AI 'supercharging' security threats to UK, MI5 warns

Artificial intelligence (AI) is "supercharging" security threats to the UK, including the potential development by terrorists and states of new killer bioweapons, the head of MI5 has warned.

The Security Service has launched an assessment centre this year to examine AI risks, Sir Ken McCallum revealed, amid concerns about the possibility of some form of self-deciding super intelligence posing a danger to the whole of humanity.

"Human history has given us no experience of facing an actor which is smarter than we are, is capable of out-thinking us," the director general said in an annual threat speech on Tuesday.

"This is genuinely novel and deserves the attention it is getting, including in MI5."

The spy chief also highlighted the growth and spread of more conventional threats.

He said that MI5 is dealing with a fourfold increase over the past decade in cases involving hostile states, primarily from Russia, Iran and China.

The volume of plots - including sabotage, assassination attempts, cyber attacks and arson - is so great that the agency is now dedicating more of its resources to countering the risk posed by foreign powers than at any time during the whole of the Cold War.

"The National Security Act is in heavy use, more so than even we and our police colleagues had anticipated, with dozens of arrests in the three years since it came into force," Sir Ken said.

There have been multiple arrests in the past couple of weeks alone in relation to a security incident linked to Iran at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire and an unrelated breach at an airbase in Cambridgeshire used by US and NATO military intelligence personnel.

Sir Ken said Russia remained the number one "aggressor", with its spies and proxy forces targeting the UK and its allies with attacks that deliberately sit under the threshold of conventional warfare "though sometimes not much short".

The Kremlin is using criminals and other "volunteers" to carry out these hostile actions because many of its own professional spies and military operators have been expelled from the UK and other European states.

The same kind of outsourcing tactic is also being used by Iran.

'An unflinching response'

Sir Ken said the UK has arrested more than 50 individuals in the past year over Iranian-linked operations.

These included a wave of arson and sabotage incidents targeting Jewish communities.

Military bases have also now joined the target list, according to the MI5 boss.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham this week accused Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of involvement in the security incident at RAF Fairford that resulted in US bomber aircraft based there being withdrawn to the United States.

The MI5 director general was limited on what he could say about that specific case because it is an ongoing investigation.

But he signalled that it was part of a new trend.

"The other major shift this year has been Iranian ambitions to come at harder targets, like military sites," he said.

He then issued this warning: "Those who seek to cause mayhem on British streets - whether hired thugs here or their paymasters overseas - will meet an unflinching response."

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AI can 'change the stakes'

On artificial intelligence, Sir Ken said the national security risks posed by this emerging technology are real.

"Today AI is already supercharging the cybersecurity contest between attackers and defenders," he said in his speech at MI5's headquarters in London.

"It can produce propaganda and radicalising material tailored to the individual. We've caught terrorists seeking to exploit AI to improve their reconnaissance and attack methodologies, with AI-enabled drones adding a new twist.

"Not yet realised - but the misuse case to which I'd attach greatest weight - is AI's potential to change the stakes on existing or even new bioweapons."

This means the technology could help terrorist groups or hostile states that have previously sought unsuccessfully to develop a bioweapons capability now achieve that ambition unless the right guardrails are in place to prevent AI from being exploited in such a way.

There is also the possibility of AI being used to develop entirely new as yet undiscovered biological weapons, such as by distorting common germs into deadly plagues.

"These risks are real," Sir Ken said.

"The UK intelligence community - MI5, GCHQ, MI6 - is working closely with the UK's globally respected AI Security Institute to take them on."

Part of this is the creation of the AI Threat Assessment Centre, which will be housed in MI5 and will also draw on expertise from other parts of government.

"This team is producing all-source assessments which separate the bluster from the realities," the MI5 chief said.

In a broader theme, the spy chief had a message for the public as he urged the whole country to be more resilient. He said: "When you hear 'national security', don't just think of Ukraine, subsea cables, armed drones or cyber weapons. Think also of the place where you live, where you work. Think of the flicker in the power grid supplying your home… We all have a stake in our national security."

(c) Sky News 2026: AI 'supercharging' security threats to UK, MI5 warns