S9 Ep24: Espresso Martini | The GRU’s New Black Ops Unit, Russian Hybrid Warfare in Britain, and Listener Questions

S9 Ep24: Espresso Martini | The GRU’s New Black Ops Unit, Russian Hybrid Warfare in Britain, and Listener Questions

Russia’s latest covert warfare escalations take center stage in this week’s Espresso Martini. Chris and Matt unpack the emergence of the GRU’s Department of Special Tasks, a new clandestine unit coordinating assassinations, sabotage, and hybrid warfare operations against the West. They also break down an alarming report on a Russia-linked Telegram network inciting terrorism and hate crimes in the UK—just another front in Moscow’s war of destabilization. Plus, listener questions on the dilemmas of counterterrorism, the future of Five Eyes under Trump, and top spy books, both fiction and non-fiction.

Subscribe and share to stay ahead in the world of intelligence, geopolitics, and current affairs.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/O_uErvzy13o

Articles discussed in today’s episode"A New Spy Unit Is Leading Russia’s Shadow War Against the West" by Bojan Pancevski | The Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/russia-spy-covert-attacks-8199e376

"A Russia-linked Telegram network is inciting terrorism and is behind hate crimes in the UK" by Gregory Davis | Hope Not Hate: https://hopenothate.org.uk/2025/02/10/exclusive-a-russia-linked-telegram-network-is-inciting-terrorism-and-is-behind-hate-crimes-in-the-uk/

Recommended Spy ReadsIn this episode, we share some of our favorite spy books—both fiction and non-fiction. Whether you’re looking for deep dives into real-world espionage or classic spy thrillers, these picks have you covered.

Chris’s Picks: A mix of gripping true stories and classic spy fiction, covering Cold War betrayals, intelligence tradecraft, and covert operations.

Fiction: Agents of Innocence (David Ignatius), Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (John le Carré), Ashenden (W. Somerset Maugham), The Deceiver (Frederick Forsyth), Damascus Station (David McCloskey)

Non-Fiction: Next Stop Execution (Oleg Gordievsky), The Art of Intelligence (Henry Crumpton), The Black Banners (Ali Soufan), The Good Spy (Kai Bird), Spy Master (Helen Fry)

Matt’s Picks: Essential reads on espionage, covert ops, and spycraft—plus some of the genre’s best novels.

Fiction: The Cardinal of the Kremlin (Tom Clancy), The Sum of All Fears (Tom Clancy), Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (John le Carré), The Honourable Schoolboy (John le Carré), Smiley’s People (John le Carré), The Quiet American (Graham Greene)

Non-Fiction: Spycraft (H. Keith Melton), Rise and Kill First (Ronen Bergman), Relentless Strike (Sean Naylor), Killer Elite (Michael Smith), The Targeter (Nada Bakos), Dead Drop (Jeremy Duns), The US Intelligence Community (Jeffrey Richelson)

Support Secrets and SpiesBecome a “Friend of the Podcast” on Patreon for £3/$4: www.patreon.com/SecretsAndSpies
Buy merchandise from our Redbubble shop: https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/60934996
Subscribe to our YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDVB23lrHr3KFeXq4VU36dg
For more information about the podcast, check out our website: https://secretsandspiespodcast.com

Connect with us on social mediaBlue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/secretsandspies.bsky.social
Instagram: https://instagram.com/secretsandspies
Facebook: https://facebook.com/secretsandspies
Spoutible: https://spoutible.com/SecretsAndSpies

Follow Chris and Matt on Blue Sky:
https://bsky.app/profile/fultonmatt.bsky.social
https://bsky.app/profile/chriscarrfilm.bsky.social

Secrets and Spies is produced by Films & Podcasts LTD.
Music by Andrew R. Bird

Secrets and Spies takes you deep inside the world of espionage, terrorism, and international intrigue. Each episode unpacks global events through the lens of intelligence and geopolitics, featuring expert insights from former spies, authors, and analysts.


Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(350)

What the Next 10 Years Look Like: China, Russia, Europe and AI | Sam Lichtenstein RANE

What the Next 10 Years Look Like: China, Russia, Europe and AI | Sam Lichtenstein RANE

Sam Lichtenstein, director of analysis at the global risk intelligence firm RANE, returns to walk Chris through RANE's 2025–2035 decade forecast: a multipolar world in which no great power has the wil...

3 Okt 59min

Russia’s worldview, disinformation, and the politics of influence | Dave Troy

Russia’s worldview, disinformation, and the politics of influence | Dave Troy

Every week, the Security Council of the Russian Federation publishes a digest of world events as Moscow sees them. Investigative journalist Dave Troy has been reading them closely, and he argues they ...

26 Sep 1h 7min

The Stay Behinds: Sweden’s Cold War Guardians | Johan Wennström

The Stay Behinds: Sweden’s Cold War Guardians | Johan Wennström

Beginning in 1949, officially non-aligned Sweden did something it kept secret for half a century: in close cooperation with the CIA and MI6, it built a clandestine civilian resistance network meant to...

19 Sep 1h 9min

The Nerd Reich | Gil Durán

The Nerd Reich | Gil Durán

Journalist Gil Durán spent years in political consulting before returning to reporting, and eventually, to the beat that became the subject of his book, The Nerd Reich. He joins Chris to lay out his c...

12 Sep 59min

Ratcliffe’s Moscow Warning, Iran’s Long Reach, and an Alliance on Edge | Espresso Martini

Ratcliffe’s Moscow Warning, Iran’s Long Reach, and an Alliance on Edge | Espresso Martini

Chris and Matt open season eleven, and Secrets & Spies’ tenth anniversary, with three stories from a busy August. First, CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s trip to Moscow, a rare visit by an agency chief s...

5 Sep 1h 16min

A Rebel, a Traitor, and the Birth of the IRA | Rory Carroll

A Rebel, a Traitor, and the Birth of the IRA | Rory Carroll

Before Bletchley Park, there was Reginald "Blinker" Hall, the Admiralty’s mercurial intelligence chief whose codebreakers read Germany’s wireless traffic during World War I, giving Britain a front-row...

29 Aug 42min

Ortiz’s War: The Most Decorated Marine in the OSS | Nicholas Reynolds & Katie S. Sanders

Ortiz’s War: The Most Decorated Marine in the OSS | Nicholas Reynolds & Katie S. Sanders

Peter J. Ortiz was the most battle-decorated member of the OSS, America’s wartime forerunner to the CIA, and one of the most decorated Marines of the Second World War. In 1944, the former French Forei...

22 Aug 48min

How GPS Became a Weapon | Katherine Dunn

How GPS Became a Weapon | Katherine Dunn

GPS is the rare piece of infrastructure most of us never think about until it fails — and it is failing more often, in more places, by design. In Little Blue Dot: How GPS Shaped the Modern World, jour...

15 Aug 1h 4min

Populært innen Politikk og nyheter

giver-og-gjengen-vg
aftenpodden
forklart
aftenpodden-usa
popradet
fotballpodden-2
stopp-verden
dine-penger-pengeradet
rss-espen-lee-usensurert
det-store-bildet
rss-gukild-johaug
nokon-ma-ga
hanna-de-heldige
aftenbla-bla
rss-penger-polser-og-politikk
e24-podden
rss-ness
frokostshowet-pa-p5
bt-dokumentar-2
saken