The head of Britain’s internal security agency, MI5, said in a speech on Thursday that the number of suspects investigated each year for potentially working for a hostile foreign government in Britain rose by 35% last year.
In the bureau’s annual update on the threats facing the UK, Ken McCallum said: “A more hostile world is forcing the biggest changes to MI5’s mission since 9/11” and that “his team is currently carrying out a near-record amount of investigations”.
Mr McCallum opened his speech by expressing his condolences for the two people killed in the ISIS-linked attack on a synagogue in Manchester earlier this month. The head of the secret agency said the “total scale of the terrorist threat is huge” and added that the growing threat from a mix of state actors and terrorists with “Islamist, right-wing extremist and other ideologies” (which could be well-prepared individuals, teenagers or mentally ill people) ushered in a “new era”.
The UK has seen a range of espionage and sabotage in recent years, from Chinese influence operations targeting parliament to Russian-led arson of warehouses supplying the Ukrainian military. McCallum also said there had been “more than 20 potentially deadly Iranian-backed plots” in the past year.
“State threats are on the rise. … Last year the number of individuals being investigated for involvement in state threat activities increased by 35%,” he said, adding that these individuals were based in the UK rather than conducting operations from overseas.
“The state threat activities I’m describing are overwhelmingly dominated by the triumvirate of Russian, Chinese, and Iranian state actors,” McCollum continued.
Asked to explain the nature of Russia’s threat, he said, “In terms of lethality, the activity is wide-ranging. In some cases, it’s arson, in some cases it’s attempted sabotage. In some cases, there’s some pretty detailed attempts to gather specific targeting information about individuals. …The only obvious purpose would be to enable someone to do something potentially lethal and nasty to those individuals.”
In May, Orlin Roussev, 47, was sentenced in a London court to nearly 11 years in prison for leading a British-based Russian spy ring that prosecutors said was conducting surveillance on the Kremlin. Five other members received a total of nearly 40 years in prison for gathering detailed information about journalists, dissidents, and Ukrainian soldiers training at a U.S. military base in Germany. Prosecutors said the six men, all Bulgarians, were operating for financial gain and did not report directly to Russian intelligence.
Mr. McCallum twice mentioned in his speech that the Russian “agents” were probably not paid for their work by their representatives, but he did not provide further details. “Legally speaking, I don’t think working for Russian intelligence in the UK is a good career move,” he said.
Mr McCallum also warned of the role artificial intelligence could play in future and current threats, saying: “Potential terrorists are already looking to use AI for propaganda, weapons research and target reconnaissance.” Still, he cautioned against “hype and intimidation” and said he believed AI could bring “real benefits” to threat detection overall.
“I’m not predicting a Hollywood movie scenario,” he added. “Artificial intelligence may never ‘intend’ to harm us, but it would be reckless to ignore its potential to cause harm.”
