Donald Trump threatens to sue BBC

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Speaker 3 This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.

Speaker 3 I'm Nick Myers, and at 16 hours GMT on Monday, the 10th of November, these are our main stories.

Speaker 3 President Trump threatens to sue the BBC over a documentary which misrepresented comments he made to his supporters who stormed the Capitol building in January 2021.

Speaker 3 With the Syrian president in Washington for talks with Donald Trump, we hear from minority groups in Syria who say he's failing to protect them.

Speaker 8 We wanted to start new businesses, but there is no security. My dearest friends are dead.
I will have to leave the country again.

Speaker 3 And as another UN climate change conference is getting underway in Brazil, for many delegates, it's personal.

Speaker 5 You know, I'm a new dad, my son's almost three, so the ways that I think about the climate crisis now is so wild.

Speaker 5 So my orientation to the climate crisis is so much more and it's something that's often at the back of my mind, right?

Speaker 7 Also in this podcast, we set up fake websites selling fake goods.

Speaker 9 Did you ever feel guilty?

Speaker 7 We didn't think about consequences.

Speaker 9 What were you buying?

Speaker 7 I was changing cars like changing clothes.

Speaker 3 An exclusive interview with a former cyber criminal who helped swindle people out of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Speaker 3 It has been described as an extraordinary moment in the history of the BBC. The resignations of Tim Davey, who was in overall charge of the corporation, and his head of news, Deborah Turnis.

Speaker 3 As you may have heard in our earlier edition, it all came about after a leaked memo criticised a BBC TV documentary programme about President Trump, which was broadcast weeks before he won the election a year ago.

Speaker 3 The specific error at the heart of the crisis was about the editing of a speech made by the President on the day of the riots on Capitol Hill in 2021.

Speaker 3 The programme put two parts of the President's speech together, so he appeared to explicitly encourage the rioting that day. That wasn't made clear to viewers.

Speaker 3 Questions are now being raised about the impartiality of the BBC, one of its key commitments to its viewers and listeners, and there's been a furious reaction from Washington, where President Trump has said some BBC journalists are corrupt.

Speaker 3 In the last couple of hours, the BBC chairman, Samir Shah, has apologised on behalf of the corporation. He explained to the BBC's Katie Razzle what he was apologising for.

Speaker 10 The apologising is for the way

Speaker 10 the team edited President Trump's speech to his supporters on January the 6th.

Speaker 4 And that was the wrong call, it was a mistake, is that what you're saying? Yes. And are you going to be, are you apologising directly to President Trump personally on behalf of the BBC?

Speaker 10 We have received a communication from President Trump and his people, and we are considering

Speaker 10 how to reply to him.

Speaker 4 Has he said that he's going to be suing the BBC?

Speaker 10 I do not know that yet, but he's a religious fellow, so we should be prepared for all outcomes.

Speaker 3 And since that interview was recorded, BBC News has learned that President Donald Trump has sent a letter to the BBC threatening legal action.

Speaker 3 When something goes seriously wrong at the BBC, it matters, not only because of the role the corporation plays in British public life, but also because of its reach and influence around the world.

Speaker 3 Rob Watson is our UK Affairs correspondent. So what more has Samir Shah said and where does this take us? He spoke to Julian Warwicker.

Speaker 11 So the second part of his letter, you basically heard the first part there, which is an apology for editing Donald Trump the way that the BBC had.

Speaker 11 The second part is to say that memo, now infamous memo almost, Julian, that has leaked, which essentially was internal criticism of the BBC, whether it was reporting its reporting of Israel, trans rights.

Speaker 11 What he has said is that, look,

Speaker 11 we have addressed some of those issues because the memo basically said, look, all these reports went to the BBC's senior management and they, you know, didn't implement stuff.

Speaker 11 They didn't seem to take it very seriously. He's saying, no, actually, you know, a lot of the points made in there, we have taken action.

