MI5 chief’s Russia warning dominates papers as Brexit headlines diverge

Sir Ken McCallum called Russia “aggressor number one” in MI5’s annual threat update on Tuesday, warning that its military and intelligence services were escalating attempts at hybrid warfare. The Daily Mirror led Wednesday’s front page with a “red alert”, according to the BBC’s newspaper review. Other papers highlighted his warnings about artificial intelligence and far-right terrorism. [1] [2]

McCallum said MI5’s caseload involving threats from states had quadrupled over the past decade. That figure covers states generally: it is not a count of Russian attacks, and he gave no starting total or country-by-country breakdown. He also said operations linked to Iran had led to more than 50 arrests in the UK over the previous 12 months. [2]

On AI, McCallum said MI5 had caught terrorists seeking to use it to improve reconnaissance and attack methods. He described its potential use in developing biological weapons as a risk that had not yet materialised, and announced that MI5 had launched an AI Threat Assessment Centre this year. [2]

The contrasting Brexit headlines arose from McCallum’s answers to journalists after the speech. According to The Guardian and Reuters, he described Russian media coverage and some activity by online trolls and bots around the 2016 EU referendum. He distinguished “what may have been attempted and what actually resulted”, The Guardian reported, and characterised the online activity as comparatively unimpressive. Reuters reported that Moscow denies interfering. [3] [4]

The BBC’s review said the Daily Telegraph led with a headline saying Russia had not swayed the vote, while the Daily Express focused on McCallum’s warning that renewed publicity would delight Russian trolls. An attempt to influence voters, however, is a different claim from changing the result. [1]

In 2020, Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee cited public studies of Russian state media and online activity but said it had not sought to assess their impact on the referendum. It called for a retrospective intelligence assessment. The government said at the time that it had seen no evidence of successful interference and rejected that recommendation.