David Vigneault, ex-intelligence chief: Democracies are being destabilised

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1:03Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Hello, I'm BBC presenter Evan Davis and this is the interview from the BBC World Service. The best conversations coming out of the BBC. People shaping our world from all over the world. I want to get freedom. I like their freedom. A gender equal world would be a better world for men too. We need to ceasefire. We need healing. We need trust. These companies don't really, they don't care what governments do. This is a war. The first thing that we want is a war to end. For this interview, I met David Vigneault, the former director of Canada's Intelligence Services, who came into our studio here at Broadcasting House.

1:51Between 2017 and 2024, he was responsible for the operations of CSIS, the country's foreign intelligence and security agency. This period presented a number of challenges for Vigneault and his organisation, such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the rise of AI, and an unpredictable Trump presidency across the border. You're going to hear his take on current tensions around the world, what keeps him up at night, and why cooperation is key. We are now in a different world. The kind of actions that countries like Russia and others are taking, Iran, is challenging our models. And we need to have a much, much more strategic perspective and not allow us to stay idle for too long because the world is moving too fast.

2:43Welcome to the interview from the BBC World Service with David Vigneault. You've worked in intelligence. You were, I think, right up there in Canadian intelligence, just about the time the full-on war, the Russian invasion of Ukraine took place. But I just wonder what you make of what are just an increasing number of reports of a drone here or a sabotage there or something happening there. It's just, it does feel like Russia is engaged in something. Yes, absolutely. It's unfortunate. But, you know, starting with the invasion in Georgia, then the invasion of Crimea in 2014, and then culminating, of course, with the full invasion and attack on Ukraine and with the goal of taking down Kiev in a few days.

3:33Russia has been engaged in many acts of warfare provocations and essentially it is a challenge to a way of life to a large extent. Its aggression has led countries who have changed policies like Finland and Sweden who have joined NATO after years, even during the Cold War, have been, you know, essentially wanting to be independent. From a military alliance point of view, they say, well, you know, their way of living was under attack and they needed to make those drastic changes. And you see now, you know, we have full-on warfare in Ukraine, but then we have what we call hybrid warfare activities taking place in many parts of Europe and other places.

4:18That includes arson, that includes assassinations, that includes a number of, of course, cyber attacks, that includes disinformation and also espionage activities to try to steal our technology for their war efforts. I don't know whether we really worked out how to respond to that, because obviously no one in the West wants to provoke a full on war with Russia. That's not where we'd like to go. Not over a cable cut here or, you know, a drone attack there. But on the other hand, one does feel you can't let these things go completely unpunished, can you? Because they almost seem designed to tease out, are you there?

4:55Are you going to react? Well, you need to To give it to Vladimir Putin, he has a really keen understanding of the West and leadership in our democracies. And he understands that there are limits and it takes time for democracies to adjust those limits. And we saw it in the early days, you know, with some countries said, of course, we will support Ukraine. But we were saying only defensive weapons, only, you know, military equipment, only training. But nothing, you know, that could be seen as a threat to Russia itself. Look where we are now. We're sending, you know, missile strike capabilities to strike deep inside Russia because he has allowed us to put those red lines early on that allowed him to take a lot of control over territory in Ukraine.

5:40And now, you know, his egregious actions have led governments to say, hey, we need to do more. But in that period of time, he has gained, you know, quite a bit. And I think this is one of the lessons from this, from my point of view, is that we are now in a different world. The kind of actions that countries like Russia and others are taking, Iran is challenging our models. And we need to have a much, much more strategic perspective and not allow us to stay idle for too long because the world is moving too fast. Yeah, we've talked about Russia, and we do talk a lot about Russia. We also talk about China sometimes.

6:22At the moment, China, I suppose, looks less capricious than Russia, more predictable, more stable, perhaps. But what sort of concerns do you have about China and its espionage in particular, its activities outside of China to instill discipline among communities, Chinese communities, Hong Kong communities? I like the way you put it. You said that China is more predictable and to a large extent it is because they are very transparent. You look at the policies of the Chinese Communist Party, you look at their constitution, you look at their legislation, it's very transparent because they have such a large country and such a large diaspora to try to influence around the world.

