186. The Secret Spy Network: Can Five Eyes Survive Trump? (Ep 4)

The Five Eyes is an intelligence alliance that has endured for decades. But can it survive Donald Trump in the White House? Listen as David and Gordon are joined by Richard Kerbaj for the final instalment of their series exploring the tumultuous history of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing alliance. ------------------- ⁠⁠⁠The Secret History of the Five Eyes by Richard Kerbaj⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠The Defector by Richard Kerbaj⁠⁠⁠ ------------------- THE REST IS CLASSIFIED LIVE 2026 at The Rest Is Fest: Buy your tickets ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to see David and Gordon live on stage at London’s Southbank Centre on 4 September: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/the-rest-is-classified-live/⁠⁠⁠⁠ ------------------- Sign-up for our free newsletter where producer Becki takes you behind the scenes of the show: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mailchi.mp/goalhanger.com/tric-free-newsletter-sign⁠-up⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ------------------- Join the Declassified Club to go deeper into the world of espionage with exclusive Q&As, interviews with top intelligence insiders, regular livestreams, ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, and weekly deep dives into original spy stories. Members also get curated reading lists, special book discounts, prize draws, and access to our private chat community. Just go to ⁠⁠therestisclassified.com⁠ or join on Apple Podcasts. ------------------- Get a 10% discount on business PCs, printers and accessories using the code TRIC10. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://HP.com/CLASSIFIED⁠⁠⁠⁠ for more information. T&C's apply. ------------------- EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/restisclassified Upgrade your online protection with an all-in-one security app! It’s risk free with NordVPN’s 30-day money-back guarantee 🌍 ------------------- Email: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@restisclassified⁠ Video Editor: Joe Pettit Social Producer: Emma Jackson Assistant Producer: Alfie Rowe Producer: Becki Hills Head of History: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03David McCloskey?

  For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter, and discounted books, join the Declassified Club at therestisclassified.com.

• 0:25David McCloskey?

  The Five Eyes is an intelligence alliance that has endured for decades. But can it survive Donald Trump in the White House? Well, welcome to The Rest Is Classified. I'm David McCloskey.

• 0:34Gordon Corera?

  And I'm Gordon Corera.

• 0:35David McCloskey?

  And this is our fourth and final episode, looking at the history of the Five Eyes. And I'm thinking now, it's a shame that we don't do five episodes, so we've done four Eyes on the Five Eyes.

• 0:49Gordon Corera?

  That's right.

• 0:50David McCloskey?

  And we are now on the fourth Eye. And we have been looking at the origins, the tensions during the Cold War. And in the last episode, we really brought it up nearly to the present day. We talked a lot about kind of post 9/11 era, the conflict over China, the emergence of China, and what that means for the Five Eyes. And we're now going to talk about the Five Eyes very much in the present day in the world of Donald Trump. And I think also talk a lot at the end of this episode about where this relationship might be going.

• 1:22Gordon Corera?

  That's right. And we're joined again by Richard Kabaj, author of The Secret History of the Five Eyes.

• 1:27David McCloskey?

  It's great to be back.

• 1:32Gordon Corera?

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• 1:35David McCloskey?

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• 2:13David McCloskey?

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• 2:21Gordon Corera?

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• 2:38Speaker 02

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• 3:21Speaker 02

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• 3:33Gordon Corera?

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• 4:04Gordon Corera?

  Where we left it last time was post-Sneden, some of the issues around China. And what we've seen, I guess, is Five Eyes increasingly go public and be more public, haven't they? In terms of having a public profile.

• 4:18Speaker 03

  Precisely. I think that takes us back to the beginning of episode one, where we talked about the case of the first public but non-publicized operation by Five Eyes, where they confronted the head of the SVR at the Russia mission in New York.

• 4:33Gordon Corera?

  Well, and that was 2022, wasn't it?

• 4:35Speaker 03

  That was 2022, in the lead up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Well, in 2023, the Five Eyes got together and said, let's put on a Five Eyes conference. And that was the first time in its history that the five leaders of the Five Eyes, the respective Human Intelligence Agency leaders, stood together to talk about the big existential threat. And that threat, so we've now gone through Cold War, War on Terror. Now, this is the threat that China presents, the existential threat.

• 5:06Gordon Corera?

  And I should say, I was there, actually, when they did that. And it was in the lovely confines of Stanford in California. You had the heads of, I guess, the security agency arms. So it was from the UK, it was Ken McCallum, head of MI5, was there, the head of the FBI, Chris Wray. And they were there on a public stage for the first time to talk about the threat from China specifically. And it was interesting. I think they chose to do it in Silicon Valley, which is where Stanford is, partly to say it's about intellectual property being stolen by China and to raise the concern level and to speak out about it. And they really had made a desire. They wanted to go public. It was slightly unfortunate because it came just after, this is October 2023, after October 7,

• 5:51Gordon Corera?

  when, you know, the Israel-Hamas conflict started after Hamas attacked Israel. And it meant, actually, that almost overshadowed their desire to talk about China at the time. And I think it didn't quite get the focus, maybe that they expected, and they'd put a lot of work into it. But it was a sign that we've seen in recent years, Five Eyes actually put out statements.

• 6:16Speaker 03

  What preceded that big Five Eyes event was a bilateral event that was hosted here at MI5 by Ken McCallum. And it was him and Chris Wray standing side by side to talk about the China threat in 2022. I think it was summer of 2022.

• 6:30David McCloskey?

  Chris Wray, former FBI director.

• 6:32Speaker 03

  Correct. And I felt that that was a historic moment at the time because, as we've explained now over the preceding episodes, you know, they've gone through World War II, Cold War, combating Soviet threat, and then combating Islamist threat during the War on Terror. But never before had those two leaders stood side by side so publicly to discuss an existential crisis, and that was China. So then, what follows the following year is that big event. And just behind the scenes, because I asked a question for something that I'm currently doing at the moment, researching on China, but why weren't the others involved in the 2022 case? And the way it was explained to me is that it took some people a little longer to sort of catch up

• 7:17Speaker 03

  and to feel comfortable with going publicly. Because the issue around China became an issue regarding attribution. Of course, the West, particularly the US and UK, became quite familiar with China's cyber espionage capabilities in the 2000s. And they would discuss these behind closed doors and confront Chinese officials about it behind closed doors. But there was a timidity and an unwillingness to speak up about it publicly and attribute it because you had the trade ties between the countries. And so you don't want to undermine trade in the interests of national security. But that would eventually become part of the big problem that we're facing with China.

