Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Female spies of MI6

ft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 182 posts

Re: Female spies of MI6

#31

Post by etrevino »

thefounder wrote: post #19
s5300 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Between a duty to family & country, which should truly come first in our short lives? Had her children ever accidentally found out at near any time in their lives, they may have never been able to trust their mother again - severing what arguably should be one of the strongest bonds one can have. Would you (rhetorically) find it reasonable that she, or anybody with children, is required to live with that thought in t…

Lol. It's supposed that one of them (i.e the mother) should behave like and adult and own it. Of course nobody forced her to choose serving her country but I believe in this case she failed both her duty to family & country. It's just proof that not all the people are up for this job. I remeber when my brother spilled the beans on a "family secret" to some close family friends in front of my mother...good that was ju…

> Lol. It's supposed that one of them (i.e the mother) should behave like and adult and own it. Of course nobody forced her to choose serving her country but I believe in this case she failed both her duty to family & country.

> It's just proof that not all the people are up for this job.

It's understood that family members will know to some extent. If nothing else, this is so that they know to be wary of security threats many people would otherwise ignore. She's almost certainly not sharing details of operations, she's instead sharing with her daughters why things are the way they are in their household.

I've said in other comments, this is another world and the concerns here are different. It's not like it is in the movies.

Again, that family members will know to some extent is understood, which is why she felt comfortable admitting it in the interview, otherwise she would have lost her job and the article would have been kiboshed by the security services.

Re: Female spies of MI6

#32

Post by icare_1er »

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #27

> For the first time ever, SIS officers reveal why women often make the best spies for our times I was unable to find where this was answered in the article. It also reads like the author relied mostly on novels, movies, and such instead on a the interview. Women spies have been around just as much, if not longer - Virginia Hall, Mata Hari, Jane Whorwood, Elizabeth Van Lew, Anne Dawson, Violette Szabo. Going even fur…

"> For the first time ever, SIS officers reveal why women often make the best spies for our times"

--> If that were true, should those spies be paid more than their not-as-good male counterparts ? And if yes, should the gap-salary which would follow, be then gapped by hiring more men as top spy positions despite their lower performances ?

Re: Female spies of MI6

#33

Post by bell-cot »

Proposed Adage: "Cognitus' Law of Headlines" ("cognitus" from Latin for known, recognized, acknowledged - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cognitus#Latin )

Similar to Betteridge's law of headlines ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline... ), this proposed adage states:

"Any time that something is referred to as 'Secret' in a headline, it is not actually secret at all."

Re: Female spies of MI6

#34

Post by chimprich »

jacquesm wrote: post #26
LilBytes wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on this article, Bond Q came first.

Interesting. Fleming actually worked for Naval Intelligence, I always thought he took those terms from there. The 'M' allegedly came from his mom.

According to my fallible memory and the probably more reliable wiki article [0] Q was based on Charles Fraser Smith, who came up with "Q devices". So this might be a feedback loop between art and life. Assuming that "Q" really is called "Q" internally, and that's not just publicity / misdirection...

I can recommend CFS's book "The Secret War of Charles Fraser-Smith" about his wartime experiences in sourcing and creating items for clandestine operations. Likely of interest to many HN readers.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_(James_Bond)

Re: Female spies of MI6

#35

Post by ClumsyPilot »

thefounder wrote: post #19
s5300 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Between a duty to family & country, which should truly come first in our short lives? Had her children ever accidentally found out at near any time in their lives, they may have never been able to trust their mother again - severing what arguably should be one of the strongest bonds one can have. Would you (rhetorically) find it reasonable that she, or anybody with children, is required to live with that thought in t…

Lol. It's supposed that one of them (i.e the mother) should behave like and adult and own it. Of course nobody forced her to choose serving her country but I believe in this case she failed both her duty to family & country. It's just proof that not all the people are up for this job. I remeber when my brother spilled the beans on a "family secret" to some close family friends in front of my mother...good that was ju…

> I believe in this case she failed both her duty to family & country.

So you likely never had to handle top secret information and couldn't spy his way out of a paper bag, has just declared that one of the most successful spies is a failure.

So typical.

Re: Female spies of MI6

#36

Post by bell-cot »

thefounder wrote: post #9

>> When her children were teenagers, Rebecca decided to tell them that she was a spy. “They were super sensible, and I judged the information wasn’t going to be a burden for them, that they wouldn’t tell everybody.” Is Rebecca still working there?

> While I was writing this piece, Rebecca retired from MI6.

Re: Female spies of MI6

#37

Post by martopix »

giantg2 wrote: post #11
thefounder wrote: post #9

>> When her children were teenagers, Rebecca decided to tell them that she was a spy. “They were super sensible, and I judged the information wasn’t going to be a burden for them, that they wouldn’t tell everybody.” Is Rebecca still working there?

Yeah... not a good idea. That's the type of info you might divulge on your deathbed to adult children. Absolutely insane to tell teens while still working there.

How do you know what the rules are? How do you know what the teenagers in questions were like? I find these comments astonishing. We literally know nothing about them, the family, "Rebecca" herself, her job, the rules behind it; how can anyone speak with such confidence and think they know better than her and her bosses?

Re: Female spies of MI6

#38

Post by ClumsyPilot »

etrevino wrote: post #24
giantg2 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah... not a good idea. That's the type of info you might divulge on your deathbed to adult children. Absolutely insane to tell teens while still working there.

I can speak as someone who was in the same situation as the teens. This is about the time that the kids begin to cotton on to the fact that things aren't quite right. Really, this is the point at which the parent has to start lying (as opposed to saying something like "oh I work for the government") or trust to their children's discretion. The kids' entire raising up to this point has normalized strong patriotism and…

Other commenters hwre seem to think that everyone else in the family is an idiot and will never catch on, despite living together for decades.

This will lead to family suspecting their mother of cheating or crime.n

Re: Female spies of MI6

#39

Post by the_af »

martopix wrote: post #30
WaitWaitWha wrote: post #27

> For the first time ever, SIS officers reveal why women often make the best spies for our times I was unable to find where this was answered in the article. It also reads like the author relied mostly on novels, movies, and such instead on a the interview. Women spies have been around just as much, if not longer - Virginia Hall, Mata Hari, Jane Whorwood, Elizabeth Van Lew, Anne Dawson, Violette Szabo. Going even fur…

> I was unable to find where this was answered in the article. For example here it makes an explicit point: "The UK’s main adversaries today — China, Russia, Iran and North Korea — are repressive societies with few women in positions of power. For the female spy, this weakness in the enemy is exploitable. Precisely because they are so likely to be overlooked, women have the potential to be the best spies of all." > p…

> "The UK’s main adversaries today — China, Russia, Iran and North Korea — are repressive societies with few women in positions of power."

(I know this is from TFA, not written by you)

At least Russia and North Korea have women in positions of power, so it seems disingenuous to lump them together with Iran, at the very least. I'm unsure about China now, but there used to be very influential Chinese women.

Also, Russia mastered the art of using women in intelligence (and sure, honeytraps), particularly because the West also tends to overlook them. Or are we going to pretend it's only our enemies that do this, as if the battle for equality was already won on our side?

Re: Female spies of MI6

#40

Post by arethuza »

jacquesm wrote: post #26
LilBytes wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on this article, Bond Q came first.

Interesting. Fleming actually worked for Naval Intelligence, I always thought he took those terms from there. The 'M' allegedly came from his mom.

His elder brother Peter's ideas around "irregular warfare" influenced Colin Gubbins who led SOE:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Fleming_(writer)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Gubbins

Post reply on HN