7:05So they need to be transparent. But when you look at what that means, it's quite also clear that you have a regime. So every important decision goes back to the perennity of the Chinese Communist Party. So we always need to factor that in, in terms of military, diplomacy, economic relationship. It is, you know, a system that is built to make sure the Chinese Communist Party stays in power. And everything else is a second order of magnitude for them. And so from that point of view, you look at their industrial policies. China was, you know, allowed into the World Trade organization under the premise of it was a developing country and we need to lift people from poverty, which was great.

7:45But they've weaponized that openness. They've weaponized our academic systems in the West and our technological innovation to essentially go from overt, completely acceptable commercial transactions, academic collaboration, to the dark side of cyber attack, espionage, steal of IP, and weaponize it. And essentially what we are seeing now is a all of society approach from the overt and completely legitimate approach of China to the completely unacceptable of stealing our innovations. And what I think something that is fundamental is the amount of IP of innovation has been taken intellectual property that has been taken away from the West from Great Britain from Canada at the US is essentially a lost generation of prosperity.

8:37And one thing that is also important, it's just not the amount of job losses in our society now, but also in the future. It's also that there is a very well-established system in China, a military-civil fusion commission chaired by Xi Jinping. And essentially, that commission is set up. It's an entire very complex system. Any new information, innovation, technology that comes into China is looked to the prism of can we industrialize it to create jobs and opportunities, but also is there a way to weaponize it, to essentially give new capabilities to the People's Liberation Army to essentially become a peer competitor, if not the largest military.

9:22And so when we step back and we understand that we absolutely need to work with China, we need to work with China. We want to, but we need to. People are talking about eyes wide open, but you need to have more than your eyes wide open. You need to also make sure that you're protecting your wallet in your back pocket. I'm absolutely fascinated, though, as someone working in intelligence, and you've got your Strider Technologies company now, but working for government before, would you buy and drive around in a personal life, a Chinese electric car? Yeah, that's a very interesting question. I've seen images, videos of the cars.

10:05They are cutting edge technology. They are very slick, very efficient. Personally, I would not because there are a couple of impacts. One is almost a philosophical point of view where I would not want to participate in essentially creating new prosperity in China, the expense of what we're doing in the West. So there is a personal choice there. The security choices, security considerations are also, I think, important to understand. Not too overhyped, but there is the reality that all of your data, what you say, where you go, with whom you are, who you associate with, everything you do around your car will be acquired by China.

10:44Do you think they might do that? You think they could use a car as a vehicle for spying on somebody? Oh, I think, you know, it is not a question for me. It is a reality. For years now, before the development of AI at scale, we had what we called the big data conundrum. And so for years, we have seen China acquire data by a volume that was completely not understandable by any other scenario other than they wanted to weaponize this data. By that, I mean to acquire extremely large amount of data. We've seen it through cyber attacks on insurance companies. Why would you want to steal that data? Because you get a lot of information about individuals.

11:23Another example is those cameras or, you know, those smart cities, you know, that have been put forward by Huawei. Why would you care about, you know, having those images of people in our cities? Well, we know for a fact that one of the reasons that Huawei was doing that in our countries, including in Canada, was to acquire a lot of faces and a lot of images of Caucasian people because they have mapped out completely China. They have been able to train their algorithms, you know, but they needed to expand that. So they needed a volume of data from the West. And essentially, are smart cities useful?

12:00Yes. Can smart city be used, you know, for another purpose? Absolutely. Like a Chinese electric vehicle, obviously.

12:10You're listening to The Interview from the BBC World Service.

12:45Thank you. or offer to buy, sell, or attain any specific investment or service. Lives Less Ordinary is bringing you a special series of extraordinary love stories. Roshan Sethi was an uptight Canadian doctor who couldn't come out to his Indian family. Karansani was an actor from India who felt he had to keep his sexuality a secret to make it in Hollywood. But they met, fell in love, and things began to change. They decided to make a romantic comedy based on their relationship. Lives Less Ordinary Love Stories from the BBC World Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Now I don't often get to interview people who live and work in the world of intelligence and security.

