MI5 warns of complex terror threats from far-right, Iran and AI
The UK faces an increasingly complex and diverse terrorist threat, with far-right extremism, Iranian state plots and the potential misuse of artificial intelligence adding to the challenges, MI5’s director general Ken McCallum said in his annual threat update. He warned that the country must become more resilient in the face of a ‘complex cocktail’ of threats with real-life consequences. McCallum highlighted a rise in anti-migrant and anti-Muslim hostility that has led to more cases of people ‘tipping into terrorist intent’ – crossing the line from rhetoric to violence. This trend is fuelled by political hate narratives, online subcultures and toxic rhetoric from abroad, including voices from the US such as X owner Elon Musk, who has posted about flashpoint events in the UK.
State threats and domestic extremism
Iran has emerged alongside Russia as a country seeking violent, deadly plots in the UK. McCallum noted that Iran had ‘ambitions to come at harder targets, like military sites’, likely referencing an incident near RAF Fairford in September, when five men from London were stopped in three white vans shortly after midnight, though nothing of significance was found and nobody was charged. The British prime minister Andy Burnham said Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps was ‘almost certainly’ behind the episode.
In early October, two Iranians from Liverpool and Salford were charged with trying to make a chlorine powder bomb to target Jewish sites in Manchester. Prosecutors said they were directed by a third party believed to be in Iran. McCallum stressed that there is ‘no law of physics dictating that rising state threats will be accompanied by diminishing terrorist threats’.
AI as an emerging concern
McCallum also pointed to artificial intelligence as a subject MI5 is ‘particularly focused’ on. AI could refine terror plots, supercharge hackers, produce individually targeted propaganda and help develop novel bioweapons. Recent concerns include scientists using AI to design viruses, with Anthropic warning of five examples of researchers using Claude for researching novel pathogens. McCallum concluded that the country is made more dangerous by blowback from strongmen starting short wars and a rising tide of hatred that may start online and morph into violent intent in real life. ‘The protection of democracy – its institutions, its representatives, its principles – has never felt more vital,’ he said.
