[3] In April 2019, the government extended Younger's contract to maintain stability through the Brexit negotiations,[4] which made him the longest-serving MI6 chief in 50 years.

[2] He joined the service at the same time as Richard Tomlinson, who in his book The Big Breach, portrayed him as "Spencer", a St Andrews graduate and former Scots Guard who was recruited while working for the Halo Trust in Afghanistan.

[20] In 2016 Younger said cyber-attacks, propaganda and subversion from hostile states pose a fundamental threat to European democracies including the UK.

[24] In 2020 he forecast continuing ideological divergence between the West and China given the premium that the Chinese Communist Party placed in preserving their interests.

[23] In an October 2020 interview with Angelina Jolie in Time magazine, Younger voiced fears that the international consensus on human rights norms had broken down.

Separately, he acknowledged that Afghanistan's future had to be determined by politics but warned that the country had changed and that the Taliban should understand that Afghans, particularly women, would have no tolerance for a reversion to the way things were.

[25] In December 2018 Younger gave a rare speech at the University of St Andrews, making emphasis of the need for fourth-generation espionage and fusing human skills with technical innovation.

[28] In September 2020, speaking to the Financial Times, Younger was asked if the UK had wrongly prioritised counter terrorism at the expense of coverage of Russia and China.

Younger said that he supported the government's very low tolerance for instability driven by terrorism because it was such a gross violation of social norms.

He described the recent destruction of the ISIS caliphate in Syria as a "High Point", but he warned that terrorism had now become more autonomous and spontaneous, and remained lethal.

Home Secretary Sajid Javid later chose to strip Shamima Begum, who had married an ISIS fighter, of her British citizenship, leaving the future of her and her son unclear.