AP
China, Russia and Iran pose three of the biggest threats to the UK in a fast-changing, unstable world, the head of Britain's foreign intelligence agency said Tuesday.
MI6 chief Richard Moore said the three countries and international terrorism make up the "big four" security issues confronting Britain's spies.
In his first public speech since becoming head of the Secret Intelligence Service in October 2020, Moore said China was the agency's single greatest priority as Beijing increasingly backs "bold and decisive action" to further its interests.
Calling China "an authoritarian state with different values than ours," he said Beijing conducts large-scale espionage operations against the U.K. and its allies, tries to distort public discourse and political decision-making and exports technology that enables control around the world.
Moore said the U.K. also continues "to face an acute threat from Russia."
He said Moscow has sponsored attempted assassinations - such as the poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal in England in 2018 - mounts cyberattacks, and attempts to interfere in other countries' democratic processes.
Moore said Iran also poses a major threat, and uses the political and militant group Hezbollah - "a state within a state" to fuel political turmoil in Lebanon and other neighboring countries.
He argued that Britain's spies must give up some of their deep-rooted secrecy and seek help from technology firms to win a cybersecurity arms race that is giving hostile countries and groups ever more capacity.
Moore, speaking at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said the disruptive potential of artificial intelligence and other rapidly developing technologies means the spy agency has to become more open to stay secret in a world of destabilizing technological change.
Moore said working with the private sector is a "sea change" for an organization enmeshed in secrecy. Until 1992, Britain's government refused to confirm the existence of MI6.
The organization has gradually become more open in recent years, even allowing publication of an authorized history, though it only goes up to 1949.
MI6 began publicly naming its chief, who uses the code name C, in the 1990s, and Moore is the first head of the service with a Twitter account.
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