MI5 boss: We face a ‘nasty mix’ of terrorism and state-backed hostilities

Russia poses the biggest state-based threat to the UK but China is the growing long-term challenge, the new head of MI5 has said, describing Moscow as delivering “bursts of bad weather” while Beijing is “changing the climate”.

Ken McCallum said MI5 is looking to increase its work to counter Chinese activities in a carefully prioritised way.

He also described how the coronavirus pandemic has created new jobs for MI5, with spies working to protect the UK’s research into COVID-19 vaccines and treatments from attempts by hostile states like Russia to try to steal or sabotage the data.

Terrorist activity is adapting to the pandemic. Terrorists are having to look for different opportunities because there are fewer crowded places to target, while covert surveillance for MI5 has had to adapt because of the lack of people on the street to blend in with.

COVID-19 may also have given new ideas to enemies who pose a biological weapons threat.

“It would feel reasonable for us to imagine, that in a year where a global pandemic has turned the world upside down, some of our adversaries will have noticed that clearly, and maybe thinking through whether this has application in their area,” Mr McCallum said.

“But I’m not saying to you that threat is now upon us, it is a possibility we have had to face a generation and we are still therefore facing it in a slightly varied form this year.”

Mr McCallum described a “nasty mix” of terrorist and state-based threats to the UK.

He noted that hostile states are no longer just focused on stealing secrets and spying, but also targeting the UK’s democracy, its economy and infrastructure.

“On state-backed hostile activity, I think we are looking at two lines that are going to cross,” Mr McCallum said in his first public comments as director general of the Security Service.

“If the question is – which countries’ intelligence services cause the most aggravation to the UK in October 2020 the answer is Russia,” he said, speaking at the Home Office in London.

“If on the other hand the question is which state will be shaping our world across the next decade, presenting big opportunities and big challenges for the UK, the answer is China. You might think in terms of the Russian intelligence services providing bursts of bad weather, while China is changing the climate.”

Mr McCallum talked about the threat from terrorism, which remains MI5’s largest task to counter.

Islamist extremism is the biggest threat, but there is a growth of right-wing extremism, which the Security Service assumed lead responsibility for tackling from the police.

The spy chief said that of 27 disrupted terrorist attacks, interrupted at a late stage, since 2017, eight of them had been by far-right extremists.

Mr McCallum, in his 40s, became the youngest head of MI5 when he took over from Sir Andrew Parker at the end of April, just as the coronavirus pandemic was sweeping the country, throwing up new challenges amid the global race to find a vaccine.

Oxford University’s vaccine candidate, which has been licensed to AstraZeneca, is in late-stage trials, while a vaccine candidate being developed by Imperial College London is in early-stage clinical trials.

“Clearly, the global prize of having a first useable vaccine against this deadly virus is a large one, so we would expect that a range of other parties around the globe would be quite interested in that research,” Mr McCallum said.

“I guess there are two bits we are on the lookout for: attempts either to steal unique intellectual property that’s been generated in that research, or potentially to fiddle with the data,” he said.

“And then the second risk we’ve got to be alive to is the possibility that the research is still high integrity and sound, but that somebody tries to sow doubt about its integrity.”

Another factor changing the way MI5 operates is technology. In particular, the growth of artificial intelligence (AI).

The spymaster described how AI is enabling officers to sift much faster through large data bases of information, hunting for evidence of a terrorist threat, such as images of the Islamic State flag or of weapons.

It was also helpful in terms of being able to find the interesting moment in a long feed of CCTV footage.

“You really don’t want to be a human operator watching endless hours of a door not opening. You want to home in on the moment when the door does indeed open and a machine is quite good at doing that for you,” he said.

He said while MI5 worked tirelessly to prevent terrorist incidents there were always those attacks that still succeed, revealing the personal effect the fear of such news can have.

“I often say to new joiners at MI5 that the hardest thing about working here is that no matter how much hard work and ingenuity we bring, it isn’t possible for us to stop every attack,” he said.

“Terrorist attacks are always, without exception, sickening. Whenever my phone rings late in the evening, my stomach lurches in case it is one of those awful moments.”

(c) Sky News 2020: MI5 boss: We face a ‘nasty mix’ of terrorism and state-backed hostilities