In this enlightening episode of the Super Creativity Podcast, James Taylor interviews Robert Hannigan, former director of GCHQ and author of "Counter-intelligence - What The Secret World Can Teach Us About Problem-Solving and Creativity" Hannigan shares insights from his extensive career in cyber security and intelligence, discussing what the secret world of counterintelligence can teach us about problem solving and creativity. They delve into the history of Bletchley Park, the importance of neurodiversity in intelligence work, and how to foster a creative and effective work environment.
Full show notes and links at https://link.chtbl.com/scp
Key Takeaways:
Creative Problem Solving: Lessons from Bletchley Park on fostering creativity and innovation in high-pressure environments.
Neurodiversity: The critical role of neurodivergent individuals in intelligence and cybersecurity and how organizations can support them.
Team Dynamics: The importance of diverse teams and creative pairs in solving complex problems.
Ethical Discussions: The necessity of open discussions on ethics and politics within intelligence organizations.
Environmental Influence: The impact of the physical and cultural environment on fostering creativity and innovation.
Quotes:
"I was trying to answer the question of how was it that Bletchley Park... created the world's first digital programmable computer." - Robert Hannigan
"Tolerating that kind of eccentricity frankly is one of the interesting challenges for an organization, particularly a company, trying to engender creativity." - Robert Hannigan
"It's really important that people can express any ethical concerns and discuss them and have them addressed." - Robert Hannigan
"The blend of these different types of thinking and ways of looking at the world is massively powerful in creativity." - Robert Hannigan
Timestamps:
[00:09] Introduction to Robert Hannigan and his career highlights.
[01:41] Robert Hannigan discusses his current focus and the fast-changing landscape of cyber security.
[02:16] Insights from Bletchley Park and the ingredients for successful counterintelligence work.
[06:07] The role of neurodiversity and eccentricity in fostering creativity at Bletchley Park.
[10:41] The importance of teamwork and creative pairs in intelligence work.
[13:38] Discussion on the impact of Elizabeth and William Friedman on US codebreaking.
[17:18] The role of neurodiversity at GCHQ and the value of different perspectives.
[20:06] Advice for managing diverse teams in large organizations.
[23:13] Modern equivalents of Bletchley Park’s 'tea parties' and fostering collective problem-solving.
[24:38] Open discussions on ethics and politics within intelligence organizations.
[27:15] Balancing optimism and caution in technology advancements.
[30:33] Robert Hannigan's personal sources of creative inspiration and the importance of the environment.
[32:01] Recommended reading for those interested in creativity and innovation.
[34:02] Conclusion and where to learn more about Robert Hannigan and his work.
https://link.chtbl.com/scp
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:09):
What can the secret world ofcounterintelligence teach us about problem
solving and creativity?
That's what my guest today and I willdiscuss.
Robert Hannigan was director of GCHQ, theUK's largest technical and cyber security
agency.
He established the UK National CyberSecurity Centre in 2016 and was
responsible for the UK's first cyberstrategy in 2009.
(00:31):
He was previously
the Prime Minister's security advisor atnumber 10 and worked closely with Tony
Blair for a decade on the Northern Irelandpeace process.
Robert is now international chairman ofBlue Voyant, a global cybersecurity
services company, and was a senior advisorto McKinsey & Co.
He is a senior fellow at the BelfastCenter at Harvard.
He is a fellow of the Institution ofEngineering and Technology in London and
(00:54):
an honorary fellow at Oxford University.
He was honored by Queen Elizabeth for hisservices to national security.
and is one of the only non -US citizens tohave received the US Intelligence
Distinguished Public Service Medal.
His new book, Counterintelligence, whichis absolutely wonderful, is about what the
secret world can teach us about problemsolving and creativity.
(01:16):
And he looks to answer a couple ofquestions.
How do you hire smart people who can worktogether to prevent terrorist attacks and
decode encrypted technology?
How do you come up with creative,counterintuitive solutions to solve major
global problems?
And how do you provide the rightenvironment for these people to thrive and
work at their best when under immensepleasure?
(01:36):
And it's my great pleasure to welcomeRobert Hannigan on the Super Creativity
Podcast today.
Welcome Robert.
Hi James, well thanks very much, very goodto be with you.
So currently what has your focus?
You've got the book is out now.
What are you currently focused on?
Yeah, so the book is out and obviously Ihave a role in Oxford which takes a lot of
time in term time and then my main focusis on cyber security obviously which is my
(02:02):
day -to -day work and that's changing veryfast and every day we see new headlines
which kind of emphasize how fast movingand how sophisticated the threat has got.
So cyber security is where I spend most ofmy thinking time.
Now in this book, I learned so manyinteresting things.
I learned a lot about Bletchley Park thatI didn't know in the work that went on
(02:23):
there and the history of GCHQ.
But there was a quote that you have righttowards, you mentioned something right at
the beginning of the book, which I thoughtwas interesting.
The other day I was in Austin in Texas andI was speaking and this sounds very
strange compared to what we'd probably betalking about, but...
was speaking for a company thatmanufactures the ingredients for bread and
(02:45):
pastries and chocolates.
And while I was there, I met a gentlemanwho was the sourdough librarian for this
company.
His job is to keep the sourdoughs of all,he goes around the world collecting
sourdoughs from these amazing places andhe has a library of this.
And in the book, earlier on, you see this,you talk about the work of...
(03:06):
of Bletchley Park and the GCHQ is lessabout mapping the DNA of Bletchley Park
and more like identifying the ingredientsof a digital sourdough starter, a messy
blended fermentation that constantlychanges, that is never entirely within the
baker's control, but nonetheless producessomething entirely surprising.
So my first question I had for you is,what are the good ingredients for someone
(03:30):
that's working in counterintelligence andhas that changed over the years?
So I love the idea of a sourdoughlibrarian, that sounds fantastic.
And Austin, Texas is a great exampleactually of tech innovation at the moment,
as I'm sure you saw when you were there.
What I was trying to answer, and I didn'twant to write one of these prescriptive
books that says do X, Y, and Z, and youwill have creativity, because I just don't
(03:53):
think it works like that.
I was trying to answer the question of howwas it that Bletchley Park, which was this
not particularly impressive.
country house in the English countrysidewhere they gathered to break codes during
the Second World War and to solve one bigproblem which was how do you decrypt and
(04:15):
then use a massive amount of interceptedradio material that was coming into
Bletchley and then get it out fast enoughfor commanders to use.
So that was the problem they were tryingto solve.
But in solving it, they
created the world's first digitalprogrammable computer colossus.
(04:35):
And so in that problem solving process,there was this immense creativity and
everything we now have.
So what we're communicating on ourlaptops, our iPhones and so on, you trace
their lineage back to Bletchley Parkreally.
And so I wanted to explore, so how didthat happen?
(04:55):
And to come to your sourdough analogy,
Many people at the time describedBletchley as an asylum, as rudderless, as
full of crazy people.
It wasn't, they thought, structured andhierarchical in the way it should have
been.
And so what were the ingredients?
Well, the ingredients were, of course, thepeople.
And it was this amazing mixture of people.
(05:17):
Not just mathematicians, not just AlanTuring types, if he is a type, the famous
people, but predominantly women.
So 76 % of the staff of Bletchley werewomen.
Most were young, most were under 30.
So you were quite old if you were over 30and you were ancient if you were over 40
at Bletchley.