Speaker 11 So, for example, the letter talks about new leadership in certain areas, new editorial guidelines, people were disciplined, and that corrections were made.

Speaker 1 I mentioned President Trump's reaction. What of political reaction here in Britain to all of this?

Speaker 11 Well, it's varied along the political spectrum.

Speaker 11 So, the more you go to the right, it's more the sense that the BBC has a fundamental problem, that there is a systemic bias, that it's a sort of a liberal bias against Israel, in favour of trans rights,

Speaker 11 against Donald Trump.

Speaker 11 And then the more you move to the other end of the spectrum, it's the idea that actually the BBC has been victim of a political coup and that those on the BBC's board who were appointed by the previous Conservative government were somehow gunning for

Speaker 11 Tim Davy and the director of news, Deborah Turnas, who's left. So

Speaker 11 it's a broad spectrum.

Speaker 11 I think that the sort of shred of good news for the BBC, if one could put it that way, is that a lot of the criticism has said, look, you know, we recognise that the BBC is a national and international asset.

Speaker 11 It's by and large a force for good. So to that extent, you know, the BBC can maybe breathe a little bit of a sigh of relief, just a little bit, Julian.

Speaker 1 What of the timing of all of this with regards to the future of the BBC, and particularly the charter that has to be renewed at intervals, which establishes its commitment to what the government requires of it?

Speaker 3 To a degree.

Speaker 11 I mean, the timing could not be worse for the BBC. You're right.
The BBC is an unusual organisation.

Speaker 11 It's not controlled by the government, but it's not a commercial organisation, it's established by a royal charter, and every 10 years that's reviewed.

Speaker 11 And what's meant by that review is: what is the BBC's role here in the UK and in the world? How should it be funded? How should it be regulated?

Speaker 11 That case now needs to be made to British society, to parliament, to parliamentarians, to politicians.

Speaker 11 Now it's going to be someone new making that case because the BBC has lost its director general and someone's going to have to make a pretty compelling case.

Speaker 1 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: And that someone, I mean, the challenge facing whoever takes takes on that role is enormous, isn't it?

Speaker 11 It is. And one thing that Tim Davey had said, I don't know whether it's privately or publicly, well, I'm making it public now anyway, is that he had said,

Speaker 11 if you look at his inbox as the director general of the BBC, it's just terrifying. And that's because, although here we are on the World Service talking about news, Julian, the BBC is massive, right?

Speaker 11 It does drama, it does entertainment, it does sport, it's radio, it's television, it's online, so and it employs lots of people, so things are going wrong as well as right all the time.

Speaker 11 So it's a pretty high-pressure job, that's for sure. But on the other hand, you have an awful lot of influence in British society in that job, and as you do at the BBC.

Speaker 3 Rob Watson. As we record this podcast, the Syrian president, Ahmed Al-Shara, is due to be holding talks with President Trump.
The US once had a $10 million bounty on Mr.

Speaker 3 Shara's head when he led a group affiliated with al-Qaeda. He will be the first Syrian leader to visit the White House since the country's independence nearly 80 years ago.
Here's our U.S.

Speaker 3 State Department correspondent Tom Bateman on the significance of President Shara's visit to Washington.

Speaker 13 This makes history in more than one way, I mean, it is in fact the first visit by a Syrian president ever to the White House since the independence of the country in 1946. So that is saying something.

Speaker 13 And it gives you a sense, I think, of the embrace that the Americans are very keen to put around Ahmad al-Sharra.

Speaker 13 And in particular, because what they see in terms of the win for the Americans and their allies in the region is trying to solidify the dramatic shifts we've seen, so the collapse of Russian and Iranian influence in Syria, and try to sort of shore up Damascus and the current momentum under al-Sharra's leadership to try and put Damascus firmly in the orbit of the Americans and their allies in the region.

Speaker 3 Since ousting President Bashar al-Assad last December, Mr. Shara has promised to be a president for all Syrians, not just the Sunni Muslim majority.

