MI5 Says UK Faces Rising Far-Right and Iranian Threats as AI Adds New Risks

"There is no law of physics dictating that rising state threats will be accompanied by diminishing terrorist threats," Ken McCallum said, adding that people and the country at large needed to focus on being more resilient. "In this new world, we should expect to be tested."

A central issue McCallum highlighted was that years of anti-migrant and anti-Muslim hostility had led to an increase in cases where people were "tipping into terrorist intent" — crossing the line from rhetoric to violence. He described the area as complex, but said it was fuelled by political hate narratives and online subcultures. He also pointed to toxic rhetoric from abroad, saying authoritarian regimes were investing heavily "in trying to distort and divide our society." He did not name individual actors. The Guardian reported that there is ample evidence that voices from the United States led by X owner Elon Musk are keen to sow division in the UK, posting about flashpoint events such as the June rioting in Belfast and Southampton.

A second trend, according to the review, is that seemingly far-off conflicts have a habit of rippling back home. Less than eight months after the United States and Israel attacked Iran, subsequently with a little help from Britain, Iran is already trying to direct terror plots in the UK, McCallum said.

Both MI5 and counter-terrorism police may have to do more to explain precisely what five men from London were doing in a village next to RAF Fairford in three white vans shortly after midnight on 27 September, given that nothing of significance was found in the vans and nobody has been charged. McCallum warned that Iran had "ambitions to come at harder targets, like military sites," a likely reference to Fairford. That came a day after the British prime minister, Andy Burnham, said Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps was "almost certainly" behind the episode.

That is not the only possible example. At the beginning of October, two Iranians from Liverpool and Salford were charged, accused of trying to make a chlorine powder bomb to target Jewish sites in Manchester. Prosecutors alleged they were directed by a third party believed to be in Iran. The two have not yet entered pleas to the charges, and a trial at the Old Bailey is scheduled.

Alongside those fast-emerging threats, the normally sober McCallum chose to raise artificial intelligence. He warned that AI could refine terror plots, supercharge hackers, produce individually targeted propaganda and even help develop a novel bioweapon. This, he added with emphasis, was a subject on which the service was "particularly focused."

Concerns were recently raised about scientists who have used AI to design viruses, after Anthropic warned of five examples of scientists who had used its Claude model for researching novel pathogens. Both instances provoked a scientific debate about what is actually possible. McCallum did not mention that AI is also an extraordinary and potentially intrusive tool for MI5 to seek out threats.

The review leaves intelligence agencies with plenty to weigh: a country made more dangerous by blowback from strongmen starting what they think will be short wars; a rising tide of hatred that may begin online but is morphing into violent intent in real life; and a complex cocktail of external and internal threats with potential real-life consequences.

As McCallum himself put it: "The protection of democracy – its institutions, its representatives, its principles – has never felt more vital."