Not just MI6 — USCIS and consular affairs have been doing this since ~2017. Many visa-fraud detection systems are now Python-based because the legacy mainframes can’t ingest the volume or velocity of data needed. The bigger change is that case officers are expected to interpret code output directly, not just read a summary from a tech team.

Kind of horrifying to think that the head of an intelligence agency thinks Russian and Python are the ones the tip of the spear needs to be fluent in.

What are some other really useful skills? AI/ML frameworks, data skills, cloud basics, embedded programming, PCB design, sensor integration, front-end, back-end/API, version control? That would just be a start. After that an MI6 hopeful would have to pick up some physics, materials science and basics of precision instrumentation so they can get a job at a Chinese foundry...for reasons. Oh, and they would have to be good at Mandarin, too. Nobody said spying was easy :)

No, but shouldn’t the bar for “well-compensated disposable mole” be higher?

that would be horrifying if that was what was said. in the speech itself not mastery in python or russian is named, but mastery in every domain.

The quote in the article is "as fluent in Python as we are in multiple other languages”… Russian is mentioned elsewhere, so gets incorporated by reference rather than directly here, but Python is still the exemplar she used for computerese.

Mastery in every domain is great, but part of that is knowing that mastering Python isn’t mastering any CS domain.

It kind of is relevant, Python seems to be a go-to language for “hacking”, isn’t it? When you look at computer or software vulnerability POCs, it is usually Python.

In late 2025 the foreign intelligence service of any <=G20 nation should, realistically, see Python competency as roughly equivalent to arithmetic, shoelace-tying, or conversational English… my point is it shouldn’t be a reach goal.