Forewarned Is Forearmed -- Or Is It?

"[Threats to such facilities mark a] major shift [in] Iranian ambitions to come at harder targets like military sites."

"[The suspected plot against the Royal Air Force Fairford base, on September 27 was] not unique. [There have] been other examples [of similar threats to installations] not just in the U.K. but around the world -- most particularly in Iran's own region." 

"[Iran has been forced to rely on] hiring criminals to do their bidding [in Britain and Europe]." 

"Given what we've seen in practise, [Iran has not demonstrated] anywhere near the level of capability [to launch a sophisticated attack on British military bases or other installations]."

"Since I started in this role in 2020, there has been another generational shift. We have again entered a new era of national security – requiring a new response."  

MI-5 Director-General Ken McCallum 

 

"[We will] keep threatening U.S. and Israeli interests worldwide until we've avenged every child in Gaza, Iran, Lebanon, and the resistance nations." 

"[People should] stay away from Zionist and American interests." 

Iran proxy group Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia — or The Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Righteous (IMCR)

Director General of MI5 Ken McCallum speaks at Thames House, the headquarters of the U.K.'s Security Service in London, Tuesday Oct. 13, 2026. (Jonathan Brady/PA via AP, Pool)

 

In its yearly update to dangers facing the United Kingdom and its allies, MI-5's director-general laid out his agency's most pressing concerns among which was the plot uncovered a month earlier as an example, against a British airbase, as forming a scheme plotted by the Islamic Republic of Iran to mount unattributed attacks by in situ groups infiltrating the U.K. and acting as agents for Iran. The attacks have struck high-security targets such as military sites and intelligence facilities. 

 

"The intensity and scale and shape" of the threat emanating from Iran is "shifting at the moment". The linkage reflects fallout from the U.S.-Israel war on Iran seven months earlier, motivating Iran and its Republican Islamic Guard Corps to focus on threatening and attacking American allies. The annual address on security threats included Mr. McCallum's security assessment that Russia "remains aggressor No. 1" against Britain and its allies which links to European support for Ukraine during Russia's now-five-year 'special military operation'. 

 

In recognition of the prevalence of the threats and the nature of the attacks, MI-5 saw the necessity of forming a dedicated new intelligence group linked to the agency meant to focus on potential threats that may in time become a more dire threat not only to the region, but beyond. Advances in artificial intelligence that take into account the possibility of chemical or biological weapons manufacturing guided by AI, and their potential use as instruments of warfare. 

 

Police patrol the perimeter of RAF Fairford as a U.S. Air Force Rockwell B-1 Lancer bomber lands Sept. 28.  Ben Birchall / Press Association via Getty

 

"[Iran has demonstrated that it is] keen on subcontracting its U.K. violence … using criminal proxies to try to intimidate oppositionists, Iranian media organizations, and Israeli sites."

"Sadly, much of this aggression has been aimed at British Jewish communities, with whom I want to express solidarity." 

The interrupted plot against the Fairford airbase is still under investigation by British counterterrorism police. Its occurrence saw the United States evacuate the dozen B-1 bombers it had stationed at the airbase. Recent weeks saw some seven suspects arrested, including five British citizens who were detained soon after midnight on September 27 and subsequently released on bail. The five were in three vans travelling toward the base perimeter, used by U.S. bombers in their strikes on Iran. A nearby farmer was alerted to their suspicious presence and informed police.

 

This was an apprehended incident marking a departure from more recent years' pattern where Iran has been linked to lower-level proxy attacks recruited online to engage in sabotage, arson or stabbings, many of which targeted Jewish communities. Over 50 arrests have been made in the past year in "Iran-linked operations", stated Mr. McCallum. These activities are known to have taken place as well in Canada where Iranian-linked criminals were hired to disrupt life and target Jewish institutions.   

"Many terrorists would dearly love to have some kind of capability with bio, chem or radiological weaponry."

"[If guardrails meant to safeguard the spread of AI fail to gain complete control, a risk presents that] AI could generate novel pathogens not previously seen."

"[A new MI-5] threat centre [was created this year with an aim to focus on such dangers]."

MI-5 Director-General Ken McCallum  

It seems clear enough that what cannot be predicted and what has become a publicly-aired dilemma over increasingly alarming news being released from among the Artificial Intelligence community that bots are striking out on their own -- deliberately taking steps to shield their activities from the notice of their human trainers to plot among themselves and act in swarms disrupting communications while managing to escape the guardrails meant to confine them -- is becoming an entirely new threat on its own. 

 

According to Mr. McCallum, the technology is "supercharging the cybersecurity contest between attackers and defenders". His concern and that of his agency is that AI could enable terrorist networks or state adversaries in the acquisition of  unconventional and extremely toxic and potent weapons that the world must now contemplate contending with. Much, much simpler to deal with challenges posed by state actors in their supercharged yet hard-to-pin-down efforts at world domination.

 

The world is faced with the trifecta of China's and Russia's ambitions on the world stage to prove themselves contenders for the position of superpowers, and the theist-motivated fundamentalism of Islamist conquest exemplified by the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxy terrorist groups to fundamentally alter the world's religious, cultural, social, judicial, academic and human rights normalcy from the contemporary struggling against the worldwide threat of infiltration and Muslim population density power of institutional alteration of Western democracy.  

"[Russian military and intelligence services] are once again escalating their attempts at hybrid warfare, [while being careful not to trigger NATO’s Article 5 threshold, in which other countries would be expected to defend their allies]."

"We see them scrambling to pay criminals to do their bidding. The whole aim of hybrid tactics is to try to intimidate us."

"[Within the U.K.’s] multifaceted relationship with China [— Beijing is a major trading partner to London — MI5 has been focused on efforts by the Chinese government] to conduct espionage, coercion or democratic interference."

MI-5 Director-General Ken McCallum  

Police officers at Leipzig Airport in Saxony, Germany, search for a drone Aug. 7. Sebastian Willnow / dpa via AP