• 7:57Gordon Corera?

  There were lots of interesting things about this Five Eyes meeting. I mean, one of them was the different delegations. Like, when the FBI director turns up, there's like a fleet of black SUVs, like armed, you know, bodyguards, lots of people. The New Zealand guy literally was traveling around with one aide, and that's it.

• 8:12Speaker 03

  He was probably stopped at the airport and searched. This is a random check, sir.

• 8:16Gordon Corera?

  But it was also interesting talking, because, you know, sit down with the head of--

• 8:18David McCloskey?

  Kiwis show up in a rented car.

• 8:20Gordon Corera?

  It wasn't quite like that. Let's not be too dismissive. But it was very interesting talking to the head of New Zealand Intelligence, because he was making the point, we have a different outlook even on China. We are a Pacific trading nation rooted in the Pacific, even in a slightly different viewpoint from Australia.

• 8:35Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 8:35Gordon Corera?

  They're obviously sometimes lumped together. And so they, I think, were less willing to talk up the China threat than--

• 8:41Speaker 03

  The Aussies.

• 8:42Gordon Corera?

  No, the Kiwis.

• 8:43Speaker 03

  The Kiwis, yeah.

• 8:44Gordon Corera?

  Than the Aussies, whereas the Aussies--

• 8:45Speaker 03

  But also, they have a different take on foreign policy. The Kiwis don't tend to be so closely aligned and in step with the Americans.

• 8:51Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 8:52Speaker 03

  And I think you've got to respect that to a degree. You know, I don't like the US, of course. We love the--

• 8:57Gordon Corera?

  We love the US.

• 8:58Speaker 03

  I love Americans, Dave. But the point being is that they're quite independent when it comes to foreign policy. And that was demonstrated in the mid-1980s, as we've previously discussed in the other episodes, in David Langy's case, where he said to Reagan, no, you can't dock your ships here. Take your ships elsewhere, buddy. And that was that.

• 9:15David McCloskey?

  Well, I mean, one of the advantages, in particular, I think, for the smaller members of the Five Eyes, of having it not be public and having it be secret for so long, is that you maintain all of the benefits of this intelligence partnership. And you can steer a slightly different foreign policy from the US or even the UK. Whereas the more, the more Five Eyes becomes public, the more you kind of are using strategic declassifications or using your intelligence agencies to send political messages, it becomes, in some ways, it, you know, it's, I think, why do it? Because it creates strain.

• 9:55Speaker 03

  Why becomes so public about it?

• 9:56David McCloskey?

  Well, no, yeah, kind of.

• 9:58Speaker 03

  I think, I disagree respectfully, because I think by being more transparent, you're actually being, the only way you can operate as an intelligence agency is if you have a public vote, right? You need the public to be on side, to be, to agree with what you're doing. No, no member of the public, you don't want any member of the public to think they're spying on me, first of all, unless you're the bad guy. And also, you need that goodwill. And I think transparency within reason provides that goodwill. And I think talking about the Five Eyes as a whole is particularly important now at a time where alliances are so crucial, but they're particularly important at a time when we're facing threats from, say, Russia or China.

• 10:40Speaker 03

  We are all together, we've got this historical, these historic ties that keep us together.

• 10:45Gordon Corera?

  But let's, let's discuss the elephant in the room, which is the fact that, that things have got harder for Five Eyes. And the reason is Donald Trump, because we're obviously in the second Donald Trump term now, and it's definitely different from the first, and we maybe will come to that. But even in the first, there were some tensions, weren't there, between the Five Eyes? I mean, there was some tension, and we've talked about this separately, about US, UK, for instance, you know, because of the Chris Steele dossier and Donald Trump's kind of dislike of the, the deep state. And, and he conceptualized the-

• 11:17Speaker 03

  Well, he attacked his own agencies, he attacked-

• 11:19Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, and he conceptualizes the deep state, though, as not just American, but also the Five Eyes to some extent, doesn't he?

• 11:25Speaker 03

  Without calling them the Five Eyes, but yeah, anything that's sort of tied within that, he despised, and it was very obvious during his first term. And of course, he accused GCHQ of bugging his telephones during the electoral campaign, during Trump 1.0.

• 11:41Gordon Corera?

  Bugging Trump Tower, wasn't it?

• 11:42Speaker 03

  And then GCHQ had to figure out what to do with this, because at any point up until that, up until that event, there would usually neither confirm nor deny. But on that specific case, having come from the White House itself, they felt compelled to speak up. And so in coalition with the May government, they said, we need to put out a statement. And they did. And I go into that in some detail, but the point being is that, yes, that, that impact wasn't just on the US intelligence agencies, but it was on the closest partner.

• 12:14David McCloskey?

  Why did he accuse GCHQ of tapping Trump Tower?

• 12:18Gordon Corera?

  I think it's back to that idea, which is, was the Five Eyes a way of spying on people you shouldn't be spying on? And this has always been the kind of conspiracy theory on the left.

• 12:28Speaker 03

  So Russia Gate was the backdrop to some of this.

• 12:30Gordon Corera?

  And it was being spread around kind of conspiratorial circles in the right-

• 12:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:35Gordon Corera?

  -that Trump Tower had been spied on, that they'd been intercepting communications. It was stuff to do with, like, contacts with Russia and that there were bank servers and all these kind of things communicating with each other. And the argument became, ah, well, you know, okay, it's not the FBI aren't doing it, it's the Brits doing it on behalf of the deep state.

• 12:52David McCloskey?

  On behalf of the US deep state.

• 12:53Gordon Corera?

  So it goes back to this idea of the Five Eyes being a kind of nefarious way of getting around things. And I think at that point, GCHQ, as you said, Richard, felt unusually, we're actually going to push back on the White House against this, because we don't want this idea to get out in circulation.

