MI5 Chief: UK Faces Greater Threat Than in Aftermath of September 11 Attacks

The head of Britain's domestic security service MI5, Ken McCallum, has said that the United Kingdom today faces more serious threats to its national security than it did in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He made the remarks in an interview with The Independent.

According to him, the nature of these dangers has changed dramatically since 2001. "Sadly, the terrorist ambition to kill people on a mass scale has not gone away, but now that threat sits alongside strategic challenges from powerful states," the MI5 chief noted.

"The Dragons Are Back, and the Snakes Haven't Gone Away"

McCallum described the current situation as "the worst of both worlds." By "dragons," he means Russia and China, while "snakes" refers to radical Islamist terrorist groups, whose activity has not ceased despite the years that have passed.

The intelligence chief called for a whole-of-society approach to countering these threats. "Government, business, the academic community and ordinary citizens should see national security not as a narrow task for a handful of intelligence agencies, but as a shared national effort," he said.

The West Cannot Rest on Its Laurels

McCallum stressed that Western countries cannot be satisfied with the defence systems already in place. "We must resist the temptation to admire the defences we built yesterday, and instead build the ones we'll need tomorrow," he said, referring to Russia's aggression against Ukraine and the wave of sabotage that has swept across Europe.

According to him, countering growing state-backed aggression — whether it be sabotage outsourced to criminal gangs, covert interference in democratic processes, or destructive cyberattacks on power plants — requires new laws and new approaches to security.

Readiness, resilience and the ability to adapt to emerging threats are, in the MI5 chief's view, what the West owes to the memory of the victims of the September 11 attacks — and to those who could become victims of future ones.

Source: novinky.cz