cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/11251740

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“Sadly, mass-casualty terrorist ambition endures… but the terrorist threat now sits alongside strategic national security threats posed by capable states,” [says Sir Ken McCallum, the head of Britain’s security agency MI5].

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{On the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in the U.S.], McCallum warns particularly of Russia and China as well as of ‘islamic terrorism’.

"This is my call to arms after 25 years: 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.”

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The threat level in the UK is currently at severe, the second-highest category, meaning that an attack is highly likely. Commemorations for the 2,977 people who died in 9/11 will be marked around the world, remembering the day the world changed.

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Russia’s hybrid war against the West and China’s competition over minerals and trade routes have led to increasing calls for a “whole nation” response rather than a reliance on the security services and armed forces for protection and survival.

He writes: “Contending with rising state-backed aggression – whether sabotage subcontracted to criminals, or covert interference in our democracy, or destructive cyber attacks on power stations – demands new laws as well as new tradecraft.”

Russia has used the full spectrum of attacks that he refers to against the UK in the past 15 years as well as state-sponsored murder.

“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.”

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