• 13:05Speaker 03

  That was unprecedented in itself, yeah.

• 13:06Gordon Corera?

  You know, that, that we, that we as the Brits are spying on an American candidate president, you know, politician.

• 13:12Speaker 03

  You can imagine how thrilled GCHQ officials were, they're like, right, we've just finished with Snowden, where we've had to run a breach inquiry into allegations that he's from our midst, and now we're having to deal with this a few years later.

• 13:23David McCloskey?

  But again, in Trump 1.0, I didn't detect any sense that the relationship, the actual working relationship between NSA and GCHQ was impacted. You would think, you would think in the, you know, in the wake of an allegation like that, that there might be, but it just kept on going.

• 13:42Speaker 03

  Well, the head of the NSA at the time went into the White House and said, this will never happen, this has never happened, this is BS. Essentially, that's what he said to him, to Trump. And so, yeah, he stood by GCHQ, the head of the NSA stood by GCHQ during that event.

• 14:01Gordon Corera?

  So Trump 1.0, the, the relationship survived, the Five Eyes? I mean, you know, bit of, bit of kind of surface tension.

• 14:08Speaker 03

  In fairness to the Trump 1.0 administration, if we to look at the security operations they conducted, they took out the ISIS caliphate, they took out al-Baghdadi, they took out, took out Saleh Mahdi. So there were many missions-

• 14:24Gordon Corera?

  They took a taffel line on China, which again is all aligned with some of the partners.

• 14:27Speaker 03

  So they conducted some big operations that are usually missed because of the noise and chaos that comes from Trump himself, right?

• 14:35David McCloskey?

  Yeah.

• 14:36Speaker 03

  But there were a lot of great things that were conducted from a security perspective. 2.0, slightly different.

• 14:41Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, let's get, let's get on to the current Trump term.

• 14:44David McCloskey?

  Slightly different focus than 2.0, hasn't it? I, I mean, I guess, how would you characterize Trump 2.0 versus 1.0?

• 14:50Gordon Corera?

  You tell us, David.

• 14:51David McCloskey?

  Well, I would say-

• 14:52Gordon Corera?

  You're an American.

• 14:53David McCloskey?

  Well, it's perhaps still too soon to tell the impact of all of this, but certainly, when you look at things like Greenland, when you look at the operation against Maduro-

• 15:02Speaker 03

  Canada.

• 15:03David McCloskey?

  That, that there is a kind of, yeah, the various, the various not so subtle threats against our Canadian friends, there's a sense that there is a hemispheric focus-

• 15:15Speaker 03

  It's different.

• 15:16David McCloskey?

  To the, you know, to the foreign policy that, in a, in a kind of, if you interpret it in its most sort of dark form, you could say, well, maybe we let sort of the Chinese do what they want in East Asia, kind of, or maybe we let the Russians do what they want in Eastern Europe. I think there's, there's a, a fear, I think, here, probably, in the UK and Europe, or in the rest of the Five Eyes, that a, a sort of much, I think, a, a US under Trump that is maybe more unpredictable, more aggressive, and more focused on a narrow set of foreign policy issues closer to home, will have much less interest in sustaining this relationship.

• 16:00Speaker 03

  But it's actually hurting the United States the most, I think, because if you think about the impact this had on the other four partners, look at the latest case in Iran. The, the Brits were unwilling to get involved, so were the Aussies, so were the New Zealand-

• 16:14Gordon Corera?

  To use their bases, yeah.

• 16:15Speaker 03

  Yeah. And so in the end, they reluctantly allowed it, but the tensions are very much there. The Canadians, the fact that Mark Carney had to come out during Davos to talk about the importance of, you know, taking matters into your own hands when you're a smaller partner or you're a medium-sized country, that was quite a pivotal moment, because I think there's a realization now that you can't really just depend on the United States, because up until this point, at the Five Eyes, all the smaller partners have done so. And it's worked out pretty well for everyone, despite all of the tensions. But from a political perspective now, it just looks so different, because he is essentially driving the machine.

• 16:54Speaker 03

  Everyone's dancing to his tune and he's, and I think that's impacting the agencies, reputationally as well, I don't think operationally, particularly not on the counterterrorism stuff.

• 17:08David McCloskey?

  Yeah.

• 17:09Speaker 03

  But-

• 17:10Gordon Corera?

  There's no, yeah. But the Canada one is, I mean, you know, Canada is part of the Five Eyes, and if you have a US president who's saying, we want it to be the 51st state, I mean, that is fundamentally, it's hard to see how you can trust, the political level at least. Now, I guess your, your point, and maybe your point as well, David, is that at the operational level, Canadian spies are probably still talking to American spies and things are fine, but there's a level, you know, there's a point at which the political rhetoric must start to impact on the operational relationships, mustn't there?

• 17:42David McCloskey?

  Is there? I mean, yeah. So if, if you look at Iran, I mean, because I take your point, that when you, when you look at the conduct of the war, it has not been, there is, there isn't, you know, sort of a shared sense of purpose between the Five Eyes, far from it, the opposite, right? At the same time, if you dug into, what is the NSA collecting on Iran? What are the Five Eyes collecting on Iran? The various human services, I mean, you know- British human Don Iran has tended to be quite good.

• 18:11Gordon Corera?

  Sure.

• 18:12David McCloskey?

  I would imagine that all of those channels are haven't been impacted in the least.

• 18:17Gordon Corera?

  So operation, it goes back to operation.

• 18:19David McCloskey?

  Yeah, exactly. Because there's still a shared sense of everybody wants the same information advantage. Right. And even even if you say, well, you know, we're not gonna, we're not gonna offer you basing rights for this conflict because we think it's a terrible idea. Well, all of the siganders, all of the spooks are still sharing everything that they were before, which speaks to something that's now deeply embedded in these relationships, right?

• 18:46Gordon Corera?

  Do you think everyone is sharing the way they shared before? For instance, if you were MI6 and you had a very sensitive source on Russia?

• 18:54David McCloskey?

  Yep.

• 18:55Gordon Corera?

  Would you be sharing it with this White House in the same way? Or, you know, where we've, she's gone now, but Tulsi Gabbard, you know, and the risks of declassification, what came through? I mean, you know, if if the alliance was based on sharing.