Speaker 3 But minority communities in the country fear for the future, as our senior international correspondent Oleg Gehry now reports from Homs province in western Syria.

Speaker 4 This was the hail of bullets that killed Wissam and Shafiq Mansoor, recorded on CCTV.

Speaker 4 Their friend was shot in the hand but escaped in the chaos, breaking his ankle as he fled.

Speaker 4 He agreed to speak to us but fears for his safety. His words are spoken by a producer.

Speaker 5 To this day, I don't believe what's happened.

Speaker 8 When the regime fell, we all came back to Syria, but there is no security. My dearest friends are dead.
There are many extremist and hardline groups. I don't know where Syria is going.

Speaker 4 Many in the valley are now feeling vulnerable.

Speaker 4 Before the regime fell, they backed Assad, as many Christians did, and he backed them.

Speaker 4 Wissam was part of a local pro-Assad militia.

Speaker 4 Some here say that's why he was targeted.

Speaker 4 The two bodies have been brought through the streets to the church.

Speaker 4 There is a deep sense in this village of loss and grief. They're asking if their community will be targeted again and what the future is for them in the new Syria.

Speaker 4 Less than an hour's drive away, we found another community in fear, Alawites, the sect of Bashar al-Assad.

Speaker 4 In the old days, that could bring benefits. Now, it's a curse.
Alawites are the main targets for revenge killings.

Speaker 4 I'm in a family home in the city of Homs, and there's a very large framed photograph.

Speaker 4 This girl was 14 years old and she was killed recently. I'm with her mum.
Could I ask you to tell me what happened?

Speaker 15 We were on the balcony at around 11 at night with some neighbours.

Speaker 15 Suddenly, a motorbike passed by

Speaker 14 and there was a lot of shooting.

Speaker 15 She tried to run into the house but couldn't make it.

Speaker 15 She'd been shot in the chest and died in my arms.

Speaker 4 Do you feel that you were targeted because your family are Alawite?

Speaker 15 Yes.

Speaker 4 Have you had any follow-up from the police or security services?

Speaker 4 Nothing.

Speaker 15 They never came back with any results.

Speaker 4 I'm standing in front of a supermarket and pinned to the front. There's a death notice for Shaban Ezedin.

Speaker 4 This was his shop where he was shot dead. His brother Adnan says Shaban never harmed anyone, but being an Alawite in the new Syria can be a death sentence.

Speaker 12 They have been chanting sectarian slogans since the revolution began in 2011.

Speaker 12 They used to shout Alawites to the coffins,

Speaker 12 Christians to Beirut.

Speaker 12 What's happening right now is the seed of forced immigration.

Speaker 12 It's just the beginning.

Speaker 12 I lost my brother,

Speaker 12 others lost their loved ones.

Speaker 12 If we are all going to get killed, it's better we flee.

Speaker 3 Arnan Azadeen, ending that report by all a Garin.

Speaker 3 A court in Paris has granted the former French President Nicolas Sarkozy early release from jail just just weeks after he started a five-year sentence. Mr.

Speaker 3 Sarkozy was found guilty of conspiring to obtain election campaign funds from the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

Speaker 3 The former president insisted he was innocent and complained about conditions in the La Sante prison in Paris. I got more from our Paris correspondent Hugh Schofield.

Speaker 17 It's a twist, but it's a totally predictable twist and one that no one is surprised by. His lawyers at the end of last week lodged

Speaker 17 a plea before a judge who decides in these matters.

Speaker 17 That plea was that he should be released straight away because he has an appeal now scheduled for early next year.

Speaker 17 And it has surprised absolutely no one that this judge has ruled that, yes, he should be released. And to be quite clear, I mean, this is no special treatment for him or anything like that.

Speaker 17 This is perfectly in accordance with all sorts of procedure.

Speaker 17 But when we reported his jailing three weeks ago, we were all saying that he probably won't stay there very long because there will be this bid put in very quickly by his lawyers to get him out again, and that's what's happened.