But it wasn't just mathematicians andacademics, it was people from
(05:40):
manufacturing, from banking, fromdepartment stores, from the telecoms
world.
And it was putting those people togetherboth as disciplines and as individual ways
of thinking.
And we might come onto neurodiversity.
But that's where the magic and thecreativity came from.
And I think that's closer to a sourdoughstarter than it is to any kind of business
(06:02):
book which tells you, do this, this, andthis, and you'll get creativity.
The thing I found really interesting, andyou talk about this towards more towards
the end of the book, but it's actually,it's a bit of a thread that kind of goes
through is what you mentioned, likeneurodiversity.
And we'll kind of come back to that.
But there were lots of, we're talkingabout this building this kind of culture
and there was lots of very interestingcharacters where the Bletchley Park and
(06:23):
obviously now in GCHQ.
One of the ones that made me laugh wasearly on you talked about Dilly Knox, I
think was the name and Rym Forty at theold Admiralty.
he decided to do something a little bitunusual, something to help his creative
process, which I actually, I do today aswell.
(06:46):
So can you share what that was?
Yeah, and Billy Knox was an amazingcharacter, but he did a lot of his
thinking in the bath.
So he had a bathtub put into the oldAdmiralty building in Whitehall.
And then when he moved nearly 20 yearslater to Bletchley Park, he had a bathtub
put into the cottage there and he wassitting in it for hours and hours at a
(07:09):
time.
So much so actually in Bletchley that oneof his colleagues thought he had drowned
and broke the door down.
So...
wasn't just an affectation.
He didn't just occasionally go and have abath.
He would find it a good place to think.
And we now know from neurological researchquite a lot about the effects of warm
water, water in general, on the brain.
(07:31):
So he wasn't wrong.
He described it as, bathing helps me withthe perception of analogies.
So not exactly sure what that means, butwe think it...
closest to a kind of lateral thinking,making connections in the brain that
wouldn't otherwise surface.
And he was a very passionate, slightlyirascible character.
(07:58):
And so the calming environment of a bathprobably helped as well, helped him focus
his thinking.
But it's a nice example of something whichno corporation would naturally think of
doing.
So.
tolerating that kind of eccentricityfrankly is one of the interesting
challenges for an organization,particularly a company, trying to engender
(08:21):
creativity.
You've got to be allowed, you've got toallow people to work in the way that they
want to up to a point.
And his is a kind of extreme example.
He's also a great example.
you got inspiration from that from, I wasrecently in a place called Ortesia, near
Syracuse in Italy.
(08:41):
And about two and a half thousand yearsago, there was a king hero, his name, and
he was trying to figure out a problem.
And he did like what I guess many
business senior people do today as theybring in a management consultant.
And the management consultant wasArchimedes and we heard the story of like
the bath and jumping at the bath, Eureka.
So I wonder if he was, had a bit of anArchimedes thing kind of going on there as
(09:04):
well.
Yeah, maybe, and he was a classicisthimself, so he would have known the work
of Archimedes well.
And of course, that was a brilliantscientific breakthrough in itself, giving
him the idea of the volume, measuringvolume.
But yeah, a good example of a non-mathematician, everything's computing and
is about mathematics, but in his case, hewas a papirologist.
(09:27):
So he spent much of his career trying topiece together these little fragments of
papyrus that have been found in the sandsof Egypt around mid to late 19th century.
And he tried to put these together torestore the poetry that was written on
them.
And I think the interesting thing aboutthat is the puzzling theme that runs
(09:48):
through the book.
All these people loved puzzles.
And for him, the puzzle actually wasn'tabout, it wasn't like a jigsaw, it wasn't
just finding little bits of papyrus andmaking them put together, though that
helped.
The real puzzle was that
The people writing the poems on these bitsof papyrus weren't the original authors.
So they were copying them out two, threecenturies later.
(10:09):
And so the challenge for him was to workout the mistakes they'd made.
So these were scribes who were oftenbored, didn't really understand what they
were copying, didn't really care verymuch, made mistakes, human error.
And there are big lessons in codebreaking.
So a lot of the progress that was made inBletchley Park in breaking German codes
was about understanding the people at theother end.
(10:30):
and the mistakes they were making, thehuman errors.
Same is true now in cyber security.
It's trying to understand the human errorsin cyber security, defense and offense.
So he's a good example around it.
When you think of when people think ofBletchley Park, they often think of the
movie kind of highlighting Alan Turing andI always kind of push against it and I
(10:54):
sense that you kind of pushed against alittle bit in the book, although it was
amazing telling that story and it broughtto attention the work of Bletchley Park to
a wider group of people.
But my bugbear, I guess, with that wasalways that it kind of does the whole lone
creative genius.
thing.
And in the book, you talk about really,that's, that's kind of not how it worked.
(11:17):
So I mean, maybe you can give us someideas in terms of what at that point, when
they're breaking these codes, what wasaround, for example, Alan Turing, who was
he, who was he working with?
How was the collaboration side workingthere?
So you're absolutely right, James.
I mean, the Imitation Game was great forthe profile of Bletchley Park and actually
big increase in visitor numbers in theyears that followed.
(11:39):
So I'm not knocking it, but it was veryHollywood.
It was all about good and bad, goodies andbaddies in Bletchley.
And it was also all about this, as yousay, this lone, solitary genius.
Now, no question Turing was a genius byany measure, but he wasn't a loner in his
work.
He very much worked as part of a team.
And in Breaking Enigma, he relied veryheavily on the fantastic work of Polish
(12:03):
mathematicians before the war, of Frenchmathematicians, and he acknowledged all
that.
And then those around him in Bletchleywere absolutely critical to him.
So he wasn't this sort of lone person whojust crapped it.
And the other thing I think that doesn'tquite come across in the film is Joan
Clarke, who's sometimes fiance for, wasn'tfor very long, but...
(12:24):
who was a really talented codebreaker inher own right and mathematician.
And after the war, she went on to work atGCHQ until the 1970s.
And in fact, just as she was working oncounter -UVOTE, counter -submarine work in
Bletchley with Turing, she ended upworking against Argentine submarines in
the Falklands War in 1982.
(12:45):
So she had a remarkable career in her ownright.
And she wasn't just the fiance of AlanTuring.
So the film gets lots of things wrong.
But overall, as you say, it was great forthe profile.
There was another type of, you mentionedthe relationship with him and his fiancee
wife at one point as well, was in the US,you have the National Security Agency,
(13:08):
which I guess is the equivalent of ourGCHQ in the UK.
And you talk about Elizabeth and WilliamFriedman there.
I believe that William Friedman was thefounder of America's NSA.
But you talked about how, I use this termcreative pairs.
They can operate it, they had verydifferent.
ways of looking at problems andchallenges, but they can lent something to
(13:31):
each other.
Can you talk about that relationship?
I thought that was that was interestingwhen I'd like to maybe kind of learn a
little bit, go and maybe read a little bitmore about that couple.
Yeah, so there's some wonderful books onthem, actually.
And there's a wonderful parallel storygoing on in the US alongside what's
happening in the First World War in the UKand then Bletchley Park.
And at the same time, these big charactersemerge.
(13:54):
So William and Elizabeth Friedman, as in away, the founders of US code breaking, US
cryptology.
And they met in this weird
scientific research establishment inChicago and outside Chicago just before
the First World War and it was run by anincredible man who's worth reading about
(14:18):
but called George Fabian who had thisobsession, had lots of obsessions, but one
of his obsessions was that Shakespeareplays weren't really written by
Shakespeare.