• 19:07Speaker 03

  More transactional, right?

• 19:08Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 19:08Speaker 03

  Because with human intelligence operations, you're not going to share everything, particularly not sourcing. And I think from that perspective, yes, absolutely, you would reconsider certain.

• 19:18Gordon Corera?

  Some of the human sources.

• 19:19Speaker 03

  But that's why I mentioned counterterrorism earlier, because that's a specific thing. If there's a threat to life.

• 19:24Gordon Corera?

  That keeps going.

• 19:25Speaker 03

  That keeps going. I think the other stuff, like, as you mentioned, Russia or China or something like that, I think they could rightly hold back some information. And that's within within the structure. There is a classification to to allow that to happen.

• 19:40David McCloskey?

  Sure. Well, there's also ways to share the product, but not be transparent about the sourcing or to shit. You know, for example, we talked about this a bit, actually, in one of our conversations around Bletchley is, you know, there's a practice of eye washing, you know?

• 19:59Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, you can, you can.

• 19:59David McCloskey?

  You can have really sensitive information and you you still share the relevant pieces, but you hide the fact that it's human. Or, you know, you break it up so it looks like it's multiple sources, or you you actually make it look like it's sigent or something else like that. Right? So there are ways that you can still really.

• 20:15Speaker 03

  Conceal.

• 20:15David McCloskey?

  Keep sharing the same information, but maybe obscure.

• 20:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:20David McCloskey?

  The sourcing, right? Which I think that that probably is happening.

• 20:23Gordon Corera?

  It's what happens. Yeah. And I mean, there've been a few moments where, I mean, there was some talk, I remember, over Venezuela, when the US was attacking those small boats. You know, where there was like, the UK is not going to share intelligence.

• 20:35David McCloskey?

  Yeah.

• 20:35Gordon Corera?

  And I remember hearing that and being like, the UK does not collect that much intelligence off the coast of Venezuela, you know?

• 20:41David McCloskey?

  I think it's. All that juicy MI6 drug boat targeting information.

• 20:45Gordon Corera?

  So there was a bit like.

• 20:46David McCloskey?

  They've turned the switches off.

• 20:48Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 20:48David McCloskey?

  Yeah, they're not sharing it anymore.

• 20:49Gordon Corera?

  There's a bit where there's a bit of kind of performative politics around some of this stuff.

• 20:53Speaker 03

  But also, a lot of the headlines, I mean, there was a headline.

• 20:56Gordon Corera?

  The headlines don't really match the reality.

• 20:57Speaker 03

  That came out suggesting that somehow the Canadians are going to be kind of cut out of the Five Eyes.

• 21:02Gordon Corera?

  Kicked out of Five Eyes, yeah.

• 21:02Speaker 03

  I mean, again, that was just, it was so thin.

• 21:05Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 21:06Speaker 03

  On, you know, substance, I think. And and because there was just nothing, immediately they denied it. First of all, the US administration denied it. But also, how? How do you do it? Like, how do you actively? I just didn't buy it.

• 21:19David McCloskey?

  When reports come out, like about the UK ceasing intelligence sharing about targeting drug boats, what do you think has actually happened below the waterline in the system?

• 21:32Gordon Corera?

  I think, I mean, I'll tell you what I think happens is some lawyer in the UK has gone, if we pass the, any intelligence we have, the US may use it for lethal targeting, which we don't believe is legal, therefore we have to stop sharing. So there's been a legal order within the UK.

• 21:47David McCloskey?

  Okay.

• 21:47Gordon Corera?

  To stop, to stop sharing.

• 21:49David McCloskey?

  Right.

• 21:49Gordon Corera?

  So I think that is true, but I think the reality was there was almost nothing to share.

• 21:53David McCloskey?

  Well, and I would presume, I guess it depends on how the lawyer wrote up that that directive, but I would presume if MI6 has has a really, and I don't know why they would, but if MI6 had a very well-placed source inside the Venezuelan government, for example, they would continue, providing strategic, you know, intelligence.

• 22:14Gordon Corera?

  It was a really narrow thing, which is like, are you passing something which could be used for something which would be illegal? In the UK's eyes, like a lethal strike. And that's been the issue with certain kinds of drone strikes in the past and things like that. So I think there are times, and it goes back to our, you know, we've made this point before, there are times when you can say, we will not share that. It isn't, everything is always automatically shared, and that's kind of normal.

• 22:37David McCloskey?

  Sure.

• 22:38Gordon Corera?

  But we're just in a slightly more febrile atmosphere. But I think as well, the Brits are trying to to maintain the relationships. I mean, this account of the Five Eyes meeting, I think we should talk about this, shouldn't we? Because the the Brits still try and, you know, the the relationship between the Brits and the Americans, they they do their best to keep maintaining it, don't they? But it's not always been easy with Cash Patel, I think, of the FBI.

• 23:02David McCloskey?

  Well, and if you're, if you're not watching this podcast on video, then you haven't seen the fact that Gordon, Richard and I are all on jet skis. Having, having this meeting because because.

• 23:12Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, we're going to have to explain that.

• 23:14David McCloskey?

  I've decided I will only meet with Gordon on a jet ski. It's the best way for us to have a conversation. This is fascinating, the Cash Patel thing, which came out in the context of a massive New York Times investigation into essentially the way he's been running the FBI. I mean, how many FBI special agents did they interview for this thing? It was like dozens and dozens and dozens. And one of the best, kind of the juiciest tidbits, which I, of course, immediately then worked into a novel, was that when Cash Patel is coming over to the UK for the Five Eyes, for Five Eyes meetings, right?

• 23:49Speaker 03

  So they have these annual conferences.

• 23:50David McCloskey?

  Annual conferences, right?

• 23:51Speaker 03

  Where the heads of agencies meet.

• 23:53David McCloskey?

  Yeah, exactly. And it rotates who hosts it. And this year it was going to be the Brits. And the the request came in from Patel's office, basically saying, look, he doesn't like having meetings in office settings, which I agree, you know, it's what what what offices are terrible places to have meetings. And what he wanted to do was, okay, let's let's mix it up a bit and think of some interesting places we could have meetings. Could we go to a Premier League soccer game?

