UK Spy Chief Accuses Iran and Russia of Hybrid Campaigns Against Britain
LONDON: Iran is stepping up attempts to hit harder targets such as military sites in Britain, and Russia is increasing its hybrid warfare against Ukraine’s allies, the UK’s domestic spy chief said on Tuesday.
In his annual speech on threats to Britain, MI5 Director General Ken McCallum said state threats had quadrupled over the last decade, and his organisation now devotes more resources to countering them than it did during the Cold War.
The speech came a day after British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said Tehran was “highly likely” behind a suspected plot against RAF Fairford, an airbase used by US bombers for strikes on Iran. The alert prompted a security scare and led US President Donald Trump to withdraw American planes from the base, as reported earlier.
Tehran has rejected any involvement in the Fairford incident, as it has rejected years of British accusations linking it to plots and attempted assassinations against dissidents and Israeli and Jewish targets in the UK.
UK spy chief: Russia remains ‘aggressor number one’
Russia also denies involvement in hostile acts in Britain and other Western countries, but McCallum named it the “aggressor number one”.
He echoed other European spy agencies in describing Russian tactics that sit 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,” McCallum said. Russia has dismissed Germany’s accusations over the August incident at Leipzig/Halle Airport as “entirely fabricated”.
AI and the bioweapon warning
McCallum’s sharpest warning concerned artificial intelligence. He said the technology was “supercharging the cybersecurity contest between attackers and defenders”, with terrorists already exploiting it to improve reconnaissance and attack planning.
But the misuse case he weighted most heavily, he said, was “not yet realised”: AI’s potential to change the stakes on biological weapons, whether existing ones or entirely new pathogens.
“Not yet realised, the misuse case to which I’d attach greatest weight, is AI’s potential to change the stakes on existing or even new bioweapons,” he said, adding that it was the area on which he and his colleagues were “particularly focused”. “These risks are real.”
The warning lands as Western intelligence agencies race to understand how fast-moving AI tools could lower the barriers to developing lethal pathogens, a concern that has moved from theoretical papers to active monitoring in the last two years.
For Britain, the speech sets the tone for a security posture increasingly focused on state threats. For Pakistan and the wider region, the Iran dimension bears watching: any escalation between Tehran and Western capitals ripples through Gulf energy routes and the neighbourhood Pakistan shares with Iran.
Who is Ken McCallum?
Ken McCallum is the Director General of MI5, Britain’s domestic security service. He delivers an annual public speech assessing the threats facing the UK, covering terrorism, espionage and state-backed hostile activity.
What did he accuse Iran and Russia of?
He said Iran is stepping up attempts to strike harder targets such as military sites in Britain, and that Russia is intensifying hybrid warfare, including drone and cyber operations, against Ukraine’s allies. Both countries deny the accusations.
What was the AI bioweapon warning?
McCallum said the most serious unrealised risk from AI is its potential to help terrorists develop lethal pathogens or modify existing biological weapons, calling it the area his service is most focused on.
