ExtremismMI5 Director: U.K. Faces Growing Threats from Russia, China, Iran—and Far-Right Extremists

Published 15 July 2021

The director-general of MI5, the U.K. domestic intelligence service, said the agency is doubling the resources it devotes to tackling threats from Russia, China and Iran, and shifting more resources to tackle the rapidly growing posed by right-wing extremists, many of whom are teenagers.

Ken McCallum, the director-general of MI5, the U.K. domestic intelligence service, said the agency is doubling the resources it devotes to tackling threats from Russia, China and Iran, and shifting more resources to tackle the rapidly growing posed by right-wing extremists, many of whom are teenagers.

The shift of emphasis comes after twenty years during which the focus on Islamist terrorism has crowded out other security priorities for the agency. McCallum noted, though, that Islamist terrorism still constitutes MI5’s largest operational mission, and that new challenges could arise as the United States and its allies withdraw from Afghanistan.

On Wednesday, 14 July, McCallum gave his annual threat update. He spoke about the challenges posed by state threats, the current threat from terrorism, and MI5’s drive to learn, adapt, and strengthen the U.K. defenses against hidden threats. He also reflected on the withdrawal of U.K. troops from Afghanistan and the ongoing challenge of encryption.

He said that his agency faces daily threats and espionage activities which predominantly come “in quite varying ways from state or state-backed organizations in Russia, China or Iran.” These activities have to be managed alongside U.K. efforts at engagement with all three countries.

The cyberthreats from Russia, China, and Iran are targeting individuals and digital infrastructure as part of a broad espionage campaign which is focused on the government but also on universities and businesses, he said. He also cited efforts at disinformation and attempts to seek hidden relationships with public figures, “hack-and-leak operations” aimed at having a political impact and troll farms seeking to sow and deepen divisions in society.

Here is the section of McCallum’s  speech which dealt with terrorism:

Terrorism
Turning now to terrorism, I’ll start, like my career started, in Northern Ireland. There is much to celebrate: the rejectionist terrorist groups are much smaller now, they hold no meaningful mandate from the communities they pretend to represent, and, while they remain determined to cause harm, they continue to be subject to skilled, effective, proportionate action by security authorities on both sides of the border. With partners we have succeeded in progressively reducing the capabilities of dissident Republican terrorist groups across recent years. But at the same moment as all this positive progress on constraining terrorism, late March and early April saw some of the worst public disorder for several years, driven by a complex range of factors.