Intel gathering

The spy who liked me: Britain’s changing secret service

Behind the closed doors of British intelligence, the era of Smiley’s People is giving way to a future of Smiley’s Facebook friends.

Digital disruption is sweeping through the world’s second-oldest profession — spying — and the UK is repurposing its intelligence services with a £1.5bn annual top-up for security available for the first time this year.

For the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, which supplies foreign intelligence, this translates into its biggest ever recruitment drive, with as many as 1,000 new staff over the next four years, a 40 per cent rise.

The increase is partly driven by the more threatening geopolitical environment, with a growing challenge from Russia and China and the metastatic resurgence of global jihadism.

But broader, social and technological changes are having a lasting impact — and demanding more fulsome changes to the very nature of spycraft itself.