And then I wrote again about the role of Russian disinformation and the war in Ukraine.

[01:02:23] This third book, I think, tries to kind of resolve the story and then look but look particularly about the way in which the transatlantic alliance has become a stretch to breaking. And of course, that's something we've we've talked about today. But I felt that that was that was where this story had a kind of natural conclusion. It's sort of like a is this a right way to describe it like a like a 25 year historical argument about the Putin regime told partly in reverse?

[01:02:49] Yeah, I guess you put it. Maybe I'll stick that on the back of the on the blurb. Thank you. You've written a blurb for me. Yeah, I think it is. And in a way, I, you know, I, I, I wanted to write a trilogy. I wanted it to be a sort of self-contained story. I, I am, I plan to carry on writing fiction, but, but I, I also plan to start in a new place with it, with it, with a new, with a new story. And, and so, yeah, I think there is that. There's a sort of quarter century of the Putin era.

[01:03:19] And, and in a way, of course, when Putin first took power, and this is noted in the third book, he, he was welcomed by Western leaders. And, you know, the people said, well, we might need a strong man. Russia's in chaos right now. And, you know, we need someone who can roll up their sleeves and take control.

[01:03:37] And I'm not necessarily saying that those people should have known better, but it's just interesting to track that trajectory of somebody who was, was by definition, you know, he went from running the FSB to running Russia. There was no, there was no interim. And, and that in a way should, should have told us something. And perhaps we didn't quite want to recognize at the time. Yeah. So you're at least in this book, partly at least looking back at Putin's origins. Um, I don't know if it's going to be in his upcoming book.

[01:04:07] I won't, I'll, we'll leave that maybe to see, um, when it, when it gets here. Uh, would you care at all to project out even hypothetically what the future holds for him? If you had to? I'm willing to, willing to engage with a bit of speculation. I mean, I think, I think very obviously he's not going to last forever and he's aging. Interestingly, I think, I think signs of his aging have been more visible in the last year or so.

[01:04:37] I, I'm not convinced by people who say that he's got a terminal illness. I just don't, if, I think if that were true, I think we would see more, more kind of obvious evidence of that. So yeah, what happens next? I, I feel it's very likely that you will have a power struggle because there isn't a clear successor. There's a series of people who like to think of themselves. They can't allow it. Yeah. And of course, someone like Putin, it's, it's a classic thing.

[01:05:03] And we've seen it before with other, with other kind of totalitarian leaders, Stalin being another one. But they, they can't bear to appoint a successor because they can't believe that there's ever a world after them. And, you know, he's basically made himself leader for life by adjusting the constitution and this sort of future post-presidential role that he envisages for himself. So I think we, we, we see a power struggle.

[01:05:28] Inevitably that brings more instability and the, the excessive kind of militarization and securitization of the Russian state. So people, people forget that, you know, we all knew that the Soviet Union was a, was a police state, was an authoritarian state. But this, Russia today is much more so.

[01:05:46] And therefore there is much more kind of violence built into the system that if it is, if it's allowed to erupt because of a kind of a struggle for leadership at the elite, you know, could be, could be pretty messy. So, yeah, I think it's going to be very turbulent. And maybe, of course, there'll just be another strong man who takes, takes power and is willing to do enough to quieten down both Western concerns and wider concerns. But I, I could imagine it being pretty messy.

[01:06:16] Yeah, I think it's, it's fair at this point to compare them to North Korea to a degree. And I think stuff they're doing with their internet right now definitely doesn't help that. Shutting down basically. Yeah, totally, totally walling it off. Something that really concerns me is the sort of hyper militant nationalism that this war has sort of engendered in Russia and how that's being drilled down into younger generations.

[01:06:43] I mean, this war will decimate generations of Russians just as World War I did for the Germans. Be that as it may, that sort of ideological brainwashing that this war has unleashed on younger generations, even after Putin's gone, whenever that happens, it'll happen someday. You can't just wash that out. I agree. And I think that's one of the risks that as, as an, as an observer, one thinks, oh, well, this has been such a traumatic experience.

[01:07:11] Surely they're all going to hate this militarized ultra nationalistic state, but it might be opposite could easily happen. And then, of course, as, after all, you know, World War I, we look at what happened in Germany, that you, you have a surviving generation that's embittered, that feels that they were humiliated by, you know, by the rest of the world. And very understandably, you know, there is a desire that Russia should pay an appropriate price for what it's done to Ukraine. And I'm not arguing against that, but clearly there are risks that go with that.

[01:07:40] Definitely. For sure. Before I let you go, for someone who's just finished A Spy at War, like me, and is waiting for book three, what's one book, fiction or nonfiction, you would recommend right now to sort of help them understand the moment? And sort of maybe prepare for the, for the, for the, for the next book.

[01:08:01] Okay. Well, there's so much good stuff out there at the moment, but I think if, if people want to try to understand Russia itself and the kind of the mentality of, of this kind of traumatized population, there's a writer called Jade McGlynn. She's a, she's a British academic who has specialized in Russia and Ukraine. In fact, she spends a lot of her time in Ukraine at the moment.

[01:08:30] And she's written a couple of books in recent years. One is called Russia's War. And it, and it, and it, it really makes the, the point that in a way at the start of the invasion, the 2022 invasion, a lot of people understand we talk about Putin's war because we want to put the responsibility on, on his shoulders.

[01:08:47] And of course that's, that's perfectly legitimate, but there is a degree to which it is Russia's war that actually quite a lot of Russian people have accepted and almost embraced this, this, these, these, these sorts of actions. And so I think that's, she's a very interesting writer. And another person I might want to give a shout out to, again, I'm thinking sort of nonfiction is, is John Sweeney, who's a British, British journalist, British author.

[01:09:16] And he wrote a great book, Killer in the Kremlin, which is a book about Putin and it tracks Putin's sort of activities all the way back to that early period. We're talking about the 1990s of wars in Chechnya and so on. And it's a really good, very readable page turner kind of guide to Putin's story, but sort of through the eyes of someone who as a journalist had sort of interacted with him at different points in that story. Yeah. Great recommendations. Thank you for that. We'll link those in the show notes.

[01:09:46] Charles, anything else you'd like to cover today that we didn't get to? No, I think we've had a, I've really enjoyed this conversation, covered a lot of ground. Thank you for having me on. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Charles Beaumont, thank you so much. Once more, the novel is A Spy at War. Part of the, let me hold that a little bit closer to the camera. Part of the Oxford Spy Ring series, book two. That's out now in the US, UK, at least. What about Australia, New Zealand?

[01:10:15] Yeah, it's definitely in Australia, New Zealand, Canada. Okay. And, yeah, it's also, I think it's coming out in Portuguese. So, is there any Portuguese listeners? Nice. Well, if anyone's on holiday and wants to pick it up or whatever while they're there, go ahead. Just have it as a souvenir, even if you don't speak Portuguese. Well, great. Well, Charles, thank you so much. This was awesome. Thank you very much. It's been my pleasure. Thanks.

[01:11:08] Thanks for listening. This is Secrets and Spies. This is Secrets.