Britain's MI6 spy agency names first female chief

A general view of the headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, in London. Kin Cheung/AP hide caption

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Kin Cheung/AP

LONDON — Q is becoming C.

The head of technology and innovation at Britain's MI6 foreign intelligence agency — the real-life equivalent of James Bond's gadget-master Q — has been promoted to the country's top spy job.

And for the first time in the agency's 116-year history, the MI6 chief — codename C — will be a woman.

It's a milestone that's already happened on the silver screen, when Judi Dench played the MI6 chief in several Bond films. (Though her character was known as M, rather than C.)

Now, real life is catching up with fiction. In a statement late Sunday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that Blaise Metreweli — the first-ever female MI6 chief — will assume her new role in the autumn, succeeding Richard Moore, who is retiring.

Metreweli, 47, said she was "proud and honored."

C is the only publicly-named position at MI6, also known as the Secret Intelligence Service. The agency handles covert overseas intelligence-gathering, and is thought to manage a global network of spies. It's roughly the British equivalent of America's CIA.

"I look forward to continuing that work alongside the brave officers and agents of MI6 and our many international partners," Metreweli said, according to a statement from Starmer's office.

This undated image released by the United Kingdom Foreign Office shows new MI6 chief Blaise Metreweli. AP/United Kingdom Foreign Office hide caption

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AP/United Kingdom Foreign Office

She's a career intelligence officer. Metreweli joined government service in 1999, and previously held director-level roles in MI6's domestic sister agency, MI5. She has spent most of her career in the Middle East and Europe.

While at MI5 in 2021, she gave an anonymous interview under the pseudonym Director K in which she warned British espionage laws were out of date, and likened Vladimir Putin's Russia to an "unpredictable storm."

As Q at MI6, Metreweli was in charge of keeping secret the identities of British spies around the world, and coming up with new ways of evading adversaries, including China's biometric surveillance.

She takes over at a time when MI6 and the U.K. overall face unprecedented challenges from Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, and from non-state entities like the Houthis in Yemen, and al-Qaeda.

"The United Kingdom is facing threats on an unprecedented scale — be it aggressors who send their spy ships to our waters or hackers whose sophisticated cyber plots seek to disrupt our public services," Starmer said in the statement from his office.