Terrorists are plotting AI-enabled drone attacks on Britain, the head of MI5 has warned.

In his annual speech, Sir Ken McCallum revealed that the Security Service had “caught terrorists seeking to exploit AI to improve their reconnaissance and attack methodologies, with AI-enabled drones adding a new twist”.

Addressing the threat that artificial intelligence posed to national security, he said the technology was “supercharging” the “contest between attackers and defenders”.

Insisting he did not want to sound alarmist, Sir Ken said terrorists and other hostile states could soon have the capability to unleash “biological or radiological weaponry”. He said he attached “greatest weight” to this threat and that the Government was “taking additional steps”.

AI itself also posed a risk, he said, noting that “human history has given us no experience of facing an actor which is smarter than we are”.

Sir Ken announced the launch of an AI threat assessment centre, which would be housed in MI5 and would draw on the expertise of the UK’s other agencies.

He said: “My adrenaline thresholds are set pretty high. I’m not easy to alarm, and neither is my organisation. But we are clear that, just as the benefits of AI are real, so are the national security risks.

“One concern would be that comparatively low sophistication actors may have a capability uplift in the AI era if these guardrails do not function as intended.

“It has long been the case that many terrorists would dearly love to have some kind of capability around energy or biological or radiological weaponry. But that hasn’t been easy for them to achieve.”

Iran ‘targeting British military sites’
Sir Ken, who was making his annual speech as director-general of MI5, also warned that Iran was now targeting British “military sites”, a “major shift” in its ambitions.

Counter-terrorism police are investigating Iran’s involvement in an alleged plot at RAF Fairford, after three suspicious vans were found near the military site in the early hours of Sept 27.

On Monday, the Prime Minister said the plot was “almost certainly” the work of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Britain and 28 other countries have accused the Islamic Republic of carrying out “lethal plotting, arson, sabotage, cyber-attacks, and other hybrid activities”.

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