Sweden is launching its own MI6

As russia prepared to invade Ukraine in 2022, American and British intelligence agencies sounded the alarm. Yet some of their European counterparts were unconvinced. Among the sceptics was Sweden’s military-intelligence service, known as must, which had long prided itself on its expert knowledge of Russia’s armed forces. Along with spy chiefs in France and Germany, must’s bosses judged that launching a full-scale war was too risky and irrational for Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, to countenance.

Now Sweden wants to make sure it never repeats that embarrassing blunder. In May the government announced the creation of a new spy agency, the Utrike underrattelsetjanst (und), or Foreign Intelligence Service. The foreign minister, Maria Malmer Stenergard, said it would be a civilian agency, comparable to Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, better known as mi6. The und will sit alongside must, while taking over some of its responsibilities. These include oversight of a shadowy unit known as the Special Collection Office, which carries out covert operations involving agents abroad. Sweden’s parliament is expected to approve the plan on August 13th, ahead of general elections in September. The und would start work in January.

The new agency is the brainchild of Carl Bildt, a former prime minister, who published a review into Sweden’s spying apparatus last year. It identified a gap in capabilities to explain the failures of 2022. Unlike many of its allies, Sweden lacked a foreign-intelligence service outside the command of the armed forces, and designed to report chiefly to government. While the system was “very good at tracking the military developments on the ground”, Mr Bildt says, “we were not as good at looking at the politics of Russia and where they were heading.” Mr Bildt concluded that this meant Sweden needed a civilian service that could better analyse what Russia’s leaders were thinking.

Sweden’s armed forces and some opposition parties have warned the reform risks being rushed given the tight timeline for the und’s creation. But few disagree with the idea in principle. Sweden has shown similar urgency on other big security decisions recently. It applied to join nato in 2022 and entered the alliance less than two years later, ending some 200 years of military non-alignment. The government currently spends 2.8% of gdp on defence and aims to reach nato’s defence-spending target of 3.5% by 2030. Sweden’s armsmakers have sold kit to Ukraine, including 16 Gripen fighter jets. Officials are also trying to rebuild “muscle memory” around civil defence, says Matthew Hefler of the Stockholm School of Economics, to prepare Swedes to contribute to Europe’s collective security.

Other European countries are shaking up their intelligence operations. Germany is seeking to free its foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst, from strict privacy rules that restrict its ability to track targets. The reason is not just Russian aggression, but also growing concerns about Europe’s dependency on American intelligence amid strained transatlantic relations. Talk of more co-operation within Europe is increasing: politicians in countries such as Germany and the Netherlands have separately floated the idea of creating European intelligence-sharing networks akin to Five Eyes, the alliance between America, Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand.

That may be easier said than done. The core of the Five Eyes alliance is signals intelligence, the stuff of intercepting and deciphering communications and data. In Sweden these activities will still be handled by another agency separate from both the und and must. Collaboration in that form of espionage is built on “very deep trust”, says Mr Bildt, and does not easily lend itself to new multilateral frameworks. More likely is informal pooling of analysis between like-minded European partners and a greater emphasis on newer forms of spycraft such as analysing open-source data, which could be enhanced by artificial intelligence.

Either way, Mr Bildt seems confident that the und’s founding will allow Sweden to respond more effectively to volatile geopolitics. “I think it should have been done ten years ago,” he explains, frankly. Better late than never.