Intelligence, Warning and Crisis

Professor Sir David Omand will examine how governments are caught by surprise. He will consider availability of detectable evidence, where and how to look for the more difficult-to-find evidence, and the extent to which evidence is understood and acted upon. He will examine the secret intelligence model for warning, before considering processes for providing strategic notice of possible developments of serious concern.
Moderator: Philippe Hayez, former Deputy Director, French External Intelligence Service ; PSIA-Sciences Po faculty member ; Scientific Advisor to the Concentration in Intelligence Studies at PSIA-Sciences Po.
David Omand is Visiting Professor in War Studies, King’s College London. He also taught a course at PSIA from 2014 to 2021. His posts in government service included UK Security and Intelligence Coordinator in the Cabinet Office, Permanent Secretary of the Home Office, Director GCHQ, and Deputy Under-Secretary of State for Policy in MOD. He served for 7 years on the Joint Intelligence Committee. He is the author of Securing the State (Hurst, 2010) and co-author with Professor Mark Phythian of Principled Spying: the Ethics of Secret Intelligence (OUP, 2018). His latest book is How Spies Think: 10 Lessons from Intelligence (Penguin, 2021).
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