AI could 'change the stakes' on bioweapons: UK spy chief

The head of Britain's domestic spy agency warned Tuesday that artificial intelligence was affecting the security risks faced by the UK, and could "change the stakes" on bioweapons.

"Today AI is already supercharging the cybersecurity contest between attackers and defenders," Ken McCallum, MI5 director general, said in his annual threat briefing.

Artificial intelligence technology had the "potential to change the stakes on existing or even new bioweapons", he warned in his speech at the agency's headquarters on the banks of the river Thames.

He announced that MI5 had launched this year a new AI Threat Assessment Centre, housed in its headquarters, and was drawing expertise from other bodies "producing all-source assessments which separate the bluster from the realities".

"Put at its simplest, human history has given us no experience of facing an actor which is smarter than we are. Is capable of out-thinking us. This is genuinely novel," McCallum added.

He said the agency had already uncovered suspects using AI to improve its reconnaissance efforts and means of attack, including with AI-enabled drones.

McCallum also revealed that the agency was devoting more resources to combating threats from foreign states than at any time since the Cold War.

"Over the last decade, our state threats caseload has quadrupled," he said, adding: "Russia remains aggressor number one."

"The Russian military and intelligence services are once again escalating their attempts at hybrid warfare," McCallum warned.

But he said that four years after Russia launched its war on Ukraine in 2022, "the Kremlin's global toolkit is weak."

"So we see them scrambling to pay criminals to do their bidding. Or exploiting naive volunteers."

Iran was also seeking to expand its hybrid warfare, and over the past 12 months more than 50 arrests had been made in Iran-linked operations, McCallum said.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham on Monday told MPs that a recent scare at a UK airbase in southwestern England used by the US military was "highly likely" to have been coordinated in Iran.

"Those who seek to cause mayhem on British streets -- whether hired thugs here or their paymasters overseas -- will meet an unflinching response," McCallum vowed.