Russia is intent on causing “mayhem” on UK streets, and Iranian-backed plots posing “lethal threats” to British people are ramping up at an “unprecedented pace and scale”, the boss of MI5 warned. Director general Ken McCallum issued the stark warnings less than two years after he laid bare the “very real threat” posed by aggression from hostile states. In a wide-ranging speech, he also highlighted the “worsening threat from al Qaida and in particular from Islamic State”, which he said had “resumed efforts to export terrorism”, and said MI5 was “powerfully alive” to the risk that tensions in the Middle East posed to terrorist activity in the UK.
Mr McCallum told reporters the rise in the number of children being investigated for terrorism in the UK by the security agency is “staggering” and warned of “canny online memes” drawing them into extreme right-wing ideologies. Speaking at the Counter Terrorism Operations Centre in west London on Tuesday, he said: “MI5 has one hell of a job on its hands. The first twenty years of my career here were crammed full of terrorist threats.
“We now face those alongside state-backed sabotage and assassination plots, against the backdrop of a major European land war.” In the last year, the number of state threat investigations run by MI5 has “shot up by 48%”, he said. Britain should “expect to see continued acts of aggression here at home” from Russia, with its military intelligence agency the G.