• 24:23Gordon Corera?

  Him and the head of MI5, Ken McCallum, yeah.

• 24:26David McCloskey?

  Could they have a box there where they could, you know, do some business? Could they go on jet skis?

• 24:31Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 24:31David McCloskey?

  Could there be a, could we just pause, could we just pause at the jet skis?

• 24:35Gordon Corera?

  I mean, like, how do you, how do you even have a meeting when you're on jet skis? I guess, because you can't talk, because it's noisy.

• 24:42David McCloskey?

  Maybe it's more of a trust-building exercise beforehand.

• 24:45Speaker 03

  That's what we should have done. You know what? We should be doing this. We should have done this.

• 24:49Gordon Corera?

  Yeah. It's like going paintballing, isn't it? It's the equivalent of going paintballing and as a kind of team-building exercise.

• 24:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:55Gordon Corera?

  But you.

• 24:55Speaker 03

  And where would you do it in the UK?

• 24:57Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 24:57Speaker 03

  Where would you actually get?

• 24:59David McCloskey?

  I haven't seen jet skiing is a big thing here. I'm in my second week here over the summer and I have yet to see jet skis.

• 25:04Gordon Corera?

  I'll arrange it.

• 25:05David McCloskey?

  Roaring down the Thames.

• 25:06Speaker 03

  Australia, that's where you do it.

• 25:07Gordon Corera?

  That's where I'm at, jet skis.

• 25:08David McCloskey?

  I mean, well, the other one was, he wanted, I think Cash was trying to get his girlfriend.

• 25:14Gordon Corera?

  Yes.

• 25:14David McCloskey?

  A private tour of Windsor Castle.

• 25:16Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, I think they go to Windsor Castle to meet with the king, which is also classic British, can I just say? Which is like, how do we keep the Americans on board? Let's take them to the castle.

• 25:25David McCloskey?

  Take them to see the king.

• 25:26Gordon Corera?

  To see the king.

• 25:27David McCloskey?

  Americans love a king.

• 25:28Gordon Corera?

  Americans love a king. We'll impress, we'll impress them with a king.

• 25:31David McCloskey?

  The really substantive piece, though, that came out of this whole.

• 25:35Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 25:36David McCloskey?

  You know, spread on on the relationship between the FBI and MI5 was that there was a particular role in the FBI office here in the embassy that the Brits wanted to to keep. And I don't exactly, I don't know if you guys know which role it was.

• 25:49Speaker 03

  I saw that.

• 25:50David McCloskey?

  I think it was a technical type role. The Brits were afraid that the role would get cut or that the officer's time would be extended. And it actually got to the level where the director of MI5 was going to raise it with Cash. It was raised. I believe Cash said, yeah, he's going to stay. And then a couple of weeks later.

• 26:08Speaker 03

  Retracted.

• 26:09David McCloskey?

  Retracted.

• 26:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:10David McCloskey?

  But again, it, I I think if it were reversed.

• 26:14Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 26:14David McCloskey?

  That's not happening.

• 26:15Speaker 03

  Of course not.

• 26:16Gordon Corera?

  That's the power of it. It goes back to the power of it.

• 26:18Speaker 03

  It's Team America, man. Come on.

• 26:19Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 26:20Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 26:21Gordon Corera?

  I mean, I would love to be a fly on the wall in these Five Eyes meetings, these like, you know, ones that happen every year, but.

• 26:26Speaker 03

  Well, maybe you can give him a Huawei phone, Gordon. Maybe you can do that.

• 26:30David McCloskey?

  Go find out what's happening.

• 26:31Gordon Corera?

  Yeah. But I think they they meet at different places every year, but they tend to keep it secret until after.

• 26:37Speaker 03

  I've attended a couple of them, actually. I did, I did a talk at a Five Eyes conference here in London shortly after the.

• 26:43Gordon Corera?

  To the Five Eyes?

• 26:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, to the Five Eyes, yeah, about the Five Eyes to the Five Eyes. And there were representatives from all the agencies.

• 26:49Gordon Corera?

  Tell us more. Were there jet skis? Were there?

• 26:51Speaker 03

  I was, I was disappointed about not having the jet skis there.

• 26:54Gordon Corera?

  Okay.

• 26:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, there there weren't, I don't know.

• 26:56Gordon Corera?

  Good snacks?

• 26:57Speaker 03

  Not really. And if there were any good snacks, they didn't serve me good snacks.

• 27:01Gordon Corera?

  Wow.

• 27:01Speaker 03

  You know, but they allowed me to.

• 27:03Gordon Corera?

  Times are hard.

• 27:03Speaker 03

  Talk about all sorts of stuff. They didn't bring me back for four weeks like you guys did, you know? I think you guys have got better snacks here.

• 27:10Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, even though we don't have a Canadian in the key.

• 27:13Speaker 03

  But there was another event that I went to just a few months ago, actually, maybe two months ago, three months ago, to to New York that was being hosted by the NYPD. But the conference was fascinating. There were about 500 people, representatives from many of the human agencies and law enforcement agencies. It was largely counterterrorism focused, but there were some other discussions. And it's quite reassuring to see how well people were getting on and how well they do get on operationally.

• 27:42Gordon Corera?

  Let's take a break there. And when we come back, we'll just delve a bit deeper into that question about whether the Five Eyes has got a future.

• 27:55Speaker 03

  What are you doing on the 4th of September?

• 27:58Speaker 04

  Oh, you're still free.

• 27:59Speaker 03

  Why?

• 28:00Speaker 04

  Haven't you heard that me and me.

• 28:03David McCloskey?

  Are all going to be at the South Bank Centre?

• 28:05Speaker 02

  We have full weekend live shows, so we're all from your favourite gold-hanger podcasts.

• 28:10Speaker 05

  Hello, all ship. I'm going to be there with Tom Holland, talking about the most scandalous housewives of Regency England. And I'm going to be sitting down with the wonderful Anita Anan, my co-host on the Empire Pod, to talk about the history of modern Iran with the.

• 28:25David McCloskey?

  Absolutely brilliant, Ali Ansari.

