MI5, Britain’s spy agency, is now devoting more resources to countering state threats than at any point during the Cold War, and the danger is only accelerating.
WEBDESK – MEDIABITES
Sir Ken McCallum, Director General of MI5, delivered his annual threat assessment in London on Tuesday, warning that foreign adversary activity against the United Kingdom has quadrupled in the last decade. Russia, he said, remains “aggressor number one,” while Iran is expanding a covert campaign on British soil and artificial intelligence is fundamentally reshaping how both terrorists and state actors operate.
Russia: Proxy Warfare After Mass Expulsions
Sir Ken painted a picture of a Kremlin increasingly reliant on criminal proxies after nearly 1,000 Russian intelligence officers were expelled from Western countries following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. “With its traditional covert footprint eviscerated, the Kremlin’s global toolkit is weak,” he said. “So we see them scrambling to pay criminals to do their bidding.”
He described Russia as waging hybrid warfare against European nations, including cyber-attacks, sabotage, and coordinated disinformation campaigns, while stopping short of direct conventional conflict with NATO. Russia’s progress in Ukraine, he added, remains “minimal and horrifically costly.”
On the question of Russian interference in the 2016 Brexit referendum, Sir Ken acknowledged attempts from Moscow but drew a sharp distinction between “interference attempted” and “outcome achieved,” stressing that the referendum result was “not in dispute.”
Iran: 50 Arrests in One Year
Fifty people have been arrested in the UK over the past year in connection with Iran-linked activities, Sir Ken disclosed, marking a significant escalation in Iranian operational aggression on British soil. Much of that activity has targeted Jewish communities and, in a separate strand, military installations, including RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, where three suspicious vans were found parked near the airbase and seven people were subsequently arrested by counter-terrorism police.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham has described the RAF Fairford incident as “almost certainly directed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard.” Sir Ken told reporters the incident was “not unique” and confirmed Iranian interest had extended beyond that single site.
AI: A New Dimension in Terrorism and State Threats
Sir Ken reserved some of his sharpest warnings for artificial intelligence, describing it as “supercharging the cyber-security contest between attackers and defenders.” MI5 has intercepted terrorists seeking to integrate AI into reconnaissance, attack planning, and drone operations.
The most alarming risk, he said, was AI’s potential to lower the barrier to bioweapons development. “The biggest threat from the misuse of AI is extremist groups using the technology to harness new and existing bioweapons,” he said, noting the threat was “not yet realized” but carried the potential to “change the stakes” entirely.
To address the emerging threat, MI5 has launched an AI Threat Assessment Center, tasked with evaluating real risks and separating, in Sir Ken’s words, “the bluster from the realities.”
Right-Wing Terror, Young Radicals and a 13-Year-Old Plotterr
Beyond state threats, Sir Ken reported that extreme right-wing terrorism is now operating at roughly the same scale as Islamist threats, a development he described as “a huge shift.” The trend is skewing younger, driven by online radicalization, with MI5 recently investigating a radicalized 13-year-old in the UK whose case generated intelligence that helped a foreign partner prevent a lethal attack.
“Over the last year, the most marked trend has been an increase in cases where extremist versions of anti-immigration and anti-Muslim grievance are tipping into terrorist intent,” he said.
The UK’s terrorism threat level was raised to severe in April, meaning an attack is considered highly likely.
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