Britons urged to be vigilant to family at risk of hostile state manipulation

Britons are urged to watch for family members – including children – being manipulated by hostile foreign states, as counter-terror police warn of a surge in “threat to life” operations.

Petty criminals and disillusioned people are increasingly being used by Russia, China and Iran as proxies to carry out sabotage and surveillance and even arsons and kidnappings in the UK.

There has been a fivefold increase in work to tackle hostile state activity since 2018 and 20% of counterterrorism policing’s casework involves threats beyond traditional terrorism – primarily state-sponsored espionage, sabotage, and targeted violence, police say.

There has never been a time like now for the scale of the threat we see in state threats

Counter Terrorism Policing’s senior national co-ordinator Vicki Evans said there have been 10 charges under the National Security Act since it came into force in December 2023.

The head of the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command, Dominic Murphy, told a briefing at New Scotland Yard: “There has never been a time like now for the scale of the threat we see in state threats.

“I said in January 2024 this was about threats to our way of life more than it was about threats to life, but actually that’s no longer an accurate description of the threat we face.

“We are increasingly seeing these three states, but not just these three states, undertaking threat to life operations in the United Kingdom alongside those threats to our way of life operations.”

He added that those in their “mid-teens” are the youngest who have been arrested or investigated on suspicion of being involved in such activities.

Mr Murphy said that Russia has “changed tactics” since the Salisbury poisonings in 2018 and are using more unorganised proxies, often reaching out to “a disenfranchised group of people who are on the criminal fraternity” online.

He mentioned the recent convictions of three men after an arson attack on a warehouse linked to Ukraine on behalf of the terrorist Wagner Group, as a “real example” of how Russia is resorting to criminal proxies to carry out hostile activity.

Mr Murphy said that ringleader Dylan Earl, 20, was approached online having been disillusioned with the UK and even offered to create a “small army” to work on behalf of the Russian state.

We really encourage people, parents, teachers, professionals, just to be inquisitive. If they're concerned, ask those questions, and if they think there's something they need to be concerned about, seek help and act

He told reporters that Iran projects a “very real physical threat” to people in the UK, saying that officers are disrupting activity on a “very regular basis”.

Mr Murphy said that China is the “smaller part” of the workload of officers, but that they are alive to threats such as possible secret police stations seeking to influence local communities, as has been seen in New York, and bounties for Hong Kong dissidents.

Ms Evans said that criminal proxies are becoming a “prevalent” tactic and often involve small amounts of money for people tasked to do “unwittingly significant actions” on behalf of hostile states.

She told of concern that young people, who may not be ideologically aligned to the views of a hostile state, are being encouraged online to carry out activities without knowing the implications.

The officer added: “We really encourage people, parents, teachers, professionals, just to be inquisitive.

“If they’re concerned, ask those questions, and if they think there’s something they need to be concerned about, seek help and act, because we want to make sure that we’re protecting people from inadvertently being drawn in this sort of activity.”

She went on: “Espionage operations target our democracy, target our institutions, they threaten to fracture public trust here in our communities and threaten to target the things that underpin our daily life and our way of life.”