Mm-hmm.

A more effective targeting process means when you get to the point of trust-building, which broadly speaking is use of cover or storytelling and cultivation, it's more effective because you've got the targeting right.

So step by step, y- you get a stronger and enhanced result, uh, the compound interest effect that I'm talking about, because you've, you've done the work initially on objectives.

So one of the things I do on, um, workshops and, and, and in personal mentoring is to work with people on what their objectives are, and I have a model for that which in- which involves looking at your, um, your vision, your personal mission statement-

Wow.

I had somebody else from Mexico City.

Um, and they, they, they're run over four, uh, well, evenings in UK time, 90-minute sessions on Zoom with recordings available if you can't make it to one, uh, uh, of those four sessions.

The next one of those starts on the 30th of September, um, and the, and the booking link and all the details for that are, are on that website, theintelligencemaven.com.

When you talk about thinking like a spy, what do you actually mean?

I'm talking about human intelligence work.

So let's start off by looking at the different categories or some of the different categories of intelligence work.

There is something called OSINT, open-source intelligence, which it speaks for itself, the recovery of information perhaps through online means, which is then subjected to intelligence analysis.

That's one skill all of its own.

SIGINT, signals intelligence, or TECHINT, technical intercept, uh, which is perhaps the domain of GCHQ or the NSA in the United States, and requires a particular understanding and ability to manipulate technical capability.

And then there's human intelligence, and human intelligence is the bit that really interests me.

Do you think-- How do we, how do we, I suppose, um, unpack the ethics of influence? And also, um, are there ways to tell if somebody's trying to manipulate us?

Well, now that that's cleared up, shall we get on with it? Thailand, sometime in the early 2000s.

So actually this all starts strangely enough in Phuket, where I was charged with dealing with the wife of a man who was working somewhere in West Africa.

In fact, he was working in Gambia, I don't mind admitting that much.

And this individual who worked in the mining sector had been arrested on suspicion of spying, and I had been approached with some colleaguesTo negotiate his release.

Obviously his wife, who was based in Phuket, was beside herself with worry, and I had traveled there partly to give her reassurance and explain to her what we were doing to ensure his safety and security and to deliver him in sound body and mind in due course.

So there I was in Phuket, in between swimming in the sea and reassuring an anxious wife, when I had a phone call.

It was a bit of an unusual phone call, which asked me to travel at very short notice to another country in West Africa, not Gambia this time, but in the same region.

After Mzee took his leave of our duo, a serious conversation was in order.

Retired a colonel?

Uh, lieutenant colonel.

Um, had a background in, uh, uh, the Welsh Guards, I think I'm right in saying.

Um, m- maybe ...

Uh, my m- my, my memory may be playing tricks there.

But he, so he had a, a very fine military background.

Um, and then when he moved into the private sector, was involved in some of the early corporatized private security capabilities organizations.

[laughs]