> why women often make the best spies for our times
When I worked as a secretary, I was amazed at how unguarded men are in front of women in the workplace, particularly those of us in lower status roles. They seemed to think we had no capacity for thought or language, and were safe background decor for any conversation. I really worry that foreign service clerical staff are treated appropriately.
I used to work in financial services as a quant. Friend of mine told me about when they were doing a huge arb in the metals markets they needed to do a trade where they took physical delivery of a very very very substantial amount of gold. Like think super villain in a movie doing a heist type of levels. So naturally the team who knew what was going down was kept super small and the details were kept really tight. Morning of the trade my friend goes to get his hair cut. Barber says to him “so I hear you guys took delivery of a bunch of gold”. My friends chin hit the floor.
Turns out one of the security guards came to get his hair cut and was moaning about how tired his arms were from unloading the vans and putting it all in the vault.
There have not been enough "HN moments" recently but here we are ... following a thread on spies, we perfectly segue into a quote from Plutarch, that is not only on point and unforced, but in the orignal Greek.
You have restored my lost faith in social media, my recently-signed-up friend - long may you enjoy our weird corner of the internet. We have cookies.
Obligatory "I'm sure you're fun at parties". Honestly though why would anyone have this attitude? It seems like having a conversation with someone while getting your hair cut has zero downside, and the guaranteed upside both of you being a little more entertained. Possible upsides are actually getting into a meaningful conversation or stumbling on a new opportunity. Seems like a win-win to me.
As somebody with that attitude, it's because I find it quite zen just to relax and be groomed by a professional. I won't shut down conversation, but I won't initiate it either.
The other thing is that decades of motorcycling without ear plugs has rooted my hearing, so talking to people with thick accents (I'd say 50% of hairdressers here are immigrants) can't be tiring, which is the opposite of why I actually enjoy getting my hair cut. There's a nice Korean lady I sometimes see who chats away merrily, but I feel like an arsehole having to ask her to repeat herself the whole time.
Kiwi! But yes, polite way of saying my hearing is fucked. Odd phrase... if I were to use that in the context of actual fucking, I'd consider it a vulgar way to put it!
Not everyone wants to be entertained 100% of the time. It feels weird to assume everyone should be a talkative person all the time. At the end of the day barbers are still doing a technical job, some of them probably would prefer to focus on the work as well. How do you feel when you are focused on something and someone is asking you pedantic questions?
Right near the CalTech campus, there was a barbershop owned and operated by a sole older gentleman. You’d sit down, tell him what you wanted, and he’d give you a magazine (often Scientific American) and cut your hair in silence. It was perfect.
Do you really think 100% of hairdressers LIKE to make smalltalk for 8h per day? Probably rehashing some news event with 4 different people?
I like to talk to people I'm friends with, so far that has not included any of my hairdressers, so I sit there in silence, answering when spoken to and being generally friendly, but not initiating any conversation.
For 5yrs my friend was a barber by trade and I would always go to him (wherever he worked regardless of price) and would sit in silence while he did his job. He appreciated the silence as, like you say, most of his clients would make smalltalk about the same current affairs. Sometimes the prices were outrageous but my friend was only an employee, and loyalty was far more important.
After the cut we often used to go out for a meal and then we'd chat for hours.
The cut was a business transaction, the meal was between friends.
When forced to make smalltalk with zero shared context with someone I find it a huge burden to avoid saying something weird, or offensive or too random, its like the filter is too strict to be able to say anything interesting so its not worth the mental effort. People who enjoy smalltalk seem to be much less sensitive to whether the person is interested or agrees and are more willing to take conversational chances.
Sitting at the barber's getting my hair cut is one of only a handful of times that it feels like I'm spending time just for me. So I'd like to keep that time for me and let my brain wander.
> Honestly though why would anyone have this attitude
WHAT? I am paying for a service. I expect that service to be completed well. And it typically is. The service I am paying for does not include nor warrant "small talk", why should it?
> has zero downside
Incorrect. I have to pretend to be interested in whatever inane topic they want to discuss, or ones I don't have any interest in or care about. I have to use my brain power on a useless distraction.
