I'm a subscriber. Really interesting videos. I heard he used to work for MI6. Not sure if that is just a rumor to try to get more subscribers or what.
But there are some more Youtubers who seem to travel around to hotspots. I am a little suspicious they work for the CIA or something. Seems like the perfect cover. It may be some of them just get paid not to actually spy but just to verify that westerners can travel and film in those places.
That's interesting about bald, it's a neat channel.
I used to be one of a group of people who other people thought were spies. I was living abroad at the time. At first this aspect was extremely irritating. Some locals would point at me and say "spy".
But the more I thought about it, the more I met people like me who I thought would make terrific spies, and the more I met local friends who I thought I could probably recruit as spies to have local culture on my side.
Then I started to casually explore the countryside like a dumb tourist, and I would emerge from a random forest to see locals' gaping mouths, later to learn it was a sensitive area. I started to think--no wonder they think we're spies!
Later on I went home and found out that a LOT of people who did what I did were recruited as legitimate spy-types. One of them was a childhood friend who apparently drank some magic government potion and became a CIA officer who went on to be extremely visible in US national politics.
It's a fascinating lens on life, superficially at least. Misdirection works for you and against you. You can make just about anything seem true or false. And weirdly while supposedly a hyper-objective effort (go $my_country!) I understand it often has a tremendous personal impact on those who are deeply involved.
> But there are some more Youtubers who seem to travel around to hotspots
These are the ones I'd recruit for a modern-day BRIXMIS. If you watch the BRIXMIS videos, the officers interviewed had a tremendous psychological overlap with traveling Youtubers who are very curious about things, to the point where _touching_ or _going to those things_ feels like a victory of its own. Digging up poop near an encampment because Soviet soldiers used log pages as toilet paper--they did that.
Aren't spies a bit of a thing of the past? The times that we need to be physically present for information are long, long past no? What has a spy acting as a tourist to gain?
Tourists make terrible spies. They attract too much attention; operating in an environment where everyone already thinks you're a spy is not what "hiding in plain sight" means.
Espionage is still very much alive. Physical presence maintains trust that can later be exploited (most of us would call it "grooming").
But there are some more Youtubers who seem to travel around to hotspots. I am a little suspicious they work for the CIA or something. Seems like the perfect cover. It may be some of them just get paid not to actually spy but just to verify that westerners can travel and film in those places.