Rare public appearance from MI5 boss Ken McCallum also includes stark warnings about Russia, Iran — and funding pressures on the intelligence service itself.
ISIS has resumed its efforts to export terrorism to Britain, the head of the U.K.’s domestic spy agency has said, as he warned it is the threat that “concerns me most.”
Ken McCallum, the director general of security service MI5, on Tuesday gave the U.K.’s first threat update since 2022, offering a wide-ranging assessment of threats from the Middle East, Russia — and much closer to home.
He warned that there is now an increased threat of terrorism from al Qaeda “and in particular” from ISIS, also known as Islamic State and Daesh. The group burst into the international consciousness in 2014, when its militants took over large parts of northwestern Iraq and eastern Syria.
“Today’s Islamic State is not the force it was a decade ago, but after a few years of being pinned well back, they’ve resumed their efforts to export terrorism,” he told a press conference in central London.
McCallum pointed to the deadly March concert hall attack in Moscow, carried out by offshoot ISIS-K, as a “brutal demonstration of its capability.”