The French equivalent of MI6 was glamorised in The Bureau, an internationally acclaimed television series, but in recent years it has been spooked by a series of intelligence failures.
The head of the Directorate General for External Security has been replaced after the agency was blamed for failing to anticipate the Russian invasion of Ukraine and coups in several former French colonies in west Africa. French spies were also caught out when Australia abruptly abandoned a big submarine deal in 2021.