They were written by Francis Bacon and sohe hired all these people to try to prove
this and in trying to prove it, so Williamand Elizabeth.
met, spent the rest of their life togetherand they conclusively established that
(14:44):
actually Francis Bacon hadn't writtenthese and it wasn't in secret code, much
to George Fabian's disappointment.
But they're an amazing couple because Ithink you're right, they complement each
other.
Elizabeth had her own career in the 30sagainst smuggling during the prohibition
era and it's only actually in this centurythat her contribution has been recognised
(15:05):
by the
US government and by Congress inparticular, she tended to get overshadowed
by William.
But actually, William himself would havebeen the first to say she was an amazing
codebreaker in her own right.
So these partnerships are important.
And there's an interesting story about thetwo of them in the First World War, trying
to break up a particular machine that hadbeen given them to test the British
(15:27):
machine, actually.
And William asks Elizabeth to close hereyes.
and say the first thing, clear her mind,say the first thing that comes into her
head when he says a particular word.
And she gets it right, of course.
And they put that down to gender,actually.
They said maybe there's a different way oflooking at this.
(15:49):
Williams was very structured, hers wasmore creative and fluid.
Yeah, it may or may not be right, but it'scertainly true, as you say, James, that
partnerships sparking off each other,teamwork is absolutely essential to
creativity.
it isn't on the whole a solitary pursuit.
And then towards maybe the last quarter ofthe book, you move into talking about kind
(16:14):
of just picking up on that, about gender,but also talking about diversity of
thought and also wider, likeneurodiversity as well.
There was one stat in it that really blewmy mind that we find here one in four
people that work at GCHQ areneurodivergent, which I thought was
fascinating.
And then as you're kind of getting intothis,
(16:37):
You were just talking about peopleobviously with autism.
My father is a musician and he hassynesthesia.
So he sees musical notes as certain colorsand you talk about that and the benefit of
that for code breakers as well.
You mentioned briefly, I think in Israelthey have a, I think it's called Unit
9900, which is made up of people withspecific, the forms of neurodivergence.
(17:04):
So tell us, as you were kind ofresearching and kind of learned,
learning about it.
Was this just something you were kind ofpicking up on because you were just around
different people at the time you were kindof noticing this pattern?
Or was there something else that kind ofled you down this path to want to
investigate this area more?
I'm fascinated by this area and althoughif you look at Bletchley Park there were
lots of people who were clearlyneurodivergent.
(17:27):
It wasn't called that in those days,tended to be seen as eccentricity or just
oddness.
But when I got to GCHQ and I'd spent 15years in and around it before I became
director, I would just met more and morestaff who had really interesting views of
the world and perceptions of the world.
and I started to talk to them and then toresearch more about what neurodiversity
(17:51):
was and just how diverse it is actually,as you say, the synesthesia is a
fascinating example of how the brain worksand shows how little we understand about
it.
But I give one example in the book where Iwas chatting to someone who was
overlooking the car park and the buildingof GCHQ's headquarters is a donut -shaped
building.
(18:11):
It's very similar to what Apple have nowdone in Cupertino.
And round it is this massive car park.
And looking out at this every day, hewould say, he felt compelled to organize
that and explain the distribution of cars.
Whereas to the rest of us, we wouldprobably just accept, well, people park
and they get out and they go into work.
(18:33):
He felt this compulsion to systematizethat.
And of course he was right.
It wasn't random.
So this is about putting order into theworld and finding patterns.
And he was absolutely right because notonly was there a computer program booking
system for the car park, which wascomplex, but all the trends of economics,
of car sales, of where people lived, oftheir school runs, all those things
(18:58):
influenced the organization of those carsaround the building.
And while the rest of us might just noteven think about it, he felt a compulsion
to explain it every day.
And I think...
That is interesting in itself, but it'salso a massive advantage in a creative
team to have people who think like that,who are systematizing brains, if you like,
(19:21):
and all the other neurodivergent traitsthat are explored in the book, all of
which blended with other people in a teamcan be massively powerful.
And one of GCSQ's of the secret world'sgreat strength has been able to value that
and say, these people are not a problem.
they're a huge advantage.
They may need extra support, they may needunderstanding, they may need the right
(19:45):
conditions in which to work, but actuallythey're a fantastic asset.
And you give the Israeli example, I mean,I think, I'm not sure I'd go as far as
saying we need to employ certain types ofneurodivergence in certain jobs, but for
sure the blend of these different types ofthinking and ways of looking at the world
is massively powerful in creativity.
(20:06):
What advice would you give if someone'slistening to this just now?
Maybe they're, I said they're not in theworld, most of us not in the world of the
counter intelligence and code breaking andthings like that.
But we do have to manage people, often inlarge organizations, you're managing a big
mix.
You have, you know, you make your diversepeople within the organization.
You also have generational differences.
(20:28):
I know a lot of leaders I speak to, theysaid they really, they struggle with
figuring out, you know,
everything from Baby Boomers to Gen Z toGen X to millennials, like working with
them.
What can management more broadly learnfrom the way that organisations like GCHQ
manage that diversity of employees?
(20:50):
That's a great question, James, and it'sthe one I get asked most often by board
level people and managers.
And I think three, just three quickexamples.
I mean, one is around recruitment.
The way most companies recruit staffmilitates against those kinds of people
because they're very often very openquestions designed to explore competence,
(21:14):
competencies.
That is the worst possible.
kind of interview for many people withneurodivergent conditions who need
something much more structured.
So thinking about and getting advice onhow you recruit is really important.
Once you've recruited people who areneurodivergent, you need to support them.
So that might be very practical thingslike computer programs that help them, but
(21:37):
it may also just be really good linemanagement.
You have to invest a lot of time.
And you have to accept that there's goingto be some disruption.
And one of the interesting things aboutBletchley is that the first leader of
Bletchley, Alastair Denniston, spent a lotof his time protecting his staff from
criticism from outside, particularly fromsenior military and Whitehall, who would
(21:58):
say, you know, these people are scruffy,they're too young, they're arrogant,
they're telling me what to do, they don'trespect authority, you need to do
something about it.
and he would push back and say, no, you'vegot to accept that if you want the amazing
things they're doing, you've got to acceptsome of the difficulties that come along
(22:20):
the way in this unusual group of people,as he put it.
That takes courage in a leadershipmanagement context.
So yeah, there are definitely some lessonson how to do it, practical and cultural.
One of the ones that I read, which I'dnever seen before, where you talked about,
you called it tea parties, wherebletchily, because of the work of the
(22:41):
shift system, they work in these shiftsall the time, someone would come in and
they would sit and they would write down,challenge an idea, something up on a, it
could be an equation up on a board, awhite board.
And the next team that were coming in, canalmost kind of look at that idea and pick
it apart or figure it out, or that wouldmaybe spark them as well.
(23:01):
Do you, without going into any confidence,what is the modern, is there a modern
equivalent of that to ensure that you'reusing this hive mind, this collective
consciousness well?
Yeah, it's an absolutely key part of theculture of lecture that's been carried
through GCHQ to the current momentactually.
(23:22):
And there are two sides to it really.
One is having those opportunities forpeople to discuss and feed in informally
their thoughts about how to do thingsbetter.
And the second key thing is to stop thatbeing hierarchical.
