Professor Sir David Omand

Professor Sir David Omand is a Visiting Professor in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, a member of the editorial board of the academic journal Intelligence and National Security, and a member of the advisory board of Paladin Capital, which invests in cyber security start-ups.

He has held senior posts across the UK’s security, intelligence, and defence institutions, including Director of GCHQ, Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, and the first UK Security and Intelligence Coordinator in the Cabinet Office, responsible to the Prime Minister for the professional health of the intelligence community, national counterterrorism strategy, and ‘homeland security’. He served for seven years on the UK Joint Intelligence Committee and writes widely on intelligence, counterterrorism strategy, resilience, and the ethics of secret intelligence, including as the author of:

• How Spies Think: Ten Lessons in Intelligence.
• How to Survive a Crisis: Lessons in Resilience and Avoiding Disaster.
• Securing the State.
• Principled Spying: The Ethics of Secret Intelligence.

Prior to this, he served as Deputy Under-Secretary of State for Policy at the Ministry of Defence, where he was particularly concerned with long-term strategy, the British military contribution to restoring peace in the former Yugoslavia, and the recasting of British nuclear deterrence policy at the end of the Cold War. He also served as Principal Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Defence during the Falklands conflict, and spent three years in Brussels at NATO as the UK Defence Counsellor.