Speaker 3 He was found guilty of criminal conspiracy to obtain election campaign funds from the late Libyan dictator, Mohamed Gaddafi. What is the argument of Mr.
Sarkozy's lawyers with regards to his appeal?

Speaker 17 Well, he has argued from the start that he's innocent.

Speaker 17 His lawyers made out that they were very angry after the conviction because the judges in the first trial that ended three or four weeks ago ruled that he was to be acquitted on the main charges, that is, of having illegally financed his campaign, of having conducted illegal funding, but they found him guilty on

Speaker 17 what seemed to be at the time the lesser charge of criminal association. And

Speaker 17 the accusation was that he let his subordinates go and

Speaker 17 try unsuccessfully, as it turned out, to raise money from Colonel Gaddafi. Now, his contention would be, and his lawyer's contention would be that that is ridiculous.

Speaker 17 The main charge was one of illegally financing his campaign. It never happened.
Not a cent was proved to have arrived in his campaign's accounts.

Speaker 17 And he would say they didn't prove that he knew of what his subordinates were allegedly doing trying to raise money from Colonel Gaddafi's associates.

Speaker 17 So, you know, it's a very complicated case, but they feel that they've got a strong defence which they'll be putting at the appeal next year.

Speaker 3 And he will be out of jail until that appeal and possibly after. What's the time frame for it?

Speaker 17 Nothing Nothing surprising about this. He's 70 years old.
French prisons are overcrowded. They do what they can to get people out of jail and that's what's happening.

Speaker 17 And then he'll be at home presumably on some kind of restricted movement and certainly not allowed to associate with any of his co-convicted people in the trial.

Speaker 17 And then, yes, the appeal trial will take place in the spring of next year.

Speaker 3 Hugh Schofield.

Speaker 3 Still to come in this podcast. We go to the Netherlands, where the electricity grid can't cope with green energy.

Speaker 16 Grid congestion is like a traffic jam on the power grid. So it's caused by either too much power demand in a certain area or too much power supply.
So too much power being put on the grid.

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Speaker 3 The annual UN climate change talks, COP 30, are starting in Brazil, with the host nation suggesting that the world's most developed countries are losing enthusiasm for the fight against climate change.

Speaker 3 Diplomats at the talks in Bilim are trying to hammer out the finer details to plans to move away from fossil fuels, help poorer countries deal with the effects of global warming and protect rainforests.

Speaker 3 The UK's special envoy for climate, Rachel Kite, is among them. Sarah Montague asked her if the people were right to have a lack of faith in the COP process.

Speaker 21 There shouldn't be a lack of faith. There should be some righteous indignation that political leaders are not driving change as fast as they need to.
But this is the first day.

Speaker 21 So President Lula called world leaders together last week, and some came, and some very important things were sort of signalled at that point. But now the world is arriving for the negotiations.

Speaker 21 And I think what's difficult for the public to grasp is that, well, first of all, we reached an agreement 10 years ago in Paris.

Speaker 21 And then for the last 10 years, we've sort of been negotiating how to do that and adding bits and pieces to the agreement. And now we've got to implement everything that we said we were going to do.

Speaker 21 You know, it's difficult to have like one big banner headline because we're now into the messy, deeply political business of and how are we going to transform the energy sector and how are we transforming our agricultural sector and how are we investing to make sure that the storms don't cause extraordinary damage every year and that's that's tough to report on okay but is it too slow well to be as effective as it needs to be Yeah, we're not on track.

Speaker 21 So that's actually the conversation. Okay, so how do we go faster? Okay, can we speed up the way that we're getting methane emissions out of the economy?

Speaker 21 Can we speed up the way that we're changing the nitrogen cycle and fertilizers to be able to feed people but with less emissions? These are complex conversations, and that's what's going on here.

Speaker 14 Does it matter that the US is pulling out?

