Blaise Metreweli, giving her first speech in the job, is expected to say the UK faces a new “age of uncertainty” where the rules of conflict are being rewritten, particularly in light of wider Kremlin aggression after the invasion of Ukraine.
“The export of chaos is a feature, not a bug, in the Russian approach to international engagement,” the agency’s first female chief will argue, and “until [President Vladimir] Putin is forced to change his calculus” it is expected to continue.
Similar comments about the scale of the threat, particularly from Russia, are expected to be made by Air Chief Marshal Richard Knighton, the chief of the defence staff, who is due to say in a separate speech that “the situation is more dangerous than I have known during my career” and call for the country as a whole to be “stepping up”.
Their pre-released remarks come as Prime Minister Keir Starmer is due to fly to Berlin for an emergency summit with European leaders, including Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, as well as President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff in an effort to persuade the US to accept an alternative European peace plan for Ukraine.
Russia is identified as an acute threat by Metreweli in her speech, due to be released in full on Monday afternoon, with an “aggressive, expansionist, and revisionist” mindset that has led to Vladimir Putin ordering the invasion of its neighbour, and deploying aggressive supporting tactics across Europe.
“Putin should be in no doubt: our support is enduring. The pressure we apply on Ukraine’s behalf will be sustained,” the spy chief is expected to say, though the diplomatic reality of the past month is that the US position is uncertain, with Trump and Witkoff previously favouring Russian demands.
Threats faced by the UK include the attempt to kill Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury in 2018 with a nerve toxin, which led to the death of the British woman Dawn Sturgess. A public inquiry into the death of Sturgess, who accidentally picked up the poison bottle, concluded this month that the Russian president was “morally responsible”.
They also include Russian efforts to use artificial intelligence to create disinformation on a vast scale, to create online videos aimed at undermining public support for Ukraine or spreading false rumours about the health of the Princess of Wales, as highlighted in a recent speech by the foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper.
Six Bulgarians living in the UK were jailed in May for their part in a spy plot, which included the hostile surveillance of an investigative journalist known for Kremlin exposés across Europe and an attempt to retrieve the phone numbers of Ukrainian soldiers thought to be training in Germany.
However, in the advance excerpts, there was no explicit mention of China, other than to refer to last week’s sanctioning of two companies based in the country accused of engaging in indiscriminate hacking against the UK and its allies.
Ministers are still grappling with whether to allow China to build a new super-embassy at Royal Mint Court in London, while the prime minister is hoping to visit Beijing in January before Trump goes there in April.
Knighton, the country’s top military officer since September, is also expected to emphasise the threat from Russia to both the UK and the NATO military alliance, in his first annual lecture at the Royal United Services Institute thinktank.
“The war in Ukraine shows Putin’s willingness to target neighbouring states, including their civilian populations,” he is expected to say, arguing that Moscow wants to “challenge, limit, divide and ultimately destroy NATO”.
He will argue the long-term success of the armed forces relies on reconnecting with society so that defence becomes “a higher national priority for all of us”, with more Britons becoming involved.
Metreweli took over from Richard Moore as the chief of MI6, or C, in October. Previously she was MI6’s head of its technology and innovation department, or Q, and spent most of her career in the Middle East and Europe.
The new leader will also emphasise that the international spy agency has to remain on top of trends in computing, traditionally the domain of its sister agency GCHQ, as well as maintain the effective use of human sources of intelligence, its traditional trade.
“Mastery of technology must infuse everything we do. Not just in our labs, but in the field, in our tradecraft, and even more importantly, in the mindset of every officer. We must be as comfortable with lines of code as we are with human sources, as fluent in Python as we are in multiple languages,” she is expected to say.
The pre-released excerpts highlighted more general reference to the moral dimension of high-tech power, though allies said this was not a coded criticism of Donald Trump’s White House, but rather a call for a whole of society approach to technological development.
“The defining challenge of the 21st century is not simply who wields the most powerful technologies, but who guides them with the greatest wisdom. Our security, our prosperity, and our humanity depend on it,” the new chief will add.
The spy chief is expected to state that “we all have choices to make ahead” and that “it will be our rediscovery of our shared humanity, our ability to listen, and our courage that will determine how our future unfolds”.
