MI5’s annual threat update covers so much ground it is easy to feel anxious. The terror threat has become more diverse, with far-right anti-migrant threats on the rise; while Iran has now firmly emerged alongside Russia as a country seeking to undertake violent and deadly plots in the UK. It is a complex area, but one certainly fuelled by political hate narratives and online subcultures.
It is also fuelled by toxic rhetoric from abroad. Authoritarian regimes, McCallum said, were investing heavily “in trying to distort and divide our society” – although he was too polite to mention that there is plenty of evidence that voices from the US led by X owner Elon Musk are keen to sow division in the UK too, as they post about flashpoint events such as the June rioting in Belfast and Southampton. A second trend is that seemingly far-off conflicts, such as the wars the UK did not start in Ukraine or Iran, have a habit of rippling back home.
It is less than eight months since the US and Israel attacked Iran, subsequently with a little help from Britain, but already Iran is trying to direct terror plots in the UK. Both MI5 and the counter-terror police may have to do a little better 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. But 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 (IRGC) was “almost certainly” behind the episode. It would be surprising if both were wrong. 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 pleaded to the charges; a trial at the Old Bailey is scheduled.
Yet, if these fast emerging threats were not enough, the normally sober McCallum decided to reference AI. 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 they were “particularly focused,” as if it was episode one of a TV thriller.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