Speaker 21 Matters for Americans because they're going to start seeing energy price inflation, et cetera, because of the slowdown of their transition away from dirty energy, and the rest of the world is electrifying quicker than ever.

Speaker 21 It matters globally, because we need everybody in this conversation because we only have one planet, as everybody says.

Speaker 21 But 195 countries who've signed Paris minus one is not zero, it's 194 and everybody else is getting on with it.

Speaker 14 Indeed, but it's not just the likes of President Trump. We've had others like you take someone like Bill Gates, who's arguing that climate change isn't going to wipe out humanity.

Speaker 14 Past efforts to get to zero carbon emissions have made progress.

Speaker 14 But he argues too much money is going into wasteful things. And actually, the money should be spent on disease and poverty.
Those are the problems.

Speaker 21 Well, I think we have to be intelligent enough to hold two ideas in our minds at the same time.

Speaker 21 So, you know, there's no amount of investment in health systems in Jamaica that would have prevented Melissa from barreling through and causing, at the last estimates, more than $10 billion of damage.

Speaker 21 So we have to reduce emissions. We have to build resilience.
And resilience includes investing in healthcare systems and protecting people, and we have to be able to do both. It's not an either-or.

Speaker 14 Do you think, though, that argument, which one hears increasingly, that net zero, that the focus on net zero, it's sucked up too much energy and that there should be a dilution?

Speaker 21 Well, I think that, look, there's a deliberate attempt to sort of weaponise net zero. But let's break down what net zero means.

Speaker 21 Net zero means are you going to have access to clean, reliable, affordable energy?

Speaker 21 Because that's going to come, it it is coming from battery storage, storage, and renewable energy, and that gives us energy security as well. Are you going to be able to invest in flood defences?

Speaker 21 Are you going to have access to clean air? Are you going to be able to have schools that can operate in the summer because we now have extreme heat at times of the year that we never had?

Speaker 21 That's what people want. That's what this is about.
The moniker of net zero, which was negotiated, is something that has been weaponised politically.

Speaker 21 But what people want and what people need are still the same things. And that's what we're trying to work out how to deliver affordably here.

Speaker 3 Well, as the COP30 climate change conference begins in Brazil, a story now from the Netherlands about problems caused by the transition to green energy.

Speaker 3 The Netherlands has thousands of homes and businesses waiting to connect to its electricity grid and thousands more waiting to inject power back into the system via solar panels and other power generation methods.

Speaker 3 The reason? The grid cannot cope with the green energy transition. The BBC's John Lawrenson reports from Rotterdam.

Speaker 22 When we all use electricity at the same time, our power grid gets overloaded, explains this TV public service announcement.

Speaker 22 This can cause malfunctions, so use as little electricity as possible between 4 and 9. Flip the switch.

Speaker 22 Transport, heating, cooking, the host of rechargeable devices we now use, use, the Netherlands is electrifying extremely fast.

Speaker 22 It has the highest number of electric vehicle charging points per capita in Europe, for example.

Speaker 22 As for electricity production, the Netherlands has replaced gas from its large North Sea reserves with wind and solar, leading the way in Europe for the number of solar panels per person.

Speaker 22 More than one-third of Dutch homes have solar panels fitted.

Speaker 3 But the grid can't cope.

Speaker 22 Keysian Ramo is the CEO of the Dutch energy producer and supplier Eneco, 70% of whose electricity is now solar and wind.

Speaker 16 Grid congestion is like a traffic jam on the power grid, so it's caused by either too much power demand in a certain area or too much power supply, so too much power being put on the grid, more than the grid and the transformers can handle.

Speaker 22 The grid, he says, was designed when electricity was generated by a small number of big, mainly gas-fired power plants.

Speaker 16 Then we used to have a grid with very big line power lines close to those power plants and increasingly smaller power lines as you got more towards the households.

Speaker 16 And nowadays we're switching to renewable power and that means that there's a lot of power also being injected into the grid in the outskirts of the grid where there's only relatively small power lines.

