EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — Occasionally, a speech does more than mark a leadership transition or outline institutional priorities. It captures, with unusual clarity, the nature of the moment we are living through and the choices it demands.
Blaise Metreweli’s recent inaugural address as Chief (or more colloquially, C) of the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service was one of those moments. Rather than offering a conventional tour of threats or capabilities, she chose a more demanding path. She spoke about human agency in a world increasingly shaped by machines. About trust, judgment, and integrity at a time when technology is accelerating every dimension of competition and conflict.
I had the pleasure of working with Metreweli while serving as Deputy Director of the CIA for Digital Innovation. I watched her navigate the intersection of operations and technology with a rare combination of rigor and imagination. Her speech reflects that same sensibility. It is operationally grounded, intellectually disciplined, and quietly ambitious in what it asks of an intelligence service. Just as it should be.
What struck me most, reading her remarks, was not simply their alignment with themes I have been working on for years, both inside government and since my departure in 2024. It was the way she wove those themes together into a coherent vision of intelligence suited to the world as it is, not the world we might wish it to be.
At the center of Metreweli’s speech is a proposition that may sound self-evident, yet is increasingly contested in practice: even in a technology-mediated world, human beings must still decide outcomes.
Artificial intelligence can surface patterns, illuminate possibilities, even accelerate analysis. It cannot decide what matters. It cannot weigh moral tradeoffs. It cannot assume responsibility for consequences. Intelligence, in her framing, remains a human endeavor, even as it becomes ever more technologically enabled.
This is a conclusion I reached years ago while leading digital transformation efforts inside the CIA. As our tools became more powerful, the temptation to treat output as authority grew stronger. We resisted that instinct deliberately. The most effective systems we built were those designed explicitly to support human judgment, not replace it. They forced users to ask better questions or to challenge assumptions, and to understand context before acting.
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I have described this in multiple speeches and articles as human–machine partnering, and Metreweli’s speech reflects the same conviction. The future of intelligence is not technological supremacy alone. Nor is it the return to a romanticized vision of the intelligence mission before the digital revolution. It is the disciplined integration of technology into human decision-making, with clarity about where judgment must reside.
Metreweli is equally clear about the character of modern conflict. We are no longer operating in a world neatly divided between war and peace. Instead, we inhabit a persistent space between the two, where states seek advantage through pressure that is continuous, deniable, and often difficult to attribute.
Cyber operations, sabotage, influence campaigns, and coercive economic measures all live comfortably in this grey zone. They are designed to intimidate and to erode confidence without triggering a conventional response.
One aspect of this competition that deserves particular attention is the emergence of what I have called digital chokepoints. These are points of leverage embedded in digital infrastructure, data ecosystems, platforms, standards, and supply chains. They do not announce themselves boldly as instruments of power, yet they have increasingly come under attack in recent years as a tool of geopolitical competition. In 2024-2025 alone, there were numerous anomalous “incidents” that damaged or cut 13 undersea cables around Taiwan and the Baltic Sea.
Grey-zone conflict, viewed through this lens, is not episodic. It is cumulative. And we will see more of it. Intelligence services must therefore understand not just individual operations, but the architecture of pressure that builds quietly and persistently across domains.
The convergence of artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and quantum computing, and the way these advances are reshaping both opportunity and risk was featured prominently in Metreweli’s speech. She avoids the dual traps of easy optimism and easy alarmism alike.
I have often framed technology as both shield and sword. It accelerates intent, but it does not generally determine outcomes. Technology itself is neutral. What matters is how it is governed, deployed, and constrained by human choice, as well as which values are encoded into its digital foundations
This distinction is not academic. The same AI system that accelerates medical discovery can enable surveillance at scale. The same digital infrastructure that connects societies can be (and is) used to monitor and control them. Metreweli’s speech is careful to emphasize mastery of technology alongside responsibility for its effects.
That balance is essential. Technological determinism strips leaders of agency and excuses poor judgment. Metreweli’s approach does neither.
One of the most sobering elements of Metreweli’s address is her discussion of trust. Information, once a unifying force, is now routinely weaponized. Falsehood spreads faster than fact. Algorithms reward outrage and reinforce bias. Shared reality seems increasingly elusive.
I have spent significant time in recent years examining the implications of synthetic media, deepfakes, and AI-enabled influence operations. Today, identity itself has become contested space. Voice, image, and presence can be fabricated convincingly and at scale. Seeing is no longer believing.
