Threats from autocratic regimes—namely Russia, Iran, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—have resulted in a 48 percent increase in state threat investigations, he said.
With each regime, the “repression at home increasingly extends to aggression overseas,” McCallum said, according to an Oct. 8 statement from the security service.
“They invest heavily in human intelligence capabilities and in advanced cyber operations,” he said. “Their targets include sensitive government information, our technology, our democracy, journalists, and defenders of human rights.”
McCallum said China presents the most complex relationship of the three because while the UK recognizes the CCP as a threat, it wants to maintain business relations with China.
“The UK–China economic relationship supports UK growth, which underpins our security,” he said, according to the statement. “There are also risks to be managed. The choices are complex, and it rightly falls to Ministers to make the big strategic judgements on our relationship with China: where it’s in the UK’s interests to co-operate, and how we do so safely.”
MI5’s role in countering the CCP threat is in disrupting attempts to harm or coerce people, often of Chinese heritage; countering CCP-backed cyberattacks and mass attempts to steal information; and “tackling threats aimed at our democracy,” McCallum said.
Efforts to disrupt these operations needs to be coupled with the education of businesses, universities, and other organization as to how to engage with China while managing risks, he said.
The UK and the European Union have a straightforward relationship with other regimes.
After Russia invaded Ukraine, 750 Russian diplomats were expelled from Europe, “the great majority of them spies,” McCallum said, and the UK and its allies continue to deny diplomatic visa applications to Russian spies.
“It’s not flashy, but it works. Kick them out, keep them out,” he said.
MI5 has also detected and disrupted proxies used by Russian intelligence agencies, McCallum said, as they have less professional training and do not have any diplomatic immunity.
With Iran, aggression has increased in the UK as well amid conflict in the Middle East.
Law enforcement has responded to 20 “Iran-backed plots presenting potentially lethal threats to British citizens and UK residents” since January 2022, McCallum said. State actors often use criminal proxies, “from international drug traffickers to low-level crooks.”
This recruitment has similarities to online radicalizers recruiting terrorists, he said.
Terrorism Evolves
Terrorism has evolved to encompass a “dizzying range of beliefs and ideologies,” the MI5 head said.“We’re encountering more volatile would-be terrorists with only a tenuous grasp of the ideologies they profess to follow,” he said.
They are also less networked, having little to no connection to other terrorists, whereas, in the past, they tended to be associated with particular groups, McCallum said.
Today, the actors may have no record, and no terrorist group claims responsibility for particular acts, he said.
There has been a three-fold increase in would-be terrorists under the age of 18, McCallum said, and they now make up 13 percent of those investigated, driven by extreme propaganda online. The online activity of the would-be teen terrorists also makes it easier to track, but sorting talk from real plotters is “an exacting task,” he said.
“It’s hard to overstate the centrality of the online world in enabling today’s threats,” McCallum said.