Speaker 16 Here we're in the virtual power plant of Ineco.

Speaker 22 At his company's head office in Rotterdam, Kishian Ramo shows me a very large control panel. It's their virtual power plant that uses AI to help balance the grid.

Speaker 22 The Dutch have been skillful in managing challenges to the grid so far, largely avoiding blackouts. When production is too high, they turn wind turbines away from the wind and turn off solar panels.

Speaker 22 They also offer special contracts which give customers a lower price in exchange for being able to stop or lower electricity supply when demand is too high.

Speaker 22 But for people and companies who want to scale up their use of electricity with a new or larger grid connection, that increasingly is just not possible.

Speaker 22 Eugene Buyings is in charge of grid congestion with Tenet, the company that runs the National Electricity Grid.

Speaker 23 We have about 8,000 companies who want to feed in electricity and produce with either solar panels or wind farms.

Speaker 23 And we've got about 12,000 organizations, so factories and the bakery and the larger industries who want to take off and consume electricity off the grid.

Speaker 23 And for both categories, the grid is congested.

Speaker 22 For some of the members of the Dutch Chemical Association, for example, whose president is Ninka Hohmann.

Speaker 24 Grid congestion is putting the future of the Dutch chemical industry at risk, and in other countries, it will be easier to invest.

Speaker 24 And well, the problem with the chemical industry is they're all value chains. And chemical processes are mostly combined processes.
And if you lose a part of that, then it can have a chain reaction.

Speaker 22 Grid company Tenet says it'll need $230 billion of investment in the grid to make it fit for purpose by 2040.

Speaker 3 That report by John Lawrenson. And you can hear more by searching for Business Daily, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Speaker 3 Back in December 2024, the former South Korean President Yoon-suk-yeol declared emergency martial law, citing threats from what he called North Korean communist forces and anti-state elements.

Speaker 3 It was seen as a serious constitutional breach, and the decree only lasted a few hours before the National Assembly rejected it.

Speaker 3 He's been in and out of detention since then, and now he's facing new charges related to that time. Our reporter Jake Kwon told me more from Seoul.

Speaker 5 The latest is that Mr. Yoon is now accused of aiding the enemy state by weakening or or hurting South Korean military?

Speaker 5 So, back in October last year, a couple months before the martial law that you mentioned, North Korea accused South Korea of flying a drone and dropping propaganda leaflets over their capital city, Pyongyang.

Speaker 5 And many of us in Seoul were confused because, one, South Korea neither confirmed or denied it.

Speaker 5 And second, it was very unusual for South Korea to drop the leaflets all the way up in Pyongyang, and for what goal? It wasn't very clear.

Speaker 5 Now, we're hearing from the South Korean authorities that it was, in fact, the President Yoon himself who ordered it.

Speaker 5 And it becomes even more difficult to believe the more we learn about it because the accusation is that Mr.

Speaker 5 Yoon wanted the North Korean to strike back, at which point there could be a limited war between the two Koreas, which would have been used as a pretext to declare the martial law and he would have eliminated his political opponents by imprisoning or worse possibly.

Speaker 5 Now, Mr.

Speaker 5 Yoon is denying any of these accusations, including the insurrection charges for which he is standing trial, and he has maintained that he declared martial law only to bring the public's attention to his lame duck status and any wrongdoing by his opposition.

Speaker 3 It does seem extraordinary. He denies all these charges that would indicate a sort of desperate attempt to stay in power at all costs.
How has that left South Korea as a society?

Speaker 3 Has it left it pretty divided still or are things coming back to normal?

Speaker 5 Well, South Korea has a new president now, and he has been making it very clear that South Korea is back.

Speaker 5 I mean, he just hosted the APAC Summit where a lot of the world leaders were in Korea, including President Trump, and his message has been consistent.

Speaker 5 South Korea is back from the chaos, its shops are open, and it's ready to engage the world. Not only the countries invited to the summit, but the one country that was missing, North Korea.

