UK facing increasing threat from China, Russia, Iran and terrorists, MI5 chief confirms
Following the ISIS terrorist attack on a Mosque in Manchester and hacking incidents from China, MI5 Director General gives us a grim warning of the state of security in the UK
Britain is facing its highest-ever volume and variety of threats from both hostile states and terrorism, according to MI5 Director General Ken McCallum. He reported a 35% increase in state threat investigations, naming Russia, Iran, and China as the main bad actors. McCallum noted these nations are increasingly using “ugly” methods usually employed by terrorists. Specifically:
Russia has been behind a “stream of surveillance plots,” and recent convictions include six spies and perpetrators of a Wagner-ordered arson attack in London.
Iran is attempting to silence global critics, with MI5 tracking over 20 potentially lethal, Iran-backed plots and citing exposed antisemitic and assassination attempts abroad.
China is engaged in cyber espionage, luring academics, and harassing UK-based dissidents. They are also suspected of harvesting data from data centres they own containing information on British citizens.
The domestic terrorism risk remains “huge,” with al Qaeda and Islamic State becoming more ambitious. Since 2020, MI5 and the police have disrupted 19 late-stage attack plots with an understood under the SOI (Subjects Of Interest) umbrella there are 4,000 high risk individuals under 24 hour surveillance out of a pool of 40,000 being monitored in some way. As more people are entering the country both legally and illegally this figure will only increase.
Starmer’s Labour government has made improved relations with Beijing a key priority as it seeks foreign investment to upgrade infrastructure and grow the economy. But this is folly as former senior security experts and trade advisers have warned this is a dangerous path to tread. “We fully recognise that China poses a series of threats to UK national security, yet we must also be alive to the fact that China does present us with opportunities,” the security minister Dan Jarvis told parliament this week. Risking the security of the UK for investment is utter insanity.
Following on from our article on the dangers of allowing the super Chinese embassy close to critical communication infrastructure in London, this report should be a wakeup call to the government. We fear this is not the case as we still haven’t been given full disclose on the agreements made during the meetings between government representatives and China just after the 2024 election, and the increasing scrutiny of the collapsed spying case due to the reluctance of the government to state that China is a threat to UK national security.