Richard Dearlove

For 38 years, Sir Richard Dearlove worked inside Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, learning how states gather information, assess risk and make decisions when facts are incomplete and consequences severe.

He became Chief of MI6 in 1999 and the years that followed transformed the intelligence landscape. Dearlove led the Service through the aftermath of 9/11, the war in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq, as international terrorism moved to the centre of Western security policy.

Dearlove joined MI6 in 1966 and spent much of the Cold War working overseas, with postings in Nairobi, Prague, Paris, Geneva and Washington. By the time he became Chief, he had served as Director of Operations and held responsibility for the Service’s administration and personnel. His career therefore spanned both the final decades of Cold War espionage and the emergence of the security challenges that followed it.

Today, Dearlove is a prominent commentator on the return of great-power competition and the growing pressure on Western intelligence systems. His recent work has focused increasingly on Russia, China, cyber vulnerability and the implications of artificial intelligence for espionage and national security.

His argument on AI is particularly revealing of his approach. He does not see technology as replacing human judgement. Instead, he has argued that powerful capabilities require oversight, while intelligence organisations must understand both hostile states and private actors developing them. In an era of deepfakes, cyber attacks and AI-enabled intelligence gathering, Dearlove believes the boundary between national security and wider societal resilience is becoming harder to maintain.

Since leaving MI6, Richard Dearlove has brought his experience into academia and public debate. He served for 11 years as Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and later chaired the University of London’s Board of Trustees for a decade.