Speaker 5 He extended the olive branch, saying, Let's let bygones be bygones. We can forget the old president and his hostility towards the North, and that his inauguration is a chance at a fresh start.

Speaker 5 However, North Korea had sworn off any contact with Seoul before, and we will have to see whether North Korean leader Kim Jong-un reaches out.

Speaker 3 That was Jake Kwan.

Speaker 3 A cyber criminal who spent almost 10 years on the FBI's most wanted list, has been speaking to the BBC in an exclusive interview from prison.

Speaker 3 Verislav Penchakov, known as Tank, was the leader of two separate hacking gangs accused of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from people around the world.

Speaker 3 The BBC's cyber correspondent, Joe Tidy, spent six hours with him in prison in Colorado for a new podcast from the World Service called Cyber Hack Evil Core.

Speaker 3 Here's a clip of the interview with Tank where he talks about starting out as a hacker. His words here are spoken by a producer.

Speaker 9 Did you ever feel guilty?

Speaker 7 We didn't think about consequences. We wanted freedom, independence from our families.

Speaker 9 What were you buying?

Speaker 7 Beer, good clothes, expensive shoes. And I would show off the money at school.
What teenager doesn't like to brag about? I was changing cars like changing clothes.

Speaker 1 How many did you have?

Speaker 7 At one point, I had six, all expensive German ones.

Speaker 3 Well, Joe Tidy told me more about his investigation.

Speaker 9 So he started off doing this sort of scamming as a teenager, and I found that part of it really interesting because I've obviously covered lots of attacks by teenagers around the world, and particularly kind of English-speaking.

Speaker 9 But there is that kind of mirror image really of his start in cybercrime coming from cheating on computer games like Counter-Strike and FIFA, moving into more serious hacking campaigns.

Speaker 9 And then eventually he went into this gang called Jabbazoos, which he led in the late 2000s.

Speaker 9 And that's where they were stealing money directly from people's bank accounts, medium and small businesses going into their accounts and just siphoning off thousands.

Speaker 9 And obviously that money adds up. And then eventually he moved into far more serious, what we call big game hunting, where they go after multinational corporations with things like ransomware.

Speaker 9 Of course, ransomware is the most pernicious and problematic form of cyber attack of our lifetimes.

Speaker 9 It's the likes of Marks and Spencer's in the UK, the co-op Jaguar Landrover, we think, being hit by ransomware. So it's a really insightful interview that he gave us.

Speaker 3 And it's obviously still a process of the authorities trying to play catch-up with the hackers who are finding more and more fiendish ways of getting round security. What is the situation now?

Speaker 3 Are the authorities sort of pretty much on the heels of the hackers? No,

Speaker 9 I wouldn't say so. I mean, if you look at this year, we have had some absolutely enormous cyber attacks on companies in the UK and around the world.

Speaker 9 We've seen a wave of new teenage cyber criminals, English-speaking, coming up and using that ransomware technique to get into corporations, encrypt the data, steal lots of data, and then hold them to ransom, usually for millions or tens of millions of pounds or dollars in Bitcoin.

Speaker 9 And I think what you get when you speak to someone like Tank and Penchikov is

Speaker 9 you kind of understand the mindset, really, because here was a man who caused a huge amount of damage and disruption and heartache for all those people, all those companies that we spoke to.

Speaker 9 And there was no real remorse there. According to him and a lot of the Russian-speaking cybercrime underworld, this is all rich Western companies, there's insurance.
There's no real victims.

Speaker 9 The way they talk about it, there's no remorse there at all. And I think that is the problem we face around the world.

Speaker 3 Joe Tidy.

Speaker 3 And that is all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later on. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email.

Speaker 3 The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service.
Use the hashtag Global Newspod. This edition was mixed by Charlotte Hadroitojimska.

Speaker 3 The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Nick Miles.
And until next time, goodbye.

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