DN interview: The spies among us

It was only a couple of years ago that a Russian spy posing as a Brazilian researcher was uncovered in Norway. No one knows how many spies are walking among us, according to British Guardian journalist Shaun Walker. In his book The Illegals, Walker takes as his starting point the shocking revelation that two American adults received one day in 2016: their parents were not the slightly boring Canadians that they had grown up with, but instead were spies for the Russian intelligence service, the KGB.

Israel has also conducted extensive espionage campaigns against its many enemies since the establishment of the state almost eighty years ago. In the book Mossad's Blood Trail, former NRK correspondent Odd Karsten Tveit writes about the brutal assassinations carried out by Israeli intelligence, including when they killed the wrong man in Lillehammer in 1973.

Walker and Tveit meet Dagens Næringsliv journalist Simen Ekern to talk about the spies among us, the damage they can do, and why countries such as Russia and Israel continue with this form of ‘old-fashioned’ espionage in our digital age.

The conversation is in English.