13:30My exposure to that scene is, I suppose, via fiction of sometimes a rather far-fetched nature. But what struck me about David Vigneault was just how normal he was. Yes, perhaps more than usual, he was precise in his choice of words. But nevertheless, he was just a well-dressed, smart person trying to make sense of the world like the rest of us. So let's return to my conversation with David Vigneault. AI is much in the news, both as a threat, but I also want to talk to you about it in the world of spying. Our picture of it, which is very much framed by James Bond and all of that ridiculous stuff.

14:06But to what extent is AI playing a big role now? So just to be clear, I used to engage in espionage and spying activities for my country in Canada. But now with Strider, we do open source information. So the role of AI in this context is to essentially allow us to take our 25 billion plus objects that we have acquired through open source and to try to make sense. going through our threat methodology and different languages, different formats and so on. And at scale and at speed, within minutes, bring an insight to our customer. So, for example, you're looking at a, we talked about some of the economic espionage actions.

14:51You're looking at a UK university or UK startup that is developing technology as to hire a number of the most talented people they can find both in the UK, but also from abroad? And who are these people? How do we make sure that, you know, they are not being, you know, used and instrumentalized by a country like China, for example? It's very, very complex. And I think the key thing here, lessons that I've personally drawn, the question is not China. It's not an ethnicity issue. The question is the motivation and the actions. And so it's not because you're a Chinese origin that you're a problem.

15:26It's what do you do with the information and the access you have? And I think this distinction is really important because that means you need facts, you need data. I want to ask you about Five Eyes. Now, this is an intelligence alliance of English-speaking countries, Australia, New Zealand, UK, Canada, the US. One looks at it from the outside. You know, we don't know much about what goes on in there, but it just must be very fraught at the moment. The tensions between the US and Canada, just an example of can life just go on as normal among the spooks when you've got the politicians literally kind of posting videos of one clubbing another one, for example.

16:07I mean, does that work? Well, as a Canadian, I think of fans when, you know, I see my prime minister, you know, on an ice ring playing hockey and being clubbered. So there is a personal, as a hockey player myself, I find that not too amusing. But seriously, the Five Eyes Alliance is the longest running in the history of the world. and the most extraordinary, I think, alliance of intelligence that has ever existed. It benefits our countries. It also benefits a lot of our allies, our partners we work with. So the Five Eyes Plus, Plus, Plus is what we have, because each of us in the Five Eyes have our own relationships and we are working in very close partnership.

16:51I'm not a director of the Canadian Intelligence Service anymore. I believe that my colleagues have their hands full with the threat environment that exists now. Does the political reality, political tension between countries affects the jobs? Yes. But I would say I was a director under the first Trump administration. I worked very closely with my colleagues in the US, mostly the CIA, the FBI. And there is essentially, we understand there's an ethos that we do care about the mandates that we've been given. The people, the men and women working for us in our countries and around the world in very dangerous places, don't put politics, you know, in the mix of their decision making.

17:33And from my experience, and from what I understand is going on now, operationally, intelligence sharing is continuing, people are leaving politics to politicians. Yeah, I can imagine that the intelligence officers carry on in their world, while the politicians can argue, there must occasionally be things where you think we just can't share this with the Trump administration. I mean, there are areas where we are not aligned in thinking with the Trump administration. The middle powers like Britain and Canada are much more supportive of Ukraine than is President Trump or his administration. Was that ever a concern under, you know, that we just can't share this?

18:12So I would say that any intelligence decision maker always is asking himself or herself that question, irrespective of who you're dealing with. Is it in your national interest? Is it something that, you know, you will advance, you know, the relationship and so on? So it's not just because of a specific leader or specific policy. You always ask yourself the question. And, you know, the decision making or what will be the elements of your decision making may vary over time because of your own political system or your own political leaders at that time. So I would say that it has always been the case that you're making that assessment.

18:49Maybe now there are other elements that are being into consideration by my colleagues who are making these decisions today. But I can tell you that even in the case of Ukraine, if you were to ask our American colleagues, there's still, you know, despite political positions being taken, there's still a very, very healthy intelligence exchange, including from the U.S. to Ukraine. Interesting. One we've just got at the moment is, well, Britain has, you know, announced sanctions against Israeli settlements. Canada has followed all lots of details to be filled in there. But one of the warnings that's been given is, well, hang on, you threaten a very good intelligence relationship with Israel and a very important one with Israel.