So there was always a principle in GCHQthat any member of staff, so getting on
for 10 ,000 at some periods, couldapproach the director.
(23:43):
directly through email.
Now that could be a burden at times, butactually it's really important.
And it goes back to the power of youngpeople as well.
But actually, most people, as I said, wereunder 30.
And you have to accept that some of themwill have absolutely brilliant
groundbreaking ideas and be able to dothings that all their senior distinguished
(24:04):
colleagues haven't thought of or haven'tbeen able to do.
And to allow that to happen, you've got tohave some...
parties as they were called at Bletchley,we would call them something different in
modern GCSE but get different disciplinestogether to discuss problems.
But you've also got to allow the mostjunior, youngest people to have their
(24:25):
ideas and have their say because that'soften where the magic comes from and
there've been some good examples post-Bletchley of exactly that happening with
people straight out of university comingup with amazing, amazing cryptological
solutions.
Now you also said something in the bookwhich I thought was interesting in light
of what's going on in many organizationstoday where, you know, the general thing
(24:48):
is, you know, don't talk about politics,don't talk about religion, you know,
there's certain things in manyorganizations that they don't talk about.
But I thought it was quite interestingthat in terms of like politics, talking
about these ideas does seem to be quiteopen within the organization.
I don't know where that just came from.
(25:08):
a Bletchley thing or if that's morerecent, because I know that many
organizations, they tend to stay, youknow, let's keep all that very separate,
but you seem to embrace it in some ways.
Yeah, I think so.
I mean, I wouldn't go overboard on partypolitics, I think.
So it's important that these areapolitical organizations and it's written
into the law actually that those runningthese agencies must be apolitical and
(25:33):
implement within the law, implement thewishes of the government of the day.
But I think what's different about thesecret world is you are not allowed to
take anything home.
So you can't take your work home.
You can't discuss your work at home withyour family and friends.
And so there's a kind of world insidewhich you're working where you have to
(25:53):
have an outlet for some things.
And if you're thinking of the ethics ofintelligence gathering and intrusion into
privacy that goes with intelligenceagencies, it's really important that
people can express any ethical concernsand discuss them and have them addressed.
You don't want to have that kind ofbubbling away.
It's also important to make sure that wemaintain the highest ethical standards and
(26:18):
a huge amount of effort goes intoadherence to the law, into legal advice,
but also into ethical considerations.
So giving staff an outlet to discuss thatis really important.
One of the parallels in the book is withthe John Lewis partnership.
So we'll meet a lot of people in the UKand not so much outside, but it's a
mutual, a very successful
(26:41):
department store and grocers.
And they had pioneered this in the earlypart of the last century for their staff
and they have a gazette which still existsI think where people would express their
views on all sorts of things.
And one of the key people at Bletchleycame from there and indeed there was a big
interchange between the two organizationsover the years.
(27:03):
But one of them inherited a lot of thesemanagement processes and brought them into
Bletchley, which is
probably part of why they were sosuccessful, but who would have thought it
would come from a department store.
And the other thing I think most of thetime that I know you and I, we speak at
different conferences, different publicevents, or for companies.
(27:25):
And in my role, I'm usually the, I guess,the tech optimist.
You talk about utopians.
I'm usually painting a more utopianpicture of, I kind of talk about the
dangers, but probably 80 % of what I'msharing is these are amazing things that
are going to happen.
You know, in
in GCH QAnon and those services is almostlike that is flipped.
(27:50):
And your job is to look at the dangers,the risks in these things, how these
things will affect it.
So is this an organization of pessimistsor is it just clear eyed folks that are
there?
That's a really interesting questionbecause obviously they're mostly tech
people themselves or interested andinspired by technology.
(28:11):
So it's an organisation of optimists whoare enthused and excited about the
technology as you are yourself, James.
I guess that what makes a difference isthat their job is to focus on the bad
things that could happen.
So what are bad people with bad intentionsgoing to do with this technology in the
future?
Because technology itself is kind ofethically neutral on the whole.
(28:33):
It's all about what people do with it andhow will it be abused is a question which
the big tech companies are never going toput front and center, partly because
they're utopians, they're optimists,partly because it doesn't make commercial
sense.
You don't spend a lot of money developinga product, push it out and say, by the
way, we're worried that this might be,might have to do it.
(28:55):
So take social media, for example.
They've spent 30 years saying, this isgreat building communities, connecting
people, all that fantastic stuff.
But they haven't said, well, all the badthings that can be done with it from
election interference through to theimpact on teenagers.
(29:15):
Those are things which have kind of beenforced on them.
And so I think getting the balance right,I mean, overall, I am an optimist too.
And I think, primarily, I would say,technological advances are fantastic and
they're bringing human progress forward atan incredible rate, or as you know, better
than anyone.
But to do that completely without lookingat the downsides is a real risk.
(29:39):
And so it's quite useful to have someagencies whose job is to look at how
things might be abused in the future.
Now bringing it back to your own work, asI was reading it, I was thinking, you're
just touching on AI, you're just touchingon quantum computing.
And I thought, is this where the nextbook's perhaps gonna go for you?
(30:01):
But where do you go to get creativeinspiration?
You mentioned in the book about the donut,GCHQ, has a garden in the middle, which I
love the idea of that.
We often get inspiration when we're out innature, or where that color green is
around us.
but also you have these open plan officeswhich I know for some people can cause
real stress, especially if you're morequiet person.
So you have what they call caves andmarketplaces.
(30:24):
But for you, where do you go to getinspired?
Where do you go to think about these bigideas and ways of solving them and
actually in your writing as well?
So I do go outside, I do like to be out innature.
I do find that inspiring.
I also find talking to people, wanderingaround, just seeing what they're doing
(30:45):
inspiring, which is a very, literally,DTHQ thing to do, actually, just to kind
of wander around and chat to people.
I'm not sure that you can prescribe that,different people find different things
good for their creativity, from baths, asyou said earlier, to sitting in a garden.
if you're lucky enough to have a gardenthat's accessible, not everybody does.
(31:07):
I mean, your point about mathematiciansand what they need is something that's
kind of occupied a lot of my time, both atGCSQ and also now I'm in a university in
Oxford and we think a lot about thearchitecture, how that helps or hinders
academics to think.
And there have been some wonderfulexamples of institutions for
mathematicians which try to blend that.
(31:30):
time alone that they need, almost a kindof monastic cell to go and think.
But the interchange of ideas, the sort ofmarketplaces you say, where they can be
sociable and exchange ideas.
If you get that wrong, you cansignificantly damage the potential for
creativity by just limiting theenvironment in which it can happen.
(31:52):
So it's really important.
I think the built environment, the naturalenvironment are really important to
creativity.
Yeah.
It's like the genius loci, the placesthemselves have their own creed and they
can inspire their own genius as well.
Just a couple of quick, back to theclassic, so quick fires, we just start to
finish up now.
Is there a book you've personally beenreading just now that has just kind of got
(32:15):
you thinking differently?
And if anyone is interested in maybecreativity, innovation, technology, future
trends, where the world may be going, isthere one book you would recommend people
check out just now?
If I'm absolutely honest, I tend not toread books about those kinds of technology
developments.
I prefer to talk to people, but I ought toread the tech press.
(32:38):
There's a lot going on in the tech press,which I find very inspiring.
And I tend to read fiction.
So I'm reading Long Island at the moment,which I think is great.
But...
Yeah, I try not to read too many of the...