• 28:27Speaker 04

  Dominic and I will be telling a thrilling Victorian adventure on the Friday night to kick things off.

• 28:33David McCloskey?

  And it's not just us. Mary Beard is coming. Stanley Tucci is coming. You really couldn't ask for a better guest list, unless you were on it.

• 28:39Speaker 02

  If you want to join us, head to southbankcentre.co.uk for the full lineup. Buy your tickets now.

• 28:46Speaker 04

  See you there. See you there.

• 28:55David McCloskey?

  Hey, guys. It's David here, and I've got some exciting news for you. This September, I'll be teaming up with The Rest Is Politics' US co-host, fellow American, and Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorist, Anthony Scaramucci, for a live show at the South Bank Centre in London.

• 29:12Gordon Corera?

  We'll be joining forces to discuss the long and often controversial role of America as the world's police.

• 29:21David McCloskey?

  We'll dive into why the US has remained so central to global conflicts.

• 29:25Gordon Corera?

  And when an unstoppable force clashes with an immovable object, it's important to have someone in the room to keep control.

• 29:34David McCloskey?

  For that reason, I've convinced Gordon to come and moderate the discussion.

• 29:38Gordon Corera?

  Based on the last time that Anthony and David went head to head during that series on the JFK assassination, I think I will have my work cut out. But to buy tickets, head to southbankcentre.co.uk and search for Team America. We look forward to seeing you there.

• 29:55Speaker 06

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• 30:41Gordon Corera?

  Well, welcome back. So, everything's fine in the Five Eyes? That's what we're saying. No problems, other than...

• 30:46Speaker 03

  Nothing to see here.

• 30:47Gordon Corera?

  Where to get the jet skis and things like that. There's been talk, though, hasn't there, about expanding it? I mean, some people want to get into the Five Eyes. Some other countries, I mean, Japan, South Korea, I mean, in the past, Israel, I think, has wanted to be in. It's hard to imagine, Germany.

• 31:02Speaker 03

  There's this institutional jealousy, I think, as well, from the outsiders, saying, why can't we be part of this club? And I think, given what we've now discussed about the Five Eyes and its history and its shared purpose and shared language and culture and similar laws, how would you bring other countries from the outside in? And how would you get them to prove their security assurance? How do you get to prove that they're not breached by malls? Just the idea of expanding inherits risk. You're naturally going to bring them on. And I think they're sharing information when and if they need to. So there is an outer circle of the Five Eyes and an outer, outer circle and what have you. So those exchanges continue on. They happen bilaterally or trilaterally with countries.

• 31:47Gordon Corera?

  But it's not the same as being part of the club.

• 31:48Speaker 03

  But it's not being part of the club. And I think that part of the club, well, you had to be there at the beginning, right? Because it's Genesis, late 1930s, right through the wartime, through the Cold War. They've lived, they have conducted so much together. They've lived through so much, there's so much shared history. I just don't think you can just somehow get someone in. And if they do, bring in the sixth or seventh. I'll do an updated edition.

• 32:09David McCloskey?

  The bigger underlying question, though, around the expansion is the value. There's an obvious value created for the party that would join.

• 32:18Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 32:18David McCloskey?

  Yeah. But what would be the value? Even if you could work through the legalities of it, and you were convinced that the Germans weren't penetrated.

• 32:28Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 32:29David McCloskey?

  Which seems laughable.

• 32:30Gordon Corera?

  They have been by Russia, haven't they, recently? Yeah.

• 32:32David McCloskey?

  What would be the value to the Five Eyes of bringing in another service?

• 32:39Speaker 03

  And what basis could they provide, as in sigan basis, for instance, that aren't already covering the entire world? So they've got, they've got the coverage. So that is the real question, I think, about the value.

• 32:50Gordon Corera?

  I remember there was a point where the Germans, I think it was around the time of Snowden, where they were quite jealous about what Five Eyes was, and they said, can we join? And I think it was interesting, because I think the existing Five Eyes said to them, if you want to join, you have to understand, you know, you don't just get the intelligence, you have to go out and get it. You know, you don't just receive, you've got to go out and provide us, you know, and spy on other countries and have an exclusive relationship with them. And they were like, oh, that's what it means. You know, I think there was a view that maybe this is just a kind of, you join the club and you get stuff.

• 33:22Speaker 03

  Besides, the Britain Americans probably said, well, by the way, we're spying on you anyway. We don't need your stuff. We know what Angela Merkel's saying.

• 33:30Gordon Corera?

  There's a question, though, whether, because we talked about whether there are different alliances. There's this thing called AUKUS, Australia, UK, US.

• 33:38Speaker 03

  The submarines.

• 33:38Gordon Corera?

  Which is a submarine deal, but some people have questioned whether actually that could become more important than Five Eyes.

• 33:45Speaker 03

  I think they're separate things, because it's not, that's not about just intelligence sharing, whereas Five Eyes is. I think the reason that AUKUS came about, and I think that's a, for me, that would become a really compelling story to look into. And I think one of the reasons it came about is the...

• 34:02Gordon Corera?

  Focus on China.

• 34:03Speaker 03

  China. There's a China threat. But the other reasons was, the other reason was very much political as well. I think Scott Morrison at the time, who was the Australian Prime Minister, and who I interviewed several times over several months about this, he wanted, you know, his vision was to bring Australia closer to the US and to the special relationship. And I think, you know, there's value in that, you could argue. But, but the other thing was that he had to figure out, in his own words, not mine, a Plan B that was better than Plan A. And Plan A was that they had a deal with the French, for the French to create these nuclear-powered submarines, or these submarines, that, I

• 34:45Speaker 03

  don't believe the French were, there were diesel, not nuclear-powered. So the US could potentially provide the nuclear power technology. And they essentially cut out the French, irritated the French, they paid them more than 900 million euros, please check that, but I think it's about right. And it brought the Aussies closer to the US and the UK to create these super expensive submarines. And we don't know when they're going to be finished, exactly, right? So there's that.

• 35:16Gordon Corera?

  And I think there could be some tension if they're not finished.

• 35:18Speaker 03

  It really irritated the New Zealanders and the Canadians. Because if this is a potential Five Eyes thing, why are you withholding the information about your vision for these submarines from your very closest partners?

• 35:30Gordon Corera?

  From the Canadians and the New Zealanders.

• 35:31Speaker 03

  And I, I know they got really irritated. I spoke to very senior political leaders there and people, they were very irritated by it. From his perspective, I don't think he, he didn't really care, because for him, it was Australia's interest that was most important. And I think as a Prime Minister, you do need to put your country's interests first. You know, people can make their judgment about how that was done and whether it could have been done a little bit more subtly.

• 35:56David McCloskey?

  There's another question that I think hangs over this, which is, in a, in an age when a lot of the, I mean, the Five Eyes is a Cold War creation, really.

• 36:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:08David McCloskey?

  And in the Cold War, the vast majority of technological breakthroughs in telecommunications, in space, in defence, were made inside the government, right? And we now are in a world where it's essentially the exact opposite, where most of the innovation, and frankly, most of the innovation that's going to be the underlying tech that goes into signals intelligence in the future, is probably not happening, or is not happening as much as it used to, in the basement of GCHQ or ASD in Australia or the NSA.

• 36:47Gordon Corera?

  It's happening in Silicon Valley.

• 36:48David McCloskey?

  It's happening in Silicon Valley. And the US intelligence community's budget is around 100 billion.

• 36:52Speaker 03

  106 billion, the latest, or something like that, yeah.

• 36:55David McCloskey?

  So.

• 36:55Speaker 03

  A year, yeah.

• 36:56David McCloskey?

  Right. So in fiscal year 2024, Apple's R&D budget, plus its SG&A, was $57 billion, right? Which is probably more than the NSA.

• 37:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:11David McCloskey?

  Probably a bigger budget than the NSA.

• 37:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, of course, because you have 18 intelligence agencies in the US.

• 37:15David McCloskey?

  And when you look at R&D expenditure alone, right, if you look at like Amazon's tech and infrastructure spend last year, was around $88 billion. And so I just, I wonder if there's a big question over the Five Eyes, which is, it's still relevant.

• 37:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:29David McCloskey?

  But is it less important now than it was at the height of the Cold War?

• 37:35Speaker 03

  You're comparing the money here, but there's a lot more, there's a lot more than that, because...

• 37:40David McCloskey?

  Totally.

• 37:40Speaker 03

  These, these commercial organisations aren't creating tech to collect intelligence and to spy. So it's a bit different.

• 37:48David McCloskey?

  Totally. It's just the scale of...

• 37:50Gordon Corera?

  The scale of investment. But I guess the point is, does that suggest... That the US, because we've took all the way through, at least since the 50s, the US has been the dominant partner. And the talk is that, you know, 85% of the intelligence that comes into the Five Eyes is American, 15% or something is from the others. But if you look at the kind of money flows and AI and tech and the private sector, if anything, that imbalance is going to grow, you know, rather than shrink. The US is not getting less important, it's getting more important. And that, again, maybe changes the dynamics, because if you're the smaller partners, again, you need to be in with the Americans, you need to keep in with this American machine

• 38:32Gordon Corera?

  and with its technology and the alliance. So you become almost more subservient, you know? I mean, there's

• 38:38Speaker 03

  Well, also, political systems change. That's the beauty about the West, right? So in some sense, there's a disadvantage with having a democracy when it comes to national security, right? So you cannot run the authoritarian state's missions that the Chinese and the Russians do. But in another sense, it's actually quite refreshing and so important because your political leaders change. And when the new political leaders come in, they have different priorities in some cases. And then you have better relationships or your relationships get worse, depending on who's the head of which agency. So I think from that perspective, the lack of continuity is actually an important thing.

• 39:19Gordon Corera?

  Because things can go bad for a few years and then they could get better.

• 39:21Speaker 03

  Precisely. So with Trump, I mean, okay, so even if he does come and stay for a third term, as you know, some of the headlines are suggesting, eventually he's going to have to go, right? And with him, so will the cabinet, and so will that sort of thinking. And I think there'll be a pushback against the ideologies that he imposed on the systems. And I think eventually there'll be a correction of sort. And when the correction of sort happens, I think it's more likely to play into the hands of the four partners, not the other way around.

• 39:50David McCloskey?

  Also, if you look at the, you know, we talked a lot in the series about how there's essentially a very hard underlying logic in the Five Eyes, which is signals intelligence broadly, whether we're talking about splicing cables or whether we're talking about intercepting satellite downlinks, whatever it might be, is very capital intensive, right? And geography matters. And so burden sharing on the cost side and having a geographically disparate, essentially former colonial network are extremely valuable. I think that there are pieces of that that are less true today,

• 40:31David McCloskey?

  in part because what we are going to be focusing more and more on collecting is

• 40:37Gordon Corera?

  Digital.

• 40:37David McCloskey?

  Those hypers, you know, sort of the big AI kind of hyperscalers, AWS, Amazon, Microsoft, whatever, the cloud, the stuff that's at the endpoint is much more, there's much more there and it's much more valuable.

• 40:51Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 40:51David McCloskey?

  And you also have a huge amount of commercially available information that you can go out and buy that you don't actually need to intercept, right? You actually just go out through cutouts and purchase it. And having the US's defence budget compared to New Zealand or the UK matters a lot when you're talking about purchasing massive quantities of data. But what still does matter is the fact that you have, I mean, a lot of, a lot of what used to be satellite downlink comms are now under C cables. The geography and the choke points of those cables matter. And having a whole bunch of command and control satellites in low Earth orbit is still, it's still a geographic game to a degree, right?

• 41:36David McCloskey?

  So the geography is still there.

• 41:38Gordon Corera?

  I agree with you. It may not matter quite as much, but I think having Pine Gap, having Memmoth Hill, Filing Dales, having Cyprus, having, having these places still matters. Because if it was simply about money, then the US could, you know,

• 41:54David McCloskey?

  It's not simply about, that's not, I agree.

• 41:56Gordon Corera?

  It's not simply about money. In the, you know, and even when we go back to the Bletchley stuff, it was the idea that two, two different approaches to code breaking is better than one, you know? And actually, the benefits, different interpretations.

