Unlike the alphabet, M comes after Q: MI6 Chief on ‘grey zone’ warfare.

December 15, 2025 4:31 PM Subscribe

New Head of MI6 Gives First Statement Blaise Metreweli, the 18th Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (aka MI6) and the first woman in the role (known in fiction as ‘M’), warned that the world is now "operating in a space between peace and war". She previously served as the Director General of Technology and Innovation—the service’s real-life equivalent of ‘Q’—making her transition a significant comment on modern espionage.

Metreweli outlined how Russia is "testing us in the grey zone" with tactics just below the threshold of war, stating MI6 would respond by "sharpen[ing] our edge and impact with audacity, tapping into – if you like – our historical SOE instincts". This refers to the wartime Special Operations Executive (SOE) that Winston Churchill ordered to "set Europe ablaze".

That historical instinct matters again now — but in very different terrain. The aggressive posture is needed to counter cyber-attacks and state-sanctioned sabotage. The line that stood out to many was her stressing that Moscow’s strategy of fueling instability is deliberate: "The export of chaos is a feature, not a bug in this Russian approach to international engagement". The new ‘C’ also emphasized that MI6 must now be "as comfortable with lines of code as we are with human sources". This push signals an increasing convergence of roles, encroaching on the traditionally technical domain of its sister Service GCHQ, underscoring how blurred the boundaries between espionage, technology, and warfare have now become.