MI5 has seen more cases in which anti-immigration and anti-Muslim grievance turns into terrorist intent, its head, Sir Ken McCallum, said in an annual speech in London. He said the UK’s terrorism threat level rose to severe in April, meaning an attack was highly likely.
McCallum said extreme right-wing terrorism drove the increase in risk “in significant part.” He called the trend one of the most marked developments over the last year. The cases involved extremist versions of anti-immigration and anti-Muslim grievance tipping into terrorist intent, he said.
Anti-immigration extremism
McCallum said extreme right-wing terrorism tended to “skew young” and was driven by the internet. MI5 recently investigated a “radicalised extreme right-wing 13-year-old here in the UK,” he said. That investigation produced information that enabled one of the service’s international partners to prevent a lethal attack in its country.
McCallum said the severe threat level rose in April for the first time in five years. Islamist groups including Al Qaeda and so-called Islamic State continued to direct and inspire attacks, he said. He also identified the increased risk from extreme right-wing terrorism as a significant part of the reason for the higher threat level.
MI5 is devoting more resources to countering state threats than during the Cold War, McCallum said. Threats from foreign adversaries had quadrupled, and the service’s operational missions on terrorism and state threats were “pretty much of equal scale.” Russia, he said, is “aggressor number one.” He warned of rising threats from Iran.
State threats and security powers
McCallum said Russia was waging hybrid warfare while avoiding a joint response from Nato. Russia had stopped short of “conventional conflict” with the military alliance and was trying to unsettle European countries, he said. Its progress in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine was “minimal and horrifically costly,” he said.
MI5 has identified and expelled Russian spies from the UK, leaving the Kremlin reliant on paid proxies for attempted attacks, McCallum said. “With its traditional covert footprint eviscerated by almost 1,000 expulsions since the invasion, the Kremlin’s global toolkit is weak,” he said. Russia is “scrambling to pay criminals to do their bidding,” he added.
Iran is expanding a hybrid campaign in the UK, McCallum said. Authorities made 50 arrests in the last year over Iran-linked activities, he said. Much of the aggression targeted Jewish communities, as well as “harder targets, like military sites.”
The National Security Act, enacted in 2023 to target people working against UK interests for foreign powers, is in heavy use, McCallum said. He said the law had been employed to tackle threats from China, Iran and Russia.
AI and terrorism risks
MI5 has “caught terrorists seeking to exploit AI” to improve reconnaissance and attack methods, McCallum said. AI-enabled drones have added a new element to the threat, he said. His greatest concern was extremist groups using AI to make bioweapons. That threat “has not yet” been realised, he said.
The technology has the “potential to change the stakes on existing or even new bioweapons,” McCallum said. The UK Intelligence Community is working with the UK’s AI Security Institute to address those risks.