For your eyes only ... plus all the new Instagram followers @MI6

Secret service embraces social media in recruitment drive to find the next generation of spies

- Lily Isaacs

The head of MI6, Britain's foreign intelligence agency, took to social media platform X last week to launch "Silent Courier", a new dark web portal through which it is aiming to recruit spies across the globe.

It appealed to potential agents with a slick video boasting all the spy-movie trimmings: a flashy car racing through the desert, a mysterious man in a suit walking in the woods, a clandestine meeting in a boardroom. It published further instructions on the service's new YouTube channel.

The previous week the service had joined Instagram, announcing its arrival with a rather more amateur video edit - this time with photos of James Bond, Killing Eve and other fictional depictions of espionage. "It's time to tell our own story," it said.

The new social media blitz is part of a trend in British government communications: from Whitehall departments to the intelligence services, agencies once averse to public attention are now chasing followers.