Director GCHQ speaks at The Languages Show 2021

A recent report from the British Council referred to Britain as a soft power superpower, and as one of the most attractive countries in the G20 group of nations. That’s largely based on the importance of English, the global significance of the English language. I wonder how vital are other language skills to the soft power in the UK?

Director: Yes, the Integrated Review the Government’s recently published has set out the ambition for the UK to be a great science power; to be a global Britain; to be out there exercising all aspects of power including, of course, its soft power. And when we think about our soft power, then we think about the importance of being able to engage globally. And as far as I'm concerned, and coming from GCHQ's perspective, then the way in which we do that is fundamentally dependent on languages; and so it must be the case that if we are to be genuinely a global Britain, if we're to exercise our influence to engage with the places we need to engage right across the world, then languages need to be a part of that. It’s not the only part, but it's a really, really important part.

Are there other skills and attributes that are fostered through the ability to speak other languages that are of particular value to GCHQ?

Director: I see this every day of every week. We have linguists [who] have been at the heart of GCHQ for all of our 102-year history, and of course what I get when I engage a linguist in the important work of GCHQ - protecting the nation's security - is way beyond just their core language skills. I get cultural understanding and an innate understanding of the places we are interested in. I get deep analytical skills, so linguists are often very very good at broader analysis; and of course a fundamental part of any analysis is that you'll put into context the pure language that you are listening to. I get this, if you like, this cognitive flexibility - so people, particularly people who have more than two languages, you get this flexibility in how they think about the world and how they think about placing the basic facts of language in that broader context and that flexibility, that ability to bring their language skills across the range of what we're doing, and then finally, I think you get this real sense, innate understanding of what it takes to communicate and engage, and you know that sense of how do we relate as individuals, how do we relate as cultures, you get that from a linguist; so when I'm thinking about what linguists can bring to GCHQ, and of course, if anyone is looking, we are always recruiting linguists and you know please, look at careers in GCHQ, but when I'm thinking about how we really leverage the power of linguists across GCHQ, it's far broader and I'd say that that's the same in every business or enterprise up and down the country.

Which languages would you consider to be strategically important?

Director: I think this is a question that's fraught with difficulties! I’m bound to offend here in how I answer this; but I think we can say, particularly at the moment as we're looking at the geopolitical changes we've seen over the last couple of years, and some of those accelerated by the pandemic, we can see that there is an increasing emphasis towards the Indo-Pacific and of course to Mandarin and other aspects of Chinese languages. And so that sense of us thinking about how those big geopolitical shifts are shaping our landscape, how they’re shaping what global Britain needs to be, then I think it's inevitable that you look in that direction. And again, of course, like every other enterprise in the country, we're thinking about what that means for our future balance of languages inside GCHQ, and we have, just at the moment, a campaign for Mandarin linguists, for example. But Mandarin isn't the only language and strategically it is of course still the case that we as a global power need to engage right across the piece. Just because we’ve had Brexit doesn't mean that we're not engaged with Europe. We remain in a country that is part of Europe. We of course have very strong links through the Commonwealth into Asia and into Africa, and so there's a very broad range of skills and languages that the nation requires going forward - albeit I think a slightly different balance because of what we've seen over the last couple of years.

How can we source the wide range of language skills that we need?

Director: Well I think that's the challenge that we all face as employers in the United Kingdom. And of course, really there are only two sources of language skills and this is at its heart when we boil this down. The first is to make sure that we've got the educational pipelines to make sure that those people who have an aptitude for languages are developed in the right way and that they get the right sort of support through their academic career and their post academic career and there are plenty of people like that in my business who have a real aptitude for languages and many of them speak multiples and some of them a dozen languages because of that innate understanding and ability around languages. But of course the other way is that we have a very large community of people in the United Kingdom where English is their second language and where from a cultural heritage perspective they have a deep understanding of a particular language and the culture that underpins it and many of those don't, I think, understand the true power of that great advantage they've had in life in some ways of being able to communicate and being seated in that cultural heritage and of course leveraging those skills which might be in that particular language but it might be just because they've demonstrated an ability to learn a whole range of different languages in other ways leveraging those skills and bringing them to bear. I will be corrected here on the stats but I think it's one in five school children - 1.6 million school children - who have that cultural heritage background and probably if we’re faced with a single change in this nation it’s to leverage those skills in a much more structured and systemic way and also as part of our broader challenges around inclusion and diversity helping those communities just to understand the power of those skills and the potential it gives them and their children for different sorts of careers in this country.

How do we bring about change in our approach to languages and cultures and their importance?

Director: I'm sure many people who are watching today have found ourselves privileged in interactions with our international counterparts when English has been spoken. And it's a historical thing, it's a convenience factor, but it's also a habit. And I think all of us should be very careful in taking that for granted, and so that sense of English as the common language then that's great whilst we can still take advantage of that, but I don't think we should take that for granted going forward. And I think we've got to find other ways of making sure that we are better able to convene in other languages where that's appropriate and that we're able to leverage all of the cultural understanding that comes from those sorts of linguist skills. And so to make that happen we've got to, like any complex system, we've got to find ways of getting the incentives in the right place, and so that's the incentives at the educational level to get involved in languages and so that children can understand, and their parents can understand, that there are really important career and life chances that come from languages. It’s post-educational making sure that we have proper careers for linguists not just, as I've already explained, in pure languages, but leveraging those broader skills. And then I think it's in the partnerships that we are able to bring to bear. So, you know, this isn't a challenge just for educationalists, this is a challenge for business, the civil society; for government and I really think we’ve got to do better at pulling together all those aspects of the UK; and this is a devolved issue as well as its a national government issue. But putting together all of those aspects so that we can encourage and incentivise the system. Some of the best things that I've seen around skills - and I'm thinking beyond languages now - but I think it is relevant to languages when we get schools and academia alongside business such that business can leverage their resources and their requirements into the academic system; but also the academic system can get to understand what it is that is going to be valued at the end of their educational experience. And I suspect that if there's a single challenge that we can start to get our heads around, it’s that. It's how do we create these better civil business and academic conversations that make sure that we know the value of languages and that we really are incentivising the right sorts of behaviours and rewards in that broader system.

There is a view at the moment, that technology could transcend the human; that we don't need so many language skills that it will all be down to artificial intelligence and automated translation and so forth. What are your views on that? 

Director: I mean again it's an excellent question and of course there's a lot of conversation, discussion, at the moment about what amounts to artificial intelligence and the role of technology and I guess I have two views on this; the first is that we all know there's a revolution in skills that is coming from the way in which machine learning in particular, as we move closer to the definitions of artificial intelligence, start to have a bearing on our workplaces, and some of the things that are easily automated will be automated and some will become autonomous. And I've no doubt that the skills requirements on the educational system and on the working population more broadly will change as the result of that, but what it doesn't do is replace the human; and what it does is it puts the skills and the expertise that that we need into different, more value-added aspects of jobs and careers and tasks. And it's absolutely the same from my perspective for linguists. And so I think you can see a world where machines are involved in more of the routine language work, that you could see more prevalent auto translation, but we're a million miles away from supplanting a linguist’s ability to put that in context, to understand the broader cultural aspects of the language or the particular country that we are engaging in. And so, if I was a linguist, I would be thinking that technology is something that can augment my skills, that will place me perhaps into a slightly different aspect of the value chain, that could bring me higher up the stack in terms of the difference that I am making, and, in a world where machines do what machines are good at and humans do what machines are not good at - and that's that broader cognitive understanding and value-added stuff - then I think that for all of my career and way beyond that linguists are going to be central to so many aspects of what we need.