19:31Is there an important intelligence relationship with Israel? Why is it important? And to what extent would you feel that's a threat for Canada or for the UK? Yeah. So again, I would say that this is one of the very, very complex situation, because you have a lot of considerations to assess. So each country is doing their own assessment. So Canada and the UK, as you mentioned, have made political decisions in terms of boycotting some goods coming out of the occupied territories. If you transcend that at the operational level, I would say that in my experience, and I have worked very closely with my Israeli colleagues over my many years in intelligence, when it comes down to issues like terrorism and espionage and so on, and things that will affect us collectively, again, we leave politics behind.

20:17No one has anything to gain by withholding intelligence that would potentially help another friendly country like Israel. But it doesn't mean that you need to support their policies, their politics. That doesn't mean that you need to acquiesce to what's going on. But I think it's important that we're not lumping everything when there's a political decision. the linkage between an issue like a policy political decision to boycott and then trying to do linkages with military collaboration with intelligence collaboration these decisions are taken with extreme caution because the slippery slope and in my experience you can still have political disagreement that need to be absolutely pushed in the public domain while at the same time maintaining intelligence collaboration so it is on a case-by-case basis but at the same time when it comes to security, when it comes to, you know, making sure people are not a victim of terrorist attack or something like that.

21:15There are things that transcend politics. Similar really to the Canada and Trump is sort of Britain and Israel or the intelligence officers will have mutually. But one thing that is, I think with Israel that I have seen is that you can absolutely disagree fundamentally with policies. And unfortunately, I've seen some of the groups, more extreme groups, recuperate some of the legitimate angst against those policies and turn that into anti-Semitism. I've seen that in terrorist attacks in my country, in Canada, where people who honestly have no idea what they're thinking about, but the radicalization online essentially brings them back to become anti-Semite, even though most of them don't really understand what they're talking about.

22:05But therefore, they target Jews around the world for that. And I think this is very important that we also speak up about that, that radicalization in any form is dangerous for society. Last question. What would keep you awake at night? What is the danger to the world? I mean, you know, we have catastrophic climate change talked about. We have potential for nuclear conflagration. We have AIs we've discussed. There are a lot of things that could go wrong in the world. What do you think is the one that we should worry most about? So for me, maybe it's because of what I've done in my life. But part of the most, you mentioned these problems, climate change, technology running amok, you know, duplical issues.

23:00So many of these problems require people of goodwill to sit down and talk about these issues. Having an ability to engage in discussion and disagree within our own societies is more fragile than it has been in a long time. Like we did with the Montreal Protocol, in fact, getting rid of CFCs that were eating the ozone layer. I mean, that was a really great thing of global cooperation to deal with a global problem. Exactly. And these are the kinds of things for me is the inability we have as countries working with each other, but within our countries as society to say, look, you may have a different point of view than mine, but it's a legitimate point of view and we will have a debate and we may not all agree.

23:42But the inability we have to work together to try to understand the same facts, and then from those facts come up with your own analysis and see what are the best solutions. The loss of that ability, I think, is a problem. And to bring it back to one of your earlier questions about Russia, this is one of the exact aspects of hybrid warfare of Russia. when they're targeting Canada, the UK, they're also targeting us specifically to create dissensions, to create, to prop up artificially some voices in our societies that, you know, otherwise would be quite marginal and create dissensions. So they want to attack us and make sure that our democracies are more fragile.

24:29Because, you know, the more fragile we are, the less we're able to counter their aggressive actions. And I think this is something that is very important in our society. It's not to have artificial consensus, but to create the right place to tackle some of these extremely complex issues. Thank you for listening to The Interview. For more compelling conversations, search for The Interview wherever you get your BBC podcasts. You'll find episodes from Ukrainian Intelligence Chief Vadim Skibitsky, the World Health Organization's Hanan Balki and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, plus many others.

25:10Until the next time, bye for now.

25:17Lives Less Ordinary is bringing you a special series of extraordinary love stories. Roshan Sethi was an uptight Canadian doctor who couldn't come out to his Indian family. Karansani was an actor from India who felt he had to keep his sexuality a secret to make it in Hollywood. But they met, fell in love, and things began to change. They decided to make a romantic comedy based on their relationship. Lives Less Ordinary Love Stories from the BBC World Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts.