In a move that has left even the most seasoned Westminster barflies choking on their pints, Donald Trump has appointed Bill Pulte, a man best known for building houses and tweeting about his philanthropy, as America's new Director of National Intelligence. Yes, you read that correctly. The man who once unironically described himself as a 'Twitter philanthropist' is now responsible for ensuring the United States isn't blindsided by enemy action. One can only assume his first act will be to demand the entire intelligence community relocate to open-plan offices, swap their classified briefings for motivational posters, and replace the CIA's iconic seal with his own profile picture.
Meanwhile, across the pond, UK intelligence chiefs are monitoring the appointment with the kind of strained detachment one reserves for a neighbour's overexcited terrier. MI6, GCHQ, and the dear old Security Service are no doubt issuing statements so carefully worded they might as well be written in invisible ink. 'We look forward to working with Mr Pulte,' they'll purr, while simultaneously updating their contingency plans for a world where the man with the final say on global threats might well ask Alexa to read the daily threat assessment.
Let us not forget, this is the same Bill Pulte who, during the pandemic, tweeted that he was 'seriously considering' buying a private island to host a no-COVID-19 party. A whimsical notion for a man now about to peruse the NSA's most intimate secrets. One imagines the briefings will now come with pop-up videos and a catchy jingle: 'If you see a suspicious package, don't panic – just tweet me a photo and I'll retweet it with a fire emoji.'
The Crown's guardians of secrets are no doubt watching this with the same horrified fascination one reserves for a car crash involving a clown car. Their carefully cultivated web of human intelligence, signal intercepts, and back-channel diplomacy may soon have to interface with a man whose primary professional qualification appears to be a blue tick. The irony is so thick you could cut it with a gin bottle. They'll be attending meetings where the senior American intelligence officer might at any moment suggest 'crowdsourcing' the identity of a double agent or 'crowdfunding' a new spy satellite.
But let's not be unfair. Perhaps Mr Pulte will bring a breath of fresh air to the musty halls of Langley. Imagine a world where the President's Daily Brief is replaced with a series of LinkedIn thought pieces, where the threat matrix is boiled down to a simple traffic light system (green for 'nothing to see here', red for 'someone's being mean to me online'), and where covert operations are rebranded as 'influencer missions'. It's a bold new world, and Britain's spy chiefs are right to be concerned.
In fact, I can practically hear them now, huddled around a secure phone in a soundproofed room, discussing strategies. 'John, we need to reassess our sources. Henderson in Moscow might be compromised. And for God's sake, ensure Pulte doesn't get access to the memo about the Queen's corgis. He'll probably try to launch a GoFundMe for them.' The resulting tremors may well be felt from Vauxhall Cross to Cheltenham, where technicians will be kept late retooling algorithms to filter out Pulte's inevitable midnight tweets from the genuine intelligence feed.
So raise a glass, if you can still find one untainted by despair, to the new Director of National Intelligence. May his briefings be as cogent as a meme, his analysis as deep as a puddle, and his tenure as short as his attention span. The spooks of the United Kingdom are watching, and they are appalled. But they are also rather magnificently British about it: they'll simply carry on, refining their own intelligence product, muttering 'oh, crumbs' under their breath while the world stumbles further into absurdity.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go check if my gin has been diluted by reality. I suspect it has been.
