MI6 will have to start working with big Silicon Valley tech companies if it wants to keep up with Chinese and Russian spies, the secret service's new chief has warned.
Richard Moore, who became head of the Secret Intelligence Service (aka MI6), has said that the West risks falling behind countries like China when it comes to using new technologies such as quantum computing or AI for espionage.
"Our adversaries are pouring money and ambition into mastering artificial intelligence, quantum computing and synthetic biology, because they know that mastering these technologies will give them leverage," Moore said in a rare public speech earlier today.
Moore added that the progress of technology in the next ten years is likely to outstrip all the advancements of the previous century.
He said: "As a society, we are yet to internalise this stark fact and its potential impact on global geopolitics. But it is a white-hot focus for MI6."
Moore believes that if the UK's secret service wants to keep up, it will need to start working with the global tech industry and "partnering with the private sector", as MI6 can no longer develop all of its own tools in-house like 'Q' from the James Bond movie franchise.
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"We cannot hope to replicate the global tech industry, so we must tap into it. We must become more open, to stay secret."
It seems Moore's warnings aren't too far off the mark. Last month, it was revealed China has already built two quantum computers in a top secret lab.
These are a million times faster than any other supercomputer on the planet and capable of bending the laws of physics by creating 'time crystals'.
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MI6 has been popularised by the long-running James Bond franchise.
It acts as Britain's foreign intelligence service, spying on threats abroad such as international terrorism and the work of state actors like Russia, Iran, and China.
Just like in James Bond, MI6 has a real-life 'Q' department that builds gadgets for its operatives, although the exact nature of these gadgets are naturally kept under wraps.
The spy agency has been criticised in the past for allegedly training senior spies from the likes of Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Jordan and others—dictatorships which reportedly often utilise torture and 'enhanced interrogation'.
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