(33:00):
There are some very good ones out there,but I try not to read too many of the kind
of predictions of the future books.
Partly because I think a lot is beingwritten about AI that is not particularly
helpful.
There's a lot of hype around AI.
But of course, AI was actually a big partof AI.
Yeah, it's one of my things as I watchmore like TV shows, they have a very dark
(33:21):
view of where we're going as acivilization in the future.
And I hope that we have more interestingstorytellers.
There are some amazing things that we had,where we had Sir David Ormond on, we form
a colleague of yours, we were talkingabout the three body problem and there is
really interesting fiction going on justnow.
(33:44):
Wonderful book, so Counterintelligence,What the Secret World Can Teach Us About
Problem Solving and Creativity.
Robert Hannigan, it's been a pleasurespeaking to you.
If you want to learn more about you andyour work, I know you're heavily involved
in different universities, I think you'rein the Bletchley Trust as well.
Where can people go to learn more aboutyou?
I've got a website, roberthanigan .com, orthere are more details in the book.
(34:07):
The proceeds of the book go to Bletchley.
It's been a real pleasure, James, andthank you very much.
I think podcasts are a great way ofexploring these things.
It's probably more dynamic than books,actually, so it's great to be here.
Well Robert Hagen, thank you so much forbeing a guest on the Super Creativity
Podcast.
Thanks, James.
What can the secret world ofcounterintelligence teach us about problem
solving and creativity?
That's what my guest today and I willdiscuss.
Robert Hannigan was director of GCHQ, theUK's largest technical and cyber security
agency.
He established the UK National CyberSecurity Centre in 2016 and was
responsible for the UK's first cyberstrategy in 2009.
(00:31):
He was previously
the Prime Minister's security advisor atnumber 10 and worked closely with Tony
Blair for a decade on the Northern Irelandpeace process.
Robert is now international chairman ofBlue Voyant, a global cybersecurity
services company, and was a senior advisorto McKinsey & Co.
He is a senior fellow at the BelfastCenter at Harvard.
He is a fellow of the Institution ofEngineering and Technology in London and
(00:54):
an honorary fellow at Oxford University.
He was honored by Queen Elizabeth for hisservices to national security.
and is one of the only non -US citizens tohave received the US Intelligence
Distinguished Public Service Medal.
His new book, Counterintelligence, whichis absolutely wonderful, is about what the
secret world can teach us about problemsolving and creativity.
(01:16):
And he looks to answer a couple ofquestions.
How do you hire smart people who can worktogether to prevent terrorist attacks and
decode encrypted technology?
How do you come up with creative,counterintuitive solutions to solve major
global problems?
And how do you provide the rightenvironment for these people to thrive and
work at their best when under immensepleasure?
(01:36):
And it's my great pleasure to welcomeRobert Hannigan on the Super Creativity
Podcast today.
Welcome Robert.
Hi James, well thanks very much, very goodto be with you.
So currently what has your focus?
You've got the book is out now.
What are you currently focused on?
Yeah, so the book is out and obviously Ihave a role in Oxford which takes a lot of
time in term time and then my main focusis on cyber security obviously which is my
(02:02):
day -to -day work and that's changing veryfast and every day we see new headlines
which kind of emphasize how fast movingand how sophisticated the threat has got.
So cyber security is where I spend most ofmy thinking time.
Now in this book, I learned so manyinteresting things.
I learned a lot about Bletchley Park thatI didn't know in the work that went on
(02:23):
there and the history of GCHQ.
But there was a quote that you have righttowards, you mentioned something right at
the beginning of the book, which I thoughtwas interesting.
The other day I was in Austin in Texas andI was speaking and this sounds very
strange compared to what we'd probably betalking about, but...
was speaking for a company thatmanufactures the ingredients for bread and
(02:45):
pastries and chocolates.
And while I was there, I met a gentlemanwho was the sourdough librarian for this
company.
His job is to keep the sourdoughs of all,he goes around the world collecting
sourdoughs from these amazing places andhe has a library of this.
And in the book, earlier on, you see this,you talk about the work of...
(03:06):
of Bletchley Park and the GCHQ is lessabout mapping the DNA of Bletchley Park
and more like identifying the ingredientsof a digital sourdough starter, a messy
blended fermentation that constantlychanges, that is never entirely within the
baker's control, but nonetheless producessomething entirely surprising.
So my first question I had for you is,what are the good ingredients for someone
(03:30):
that's working in counterintelligence andhas that changed over the years?
So I love the idea of a sourdoughlibrarian, that sounds fantastic.
And Austin, Texas is a great exampleactually of tech innovation at the moment,
as I'm sure you saw when you were there.
What I was trying to answer, and I didn'twant to write one of these prescriptive
books that says do X, Y, and Z, and youwill have creativity, because I just don't
(03:53):
think it works like that.
I was trying to answer the question of howwas it that Bletchley Park, which was this
not particularly impressive.
country house in the English countrysidewhere they gathered to break codes during
the Second World War and to solve one bigproblem which was how do you decrypt and
(04:15):
then use a massive amount of interceptedradio material that was coming into
Bletchley and then get it out fast enoughfor commanders to use.
So that was the problem they were tryingto solve.
But in solving it, they
created the world's first digitalprogrammable computer colossus.
(04:35):
And so in that problem solving process,there was this immense creativity and
everything we now have.
So what we're communicating on ourlaptops, our iPhones and so on, you trace
their lineage back to Bletchley Parkreally.
And so I wanted to explore, so how didthat happen?
(04:55):
And to come to your sourdough analogy,
Many people at the time describedBletchley as an asylum, as rudderless, as
full of crazy people.
It wasn't, they thought, structured andhierarchical in the way it should have
been.
And so what were the ingredients?
Well, the ingredients were, of course, thepeople.
And it was this amazing mixture of people.
(05:17):
Not just mathematicians, not just AlanTuring types, if he is a type, the famous
people, but predominantly women.
So 76 % of the staff of Bletchley werewomen.
Most were young, most were under 30.
So you were quite old if you were over 30and you were ancient if you were over 40
at Bletchley.
But it wasn't just mathematicians andacademics, it was people from
(05:40):
manufacturing, from banking, fromdepartment stores, from the telecoms
world.
And it was putting those people togetherboth as disciplines and as individual ways
of thinking.
And we might come onto neurodiversity.
But that's where the magic and thecreativity came from.
And I think that's closer to a sourdoughstarter than it is to any kind of business
(06:02):
book which tells you, do this, this, andthis, and you'll get creativity.
The thing I found really interesting, andyou talk about this towards more towards
the end of the book, but it's actually,it's a bit of a thread that kind of goes
through is what you mentioned, likeneurodiversity.
And we'll kind of come back to that.
But there were lots of, we're talkingabout this building this kind of culture
and there was lots of very interestingcharacters where the Bletchley Park and
(06:23):
obviously now in GCHQ.
One of the ones that made me laugh wasearly on you talked about Dilly Knox, I
think was the name and Rym Forty at theold Admiralty.
he decided to do something a little bitunusual, something to help his creative
process, which I actually, I do today aswell.
(06:46):
So can you share what that was?
Yeah, and Billy Knox was an amazingcharacter, but he did a lot of his
thinking in the bath.
So he had a bathtub put into the oldAdmiralty building in Whitehall.
And then when he moved nearly 20 yearslater to Bletchley Park, he had a bathtub
put into the cottage there and he wassitting in it for hours and hours at a
(07:09):
time.
