Security services assess cyber threat

By James Blitz

David Cameron’s government has begun an internal discussion on whether the UK’s security services need to rebalance their efforts away from counter-terrorism towards some of the major new threats facing the UK, such as cyber espionage from China.
 

Although there has been a growing view that the UK is unlikely to be involved in state-on-state conflict, there remain fears over the risks posed by foreign states in areas such as energy security and proliferation of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Some analysts believe the UK needs to do more to advance its economic interests by gathering secrets from foreign governments.
 
The security services – MI5, MI6, GCHQ and the police – have been heavily focused for years on counter-terrorism and, in particular, preventing an atrocity at the Olympics and Paralympics .
 
With those events now safely passed, ministers and intelligence chiefs are intensifying talks on whether more effort is needed to tackle emerging risks, in particular espionage by foreign states.
 
The prime minister’s national security council discussed the post-Olympics agenda for the security services on July 3. No firm decisions were taken but officials said the intelligence agencies were asked to consider whether there should be a shift in priorities and report back for more talks.
 
“The issue on ministers’ minds was what the security scene would look like in, say, 2025,” a Whitehall figure said. “Will we look back and say that, in the decade after the Olympics, the jihadist threat remained the central security preoccupation for the UK? Or will the next decade come to be dominated by other issues, like the return of state-on-state challenges from Russia and China.”
 
For Britain’s intelligence community, the conclusion of the Olympics was always set to mark a watershed. Olympic security has been the dominant preoccupation of MI5 and MI6 for the past seven years because the event was an obvious attraction for jihadists plotting a major attack.
 
The fact that the bomb attacks in London on July 7 2005 took place one day after Britain was awarded the games heightened fears that the Olympics were at risk. But no significant terrorist attack has taken place in the UK since those London bombings – causing some analysts to argue that the jihadist threat has been contained.
 
Within the intelligence world, this view is strongly contested. “While the games have been a success in security terms, there are still many people plotting jihadist acts,” an official said. “Core al-Qaeda in Pakistan may have been decimated but new jihadists groups are emerging in Nigeria, Mali and Syria. In some way the complexity of jihadist operations is making the challenge bigger.”
 
The official added: “Ministers will never want to take any risk in reducing our commitment to counter-terrorism. They know that a single terrorist incident, if successful, would do immense damage to Britain’s reputation and confidence.”
 
That said, other challenges are emerging. The biggest question is whether there needs to be more effort to tackle the rise in web-based espionage by China. As Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, suggested in a speech this year, the amount of hostile activity generated by foreign states in cyber space is “astonishing” and of “industrial scale.”
 
A second issue is whether MI6 should focus more on collecting foreign intelligence on Britain’s economic rivals.

“There may need to be a greater focus on what I would call ‘old fashioned statecraft,’ collecting intelligence from foreign governments in order to further Britain’s political and economic interests,” said Nigel Inkster of the International Institute for Strategic Studies think-tank.

Many commentators note that the Cameron government is committed to putting promotion of economic interest at the heart of foreign policy.
 
“It makes no sense to completely unwind the position on counter-terrorism,” Mr Inkster said. “But there are questions of proportion to be discussed. In the forthcoming spending round, it would certainly make no sense for the agencies to make a bid for cash, solely based on counter-terrorist activity.”
 
Michael Clarke, head of the Royal United Services Institute think-tank, made a similar point. “Now the Olympics is over, funding for the intelligence services will get tighter,” he said. “This will mean there needs to be far more discussion about priorities, whether the agencies like it or not.”

That said, the firm view inside MI5 and MI6 is that the counter-terrorism effort cannot be compromised. “If a bomb goes off in London, the whole discussion will change,” a Whitehall official said. “The fundamental problem is that – now the Olympics are over – nobody can be completely sure what the next big challenge to national security will be.”
 
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2012.