RUSI Annual Security Lecture

In a speech, Jeremy Fleming, director of the GCHQ spy agency, will say that the Chinese leadership was seeking to use technologies such as digital currencies and its Beidou satellite navigation network to tighten its grip over its citizens at home, while spreading its influence abroad. ... "They seek to secure their advantage through scale and through control," Fleming will say in the annual security lecture at the Royal United Services Institute think tank, according to extracts released by his office.

Giving the annual security lecture for the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the defence and security think tank, Sir Jeremy [Fleming] will highlight digital currencies operated by central banks as one key technology, suggesting China could use it to monitor the transactions of users at home, while also using it as a way of avoiding international sanctions in the future.

"We know - and Russian commanders on the ground know - that their supplies and munitions are running out," Sir Jeremy will say in his speech at the annual Royal United Services Institute security lecture. He will argue that the mobilisation of prisoners and inexperienced men "speaks of a desperate situation" - and will also directly criticise President Putin as isolated and making mistakes.