The head of MI6 has warned that the UK faces increasingly complex security threats driven by Russia’s determination to “export chaos” across the globe.
In her first public speech as chief of the UK’s foreign intelligence service, Blaise Metreweli is expected to say on Monday that President Vladimir Putin’s approach to international affairs is reshaping the nature of conflict and creating new and unpredictable risks for Britain and its allies.
According to extracts released by the Foreign Office, which oversees MI6, Metreweli will place particular emphasis on what she describes as an “aggressive, expansionist” Russia.
“The export of chaos is a feature, not a bug, in the Russian approach to international engagement,” she is expected to say. “We should be ready for this to continue until Putin is forced to change his calculus.”
Metreweli, who took over from Richard Moore at the end of September, is the only member of the secretive intelligence agency whose identity is publicly known. Before becoming chief — a role traditionally referred to as “C” — she served as MI6’s director of technology and innovation, a position often likened to the fictional James Bond character Q.
In her speech, Metreweli is expected to highlight the growing importance of technology alongside traditional espionage, arguing that intelligence officers must be adept in both digital and human intelligence.
“MI6 officers must be as comfortable with lines of code as we are with human sources,” she will say, adding that they should be “as fluent in Python as we are in multiple languages”.
Her remarks follow a series of warnings from Western defence and security officials about the rise of so-called hybrid threats from states including Russia, Iran and China. These threats combine cyber-attacks, espionage and influence operations, which authorities say are undermining global stability.
Last week, the UK imposed sanctions on several Russian media organisations accused of conducting information warfare, as well as on two Chinese technology firms over what it described as “vast and indiscriminate cyber-activities”.
Metreweli is the first woman to lead MI6 since the agency was founded in 1909.
Britain’s other main intelligence services have already broken similar barriers. MI5, the domestic security agency, was led by Stella Rimington between 1992 and 1996 and by Eliza Manningham-Buller from 2002 to 2007. Anne Keast-Butler became head of the electronic and cyber-intelligence agency GCHQ in 2023.