So much so actually in Bletchley that oneof his colleagues thought he had drowned
and broke the door down.
So...
wasn't just an affectation.
He didn't just occasionally go and have abath.
He would find it a good place to think.
And we now know from neurological researchquite a lot about the effects of warm
water, water in general, on the brain.
(07:31):
So he wasn't wrong.
He described it as, bathing helps me withthe perception of analogies.
So not exactly sure what that means, butwe think it...
closest to a kind of lateral thinking,making connections in the brain that
wouldn't otherwise surface.
And he was a very passionate, slightlyirascible character.
(07:58):
And so the calming environment of a bathprobably helped as well, helped him focus
his thinking.
But it's a nice example of something whichno corporation would naturally think of
doing.
So.
tolerating that kind of eccentricityfrankly is one of the interesting
challenges for an organization,particularly a company, trying to engender
(08:21):
creativity.
You've got to be allowed, you've got toallow people to work in the way that they
want to up to a point.
And his is a kind of extreme example.
He's also a great example.
you got inspiration from that from, I wasrecently in a place called Ortesia, near
Syracuse in Italy.
(08:41):
And about two and a half thousand yearsago, there was a king hero, his name, and
he was trying to figure out a problem.
And he did like what I guess many
business senior people do today as theybring in a management consultant.
And the management consultant wasArchimedes and we heard the story of like
the bath and jumping at the bath, Eureka.
So I wonder if he was, had a bit of anArchimedes thing kind of going on there as
(09:04):
well.
Yeah, maybe, and he was a classicisthimself, so he would have known the work
of Archimedes well.
And of course, that was a brilliantscientific breakthrough in itself, giving
him the idea of the volume, measuringvolume.
But yeah, a good example of a non-mathematician, everything's computing and
is about mathematics, but in his case, hewas a papirologist.
(09:27):
So he spent much of his career trying topiece together these little fragments of
papyrus that have been found in the sandsof Egypt around mid to late 19th century.
And he tried to put these together torestore the poetry that was written on
them.
And I think the interesting thing aboutthat is the puzzling theme that runs
(09:48):
through the book.
All these people loved puzzles.
And for him, the puzzle actually wasn'tabout, it wasn't like a jigsaw, it wasn't
just finding little bits of papyrus andmaking them put together, though that
helped.
The real puzzle was that
The people writing the poems on these bitsof papyrus weren't the original authors.
So they were copying them out two, threecenturies later.
(10:09):
And so the challenge for him was to workout the mistakes they'd made.
So these were scribes who were oftenbored, didn't really understand what they
were copying, didn't really care verymuch, made mistakes, human error.
And there are big lessons in codebreaking.
So a lot of the progress that was made inBletchley Park in breaking German codes
was about understanding the people at theother end.
(10:30):
and the mistakes they were making, thehuman errors.
Same is true now in cyber security.
It's trying to understand the human errorsin cyber security, defense and offense.
So he's a good example around it.
When you think of when people think ofBletchley Park, they often think of the
movie kind of highlighting Alan Turing andI always kind of push against it and I
(10:54):
sense that you kind of pushed against alittle bit in the book, although it was
amazing telling that story and it broughtto attention the work of Bletchley Park to
a wider group of people.
But my bugbear, I guess, with that wasalways that it kind of does the whole lone
creative genius.
thing.
And in the book, you talk about really,that's, that's kind of not how it worked.
(11:17):
So I mean, maybe you can give us someideas in terms of what at that point, when
they're breaking these codes, what wasaround, for example, Alan Turing, who was
he, who was he working with?
How was the collaboration side workingthere?
So you're absolutely right, James.
I mean, the Imitation Game was great forthe profile of Bletchley Park and actually
big increase in visitor numbers in theyears that followed.
(11:39):
So I'm not knocking it, but it was veryHollywood.
It was all about good and bad, goodies andbaddies in Bletchley.
And it was also all about this, as yousay, this lone, solitary genius.
Now, no question Turing was a genius byany measure, but he wasn't a loner in his
work.
He very much worked as part of a team.
And in Breaking Enigma, he relied veryheavily on the fantastic work of Polish
(12:03):
mathematicians before the war, of Frenchmathematicians, and he acknowledged all
that.
And then those around him in Bletchleywere absolutely critical to him.
So he wasn't this sort of lone person whojust crapped it.
And the other thing I think that doesn'tquite come across in the film is Joan
Clarke, who's sometimes fiance for, wasn'tfor very long, but...
(12:24):
who was a really talented codebreaker inher own right and mathematician.
And after the war, she went on to work atGCHQ until the 1970s.
And in fact, just as she was working oncounter -UVOTE, counter -submarine work in
Bletchley with Turing, she ended upworking against Argentine submarines in
the Falklands War in 1982.
(12:45):
So she had a remarkable career in her ownright.
And she wasn't just the fiance of AlanTuring.
So the film gets lots of things wrong.
But overall, as you say, it was great forthe profile.
There was another type of, you mentionedthe relationship with him and his fiancee
wife at one point as well, was in the US,you have the National Security Agency,
(13:08):
which I guess is the equivalent of ourGCHQ in the UK.
And you talk about Elizabeth and WilliamFriedman there.
I believe that William Friedman was thefounder of America's NSA.
But you talked about how, I use this termcreative pairs.
They can operate it, they had verydifferent.
ways of looking at problems andchallenges, but they can lent something to
(13:31):
each other.
Can you talk about that relationship?
I thought that was that was interestingwhen I'd like to maybe kind of learn a
little bit, go and maybe read a little bitmore about that couple.
Yeah, so there's some wonderful books onthem, actually.
And there's a wonderful parallel storygoing on in the US alongside what's
happening in the First World War in the UKand then Bletchley Park.
And at the same time, these big charactersemerge.
(13:54):
So William and Elizabeth Friedman, as in away, the founders of US code breaking, US
cryptology.
And they met in this weird
scientific research establishment inChicago and outside Chicago just before
the First World War and it was run by anincredible man who's worth reading about
(14:18):
but called George Fabian who had thisobsession, had lots of obsessions, but one
of his obsessions was that Shakespeareplays weren't really written by
Shakespeare.
They were written by Francis Bacon and sohe hired all these people to try to prove
this and in trying to prove it, so Williamand Elizabeth.
met, spent the rest of their life togetherand they conclusively established that
(14:44):
actually Francis Bacon hadn't writtenthese and it wasn't in secret code, much
to George Fabian's disappointment.
But they're an amazing couple because Ithink you're right, they complement each
other.
Elizabeth had her own career in the 30sagainst smuggling during the prohibition
era and it's only actually in this centurythat her contribution has been recognised
(15:05):
by the
US government and by Congress inparticular, she tended to get overshadowed
by William.
But actually, William himself would havebeen the first to say she was an amazing
codebreaker in her own right.
So these partnerships are important.
And there's an interesting story about thetwo of them in the First World War, trying
to break up a particular machine that hadbeen given them to test the British
(15:27):
machine, actually.
And William asks Elizabeth to close hereyes.
and say the first thing, clear her mind,say the first thing that comes into her
head when he says a particular word.
And she gets it right, of course.
And they put that down to gender,actually.
They said maybe there's a different way oflooking at this.
(15:49):
Williams was very structured, hers wasmore creative and fluid.
