Today, June 8, 2024, just received the paper copy of the Economist. Browsing through the articles, I was surprised to see (on pages 71 and 72) an article titled “How to hire a spy; Less Bond, more boffin; puzzles, games and free thinking are key to codebreaking.” It is partly a review of a new book: Counter-Intelligence by Robert Hannington, Harper Collins. Having some familiarity with this world, I wondered whether the article would mention the usefulness of dyslexia and other learning differences. Then I found this passage:
“The aim is to understand those systems and to ‘attack’ their weaknesses, as cryptanalysts say. To do that successfully requires people who think in different, original and unusual ways. . . .
“Drawing on research into neurodiversity and autism-spectrum disorders, GCHQ ‘has actively sought to recruit this kind of diverse workforce.’ says Mr. Hannigan. Dyslexia (challenges in reading or writing) and dyscalculia (difficulty in understanding numbers) are ‘prevalent’ at GCHQ; Mr. Hannigan guesses that one in four of the organization’s staff has some sort of neurodiverse condition. Such people would not always prosper in traditional job interviews or flourish under the rigid hierarchy of armed forces or the formality of the civil service.”
It happens that I described my own experience with GCHQ and dyslexia in a recent listing of archive materials (below). It is amazing how these ideas are finally gaining serious attention in various demanding workplaces. Hopefully, conventional educators and test designers will begin to pay attention:
“Dyslexia Is Britain’s Secret Weapon in the Spy War”
In June 2006, Thomas G. West was honored to be invited to be the main speaker at the first ever “Diversity Day” conference in Cheltenham, England, for the staff of GCHQ, the code-breaking descendants of Bletchley Park (the World War II Nazi code breakers and the source of “Ultra,” the extremely secret intelligence source for Winston Churchill, never revealed to the public until the 1970s). According to one employee at GCHQ, “while people with neuro-diversity may be viewed as ‘odd or weird,’ they are ‘fully accepted’ at GCHQ.”
GCHQ officials and cyber experts make it quite clear that their dyslexic employees, among others, are viewed as highly valued workers. As one spokesperson said in an article for the Daily Mail, “Dyslexia Is Britain’s Secret Weapon in the Spy War: Top Codebreakers Can Crack Complex Problems Because They Suffer from the Condition. . . . Most people only get to see the jigsaw picture when it’s nearly finished while the dyslexic cryptographists can see what the jigsaw looks like with just two pieces.” (Also see section in West’s third book, Seeing What Others Cannot See, “Seeing the Puzzle with Only Two Pieces -- Learning Differences at GCHQ,” West, 2017, pp. 147-150.)
The following Saturday after the GCHQ diversity conference, there was an informal gathering for several employees and their families -- with a pub lunch and a walk around the village -- where one teen-aged son said, “Now I finally begin to understand my father.”
At one point, after the walk, West found himself sitting with a group of seven at the edge of our host’s garden, gradually discovering that all of those with him had recently been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. (He was glad to have shown earlier that day a short clip about Temple Grandin from a recent BBC film on her visual thinking and her life and work as an autistic person.) Among other things, they discussed The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon and connections with the Sherlock Holmes story “Silver Blaze” (involving the significance of “the dog that did not bark”).
It is apparent that organizations such as GCHQ (and possibly NSA in the US) are important places to better understand unexpected patterns in extraordinarily high performance and to seek connections between visual thinking, dyslexia, autism and other forms of different thinking.
This approach is especially important since conventional professional literature and training is often focused exclusively on correcting academic weaknesses and problems without consideration of a range of special talents and capabilities – talents which are likely to be increasingly valuable over time. (More for this archive is to be provided later concerning this important GCHQ meeting and related corporate organization management policies. Full credit to JT and RT at K4L -- TGW.)
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