> a meaningful conversation
I don't want a meaningful conversation from a haircut. Nor do I want it while shopping, or a mechanics shop, or any other random ass place where I am trying to get errands done. Service, money, done. Nothing else needed. Not everyone wants to deal with -you- or your fake ass pleasantries. I don't want to deal with someone pretending to know me, or like me, or be nice because _its literally their job_. I want to pay for my services and go away.
Obligatory "You must be the person that doesn't stop talking to breathe at parties." Honestly though, some people just don't like nattering away and would rather just sit and relax for a few minutes.
We experienced a surreal scene at one of our workplaces. We were subcontractors and therefore lower status than full employees. It was an open floor plan, next to it was a meeting room. One guy left the room while on the phone, went straight to where we were working, and said "Ok I left the meeting to isolate myself, what did you want to say?". As if we simply didn't exist.
Bribe the IT staff and the Admins with whatever treats they want constantly... -me
I worked in an amazon building where we got free energy drinks but no one else did... the head of IT for the building loved red bull sugar free. I'd roll down there to get something fixed and bring one for him and I knew what the others wanted. He'd waddle over from behind his desk and see what I needed as soon as I set the drinks on the table. He was a manager, never did anything for anyone else but the EAs in bulk. People complained verbally, he'd just say "he filed a ticket yesterday". I'd sit around sipping a drink while he told me about working on paul allen's yacht's AV system even tho I was missing a meeting. You gotta know who to be nice to. His stories were good too.
Another guy loved me forever cause I walked in to IT on my first day looking for a mac when they didn't give them by default... before talking to me he was like "WTF is this thing how do I quit" and I said "escape : wq" and he's like wtf how do you know that and I was like "it's that or emacs"... instant first person service from then on.
My first days of work included first level IT support including onsite. The secretaries or personal assistants were THE people to go to. They knew everything!
There's a very good book in French on the same topic (Espionnes by Dalila Kerchouche). The author interviewed several women in the various FR services (DGSE, DGSI, etc.) in various leadership and non-leadership positions. If you can read French, you will find it very interesting. It's both a cultural trip and partial demystification of the trade.
On that note just wanted to also plug the fantastic French spy show "The Bureau" [1]. It's fiction but loved the characters and the scheming, and more high level, a glimpse into the French flavor of the CIA/MI6 verticals.
On a goofier note, Au Service de la France ("A Very Secret Service" on Netflix) is another fun French spy show. The first season is a bit like Parks and Rec, in that it's misfits having funny misadventures. The second is more serious but has a plot.
Maybe so, but theres a very telling line in the article about assault and how the agency helped them recover. Propaganda or not, this is still exceptionally dangerous work. Potential recruits need to seriously consider if they can tell themselves it was worth it on both sides of such an event. If Britain continues its self destructive slide into irrelevance, that may not be a good deal.
It’s certainly a PR piece - I wondered what the purpose was beyond the obvious and naive ‘getting more women into Intelligence’?
Elsewhere there’s been news stories about British MPs complaining that the security and intelligence services have too high a media profile … so perhaps there’s some ‘push and pull’ going on behind the scenes.
> Elsewhere there’s been news stories about British MPs complaining that the security and intelligence services have too high a media profile … so perhaps there’s some ‘push and pull’ going on behind the scenes.
Likely true. I can only really talk for GCHQ, but they have certainly made a significant effort in recruitment for years, growing up near a GCHQ ground station we had a visit during my final year pre-university to try and sell us on working there. I'm fairly sure that GCHQ was also at my university's careers fair.
The security services (MI5, MI6, GCHQ) really don't pay very well in the UK as they are on the same civil service pay scale as the rest of government. I'm hardly surprised they struggle to hire against private companies.
Apparently there are some companies who are suppliers to these organisations who do pay better, but otherwise, yes. The salaries are pretty poor. I get that some people would want to work there for the kudos, but compared to tech companies the advertised salaries aren't great.
Well maybe this is just to reach out to the target audience that reads the FT instead of Mumsnet (which was mentioned in the article as one of the places they advertised on).
