The director general of Britain’s domestic spy agency MI5 has warned while Al-Qaeda’s power to attack the West has been all but erased in the years since 9/11, the overall threat picture is now worse than in 2001 between new and innovative terror networks, lone wolf attackers, and state-sponsored terrorism.
British spy boss Sir Kenneth McCallum has made the latest in a series of interventions by leading political, military, and security figures priming the pump for societal change, warning an ever-greater security threat means the public now need to pull together for national “preparation, resilience… courage”.
While “another 9/11” is “progressively less likely” as time passes because Western security services have become well adapted to fighting that particular form of terrorism, in the whole the security picture is now worse than in 2001, the spy boss said. The answer to this is more state power, more integration between the government and society so Whitehall can easily take control in a crisis, and more laws to keep “out-innovating” the enemy, he said.
Hitherto such warnings have been presented by others as a response to Russia becoming an combatant against the West, again, and often in the context of the public needing to be mentally prepared for doing their part in a coming war. These “dragons” of foreign policy — Russia and China — were not explicitly named McCallum’s op-ed in the former British newspaper The Independent, but were heavily enough implied as a new and growing source of instability.
This security risk from foreign powers launching hybrid attacks was less of a factor in the immediately post-Cold War world of 2001, he said, and it today comes on top of the terror network threat of the sort that planned 9/11-style atrocities, but also the developments in self-radicalised, ‘lone wolf’ terror that has developed in the past 20 years.
The lack of communication chatter surrounding these self-starter killers makes them all the more difficult to detect for signals-intercepting-specialised intelligence agencies. He added: “Sadly, mass-casualty terrorist ambition endures”.
Sir Ken said: “rising State-backed aggression – whether sabotage subcontracted to criminals, or covert interference in our democracy, or destructive cyberattacks on power stations – demands new laws as well as new tradecraft.”
Part of the security problem identified by the top spy boss is that fact that compared to the past, less of the world is under government control and that means in a sudden, unforeseen crisis the response can’t be centrally directed from a bunker under Whitehall. To overcome this, the state needs to take much more of society in hand. He said the balance the government should strike is:
… preserving an open economy but cooperating across government, industry and academia, to close vulnerabilities and enable swift, coherent action when crises hit… government, business, academia, and the public must treat national security not as the specialist concern of a handful of agencies, but as a shared national endeavour. We cannot wait for the next shock to discover who owns the vulnerability, who has the authority to act, or who was supposed to pick up the phone.
Sir Kenneth’s remarks are just the latest in a now years-long procession of senior figures warning Britain and wider Europe that war looms and society has to change to prepare to absorb the impact of that, including backfilling first-echelon military casualties. As previously reported:
Talk of imminent war stalks the discourse in the United Kingdom… Both NATO and Westminster have spent the past two years drumming the idea into the British public that the post-Cold War era is over and the West is now in a 1930s-like pre-war state, if not already in the prelude of ‘Hybrid war’. The leitmotif of these warnings is the coming conflict, be it successfully deterred or not, will be a “whole of society event” and young Britons will be a particularly important part of that.
… the head of the UK Armed Forces Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton made similar remarks. He added: “Sons and daughters, colleagues, veterans, will all have a role to play. To build, to serve and, if necessary, to fight. And more families will know what sacrifice for our nation means”.
The same day, the head of Britain’s foreign intelligence agency MI6 said it would now be acting like the Second World War SOE agency, which launched sabotage campaigns against enemies in Europe. The Director said: “At an operational level, we will sharpen our edge and impact with audacity, tapping into – if you like – our historical SOE instincts… We will never stoop to the tactics of our opponents. But we must seek to outplay them. In every domain. In every way.”
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