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MI6 Chief: We'll Be as Fluent in Python As We Are in Russian (theregister.com) 43

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
The new chief of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service told officers this week that they must become as fluent in programming languages like Python as they are in foreign languages like Russian as the spy agency adapts to what she described as a space between peace and war. Blaise Metreweli, MI6's first female chief and previously the service's director general of technology and innovation, said in her first public speech that mastery of technology is now required across the organization.

She warned that advanced technologies including AI, biotechnology and quantum computing are revolutionizing both economies and the reality of conflict. Metreweli focused particularly on threats from Russia, saying the country is testing the UK in the grey zone through cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, drones near sensitive sites and propaganda operations.
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MI6 Chief: We'll Be as Fluent in Python As We Are in Russian More

MI6 Chief: We'll Be as Fluent in Python As We Are in Russian

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  • Perhaps (Score:3)

    by liqu1d ( 4349325 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2025 @04:19PM (#65862325)
    Instead of people being fluent in both they could have one department focused on communication and another on creating their tooling? Keep people focussed on what they're good at?

    • Everybody has to be good at everything!
      "required across the organization" is the key phrase here.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by wed128 ( 722152 )
      I think this statement comes from the tendency laypeople have of conflating computer languages and spoken ones. "Fluency" in python does not mean the same thing as it does in Russian.
      • Problem is she should be far removed from being a layperson given her previous role was director general of technology and innovation.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by dfghjk ( 711126 )

          and, interestingly, Python's main claim to fame is that it is easy to learn and understand for laypeople. Basically, the problem being solved here is one that Python's claim to fame is that it minimizes in the first place.

          But hey, discounting expertise is what bureaucrats do best.

      • I think this statement comes from the tendency laypeople have of conflating computer languages and spoken ones. "Fluency" in python does not mean the same thing as it does in Russian.

        What if your Russian is bad enough to be mistaken for Python?

        (Sorry. I voice-activated a compiler trying to speak like a John Wick villain once.)

    • The more I think about, the more I suspect that's what she means. I mean, not everyone who works for MI-6 understands Russian, right? I assume the qualifications for working there are a little more varied given Russia is not the only country they have to deal with, and just because someone's fluent in Russian doesn't make them generically helpful.

      What I suspect she's saying is she wants the company organizationally more fluent in these things, not all individuals who work there.

      • Yup. The "Russian" bit was made up by El Reg - that was not in the quote at all. What she said was:

        Mastery of technology must infuse everything we do. Not just in our labs, but in the field, in our tradecraft, and even more importantly, in the mindset of every officer. We must be as comfortable with lines of code as we are with human sources, as fluent in Python as we are in multiple languages

    • Instead of people being fluent in both they could have one department focused on communication and another on creating their tooling? Keep people focussed on what they're good at?

      * Glances at completely separate US Military job designators for both linguists and programmers *

      Those that know, know.

      Those that don’t, soon will.

      But I say let the Boss go first. Should be easy for the one demanding CrossFit-grade cross-training.

  • Also MI6 Chief (Score:5, Funny)

    by greytree ( 7124971 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2025 @04:39PM (#65862369)
    We can't make head nor tail of C++ or Chinese. Not a clue.

  • Eto lish' pokazyvayet, naskol'ko plokho oni znayut russkiy yazyk.

  • when she said quantum computing.

  • Ick! (Score:3)

    by Locke2005 ( 849178 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2025 @05:12PM (#65862455)
    I have been forced to work in Python again lately, which has only served to remind me how much I HATE Python! Remember that due to the GIL (Global Interpreter Lock) design, Python is inherently single threading, meaning anything they try to tell you about Python concurrency is a LIE! (I have a very slow BLE link that takes 120 milliseconds for each transaction, and I'm blaming one end of the connection being implemented in Python as the reason.)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by lyosha ( 97461 )

      you are a bit behind with your hate

      https://docs.python.org/3/what... [python.org]