Yeah, it may or may not be right, but it'scertainly true, as you say, James, that
partnerships sparking off each other,teamwork is absolutely essential to
creativity.
it isn't on the whole a solitary pursuit.
And then towards maybe the last quarter ofthe book, you move into talking about kind
(16:14):
of just picking up on that, about gender,but also talking about diversity of
thought and also wider, likeneurodiversity as well.
There was one stat in it that really blewmy mind that we find here one in four
people that work at GCHQ areneurodivergent, which I thought was
fascinating.
And then as you're kind of getting intothis,
(16:37):
You were just talking about peopleobviously with autism.
My father is a musician and he hassynesthesia.
So he sees musical notes as certain colorsand you talk about that and the benefit of
that for code breakers as well.
You mentioned briefly, I think in Israelthey have a, I think it's called Unit
9900, which is made up of people withspecific, the forms of neurodivergence.
(17:04):
So tell us, as you were kind ofresearching and kind of learned,
learning about it.
Was this just something you were kind ofpicking up on because you were just around
different people at the time you were kindof noticing this pattern?
Or was there something else that kind ofled you down this path to want to
investigate this area more?
I'm fascinated by this area and althoughif you look at Bletchley Park there were
lots of people who were clearlyneurodivergent.
(17:27):
It wasn't called that in those days,tended to be seen as eccentricity or just
oddness.
But when I got to GCHQ and I'd spent 15years in and around it before I became
director, I would just met more and morestaff who had really interesting views of
the world and perceptions of the world.
and I started to talk to them and then toresearch more about what neurodiversity
(17:51):
was and just how diverse it is actually,as you say, the synesthesia is a
fascinating example of how the brain worksand shows how little we understand about
it.
But I give one example in the book where Iwas chatting to someone who was
overlooking the car park and the buildingof GCHQ's headquarters is a donut -shaped
building.
(18:11):
It's very similar to what Apple have nowdone in Cupertino.
And round it is this massive car park.
And looking out at this every day, hewould say, he felt compelled to organize
that and explain the distribution of cars.
Whereas to the rest of us, we wouldprobably just accept, well, people park
and they get out and they go into work.
(18:33):
He felt this compulsion to systematizethat.
And of course he was right.
It wasn't random.
So this is about putting order into theworld and finding patterns.
And he was absolutely right because notonly was there a computer program booking
system for the car park, which wascomplex, but all the trends of economics,
of car sales, of where people lived, oftheir school runs, all those things
(18:58):
influenced the organization of those carsaround the building.
And while the rest of us might just noteven think about it, he felt a compulsion
to explain it every day.
And I think...
That is interesting in itself, but it'salso a massive advantage in a creative
team to have people who think like that,who are systematizing brains, if you like,
(19:21):
and all the other neurodivergent traitsthat are explored in the book, all of
which blended with other people in a teamcan be massively powerful.
And one of GCSQ's of the secret world'sgreat strength has been able to value that
and say, these people are not a problem.
they're a huge advantage.
They may need extra support, they may needunderstanding, they may need the right
(19:45):
conditions in which to work, but actuallythey're a fantastic asset.
And you give the Israeli example, I mean,I think, I'm not sure I'd go as far as
saying we need to employ certain types ofneurodivergence in certain jobs, but for
sure the blend of these different types ofthinking and ways of looking at the world
is massively powerful in creativity.
(20:06):
What advice would you give if someone'slistening to this just now?
Maybe they're, I said they're not in theworld, most of us not in the world of the
counter intelligence and code breaking andthings like that.
But we do have to manage people, often inlarge organizations, you're managing a big
mix.
You have, you know, you make your diversepeople within the organization.
You also have generational differences.
(20:28):
I know a lot of leaders I speak to, theysaid they really, they struggle with
figuring out, you know,
everything from Baby Boomers to Gen Z toGen X to millennials, like working with
them.
What can management more broadly learnfrom the way that organisations like GCHQ
manage that diversity of employees?
(20:50):
That's a great question, James, and it'sthe one I get asked most often by board
level people and managers.
And I think three, just three quickexamples.
I mean, one is around recruitment.
The way most companies recruit staffmilitates against those kinds of people
because they're very often very openquestions designed to explore competence,
(21:14):
competencies.
That is the worst possible.
kind of interview for many people withneurodivergent conditions who need
something much more structured.
So thinking about and getting advice onhow you recruit is really important.
Once you've recruited people who areneurodivergent, you need to support them.
So that might be very practical thingslike computer programs that help them, but
(21:37):
it may also just be really good linemanagement.
You have to invest a lot of time.
And you have to accept that there's goingto be some disruption.
And one of the interesting things aboutBletchley is that the first leader of
Bletchley, Alastair Denniston, spent a lotof his time protecting his staff from
criticism from outside, particularly fromsenior military and Whitehall, who would
(21:58):
say, you know, these people are scruffy,they're too young, they're arrogant,
they're telling me what to do, they don'trespect authority, you need to do
something about it.
and he would push back and say, no, you'vegot to accept that if you want the amazing
things they're doing, you've got to acceptsome of the difficulties that come along
(22:20):
the way in this unusual group of people,as he put it.
That takes courage in a leadershipmanagement context.
So yeah, there are definitely some lessonson how to do it, practical and cultural.
One of the ones that I read, which I'dnever seen before, where you talked about,
you called it tea parties, wherebletchily, because of the work of the
(22:41):
shift system, they work in these shiftsall the time, someone would come in and
they would sit and they would write down,challenge an idea, something up on a, it
could be an equation up on a board, awhite board.
And the next team that were coming in, canalmost kind of look at that idea and pick
it apart or figure it out, or that wouldmaybe spark them as well.
(23:01):
Do you, without going into any confidence,what is the modern, is there a modern
equivalent of that to ensure that you'reusing this hive mind, this collective
consciousness well?
Yeah, it's an absolutely key part of theculture of lecture that's been carried
through GCHQ to the current momentactually.
(23:22):
And there are two sides to it really.
One is having those opportunities forpeople to discuss and feed in informally
their thoughts about how to do thingsbetter.
And the second key thing is to stop thatbeing hierarchical.
So there was always a principle in GCHQthat any member of staff, so getting on
for 10 ,000 at some periods, couldapproach the director.
(23:43):
directly through email.
Now that could be a burden at times, butactually it's really important.
And it goes back to the power of youngpeople as well.
But actually, most people, as I said, wereunder 30.
And you have to accept that some of themwill have absolutely brilliant
groundbreaking ideas and be able to dothings that all their senior distinguished
(24:04):
colleagues haven't thought of or haven'tbeen able to do.
And to allow that to happen, you've got tohave some...
parties as they were called at Bletchley,we would call them something different in
modern GCSE but get different disciplinestogether to discuss problems.
But you've also got to allow the mostjunior, youngest people to have their
(24:25):
ideas and have their say because that'soften where the magic comes from and
there've been some good examples post-Bletchley of exactly that happening with
people straight out of university comingup with amazing, amazing cryptological
solutions.
Now you also said something in the bookwhich I thought was interesting in light
of what's going on in many organizationstoday where, you know, the general thing
(24:48):
is, you know, don't talk about politics,don't talk about religion, you know,
there's certain things in manyorganizations that they don't talk about.
But I thought it was quite interestingthat in terms of like politics, talking
about these ideas does seem to be quiteopen within the organization.
I don't know where that just came from.
