When it comes to toppling governments from behind the scenes, not many know the business better than MI6. Since the end of World War II, British covert operatives have executed 42 coup attempts in 27 countries throughout the world, in pursuit of economic or political outcomes that suit the nation’s interests.
In other words, they know a hostile takeover when they see one — which is why it’s alarming that Blaise Metreweli, the new head of the spy agency, issued a statement warning that global power is increasingly being transferred to the world’s tech corporations.
“Our world is being actively remade with profound implications for national and international security,” Metreweli declared in her first statement as chief of MI6. “Power itself is becoming more diffuse, more unpredictable as control over these technologies is shifting from states to corporations and sometimes to individuals.”
She also noted that “we’re now operating in a space between peace and war.”
“This is not a temporary state or a gradual, inevitable evolution,” she continued.
Over the past few months, politicians from the ruling Labour party have grown increasingly frustrated at political meddling from tech billionaires like Elon Musk, who called for the overthrow of the UK government at a far-right rally in September.
Notably, Metreweli stopped short of calling out any billionaires by name or identifying the systemic issues that got us here, according to The Paper. Instead, she followed other ministers in centering a vague loss of public trust, rather than the profit-driven forces reshaping global power for their own interests.
“The foundations of trust in our societies are eroding,” she said. “Information, once a unifying force, is increasingly weaponized. Falsehoods spread faster than fact, dividing communities and distorting reality. We live in an age of hyper-connection yet profound isolation. The algorithms flatter our biases and fracture our public squares.”
Metreweli is notably the first woman to lead as chief of MI6. Her own history speaks to the intricate web of colonial power brokers that have laid the groundwork for the increasingly monopolistic world we now live in.
For example, Metreweli grew up in the upper crust of British-occupied Hong Kong, where she received a lavish private education. Though she never would’ve had to worry about it, Western corporations have a long history of brutal exploitation of native-born workers and economic collusion with the occupation government.
After receiving her education, Metreweli went on to work as an intelligence operative in the US- and British-occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, important economic zones which were regarded as part of the old British Empire. (Her official assignment was “Second Secretary for Economic Affairs at the Foreign Office” in Dubai, per The Times.)
In short, Metreweli’s alarm over corporate power isn’t so much a critique of tech monopolies in general, but a defense of the British state’s role in influencing world governments. Her speech, shaped by a career fighting for British interests, boils down to a simple refrain: that power should be ours to wield, not theirs.
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