This presents intelligence services with challenges that extend well beyond traditional counterintelligence or cyber defense. When trust collapses, when one can no longer discern truth from fiction, societies risk losing much more than confidence in institutions. They risk losing the ability to reason collectively about the world they inhabit.
Metreweli’s insistence that defending the space where truth can still stand as a core intelligence mission reflects a deep understanding of what is at stake.
Another strength of Metreweli’s speech is her refusal to treat today’s challenges as isolated problems. She describes an interlocking threat landscape that spans physical and digital domains, from seabed cables to space systems, from code to cognition.
This holistic view is critical. Too often, Western governments have approached cross-domain issues in separate policy lanes. Next-generation communications, artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure, cyber intrusions, disinformation campaigns. All treated as distinct, individual issues. Our principal strategic competitor, the People’s Republic of China, has not made that mistake. These domains are understood as mutually reinforcing components of a comprehensive national digital strategy tied directly to a grand geopolitical ambition.
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I have argued for years that we must respond in kind, not by mirroring authoritarian models, but by approaching this competition in a more holistic fashion and by offering global partners a credible alternative. Countries around the world want to harness new technologies to accelerate development and improve lives. Many also want to protect sovereignty and human freedom. Meeting that demand requires seeing the digital contest as a whole, not as a collection of technical projects about which individual and disconnected policy decisions are made.
Though not stated in such terms, Metreweli’s framing reflects this reality.
As an operational commander who became a technical leader, Metreweli brings unusual authority to her discussion of technology within intelligence tradecraft. She envisions a service where officers are as comfortable using digital tools as they are recruiting and running human sources.
This is not about turning intelligence officers into engineers. It is about understanding technology as both a tool and a terrain. Digital literacy becomes foundational, not because everyone must code, but because everyone must grasp how technology shapes the operational environment and adversary behavior. In modern intelligence, ignorance of technology becomes a vulnerability.
Metreweli also speaks directly to the question of legitimacy. Intelligence services in democracies operate with extraordinary authorities. Their effectiveness ultimately depends on trust.
Her commitment to openness, where it can responsibly exist, is not about transparency for its own sake. It is about sustaining a relationship with the public rooted in shared values. Accountability, in her formulation, is a strength, not a constraint.
This is a principle I championed consistently inside the Agency and since my departure. In democratic societies, trust can never be taken for granted. It must be earned and maintained, especially as intelligence services operate in the shadows, out of view of the citizens they serve.
A particularly powerful portion of Metreweli’s speech focuses on audacity and “hustle,” reflecting a clear understanding of the environment intelligence services face today. In a world defined by exponential change, moving slowly does not preserve relevance. It accelerates decline.
I have spoken often about urgency, about the reality that institutions unwilling to adapt will become obsolete. That does not mean abandoning discipline or ethics. It means recognizing that delay carries its own significant risks. In today’s dynamic, high-threat landscape, inaction is perhaps the biggest risk.
Metreweli closes her speech where she began, with values. Courage. Creativity. Respect. Integrity. She recounts a conversation with a long-term foreign agent who worked with the UK precisely because of these values. This is not a sentimental anecdote. It is a strategic insight into how intelligence services in western democracies must navigate today’s complexity. Leveraging our core strength. Values.
We are living through the rise of digital authoritarianism, where technology is used to monitor, manipulate, and control populations at unprecedented scale. The most profound threat this poses is not technical. It is moral. It erodes human agency incrementally, often invisibly, until freedom becomes difficult to reclaim.
I have warned repeatedly that societies rarely lose freedom in dramatic moments. They lose it through systems that optimize for efficiency or security while stripping away consent, accountability, and choice.
Metreweli’s insistence that none of us have a future without values is therefore a statement of strategic reality, and it gets to the very heart of the issue.
Blaise Metreweli’s speech deserves close reading, not because it is eloquent (though it is), but because it is consequential. It articulates a vision of intelligence that is technologically fluent without being technologically captive, operationally aggressive without abandoning principle, and deeply human in a world that increasingly tempts us to forget what that means.
For intelligence professionals, policymakers, and citizens alike, it is a reminder that even as our tools evolve, the most important choices remain ours to make.
Read the full speech here.
All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the US Government. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying US Government authentication of information or endorsement of the author’s views.
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