(25:08):
a Bletchley thing or if that's morerecent, because I know that many
organizations, they tend to stay, youknow, let's keep all that very separate,
but you seem to embrace it in some ways.
Yeah, I think so.
I mean, I wouldn't go overboard on partypolitics, I think.
So it's important that these areapolitical organizations and it's written
into the law actually that those runningthese agencies must be apolitical and
(25:33):
implement within the law, implement thewishes of the government of the day.
But I think what's different about thesecret world is you are not allowed to
take anything home.
So you can't take your work home.
You can't discuss your work at home withyour family and friends.
And so there's a kind of world insidewhich you're working where you have to
(25:53):
have an outlet for some things.
And if you're thinking of the ethics ofintelligence gathering and intrusion into
privacy that goes with intelligenceagencies, it's really important that
people can express any ethical concernsand discuss them and have them addressed.
You don't want to have that kind ofbubbling away.
It's also important to make sure that wemaintain the highest ethical standards and
(26:18):
a huge amount of effort goes intoadherence to the law, into legal advice,
but also into ethical considerations.
So giving staff an outlet to discuss thatis really important.
One of the parallels in the book is withthe John Lewis partnership.
So we'll meet a lot of people in the UKand not so much outside, but it's a
mutual, a very successful
(26:41):
department store and grocers.
And they had pioneered this in the earlypart of the last century for their staff
and they have a gazette which still existsI think where people would express their
views on all sorts of things.
And one of the key people at Bletchleycame from there and indeed there was a big
interchange between the two organizationsover the years.
(27:03):
But one of them inherited a lot of thesemanagement processes and brought them into
Bletchley, which is
probably part of why they were sosuccessful, but who would have thought it
would come from a department store.
And the other thing I think most of thetime that I know you and I, we speak at
different conferences, different publicevents, or for companies.
(27:25):
And in my role, I'm usually the, I guess,the tech optimist.
You talk about utopians.
I'm usually painting a more utopianpicture of, I kind of talk about the
dangers, but probably 80 % of what I'msharing is these are amazing things that
are going to happen.
You know, in
in GCH QAnon and those services is almostlike that is flipped.
(27:50):
And your job is to look at the dangers,the risks in these things, how these
things will affect it.
So is this an organization of pessimistsor is it just clear eyed folks that are
there?
That's a really interesting questionbecause obviously they're mostly tech
people themselves or interested andinspired by technology.
(28:11):
So it's an organisation of optimists whoare enthused and excited about the
technology as you are yourself, James.
I guess that what makes a difference isthat their job is to focus on the bad
things that could happen.
So what are bad people with bad intentionsgoing to do with this technology in the
future?
Because technology itself is kind ofethically neutral on the whole.
(28:33):
It's all about what people do with it andhow will it be abused is a question which
the big tech companies are never going toput front and center, partly because
they're utopians, they're optimists,partly because it doesn't make commercial
sense.
You don't spend a lot of money developinga product, push it out and say, by the
way, we're worried that this might be,might have to do it.
(28:55):
So take social media, for example.
They've spent 30 years saying, this isgreat building communities, connecting
people, all that fantastic stuff.
But they haven't said, well, all the badthings that can be done with it from
election interference through to theimpact on teenagers.
(29:15):
Those are things which have kind of beenforced on them.
And so I think getting the balance right,I mean, overall, I am an optimist too.
And I think, primarily, I would say,technological advances are fantastic and
they're bringing human progress forward atan incredible rate, or as you know, better
than anyone.
But to do that completely without lookingat the downsides is a real risk.
(29:39):
And so it's quite useful to have someagencies whose job is to look at how
things might be abused in the future.
Now bringing it back to your own work, asI was reading it, I was thinking, you're
just touching on AI, you're just touchingon quantum computing.
And I thought, is this where the nextbook's perhaps gonna go for you?
(30:01):
But where do you go to get creativeinspiration?
You mentioned in the book about the donut,GCHQ, has a garden in the middle, which I
love the idea of that.
We often get inspiration when we're out innature, or where that color green is
around us.
but also you have these open plan officeswhich I know for some people can cause
real stress, especially if you're morequiet person.
So you have what they call caves andmarketplaces.
(30:24):
But for you, where do you go to getinspired?
Where do you go to think about these bigideas and ways of solving them and
actually in your writing as well?
So I do go outside, I do like to be out innature.
I do find that inspiring.
I also find talking to people, wanderingaround, just seeing what they're doing
(30:45):
inspiring, which is a very, literally,DTHQ thing to do, actually, just to kind
of wander around and chat to people.
I'm not sure that you can prescribe that,different people find different things
good for their creativity, from baths, asyou said earlier, to sitting in a garden.
if you're lucky enough to have a gardenthat's accessible, not everybody does.
(31:07):
I mean, your point about mathematiciansand what they need is something that's
kind of occupied a lot of my time, both atGCSQ and also now I'm in a university in
Oxford and we think a lot about thearchitecture, how that helps or hinders
academics to think.
And there have been some wonderfulexamples of institutions for
mathematicians which try to blend that.
(31:30):
time alone that they need, almost a kindof monastic cell to go and think.
But the interchange of ideas, the sort ofmarketplaces you say, where they can be
sociable and exchange ideas.
If you get that wrong, you cansignificantly damage the potential for
creativity by just limiting theenvironment in which it can happen.
(31:52):
So it's really important.
I think the built environment, the naturalenvironment are really important to
creativity.
Yeah.
It's like the genius loci, the placesthemselves have their own creed and they
can inspire their own genius as well.
Just a couple of quick, back to theclassic, so quick fires, we just start to
finish up now.
Is there a book you've personally beenreading just now that has just kind of got
(32:15):
you thinking differently?
And if anyone is interested in maybecreativity, innovation, technology, future
trends, where the world may be going, isthere one book you would recommend people
check out just now?
If I'm absolutely honest, I tend not toread books about those kinds of technology
developments.
I prefer to talk to people, but I ought toread the tech press.
(32:38):
There's a lot going on in the tech press,which I find very inspiring.
And I tend to read fiction.
So I'm reading Long Island at the moment,which I think is great.
But...
Yeah, I try not to read too many of the...
(33:00):
There are some very good ones out there,but I try not to read too many of the kind
of predictions of the future books.
Partly because I think a lot is beingwritten about AI that is not particularly
helpful.
There's a lot of hype around AI.
But of course, AI was actually a big partof AI.
Yeah, it's one of my things as I watchmore like TV shows, they have a very dark
(33:21):
view of where we're going as acivilization in the future.
And I hope that we have more interestingstorytellers.
There are some amazing things that we had,where we had Sir David Ormond on, we form
a colleague of yours, we were talkingabout the three body problem and there is
really interesting fiction going on justnow.
(33:44):
Wonderful book, so Counterintelligence,What the Secret World Can Teach Us About
Problem Solving and Creativity.
Robert Hannigan, it's been a pleasurespeaking to you.
If you want to learn more about you andyour work, I know you're heavily involved
in different universities, I think you'rein the Bletchley Trust as well.
Where can people go to learn more aboutyou?
I've got a website, roberthanigan .com, orthere are more details in the book.
(34:07):
The proceeds of the book go to Bletchley.
It's been a real pleasure, James, andthank you very much.
I think podcasts are a great way ofexploring these things.
It's probably more dynamic than books,actually, so it's great to be here.
Well Robert Hagen, thank you so much forbeing a guest on the Super Creativity
Podcast.
Thanks, James.
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