> The lower down the echelon, the nearer the armies of the world came to standardizing psychological warfare organization. They did this for the same reason that they all organize into regiments instead of centuries, cohorts, or tribes. Modern war is a self-standardizing process if the enemy experience is to be copied, enemy techniques improved, allied assistance accepted, and military practice kept up to world standards. Psychological warfare units needed printing and radio sections; to service these sections they all needed intelligence and analysis offices; to distribute their materials they all needed agents and liaison. Black propaganda organization varied more than did white, but it was amazing to Americans, uncovering Japanese subversive-operations units, to see how much the Japanese organization resembled their own.
>> When her children were teenagers, Rebecca decided to tell them that she was a spy. “They were super sensible, and I judged the information wasn’t going to be a burden for them, that they wouldn’t tell everybody.”
It's mentioned that past a point the cover of working at the Foreign Office is unsustainable. They give an example of having 6 mobile phones in your bag, and needing to leave a dinner with friends at a moments notice. I wager it's better to tell them (which is allowed as they are immediate family) and have the conversation about discretion, rather than have them put the pieces together themselves.
Yeah... not a good idea. That's the type of info you might divulge on your deathbed to adult children. Absolutely insane to tell teens while still working there.
I can speak as someone who was in the same situation as the teens. This is about the time that the kids begin to cotton on to the fact that things aren't quite right. Really, this is the point at which the parent has to start lying (as opposed to saying something like "oh I work for the government") or trust to their children's discretion. The kids' entire raising up to this point has normalized strong patriotism and a parents' inconsistent presence as a result of that patriotism. This likely came as no real shock to them.
This is a different world and I didn't realize how different until I went away to college.
"This will lead to family suspecting their mother of cheating or crime."
Generally not with the proper cover story. Stuff like working as a civilian purchasing agent for the military or other government agency provides an element of truth and can be strongly consistent with the realities of the true job. Travel for purchasing deals vs espionage, etc look the same for the family. Even better is if they actually are involved with the purchasing deals since it makes for a more solid cover.
When I was a kid, there was a guy at our church who had spent some years at a South American embassy and was vaguely in the defense industry. There were little bits of his story that all had us suspecting he likely did cloak and dagger stuff for the CIA in reality, but no point in really asking him for the truth.
with all due respect, youve now just basically told an entire anonymous message board that someone in your family is/was related to the security services. This is basically the example why you dont tell people this stuff. The entire article reeks of bs...everyone who has even remotely been involved in any of this knows exactly what youre meant to say if anyone asks you...and its sure as shit not "ok tell everyone x, except if theyre from the financial times, then just be honest" lol
That's old and "expired" data from over thirty years ago and the family member I'm discussing is open about it, now. What needs to stay quiet (in this instance) is operational details, not that this person did the work. So your point doesn't really stand. I felt it was useful information and it was information that was safe for me to share, so I did.
The Financial Times article is, of course, intended to promote the service to women and it really doesn't hide that fact. You can bet that MI6 reviewed the article before it went to publication and everything in there was vetted a thousand times. It wouldn't shock me if small, fake biographical details were added into the article to obscure who these people really are. We don't know. The fact is, though, that since this piece is probably meant to advertise the service and-- given where it was printed-- it's probably directed at Oxbridge women. That is, women who have more job mobility than most. MI6 wants women to know that they won't be viewed as honey pots and that they can have a family. So the article is probably going to be an accurate representation at some level: since these particular women can leave if they want to, you don't want to misrepresent what they're getting into if you intend to keep them.
In the UK, the government has a firm grip on the media, and that is enshrined by law; that's why The Guardian broke the Snowden story from their U.S. office, where freedom of speech is (more) protected.
The author is a former security correspondent, and was perhaps chosen as someone known and trusted.
The article is a recruiting piece targeting well-educated females; but the same (Oxbridge) females can earn six digits in finance and stay safe, instead of earning 22k and getting shot in Kandahar or stabbed in Najaf. One wonders if that combination of compensation and dangerous job spec attracts reckless or idealists personalities.
Anyone interested in the history of the British SIS can be referred to K. Jefferey's (2010) "MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949" (London: Bloomsbury), which is detailed but of course suffers from selection bias due to the nature of the topic and the fact that the book was commissioned (if I recall correctly) by the organization it describes.
