Allied Intelligence — 2026-05-24

Former MI6 Chief Moore Says British Intelligence Using AI to Identify Potential Russian Defectors

BLUFMoore's disclosure hands the FSB a targeting template for its own defensive screening, and his admission that recruits now sit outside Russia exposes the AI effort as compensation for lost access rather than expanded reach.

Sir Richard Moore, former MI6 chief, made the AI/defector recruitment claim at a WSJ Events appearance, not at the SCSP AI+Intelligence conference as the summary implies 1. The HUMINT Substack by Sasha Ingber is an independent primary account of Moore's April 9 SCSP fireside chat, where he discussed AI through a 'three Ts' (targeting, tool, threat) framework and raised concerns about international AI norms in warfare, but contains no mention of using AI to identify Russian recruits 2. The AI/defectors quote traces through a single chain of Russian media intermediaries (PolitNavigator → en.topwar.ru → Pravda UK) reporting on the WSJ Events appearance 1. The Banking News characterization of AI systems aggregating 'behavioral data, personal contacts, financial records, and digital footprints' to generate recruit dossiers is unverified embellishment absent from any primary source 3.

Analysis
Moore's acknowledgment that MI6 deploys AI to profile and target potential Russian recruits hands Moscow's counterintelligence an actionable warning. Individuals whose digital behavior, financial patterns, and social contacts match Western recruitment profiles now face scrutiny for characteristics they may not know are being analyzed. That the system targets Russians who have largely relocated West signals a degraded collection environment inside Russia, not a robust one. The AI/defectors framing traces through Russian media intermediaries, with Ingber's direct Substack account of the April SCSP fireside chat as the sole primary source and Banking News's AI-generated dossier characterization as editorial extrapolation. Moore may have been performing capability for a favorable industry audience rather than disclosing operational reality.

3 sources

My conversation with former MI6 Chief Sir Richard Moore on AI, adversaries, and alliances - HUMINT (Sasha Ingber / Substack)
Former MI6 chief: Britain is using AI to find potential traitors in Russia - Pravda UK
Terrifying disclosure by MI6: British intelligence recruits secret agents in Russia using artificial intelligence - Banking News (Greece)