There’s a scene in Skyfall in which Daniel Craig’s ageing James Bond meets his youthful new quartermaster Q.
Q tells the secret agent that he can “do more damage on my laptop sitting in my pyjamas before my first cup of Earl Grey than you can do in a year in the field”.
This might have been a fictional reading of the growing importance of technology within the intelligence services, but MI6’s real head has agreed that innovations including digital technologies, artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing are completely changing the way that intelligence operates.
In his first major speech as head of MI6, Richard Moore referenced the fictional spy franchise, calling for more collaboration with private tech companies and saying that the modern equivalent of Bond couldn’t rely only on resident experts such as Q.
It had recently been revealed that MI6 did indeed have its own real-life equivalent of the Q section, providing spies with gadgets and useful technology.
Delivering his speech to think tank the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), Moore listed some of the technologies posing major challenges for Britain’s secret service.
New technologies pose challenges for security services
They include a combination of facial recognition and biometric identification technologies, which make it far more difficult for intelligence officers to operate incognito in hostile territories.
He added that advances in fields such as engineered biology and quantum engineering would have a major impact on entire industries.
He said that the call to partner with the private sector represented a “sea change” for MI6 as the organisation had previously relied on its own capabilities to develop the technology it needed.
Moore said that Britain’s adversaries were investing heavily in technologies including AI, quantum computing and synthetic biology.
While MI6 has previously relied heavily on human intelligence gathering, Moore said that it has also made use of technologies such as secure wireless communications developed in World War 2.
MI6 and fellow security organisations MI5 and GCHQ – which provide domestic counter-intelligence and information security respectively – have struck a deal with Amazon to host their cloud data.
Moore said that an organisation such as MI6 could not hope to keep pace with the global tech industry, so needed to tap into it instead.
He added that it was opening up “mission problems” to companies that would not normally be involved with national security.
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