Iran is ramping up attempts to hit harder targets such as military sites in Britain while Russia is escalating its hybrid warfare as it lashes out against Ukraine’s allies, the UK’s domestic spy chief said on Tuesday.
In his annual speech on wide-ranging threats to Britain, MI5’s Director General Ken McCallum also said the greatest concern about the misuse of AI was terrorists being able to develop bioweapons or even create new novel pathogens.
McCallum said state threats had quadrupled over the last decade meaning his organisation now devoted more resources to the issue than during the Cold War.
On Monday, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said Tehran was “highly likely” behind a suspected plot against RAF Fairford, which had been used by US bombers to carry out strikes on Iran. It prompted a massive security alert and led to US President Trump withdrawing planes from the air base.
McCallum said he could not speak about the Fairford incident because of an ongoing investigation, but he said there had been a major shift this year in “Iranian ambitions to come at harder targets, like military sites”.
“The RAF Fairfield incident … is not unique. There have been other examples, not just in the UK but around the world,” he said.
On Russia, which likewise denies involvement in hostile acts in Britain, the UK spy chief said it remained the “aggressor number one”.
He echoed comments from other European spy agencies that Russia was using tactics just short of conventional conflict, citing the attempted drone attack on a cargo plane at a German airport and a cyber attack on Polish energy infrastructure.
“It’s no accident that Russian aggressors are trying to unsettle other European homelands at a time when their military progress in Ukraine is minimal and horrifically costly,” he said.