Terrorists plotting AI drone assaults on Britain – MI5 Chief

MI5 Director-General Sir Ken McCallum has warned that terrorists are looking for to make use of synthetic intelligence to enhance assault planning, together with by means of AI-enabled drones.

In his annual speech on the Security Service’s Thames House headquarters in London, McCallum mentioned MI5 had “caught terrorists seeking to exploit AI to improve their reconnaissance and attack methodologies, with AI-enabled drones adding a new twist”. He described AI as “supercharging” the “contest between attackers and defenders” and warned that it may give much less refined teams entry to capabilities beforehand past their attain.

“My adrenaline thresholds are set pretty high. I’m not easy to alarm, and neither is my organisation. But we are clear that, just as the benefits of AI are real, so are the national security risks,” he mentioned. “One concern would be that comparatively low sophistication actors may have a capability uplift in the AI era if these guardrails do not function as intended.”

McCallum mentioned he connected specific significance to the potential of terrorists gaining capabilities involving organic or radiological weapons, including that the federal government was taking extra steps to deal with the risk. “It has long been the case that many terrorists would dearly love to have some kind of capability around energy or biological or radiological weaponry. But that hasn’t been easy for them to achieve,” he mentioned. He additionally warned about dangers from AI itself, saying “human history has given us no experience of facing an actor which is smarter than we are”.

McCallum introduced an AI risk evaluation centre inside MI5, drawing on experience from different British businesses.Turning to hostile state exercise, he mentioned Iran was more and more concentrating on British army websites, describing the event as a “major shift” in its ambitions. Counter-terrorism police are investigating suspected Iranian involvement in an alleged plot at RAF Fairford after three suspicious vans had been discovered close to the bottom within the early hours of September 27. Five males had been arrested.

The Prime Minister mentioned on Monday that the alleged plot was “almost certainly” the work of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. McCallum declined to debate the investigation intimately however indicated that issues prolonged past Fairford. “Do not draw inferences about any other specific incident when I say Fairford is not unique in the UK,” he mentioned. He mentioned MI5’s Iran-linked operations had resulted in additional than 50 arrests in Britain over the previous 12 months.

Russia, in the meantime, “remains aggressor number one”, he mentioned, citing sabotage, cyberattacks and a thwarted assassination plot within the United States. “You might be surprised to know that in 2026, MI5 is devoting more resource to countering state threats than during the Cold War,” McCallum mentioned. The service’s hostile state caseload had quadrupled over the previous decade, he added.

McCallum additionally addressed the current improve in Britain’s terrorism risk stage to “severe”, which means an assault is very seemingly. He mentioned the change had been “driven in significant part by extreme Right-wing terrorism” linked to immigration. “Over the last year, the most marked trend has been an increase in cases where extremist versions of anti-immigration and anti-Muslim grievance are tipping into terrorist intent,” he mentioned. He revealed that an investigation right into a 13-year-old in Britain who had been radicalised by excessive right-wing ideology helped disrupt a probably deadly assault overseas a number of months in the past.

With resilience because the theme of his tackle, McCallum urged the general public to assist strengthen Britain’s defences in opposition to “malicious disruption and coercion”. He cited assaults on American vitality and water infrastructure, arson concentrating on European defence firms and “a destructive cyber attack on an energy generator” in Britain.

Calling for stronger neighborhood cohesion, he mentioned “the cohesion and confidence of our communities has become a national security front line”. Authoritarian regimes and different actors had been “weaponising whatever frictions they notice”, he warned. “Their trolls aren’t geniuses, by the way; they only get a foothold if we give them one,” he mentioned.

McCallum additionally referred to the reported killing of Reform UK spokeswoman Ann Widdecombe as “part of a concerning trend of violence” in opposition to political figures. According to the report, Widdecombe, 78, was killed at her house in Haytor, Devon, in July. Joshua Kerry, 28, has been charged together with her homicide and making ready acts of terrorism, together with in opposition to Reform UK chief Nigel Farage.