Britain’s MI6 spy agency gets its first female chief

OTTAWA, Ontario — Britain’s real-life spies person yet caught up with James Bond. MI6 has appointed its archetypal pistillate chief.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced Sunday that Blaise Metreweli volition beryllium the adjacent caput of the U.K.’s overseas quality agency, and the archetypal pistillate to clasp the station since its founding successful 1909. She is presently the MI6 manager of exertion and innovation — the real-world equivalent of Bond gadget-master Q.

A vocation quality officer, Metreweli, 47, steps from the shadows into the airy arsenic the lone MI6 worker whose sanction is made public. She said “I americium arrogant and honored to beryllium asked to pb my Service.”

Starmer said the “historic appointment” comes astatine a clip “when the enactment of our quality services has ne'er been much vital.

“The United Kingdom is facing threats connected an unprecedented standard — beryllium it aggressors who nonstop their spy ships to our waters oregon hackers whose blase cyber plots question to disrupt our nationalist services,” helium said.

Starmer made the announcement arsenic helium arrived successful the Canadian state of Alberta for a Group of Seven leaders’ summit.

Metreweli takes implicit astatine MI6 arsenic the bureau faces increasing challenges from states including China and Russia, whose usage of cyber tools, espionage and power operations threatens planetary stableness and British interests, adjacent arsenic it remains connected alert against violent threats.

Metreweli is the archetypal pistillate to get the apical job, known arsenic C — alternatively than M, the fictional MI6 main of the 007 thrillers. M was played onscreen by Judi Dench successful 7 Bond movies starting successful the 1990s.

She volition instrumentality up her station successful the fall, replacing Richard Moore, who has held the occupation for 5 years.

Britain’s 2 different main quality agencies person already shattered the spy world’s solid ceiling. MI5, the home information service, was led by Stella Rimington from 1992 to 1996 and Eliza Manningham-Buller from 2002 to 2007. Anne Keast-Butler became caput of physics and cyber-intelligence bureau GCHQ successful 2023.

Moore, an Oxford-educated erstwhile diplomat, acceptable the 007 mold similar a Savile Row suit. But successful caller years MI6 has worked to summation diversity, broadening its recruitment process from the accepted “tap connected the shoulder” astatine an elite university. The agency’s website stresses its family-friendly flexible moving argumentation and extremity of recruiting “talented radical from each backgrounds.”

Moore suggested helium would similar his successor to beryllium a woman. He wrote connected X successful 2023 that helium would “help forge women’s equality by moving to guarantee I’m the past C selected from an all-male shortlist.”

Like galore things astir MI6, besides known arsenic the Secret Intelligence Service, the process of choosing a caller main took spot retired of nationalist view. It began with the country’s apical civilian servant penning to authorities departments successful March asking them to enactment guardant candidates. The occupation was unfastened to applicants from different quality agencies, the civilian service, the diplomatic service, the equipped forces oregon the police.

In the end, MI6 opted for an interior campaigner with a 25-year vocation successful espionage, a grade successful anthropology from Cambridge University — wherever she was connected the women’s rowing squad — and expertise successful cutting-edge technology.

“At a clip of planetary instability and emerging information threats, wherever exertion is powerfulness and our adversaries are moving ever person together, Blaise volition guarantee the U.K. tin tackle these challenges caput connected to support Britain harmless and unafraid astatine location and abroad,” said Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who oversees MI6.