Britain and Australia have a shortage of spies and recruiting the next generation is proving difficult

Harry Ferguson didn’t want to be a spy.

When he finished his studies at Oxford University in England in the 1980s, he planned to join the army.

That is until he received a tap on the shoulder from his tutor, asking if he had considered serving his country in “other ways”.

A few weeks later, a plain brown envelope appeared in his mailbox inviting him to an interview with an anonymous government department.

He went on to spend decades traveling the world undercover as an international spy for MI6 – the UK’s international intelligence service – foiling terrorist arms plots and disrupting the narcotics trade.

“It’s kind of a trap you get into because you think, ‘Well, I know he’s probably not James Bond, but what is he really like?'” Mr Ferguson told the ABC.

“You go to an interview and another interview and then you start training and before you know it you’re undercover in the depths of Nigeria.”

But in 2024, recruiting the next generation of spies turns out to be much more difficult than a simple invitation.

Security agencies struggle to attract young workers.

“This is an emerging trend with intelligence services across the Western world,” said former MI6 agent turned author Mr Ferguson.

“Since 9/11, Iraq and Afghanistan and right now, if you look at what’s going on in Gaza and Lebanon, a lot of young people say, ‘Why would I want to contribute to this when you don’t. anything good?'”

In Britain, the situation is so dire, MI5 – the country’s national intelligence service – recently took the unprecedented step of launching a social media campaign to try to humanize the experiences of young workers to persuade disaffected millennials to apply for positions.

The UK also relaxed its recruitment rules in 2022, allowing citizens with foreign-born parents to join security agencies, to boost the workforce.

Australia’s national security conference in April heard the country was not producing enough workers with geopolitical skills because young people saw climate change as a greater threat to the country than hostile nations.

“If you ask a lot of people in their 20s, they’ll tell you, with good reason, that the biggest security issues facing the country have to do with climate change,” said William Leben, strategy expert from Australia’s National Security University. ABC.

Mr Leben said security agencies and the armed forces face recruitment headwinds because of lengthy vetting processes and the significant demands placed on people’s personal lives, as well as how young people perceive the threat.

“Organisations will need to do a lot of work to close the gap because counter-terrorism has not gone away… counter-intelligence work is increasingly important and defense still has a very clear mandate from government to prepare for to fight wars, we hope. we don’t have to fight, while climate change is a competing factor with all of these things,” he said.

Mr Ferguson, who now runs a social media account about all things espionage aimed at young people, said when he became a secret agent four decades ago there was a service tradition the Cold War was at its height and there was an enemy to fight. But now, he says, the issues are less clear.

“Young people today still want to serve, but they see it in other ways: climate change, human rights, and there are political issues they want to give their time to,” he said.

“The effects of this are slightly different in each country, but we see that this cultural change is a political change and the desire not to make the world a worse place is actually affecting recruitment.

The impact of this recruitment shortfall could have a significant long-term impact.

Afeeya Akhand, of the Strategic Policy Institute, said it is imperative that agencies integrate the views of the next generation, who will be the ones affected by the decisions made.

“By not having that diversity of thought, it means we’re not reflecting what the population is thinking,” she said.

The perception of what national security is needs to change to recruit and retain the younger generation, according to Ms Akhand.

“Traditionally, we’ve looked at national security in terms of threats to our state, which are often through military invasions and protection against other countries, but those threats have evolved,” she said.

“Many young people see issues like COVID and climate change as key threats, and changing perceptions to show the next generation that you can work on a range of issues in security and government agencies is important.”

But the youth’s extensive digital footprint could be problematic if they want to become officers.

Mr Ferguson said it was a problem facing security agencies as Generation Z shared more of their lives on social media, but insisted they often made the best agents.

“Often people who care about issues like the environment and human rights are the very people you want, too, because they’ll make great runners,” he said.

“The people I want to recruit are the kind of young people who think, ‘With where I come from and the friends I have, I could never be a secret agent,’ but these are the people who can work undercover and they often have skills they don’t know yet.”