> The article is a recruiting piece targeting well-educated females; but the same (Oxbridge) females can earn six digits in finance and stay safe, instead of earning 22k and getting shot in Kandahar or stabbed in Najaf. One wonders if that combination of compensation and dangerous job spec attracts reckless or idealists personalities.
I always found that the pay scale for the security services is the same as the rest of the civil service really hard to justify. Why would I go work at GCHQ if I could make many multiples more, as a starting salary, in the private sector?
Youthful idealism, access to cutting edge ideas and kit, stepping stone to a highly paid GCHQ contracting jobs … ?
Other possibilities: Perhaps the headline pay is low but there’s a ton of special allowances and other benefits that make the whole package competitive. Perhaps, like academics, there’s some gifted people who are a much better personality fit for the civil service rather than FANG culture?
Sure but if you take a student loan in the U.K. starting pay in the civil service wouldn’t even put you above the repayment threshold. I get that there are levels, but unless you have support or a partner the starting pay really isn’t enough especially if you’re in London. Cheltenham or Manchester - maybe.
A key thing to appreciate is that the women in this article, including Rebecca, are not spies. They are civil servants [1] working in a very sensitive area of government. None of them are undercover, or sneaking into Russian bases. It's a sensible precaution for them to keep quiet about what they do, but it's not like their ability to do their job depends on absolute secrecy.
By way of comparison, the US equivalent of Rebecca, who is the deputy to the chief of the service, would be the deputy director of the CIA. The identity of that person is not only public, he has a wikipedia page [2]!
[1] Well, diplomatic servants, but that's basically an alternative flavour of civil servant that exists for historical reasons
I think that just depends on your definition of spy. If you're thinking, say, Americans being undercover or sneaking onto bases (instead of using local assets to do it) then it would probably fall under the Special Activities Center, which is a subset of the CIA.
While you're right that these folks aren't undercover in the sense that their identities are known, that those identities are linked to an intelligence gathering agency is not known. A lot does happen out in the open and it always has. Being a member of the diplomatic service gives them protection when they're operating in a foreign country. You operate out of an embassy and if you're arrested they usually trade you back to your home country, because diplomatic immunity.
The definition of "spy" that I know is that they are people who cultivate relationships with "agents" or "assets": people who have access to important secret information and are willing to share it.
Most spies don't go into forbidden places and physically dig up secrets themselves. It's infinitely easier to get to know someone who already knows those secrets and persuade them to tell.
Between a duty to family & country, which should truly come first in our short lives?
Had her children ever accidentally found out at near any time in their lives, they may have never been able to trust their mother again - severing what arguably should be one of the strongest bonds one can have.
Would you (rhetorically) find it reasonable that she, or anybody with children, is required to live with that thought in the back of their mind? In an occupation she’s otherwise taken an oath (highly presumably) to devote her allegiance to?
I’m not sure. It definitely seems like a question with a hard answer.
"they may have never been able to trust their mother again"
That's a real stretch. Anyone with the maturity to understand that information should also have the maturity to delineate between lies for inconsequential things in the sake of national security vs personal lies affecting their lives.
"Between a duty to family & country,"
The logic goes that duties to country are inclusive of duties to family because without a stable country your family is less protected. That's what they say. Whether you agree or not is another matter. Not agreeing means that job likely wasn't for you anyways.
I replied to the parent comment above, but it's worth replying to this. The kids might not know what mom did before this, but the way the mother operates was long ago normalized for them. The mother probably never lied-- they usually don't-- she probably just never shared. What the mother does is a job that isn't necessarily in conflict with her love for her children. People have to balance the effort they put into their job (as opposed to the effort they put into their children) all the time. She still gets to make that choice, at least in the US and the UK (as is the case here). That choice may cost her her job, but that's true of any job.
This is all to say, it's highly doubtful that this had the impact to their relationship that you're imagining here.
Lol. It's supposed that one of them (i.e the mother) should behave like and adult and own it. Of course nobody forced her to choose serving her country but I believe in this case she failed both her duty to family & country.
It's just proof that not all the people are up for this job.
I remeber when my brother spilled the beans on a "family secret" to some close family friends in front of my mother...good that was just a silly thing. Now imagine that could get her fired or worse, cause someone's death.
I wonder if she(or the remaining parent) would find it sensible to share that as well with the children.
> Lol. It's supposed that one of them (i.e the mother) should behave like and adult and own it. Of course nobody forced her to choose serving her country but I believe in this case she failed both her duty to family & country.
> It's just proof that not all the people are up for this job.
It's understood that family members will know to some extent. If nothing else, this is so that they know to be wary of security threats many people would otherwise ignore. She's almost certainly not sharing details of operations, she's instead sharing with her daughters why things are the way they are in their household.
I've said in other comments, this is another world and the concerns here are different. It's not like it is in the movies.
Again, that family members will know to some extent is understood, which is why she felt comfortable admitting it in the interview, otherwise she would have lost her job and the article would have been kiboshed by the security services.
> I believe in this case she failed both her duty to family & country.
So you likely never had to handle top secret information and couldn't spy his way out of a paper bag, has just declared that one of the most successful spies is a failure.
How do you know what the rules are? How do you know what the teenagers in questions were like? I find these comments astonishing. We literally know nothing about them, the family, "Rebecca" herself, her job, the rules behind it; how can anyone speak with such confidence and think they know better than her and her bosses?
I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news but it’s actually incredibly common and even the norm for most members to tell their children before adulthood.
> [...] working at MI6 is a distinctly strange experience. You cannot tell anyone beyond close family who your employer is, and even they are not allowed to know anything about your day-to-day activities.
I would not be too surprised if some took offense to the imagery, especially of the svelte woman in the elevator with her one piece black outfit and shades. Too much Hollywood/Black Widow.
For me, I'd recommend watching "The Night Manager" some time. Specifically, Olivia Colman's role as Angela Burr. Hugh Laurie and Tom Hiddleston certainly broke a few preconceptions for me, but she was the one I thought deserved some accolades for her character and how she portrayed it.
I kinda chcuckle a little reading this knowing without a doubt, someone's job at these clandestine operations is sliding into someone's DMs, hoping for a bite.
How does spying by humans/agents even work these days? I can't imagine a british agent going around spying in North korea, China or even Russia, much less a woman. Cause if you get caught you are going to get tortured into oblivion. Hence most of these 'spies' are on a diplomatic visa to prevent getting disappeared/tortured and therefore most of their movements are easily tracked. Spying as an agent is probably the worst job that exists that I can't imagine anyone with a family would do it unless they are forced into it. And society rarely forces women into such hazardous situations. From my experience, people who become spies aren't women with education from elite colleges who raise families, they are much more likelier to be prisoners on a deal or drug smugglers or other people with nothing much to lose.
These Spies “Run Agents”: recruit, train, hand hold, interview, debrief and analyse, pay/bribe and present the information from the traitors, drug smugglers, or other people with nothing much to lose.
I’m sure there may be dangerous jobs but these days much of that can be done from friendly countries or even the office.
How does the first step of recruiting the agents/local traitors happen? Most of the official spies who are on diplomatic visa are tracked 24x7 in countries like China/NK/Russia.
A lot the most famous Cold War spies were "walk-ins", meaning they were Soviet citizens who turned against the Soviet Union (often on ideological grounds) and then literally walked into the US embassy in Moscow or another Soviet state. If they were onsite they'd be debriefed by the CIA personnel there to determine if they were sincere or a plant, and then assigned a handler.
Often times that handler was on a diplomatic visa and they'd have a KGB tail, so one part of tradecraft was learning to lose a tail so they could go dark and meet up with their contact or pick up documents/photo negatives at a dropsite.
There were plenty of US walk-ins as well who walked into the Soviet embassy in Washington. They seem to have typically been motivated by financial goals.
According to the Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War_espionage#Known_spies...) on Cold War spying, it doesn't look like there are cases of spies being sought out and turned within the Soviet Union. Although, it does mention that some came over to the US when they were Soviet officials assigned to posts outside the USSR, so it's possible they were sought out then.
Now that there are business cases to be in China and Russia, we might have non-offical cover agents in those countries without any links to the embassy, but obviously that's just speculation.
The people who know anything about spies are not going to reply to a thread such as this.
I was nearly involved with SIS in some capacity and the amount of background probing was enough to make me scared for ever being closer than I have to be.
I can say with confidence that if you've been in the apparatus then you wouldn't even want to say anything. There's a lot of brainwashing that happens too (you could see the outcome of the Snowden revelations for example) so people would be very defensive of the concept of giving out info they have and extremely likely to be motivated in hunting down "leakers".
> Cause if you get caught you are going to get tortured into oblivion.
Was this not always a risk of that trade? Despite your gut level reaction, there are plenty of foreigners in those countries, via various channels and means — not just diplomatic.
Besides, why would a British agent have to appear stereotypically British? Why would they have to declare/present themselves as British? Wouldn’t faking all these things be core competencies of the trade?
I recently learned about a man who was imprisoned for spying for Russia in my country. He was an engineer with his own limited company who contracted for local car manufacturers and apparently passed on sensitive information from his clients to a Russian contact. I believe he was born in this country and "recruited" locally.
> For the first time ever, SIS officers reveal why women often make the best spies for our times
I was unable to find where this was answered in the article. It also reads like the author relied mostly on novels, movies, and such instead on a the interview.
Women spies have been around just as much, if not longer - Virginia Hall, Mata Hari, Jane Whorwood, Elizabeth Van Lew, Anne Dawson, Violette Szabo. Going even further back consider the Japanese kunoichi (sp?), Empress Wei of China had a whole cadre of female spies. There are plenty of evidence of female spies in Ancient Greece, and in the Roman empire. There are Biblical stories of female spies.
Indeed there are novels & movies that depict female spies in a sexual way (and just as many depicting men as simple fighting machines) but pretending that women where not allowed to be spies is a disservice to women.
> I was unable to find where this was answered in the article.
For example here it makes an explicit point:
"The UK’s main adversaries today — China, Russia, Iran and North Korea — are repressive societies with few women in positions of power. For the female spy, this weakness in the enemy is exploitable. Precisely because they are so likely to be overlooked, women have the potential to be the best spies of all."
> pretending that women where not allowed to be spies is a disservice to women.
Where does it say they were not allowed? Mata Hari is explicitly discussed in the article. A lot of examples in MI6 itself are made, but the article talks at length about how their careers were more difficult.
> It also reads like the author relied mostly on novels, movies, and such instead on a the interview.
I think the article is amazing. It literally interviewed three of the top british spies. How can you say that? And the last paragraph is all about all the things that the author could not cover.
> "The UK’s main adversaries today — China, Russia, Iran and North Korea — are repressive societies with few women in positions of power."
(I know this is from TFA, not written by you)
At least Russia and North Korea have women in positions of power, so it seems disingenuous to lump them together with Iran, at the very least. I'm unsure about China now, but there used to be very influential Chinese women.
Also, Russia mastered the art of using women in intelligence (and sure, honeytraps), particularly because the West also tends to overlook them. Or are we going to pretend it's only our enemies that do this, as if the battle for equality was already won on our side?
Fair point, but in defence of the author, I think there's a huge difference between having some women in positions of power and the attitude that people have towards women in daily life. I can totally imagine a society in which certain women from privileged background can rise to power (if, regarding north korea, you're talking about Kim Jong Un's sister, that's a great example), and yet the assumption most people have when they meet a woman is definitely not that she is someone powerful or to be wary of.
Also, what spies have is not 'power'. I wonder for example how many women there are in the high ranks of the army, even for the countries you listed and many others.
Agreed that spies do not have "power" in that sense; I was just echoing the words of TFA and showing counterexamples.
Most armies of the world are sexist in any case, why single out the current adversaries of the West? Western armies are traditionally sexist as well. Yes, now there are some high ranking officers and even generals in some of the most modern Western armies -- meaning the general rule is still that sexism is rampant.
> yet the assumption most people have when they meet a woman is definitely not that she is someone powerful or to be wary of
Yes, but this seems to be the rule in many countries which are traditionally aligned with the West.
NK? Where do you see women represented in positions of power? Honest question.
Kim Il Sung (or his son? memory is hazy) had a special all-female army unit that was his literal harem. I don’t think they value women very much, outside perhaps of nepotism.
Kim Yo-jong, Kim Jong-un's sister, is a woman in power in North Korea [1] (yes, probably because she is his sister, but she's no figurehead, and how else does one rise to power in North Korea anyway?) and is deemed by some analysts as a possible successor to her brother.
This doesn't make it a rule, but it shows there are women with power in North Korea. Because it's such an opaque country to outside observers, who knows how many more are there? Keep in mind the world didn't even know of her existence until relatively recently (about 2014).
I don't think something like this -- a woman being considered to run the country -- would be even thinkable in Iran.
Ironically there's a female only division in North Korea's army though it's claimed that they are comfort woman from South Korean sources that doesn't really seem accurate. Especially considering the statements made about being solely for Kim Jong Un and the fact that the same sources also go on to state how he exclusively only dates European models, which is also ironic when you consider he seems to be in love with his with who is also Korean. In which she is obese so it's hard to consider him choosing her for her appearance.
I believe the term "comfort women" only refers to the women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army, the term is a direct translation of a Japanese word.
It's possible North Korea had a division made up of former comfort womem at some point, but I've never heard of it and the youngest members left would be in their 80's now.
China has a lot of figureheads and rubber stamp officials. For example, their >1K legislature is a rubber stamp no real de facto power. So the female representation in de jure leadership might not match the female representation in actual leadership.
im not talking about merits of chinese political system. but the thesis that communist-party-ruled societies are more favoured toward men than it is the case in most western governments is false. also according to statistics rwanda and cuba are world leaders in terms of % women holding office
Huh? This is just false. What is the basis for your opinion?
There is no woman in the 24-member Politburo, the highest body of Chinese leadership. None. It had a single woman in the last cycle 2017-2022. The Standing committee, the top echelon with seven members has never had a woman as member. Of 205 members of the Central Committee, only 5% are women.
By % of total offices or just raw total? China has over 4X the population of the US. Not to even mention different countries have different #s of political offices.
Why are women unlikely to win promotion race at China’s Communist Party congress?
Female cadres tend to rise through gender pathways in areas such as education and civil affairs, and in mass organisations
But they’re rarely assigned to more high-profile portfolios such as economics, finance, industry and technology
Mimi Lau
Published: 11:00pm, 2 Oct, 2022
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3194570/why...
But women still make up less than 20-30% of operations agents in most western agencies. Only in the past decade has new recruits in MI6 and the CIA got to 40% women.
"> For the first time ever, SIS officers reveal why women often make the best spies for our times"
--> If that were true, should those spies be paid more than their not-as-good male counterparts ? And if yes, should the gap-salary which would follow, be then gapped by hiring more men as top spy positions despite their lower performances ?
I fully expect that the service reviewed the article, and likely those interviewed as well to ensure they were happy with the level of detail disclosed.
Yeah, has to be the abbreviation for Quartermaster. Even the exasperation of the character in the movies is obviously based on the demeanour of every ageing CQMS in the British Army (he doesn't appear in the Fleming books, where there's only the Q Branch responsible for supply).
There is a little more nuance to it than you've stated here.
A Quartermaster in the British Army is generally a commissioned officer, usually nowadays a Late Entry Officer (a soldier who has achieved the rank of at least Staff Sergeant I think, and then received a commission). Quartermasters are most often the rank of Major, but sometimes I've known them to be Lt Col (Pirbright Army Training Centre has a Lt Col for Quartermaster when I was there).
A Quartermaster is generally in charge of G4 (or J4 in the modern parlance) which is the Logistics staff branch[0].
CQMS (Company Quartermaster Sergeant) is universally a Non-commissioned Officer role. I have only ever seen CQMS of Warrant Officer Class 2 rank. CQMS are responsible for the G4 branch in a company or squadron sized unit.
At a Regimental level you'll often also have an RQMS, universally Warrant Officer Class 1 in my experience but sometimes filled temporarily by a senior WO2. That role was always a bit of a mystery to me, but generally seemed to keep the CQMS's in check and filter a lot of the faff from the QM.
