Tri-Service
1,000 New Spies For War On Terror
MI6 is recruiting almost 1,000 spies to fight terrorism.
The recruits will increase the size of the force from 2,500 intelligence officers and analysts to nearly 3,500 by 2020.
There is no detail on what positions are being advertised but it’s believed the new members will be experts in cyber, data collection, foreign analysis and languages.
The recruitment drive comes against a backdrop of increasing threats from radical terror groups that could last for decades.
The 2014 National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review set out plans to add to the ranks of the security and intelligence agencies, with MI6, expected to receive the majority of them.
The rest are expected to be shared between MI5, GCHQ and police Counter Terrorism Command.
The head of MI6, Alex Younger, made a rare public appearance alongside counterparts from the US, Australia and Canada in Washington DC.
He didn’t mention the recruitment drive but said the “enduring” danger of terrorism would exist for a long time, he said: "I would like to be optimistic about this but we have got quite long experience of this phenomena now and I see it very much as the flip side to some very deep-seated global trends, not least of all globalisation, the reduction of barriers between us."
"It's a function also of the information revolution and the capacity for ideas to travel. It is fuelled by a deepening sectarian divide in the Middle East and there are some deep social economic and demographic drivers to the phenomenon that we know as terrorism.”
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