BBC News ·
MI5 tackling more state threats than during Cold War, warns intelligence chief
By Frank Gardner||4 min read at BBC News
Model summary
not written by BBC News · not verifiedGenerated October 13, 2026
- The head of MI5, Sir Ken McCallum, has warned that the UK is facing an unprecedented scale of state-sponsored threats from countries like Russia and Iran, alongside rising risks from extreme right-wing terrorism. He highlighted that these threats have quadrupled in the last decade and noted that the agency is now monitoring the potential use of artificial intelligence by adversaries for cyberattacks and bioweapons. The intelligence chief emphasized that the service is actively countering these complex dangers through international collaboration and new technological assessment centers.
This is an AI-estimated analysis and may not reflect the article's actual intent or the publisher's editorial position.
Sign in to give feedbackMI5 is devoting more resource to countering state threats than during the Cold War, the head of the intelligence service has said, as he labelled Russia " number one".
Sir Ken McCallum warned MI5 was now facing a situation in which "our terrorism and state threats operational missions are pretty much of equal scale" as threats from foreign adversaries have quadrupled over the last decade.
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