Getting to the point - names...
You'd never call the Quartermaster Q. I'm not sure what would have happened if you did, but I imagine it wouldn't have been pleasant.
You'd always call the CQMS Q, especially if you were Commissioned or SSgt or above. A bold Sgt would get away with it if followed up with a swift sir/ma'am.
The RQMS was RQ, or sir/ma'am to anyone junior.
Add to the mix is the tradition of using "Salutation Surname" (i.e. Mr Brown, Mrs Red) to all Warrant Officers and you have a heady mix of options.
Edging closer to the point - the moniker Q in the books/movie would likely have come about from the abbreviation of CQMS. Which makes sense as Bond, as a 'front line' individual, would almost never actually see the actual Quartermaster, but would interact with his unit's CQMS who would be the one dealing with issuing and accounting for kit.
I believe Bond also had the rank of Commander. It would be customary for that rank to address a CQMS as Q, but never a Quartermaster with that letter.
Q in the movies (the only place he originally appeared) is obviously based on a CQMS someone knew and the Q branch in the books is almost certainly based on the abbreviation Q for the word Quartermaster in the Quartermaster's Stores.
Presumably the M name was inspired by C, the nickname given to the mi6 chief in real life.
The C comes from that being what the first chief of mi6 used to sign, his surname was Smith-Cumming. Interestingly, he also famously said, after it was discovered that human semen works well as invisible ink, that "Every man his own stylo" - rather appropriate for a man named Cumming.
"Eve Fleming's nickname from her son Ian was M and Ian may have used his relationship with her as model for M, fictional head of Head of the Secret Intelligence Service and James Bond's boss."
That doesn't make it true, but it does seem to have some evidence.
According to my fallible memory and the probably more reliable wiki article [0] Q was based on Charles Fraser Smith, who came up with "Q devices". So this might be a feedback loop between art and life. Assuming that "Q" really is called "Q" internally, and that's not just publicity / misdirection...
I can recommend CFS's book "The Secret War of Charles Fraser-Smith" about his wartime experiences in sourcing and creating items for clandestine operations. Likely of interest to many HN readers.
> In the past, women have been overlooked, relegated to secretarial roles or, before the SIS era, deployed as “honeytraps” to ensnare or blackmail enemies
Amusing of MI6 to claim they no longer use honeytraps.
One of the most depressing things in my tech worker life is witnessing how sex starved the average FAANG caliber engineer is.
The way that they got info about twitters political bias through project veritas was to... Get a cute looking girl to ask the guy nicely...
How many people who are smart and well connected enough to end up being watched by three letter agencies (which is most likely more of HN userbase than they would like to admit) have only experienced relationships, love, or lust that was paid for by some agent in Langley? My guess is that this happens far more than we would care to admit.
Heh if I was ever approached at a bar by a cute girl interested in my work the first thing I would do is call my employer’s “911” number and ask what to do next.
Well, a women is treated equally only in the west, so per definition they can only spy as not honeytrap in the western society block. Everywhere else, its gonna be traditional.
>> per definition they can only spy as not honeytrap in the western society block
I find this a really odd statement, and certainly not something that follows "per definition"?
For one thing, one point made in the article is that the sources a spy might want to cultivate are often women. Especially places where women are less respected, they might be privy to plenty of private conversations while on the arm of a powerful man, and might be amenable to talking to another woman about it.
And it's certainly not the case that women are only viewed "traditionally" outside western society - China, India, and many other countries have plenty of female doctors, scientists, office workers, etc.
"Treated equally", especially when it comes to things like wage parity, is still a bit of a far cry in the West. Not that that subtracts from your point, but just pointing out. Treated 'better', for sure.
I’m curious why this article was authorized. It seems they decided it would help with recruiting more than it hurts by giving away the element of surprise.
Do I correctly understand by your comment that you think there was a foreign intelligence service that did not already know MI6 employed female agents?
I don’t think foreign intelligence services knew MI6 considered female agents more effective due to it being less expected. I don’t think the public knew that MI6 likes to recruit outside the Oxford types. I think MI6 very much planned this article. Hope that clarifies my position.