• 42:08Speaker 03

  You need dissenting voices in rooms. And you don't get that when you have, if you have an echo chamber, you have intelligence failures, right? As we've seen. So you do need the external input. I think that's, that's where the value comes in.

• 42:20Gordon Corera?

  In the alliance, rather than even just the geography and the money.

• 42:23Speaker 03

  Also the individuals, because for instance, a Canadian intelligence official working on analysis will have a slightly different interpretation of the, of the intelligence than, say, a US. And they have, they will discuss it. And the best idea should always win.

• 42:38Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 42:38Speaker 03

  But you, the ideas improve when you debate them. They tend to.

• 42:43Gordon Corera?

  But, but I guess the, the question is if, you know, the alliance has been based on shared values, shared, shared interests, shared threats. At the moment, you can see, as we, you know, we talked about at the start of this episode, China is, is one way of approaching that. Although even within that, you know, New Zealand has a slightly different view. Also, you can see Canada thinking, actually, maybe we need to trade more with China because we're worried about our reliance on the US, which is more difficult. So you, you kind of go, I, I agree it's surviving at the operational level, but you can see some of the strains at least, you know, in, in the way they see the world. So I guess last question for us is, is it still there in 10 years, 20 years, Five Eyes?

• 43:24Speaker 03

  I just don't see how it's going to fall apart. I genuinely don't see it. You know, could it go on hiatus? Could the US withdraw? Why would the others walk away? I can't see the other four walking away from the alliance. If the US walks away, then the others are more likely to stay together because they work really well together. But I also don't see the value that the US would get from walking away from Five Eyes. If anything, it's the other way around. And for someone like Donald Trump, who is transaction driven and who is value driven, I think he would even see that, well, we could

• 43:58Gordon Corera?

  We'd get this base, get that base, yeah. We'd have to pay for it ourselves, yeah.

• 44:01Speaker 03

  Yeah. And this, this kind of rhetoric around Canada being, becoming a 51st state, I mean, do we really believe that?

• 44:08David McCloskey?

  It seems like a more likely scenario that it could be a thinner arrangement in which it's still a Five Eyes. There's still loads of intelligence sharing. But in fact, I mean, there's, there's an interesting example in the way the US has deepened its relationship with Mossad at the Middle East, where it's not part of the Five Eyes. But the US has said, well, I'm not withdrawing from the Five Eyes. It's not like I, it's, these things are not necessarily zero sum, but I deepen my partnership. Still kind of, I'm not, I'm not sacrificing GCHQ information of the Israelis, but I've just deepened this bilateral relationship because that's good for me in the region. And the Five Eyes remains operationally as it has.

• 44:50Gordon Corera?

  No, I agree. And I think that's the future, is Five Eyes survives, but it possibly becomes less central and pivotal. And because you can even see it in the UK, is that they're working hard to build their intelligence relationships with European countries. You know, they're building it with Poland, they're building it with the Baltics, they're building it with France and others. And so it's, to some extent, it's diversifying rather than having that one alliance. But that, but that absolutely doesn't mean you get rid of that one alliance.

• 45:15David McCloskey?

  No.

• 45:16Gordon Corera?

  But, but you diversify, I think, in those cases. It becomes less, you know, the thing that, that defines everything.

• 45:23David McCloskey?

  And by the way, intelligence agencies are great at compartmentalizing

• 45:27Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 45:27David McCloskey?

  information. So the Five Eyes stuff stays with the Five Eyes. And if we decide, if the US decides for some reason that we want to have a deeper relationship with El Salvador.

• 45:39Gordon Corera?

  Go for it.

• 45:40David McCloskey?

  We can, we can do that. And we won't, we will not relay to El Salvador sensitive information that's being collected under the auspices of the Five Eyes. Intelligence agencies do that even if there wasn't a Five Eyes.

• 45:53Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 45:54David McCloskey?

  We're not, we're not getting stuff in our bilat with the Israelis and then sharing it with you. We're respecting the kind of compartmentalization of information that's so critical to intelligence in general.

• 46:05Gordon Corera?

  Okay. Well, I think that's a good place to leave it. With the Five Eyes, we think probably surviving, we think, but maybe slightly in a different form.

• 46:14Speaker 03

  We can do another episode. We can do the fifth episode of the Five Eyes if the Five Eyes collapses.

• 46:19Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, exactly. We'll definitely be there for that.

• 46:21David McCloskey?

  And I have resisted this entire series. Gordon has been wearing glasses off and on. I have resisted calling him a Four Eyes.

• 46:28Gordon Corera?

  Thank you very much.

• 46:29David McCloskey?

  But I, but, and I've decided, I've finally, my, the temptation grew too great as we close out the series.

• 46:34Gordon Corera?

  I'll put them on just for the end, just so you could do that.

• 46:36Speaker 03

  Maybe you guys can host me for sort of a late lunch at Five Guys. And then we sort of set it off from there.

• 46:42Gordon Corera?

  Richard Kerbaj on that note. Thank you very much. Author of The Secret History of the Five Eyes and also The Defector, which has just come out in the US or is about to come out in September. Thank you very much for joining us.

• 46:54Speaker 03

  Thank you. Thanks for having me.

• 46:55Gordon Corera?

  And just a reminder that club members are going to be able to hear interviews with some of the intelligence chiefs who've sat inside these Five Eyes meetings, who've been at the heart of some of the decisions and are going to explain to us really how it really works.

• 47:10David McCloskey?

  They won't hear the interviews because we did them on jet ski. It'd be too loud.

• 47:14Gordon Corera?

  So do join if you want to hear, hear those interviews at therestisclassified.com. We've also got some great series coming up, which you'll get early access to on things like 9/11 and Kim Philby. So do join there. But otherwise, we'll see you next time.

• 47:26Speaker 03

  We'll see you next time.

• 47:32Speaker 04

  Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zepbound Terzepatide may be able to help. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity, or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems, to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15-milligram injection. Zepbound contains Terzepatide and should not be used with other Terzepatide-containing products or any GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepbound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pens, or reuse needles.

• 48:14Speaker 04

  Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. If you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zepbound with asylphonal urea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor.

• 48:54Speaker 04

  Call 1-800-545-5979, or visit zepbound.lily.com.

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