Before his academic career, he underwent pilot training in the Royal Air Force, and briefly worked as a stand-up comedian and actor,[1] appearing in A Captive in the Land and other productions by Gorky Film Studio.
[2][3][4] In June 2019, Giles became suspicious of and helped to undercover Katie Jones, a supposed expert of American politics that did not exist but was an AI-generated face, and was part of "a vast army of phantom profiles lurking on the professional networking site Linkedin" in the words of the Associated Press.
[25] He has also discussed hybrid warfare and sees the threat of sabotage against submarine communications cables as a possible further vector of aggression by Russia against NATO.
Many indicators and warnings of preparation for a possible invasion are in place, including logistics, food supplies, medical services, and interior troops which would be used for control of occupied areas.
"[27] He argued that Moscow went to considerable lengths to be in a position to act, stating: "Prior to the crisis coming to a head, every major amphibious assault ship Russia had in Europe was pre-positioned in the Black Sea, with units moved thousands of miles from both the Baltic and the Northern Fleets.
[32] About the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, he argued that it was more or less overt, and said that Russia was happy to permit a dozen Western journalists to report on a notorious Saint Petersburg troll farm "partly because of a sense of urgency that the next conflict is coming".
He said: "Russia's enormously expensive reorganisation and rearmament programme was already in full swing well before the crisis over Ukraine, while NATO nations were still winding down their militaries.
[34] In January 2022, Giles said that the British warning was a sign of "the U.K. effectively taking the lead of a strong NATO and European response to Russia's threats to Ukraine".
Popular scenarios for Russian military adventures such as a move on the Suwałki gap — the strip of Polish-Lithuanian border separating the exclave of Kaliningrad from the rest of Russia — would no longer be several geopolitical steps away.
"[36] In January 2022, citing long-range missile attacks or cyber-attacks targeting critical infrastructure due to Ukraine's weaker anti-missile defences, Giles said: "The different scenarios for how exactly Russia might seek to persuade the West to meet its (security) demands by punishing Kyiv don't even necessarily include a land incursion.
"[37] In February 2022, amid the military buildup to the invasion of Ukraine, Giles stated that Russia is "swift to label its adversaries and victims in Europe as Nazis.
"[13] In March 2022, a week after Russia invaded Ukraine, he said that the Russian campaign was rapidly developing in ways he described as "eerily familiar" to Putin's deadly battle of Grozny (1999–2000) during the Second Chechen War.
"[38] In June 2022, about the possibility of a ceasefire on the Russian side, Giles said: "This is a ploy which could be used by Russia at any time, if it wants to capitalise on European pressure on Ukraine to surrender and give up territory in exchange for notional peace.
[40] In December 2022, Giles stated that predictions or denials of a new offensive were based on "whether people are applying Western standards of readiness" to Putin's military.
"[45] About the then foreign secretary Boris Johnson's comments and the possibility of Britain rethinking its involvement in the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia, he said: "My assumption is that it'll be fairly swiftly forgotten.
"[47] He added that many possible challengers to Putin have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo in order to preserve their fortunes and safety, saying: "Anybody that might have been considering standing against Moscow will have rapidly reassessed their risk calculus on seeing what happened to Prigozhin.
This was a response to the scandal surrounding the House of Commons of Canada's standing ovation for Yaroslav Hunka, a Ukrainian-Canadian World War II veteran of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician).
Giles wrote that Hunka should not have been invited to the Canadian Parliament, not because he himself might be guilty of a war crime, but because the resulting scandal fuelled Russian propaganda.