Sir Ken McCallum, Director General of MI5, gave the service's annual threat speech on Tuesday. Reuters and the Evening Standard reported that Iran is trying to hit harder targets in Britain, such as military sites, and the Standard added that the past year has seen more Iranian action against Jewish sites. AP and the Standard said he called the suspected plot against RAF Fairford 'not unique'. Reuters said Russia is escalating its hybrid warfare as it lashes out at Ukraine's allies. CNA reported that he warned AI could 'change the stakes' on bioweapons and worsen cyberattacks. On Brexit, the Standard said he described Russian attempts to interfere in 2016 as openly documented, while Sky News said he told listeners the result 'is not in dispute'. FinancialJuice, alone, reported that Iran summoned Britain's ambassador and asked for evidence.
The head of the service that investigates plots on British soil has set out, in public, which threats he thinks are rising. He has linked the Fairford case to a pattern, put Iran and Russia ahead of other dangers and added a warning about technology that is moving faster than the rules. His remarks on the referendum also draw a line between a documented attempt at interference and any claim about the outcome, which matters in an argument that has already reached the Prime Minister.
Nothing changes in daily life today. If you work at or near military sites, in defence, energy or communications, or run a Jewish community site, expect continued official advice on security. Everyone else is more likely to meet the threat as online disinformation than as a physical attack.
Supporters of the warning say a spy chief speaking openly shows how serious the pressure is, and that naming Iran and Russia helps the public and allies take it seriously.
Sceptics say an annual speech is a statement, not evidence, that the reports we saw gave no figures or cases beyond the ones already known, and that the Brexit remarks have been read in opposite ways by different papers.
Hold three ideas apart. One: the threat to military sites is a claim by the service that would know, but the public has seen little of the evidence. Two: 'Russia tried' and 'Russia changed the result' are different statements, and Sir Ken has endorsed only the first. Three: the Iranian summoning is a single-source item until a second outlet confirms it. Watch for the government's reply to Iran and for any detail on who was arrested over Fairford.
Reuters, AP, BBC, Sky News, Evening Standard, The Hill, NBC News, CNA, The Independent, Mirror, Der Spiegel, FinancialJuice (single source for Iran's reaction) · 13 Oct 2026
MI5's chief says Iran is turning to harder targets such as military sites and Russia is stepping up hybrid attacks. AI, he warns, could 'change the stakes'MI5's chief says Iran is turning to harder targets such as military sites and Russia is stepping up hybrid attacks. AI, he warns, could 'change the stakes'
Sir Ken McCallum called the suspected RAF Fairford plot 'not unique'. On Brexit he said Russia did try to interfere in 2016, but that the result 'is not in dispute'.
Sir Ken McCallum, the Director General of MI5, used the security service's annual threat speech on Tuesday to describe a country under pressure from several directions at once. Iran, he said, is trying to hit harder targets in Britain, such as military sites, Reuters and the Evening Standard reported, and the Standard added that the past year has brought more Iranian action against Jewish sites. He called the suspected plot against RAF Fairford, the Gloucestershire air base used by US forces, 'not unique', AP and the Standard reported, and The Hill described it as one part of a wider Iranian effort. Russia, Reuters said, is escalating its hybrid warfare, meaning sabotage, disinformation and pressure short of open war, as it lashes out at Ukraine's allies. The BBC's headline and Der Spiegel both said MI5 is now dealing with more state threats than it did in the Cold War.
The speech followed Mr Burnham's statement to MPs on Monday that the Fairford plot was 'almost certainly' directed by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a charge Tehran dismissed as unfounded, according to our report yesterday. Sir Ken's 'not unique' widens the frame from one incident to a campaign. The reports we saw, however, gave no count of plots, arrests or sites targeted, so the scale of that campaign is not yet public.
Artificial intelligence ran through the speech. CNA reported that he warned AI could 'change the stakes' on bioweapons and worsen cyberattacks and other threats, and The Independent's headline said terrorists could use AI to go after the UK with drones and bioweapons. NBC News listed China and terrorist groups alongside Iran and Russia among the dangers he named. The Mirror's headline put the threats on a post-9/11 scale, a framing we saw only there. The outlets agree on the shape of the warning if not on its emphasis: hostile states first, with terrorism and technology close behind.
The speech also landed in an argument. On Sunday Prime Minister Andy Burnham said Russia had interfered in the 2016 EU referendum, a claim Nigel Farage has called a lie. Sir Ken said it is openly documented that Russia sought to interfere in that vote, the Standard reported, and the Guardian's headline called that confirmation. But he said the result 'is not in dispute', Sky News reported, and the BBC and the Standard said he warned against overstating, or amplifying, Russian propaganda. The Telegraph ran a comment piece calling this a rebuke to Mr Burnham; that is the writer's reading, not a finding. One detail rests on a single source: FinancialJuice, a market news service, reported that Iran summoned Britain's ambassador and demanded evidence of Iranian links to the Fairford incident. We found no second outlet, and none of the reports we saw said the underlying evidence had been published.