MI5 chief warns of threats to UK from Russia, Iran and AI

MI5 chief warns of threats to UK from Russia, Iran and AI

MI5 is putting more resources into countering state threats than it did during the Cold War, the head of the intelligence service has said, describing Russia as "aggressor number one".

Sir Ken McCallum warned that MI5 is now dealing with a situation where "our terrorism and state threats operational missions are pretty much of equal scale" because threats from foreign adversaries have quadrupled.

In an annual speech at the domestic intelligence service's headquarters in London, he also warned about growing threats from Iran and "extreme right-wing terrorism".

Sir Ken also said MI5 had "caught terrorists seeking to exploit AI", including by combining the technology with drones - and warned the UK must stay ahead of the danger of new bioweapons being developed by violent groups.

The MI5 chief said Russia was carrying out hybrid warfare while carefully avoiding a response from Nato, a line he said the Kremlin would be "foolish to cross".

Sir Ken said Russia had stopped short of "conventional conflict" with the military alliance and was instead trying to destabilise European countries while its progress in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine is "minimal and horrifically costly".

He said MI5's success in identifying and expelling Russian spies from the UK had left the Kremlin reliant on paying proxies for attempted attacks.

He continued: "With its traditional covert footprint eviscerated by almost 1,000 expulsions since the invasion, the Kremlin's global toolkit is weak. So we see them scrambling to pay criminals to do their bidding."

He added: "These are not the actions of a great power with the strategic upper hand."

Sir Ken also warned that Iran is expanding a hybrid campaign in the UK.

The intelligence chief said there had been 50 arrests in the last year over Iran-linked activities.

Much of this Iranian aggression has been directed at Jewish communities, Sir Ken added, as well as at "harder targets, like military sites".

Sir Ken also said the National Security Act - a 2023 law intended to target people working against UK interests for foreign powers - is being used heavily, and has been used to address threats from China as well as Iran and Russia.

On the developing threat posed by AI, Sir Ken said: "We've caught terrorists seeking to exploit AI to improve their reconnaissance and attack methodologies, with AI-enabled drones adding a new twist."

The threat he was most concerned about, Sir Ken told Thames House, was extremist groups using AI to create bioweapons.

He said that threat was "not yet realised" but warned the technology has the "potential to change the stakes on existing or even new bioweapons".

Sir Ken continued: "These risks are real. The UK Intelligence Community - MIS, GCHQ, M16 -is working closely with the UK's globally respected AI Security Institute to take them on."

In April, the UK's terrorism threat level was raised to severe for the first time in five years, meaning an attack is highly likely.

Sir Ken said Islamist groups like Al Qaeda and so-called Islamic State both continue to direct and inspire attacks, while the higher risk was also driven "in significant part" by extreme right-wing terrorism.

He continued: "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."

Sir Ken said extreme right-wing terrorism tended to "skew young", driven by the internet - adding that MI5 had in recent months investigated a "radicalised extreme right-wing 13-year-old here in the UK".

He said: "That investigation generated insight that enabled one of our international partners to prevent a lethal attack on their soil."