The new head of Britain’s foreign intelligence agency, MI6, has warned the public in his first public address that the UK is “currently operating between peace and war” and that “the front lines are everywhere” amid rising tensions with Russia.
Blaise Metreweri will start this fall, becoming the first female director in the Secret Service’s 116-year history. The director, commonly referred to as “C,” is the only publicly named member of the notoriously secretive organization.
In a speech at MI6 headquarters in London on Monday, Metreweri highlighted the serious threat posed by Russia and condemned the Kremlin’s attempts to “bully, fearmonger and manipulate”.
“We all continue to face the threat of an aggressive, expansionist, revisionist Russia that seeks to conquer Ukraine and harass NATO…[Putin]is prolonging negotiations and shifting the costs of the war to his own people,” she said.
Metreweri emphasized the need to master new technologies, saying recent advances in artificial intelligence, biotechnology and quantum computing could converge to create “science fiction-like tools” that could be used as dangerous weapons.
He previously led the service’s technology and innovation teams, a role best known as “Q” in the James Bond movies.
From AI-powered robots that could have devastating effects on the battlefield to algorithms that could become “as powerful as nations”, the new spy chief has warned of the need to harness “all the data” to Britain’s strategic advantage.
She also highlighted the increasingly complex threat landscape facing the UK, which is being contested “from the sea to space, from the battlefield to the boardroom. And as disinformation manipulates our understanding of each other and ourselves, even our brains are at stake.”
Security experts say Russia is waging a hybrid war against Ukraine’s Western allies following Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor. In Britain, police said Russian-backed agents set fire to a factory linked to Ukraine.
Elsewhere in Europe, drones spotted near airports have grounded flights, violated NATO airspace in Poland and Romania, and severed undersea cables in the Baltic Sea, raising fears of sabotage. Russia has not claimed responsibility for any involvement in these incidents.
The MI6 boss also highlighted the power of human agency in dealing with threats to Britain’s security.
“The defining challenge of the 21st century is not just who wields the most powerful technology, but who guides it with the greatest wisdom. Our security, prosperity and humanity depend on it,” Metreweri said.
He called for a “rediscovery of our common humanity” to determine how the future unfolds in a more dangerous technology-mediated world.
“Our world is being remade, and for the first time, we are all at the center of it,” she said.
“What defines us is not what we can do, but what we choose to do. That choice, the exercise of human agency, has shaped our world and will shape it again,” she added.
The MI6 chief’s speech came just a week after British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper’s speech highlighted the threat of information warfare. Mr Cooper said the government had sanctioned two China-based companies for “large scale and indiscriminate cyber operations against the UK and its allies”, as well as a number of organizations and individuals responsible for “conducting Russia’s information warfare”.
Earlier this year, MI6 launched an online portal aimed at using the dark web to lure potential spies into submitting sensitive information, specifically targeting Russia.
The portal, called Silent Courier, provides anonymous access to the secure MI6 messaging platform, allowing users to send information to British intelligence agencies from anywhere in the world. The announcement comes after former spy chief Richard Moore gave an extraordinary speech in Prague in July 2023, appealing to Russians to spy for Britain.