      • While I am very happy to see they finally did something about the GIL in 3.14, Meta still uses 3.12.4. There are lots of other things I hate about Python. Rust, and even C/C++ to some extent, find most errors at compile time. With Python using duck typing and being interpreted, you never know if something is mistyped in a line of code until that line of code gets executed and throws an exception. While interpreted code gives you a much shorter turning around in the write/test cycle for development of protot

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by abulafia ( 7826 )
          Dynamic typing is a design choice, trading speed of development for large-scale development features. (Advice: if you demand static typing in your language, never, ever look at Perl...) Doesn't mean you have to like it, but not every language needs to be statically typed.

          But if we want to grouse...

          I hate python's ecosystem. It is effectively impossible to run multiple nontrivial python applications on the same machine without encapsulation of some sort (virtualenv-type hacks, Docker, separate VMs). And ev

    • Many communication channels are fast in Python. Any communication channel can be messed up in any language.
      • The implementation I'm using is basically using PySerial to drive a USB-connected BLE device talking to a remote PSoC6 BLE device. I'm blaming PySerial for the problem, but the problem _could_ be caused by bad firmware in the BLE device. BLE isn't famous for good throughput either, but the throughput I'm seeing is several orders of magnitude worse than expected even for BLE. I agree that communication channels can be badly implemented in any language, and they frequently are. I'm just used to communication
    • If unsatisfied with CPython, please try Stackless Python with its microthreads.
    • Well, if you go back to the summary, it does seem to imply that the head of MI6 thinks that python is the Russian of programming languages....
  • With both python and russian, people think they are a lot more fluent than they really are after several shots of vodka!

  • Her comments on the nature of the threat from Russia and China are well put and stand up to analysis. That she was stating these things in public suggests that she wants the politicians to stop dithering and she is correct about that.

    Her comments on tech seen naive. The tech world won't take her seriously and with good reason.

    • According to her bio, she's fluent in Arabic and Ukrainian (and of course English), and her official title is 'C'. Maybe she didn't want to say 'C', so she said "Python" ... which practically any script kiddie can learn in a day.

    • The comments related to this in TFA seem aspirational...

      "This demands what she called "mastery of technology" across the service, with officers required to become "as comfortable with lines of code as we are with human sources, as fluent in Python as we are in multiple other languages."

      I agree, I don't expect the tech world to even notice this, unless and until "Recruitment will target linguists, data scientists, engineers, and technologists alike." actually happens. I think anyone hired for these roles wil

  • Fluent in Python (Score:5, Funny)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2025 @06:34PM (#65862675)

    a space between peace and war

    Or perhaps a tab between peace and war.

  • The new chief of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service told officers this week that they must become as fluent in programming languages like Python as they are in foreign languages like Russian.

    Does MI6 understand not even the US Military is dumb enough to assume every foreign language linguist is also a programmer?

    Step right up, Boss. Show the rest of us how it’s done.

  • It begs the question as to how fluent MI6 is in Russian.

  • I thought they didn't pay their public servants well either. Our agencies can't get the best people specifically because they don't do that, are they any different?

  • Good thing this isn't the CIA, or Python's Benevolent Dictator for Life's cigars would mysteriously start exploding.

  • A friend once worked in Washington on a defense project, and took classes in Russian at the Washington branch of the Defense Language Institute. He was very proud of himself and after a while, he decided to head to a Russian bookstore in town, walked in and told them in Russian that he was looking for some books on biographies of Russian diplomats. The clerk looked up and with a big smile exclaimed DLI !. Apparently Russians can tell that youâ(TM)ve been trained there.

    • Absolutely, especially in a town that has a DLI. Anyone going to DLI for the first time is generally going to have an accent and perhaps be overly formal, which is so easy to do with declined, gendered languages, so it's simple for the shopkeeper to put dva i dva together.

  • Would be soooo proud!!!

  • Next James Bond movie going to show him using Python to break into Spectre?

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