Russia and China are amping up their espionage on Western nations, and there is a “narrowing window for the U.K. and allies to stay ahead,” according to Britain’s spy chief.
In a rare speech Wednesday at Bletchley Park, an estate in Buckinghamshire, England, that was the center of Allied code-breaking efforts during World War II, Anne Keast-Butler, the director of GCHQ, the U.K.’s intelligence and cybersecurity agency, warned of a renewed threat to the West from newly emboldened adversaries.
Part of this threat has to do with AI and its transformation on warfare.
“Warfare is being reconfigured; increasingly data-driven, AI-enabled, and automated in conflicts from Ukraine to Iran,” she said, adding “China is now a science and tech superpower with sophisticated capabilities across their intelligence, cyber, and military agencies.”
At the same time, Russia is increasing its aggression abroad, she added.
“Russia is scaling up its daily hybrid activity against the U.K. and Europe, stretching from the seabed to cyberspace—relentlessly targeting critical infrastructure, democratic processes, supply chains and public trust,” she said.
Keast-Butler’s speech, delivered on the 80th anniversary of the formation of the 1946 UK-USA signals agreement—the precursor for the Five Eyes intelligence sharing alliance between the U.S., U.K., Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, comes as both China and Russia have become more daring in their efforts to carry out surveillance.
In the U.K. earlier this month, a border officer and a former Hong Kong trade official were found guilty of spying on dissidents for China in the first case of its kind. In the U.S., two Chinese nationals were charged last summer with allegedly working for China’s intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security, and for allegedly attempting to recruit spies from within the U.S. military.
Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence assessments warn both China and Russia have increased the amount of surveillance equipment in Cuba that could be used to spy on America. They have also roughly tripled their personnel on the island since 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Trump administration has recently increased pressure on Cuba, partly by indicting 94-year-old revolutionary leader Raúl Castro for conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals among other charges last week.
Given this increase in espionage activity on the part of Western adversaries, both companies and individuals need to make cybersecurity “10 times more urgent,” Keast-Butler said. For the U.K. government, that means strengthening ties with allies and forging new partnerships.
For citizens, “that means taking important action now to switch from passwords for passkeys,” she said.
Still, Keast-Butler stopped short of calling for foreign IT infrastructure to be banned. She noted that while other countries have taken this approach, it doesn’t work, in her view.
Instead, the U.K. should back its homegrown tech companies, encourage strong encryption, and protect its supply chains, she argued.
“Sovereignty doesn’t have to mean ‘made in the U.K., so long as we carefully manage our supply chains, dependencies, and data,” she said.
