LONDON, September 11. /TASS/. Powerful states once again threaten the UK’s security after decades, while the danger of terrorism persists, MI5 Director General Ken McCallum said, urging the country to act.
He recalled a metaphor used by former CIA Director James Woolsey at a US congressional hearing in 1993, when he said the West had defeated a dragon but now faced numerous poisonous snakes. The dragon represented the Soviet Union, while the snakes stood for non-state threats, including terrorist groups. "We now face the worst of both worlds: dragons are back, but snakes persist," the MI5 chief wrote in a column published in The Independent marking the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks in the US.
"The terrorist threat now sits alongside strategic national security threats posed by capable States," McCallum wrote, without specifying which countries he meant.
"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 endeavor," he said, urging the country not to wait for the next shock and to prepare for future threats rather than yesterday’s battles. He also argued that the situation demands new laws and intelligence methods.
