Intelligence Scoop: The Biggest Threats to Britain, Live From MI5

0:00For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter, and discounted books, join the Declassified Club at therestisclassified.com. Are Russia and Iran escalating their attacks on the UK? Could artificial intelligence help terrorists develop deadly bioweapons? And what really happened at RAF Fairford? Well, welcome to The Rest Is Classified. I'm David McCloskey. And I'm Gordon Carrera. And it has been a very busy few weeks, lots of threats. And Gordon, you are quite literally just out of MI5 headquarters, which I guess begs the question, why did they let you in in the first place? There's a good question. But once a year, the head of MI5, Sir Ken McCallum, does open up

1:00MI5 headquarters at Thames House on the river in central London to a select group of journalists to give them an overview of the threats facing the UK. There's a speech on camera on the record. Some of the details of what happened inside the building are strictly off the record, although I did get special dispensation to reveal that the pastries were very, very good, a kind of Biscoff croissant. But anyway, that's probably not what people are really interested in. So the MI5 director gives an on-the-record speech that is also followed by a Q&A time. And you, I understand, Gordon, were one of the lucky journalists who was permitted to ask a question. Yeah, that's right. And I asked him about Iranian threats to military bases in the UK.

1:44And that's obviously in the wake of this very interesting and mysterious story of what happened at RAF Fairford, an American air base in Britain. And for those who haven't followed the story, it is an absolutely kind of wild tale about a group of men who were arrested outside the base. And then a week later, 12 US B-1 bombers that had been stationed at Fairford and that had been used to conduct strikes against Iran are essentially evacuated from the base in a very major hurry. Later in the episode, David, we'll be diving deep into what we know about what really happened there and what the head of MI5 told me about the Iranian threats. But before that, we're going to look at some of the other head of MI5 told me about the Iranian threats. But before

2:25that, we're going to look at some of the other threats that MI5 identified as facing us, including Russia, and interestingly, a lot about artificial intelligence. But first, a quick word from our sponsors at HP. This episode is brought to you by HP. In intelligence, you quickly learn that you are only as strong as the network around you. It's rarely a single major event that undermines an operation. It's the gaps between systems. That's where information leaks. It's the same in business. Leaders face a constant battle against strict timelines, mismatched tools, and the worry their security isn't as tight as they think it is. Which is why HP approaches technology not as a collection of gadgets but as an integrated system.

3:11And crucially that protection is built in at hardware level. It runs quietly in the background blocking threats without requiring constant specialist oversight. With a team of business advisors HP helps businesses of all sizes find technology that fits their needs and budget. To see how HP helps businesses work securely and productively, visit hp.com forward slash classified. Trick listeners also benefit from 10% off HP business technology with the code TRICK10. Whether you're living abroad, paying someone overseas, or just trying to manage your money across borders, you want a fair exchange rate, an easy transfer, and no surprises along the way. Wise keeps things simple. Wise is a smart way to move the currencies you need around the globe.

4:16It works in more than 160 countries and with over 40 currencies. Most transfers arrive instantly. Wise uses the mid-market exchange rate, like the one you see on Google, with no markups or hidden fees. So when money needs to move, you can see the rate, know the fee, and get on with it. Join millions saving billions on hidden fees by downloading the Wise app today. Be smart, get wise, T's and C's apply. This episode is brought to you by Petivity. Cat parents are basically mealtime detectives. Who actually ate? Did they finish? Was that less than yesterday? The new Petivity smart feeder for cats turns everyday meals into meaningful health insights, helping you identify changes in your cat's habits and be more proactive about

5:02their health. Plus, you can feed them from MI5 about the threats facing the UK? So there was certainly a message about the big state threats, as MI5 puts it. The head of MI5, Ken McCallum, said MI5 was devoting more resources to countering these state threats than during the Cold War. So caseload dealing with these things, which are espionage, sabotage, that kind of enemy action, that's quadrupled in the last 10 years, he said. Russia remains aggressor number one, in his words. Russia remains aggressor number one, as Putin's Kremlin continues to lash out at the UK and its allies. Like a number of national leaders have recently highlighted, the Russian military and intelligence services are once again escalating their attempts at hybrid warfare.

6:03Basically trying to intimidate and also weaponise division, particularly through social media and information flows. It's interesting. One of the major debates in the UK has been whether or not Russia interfered in the 2016 Brexit referendum. And I believe our counterparts on the rest is politics. Rory and Alistair actually got Prime Minister Andy Burdham to essentially admit that they did. I've asked the question myself coming in to this role, because I gave a speech to the UN recently on this very topic. I don't think we knew back then the extent to which there was state-sponsored interference in the British democratic process. But I asked the question coming into Downing Street, well, was there interference in the

6:522016 referendum from Russia? And I've had the clear answer that yes, there was. And these things are important now to put clearly on the record, and I believe, help voters in Germany and France understand that some of this politics is instigated via our enemies, namely Russia. That caused a bit of a stir and that was the subject of some of the questions to the head of MI5. When he was asked about those comments at the briefing, he said there was little doubt that Russia had tried to interfere in Brexit back in 2016, the referendum. But he was much more cautious about saying that it had an effect on the results. Now, it's interesting because one of the problems for MI5 is that it was pretty wary of getting involved in politics after that very divisive referendum and of kind of trying to unpick it or be seen to doing so.

7:49And the politicians who kind of oversaw MI5, particularly after the referendum, also didn't really want that subject unpicked with people looking at Russian interference. So there wasn't much focus on it. And obviously, we now have a prime minister who is more focused on getting into a different relationship with Europe and is willing to talk about it in a different way. So it was quite interesting and it was quite difficult, I think, for the head of MI5 to talk about this very divisive political subject. try and do this, but we also have to not let them get into our heads and make them out to be more successful and more effective at influencing our politics than they actually are. The whole aim of

8:32hybrid tactics is to try to intimidate us. So let's not fall into that trap. And we need to be kind of resilient to that risk and that danger of Russia trying to divide us. He probably pointed to the American example of how effectively we dealt with this during the 2016 election, right? Yeah. No fallout, no legacy. Keep Russia out of our heads. And really, just a perfect example of how the intelligence services managed to walk that fine line. I mean, in all seriousness, it is a very interesting parallel to the 2016 case, which we did that series on the pod earlier this year on Russian interference in that election, the nature of it, and how it quickly became politicized. So I mean, I guess it does make sense that Sir Ken would be

9:17quite reluctant to dip his toes into that pretty nasty part. The morass. Yeah. So yeah, he talked about Russia. Interestingly enough, we'll come back to Iran later. He talked about, even with all these state threats, Chinese espionage as well, still worry about terrorism, especially, I think, political violence, violence against politicians, also growing extreme right-wing terrorism. I mean, at one point he said that MI5 was investigating a radicalized extreme right-wing 13-year-old in the UK. So I think that remains a focus despite this kind of growth of the state threats. And he also spent a lot of time talking about artificial intelligence, AI. Yeah. And I thought that was really interesting because it's been there in speeches in the past,

10:03but never quite with the prominence it had at this briefing. And it was talked about in more specific ways rather than a general threat. For instance, the risk that it's turbocharging cyber threats, making it easier to hack into systems. There's the risk it can produce propaganda and radicalizing material tailored specifically to individuals. He also said that they'd seen terrorists seeking to exploit AI to improve reconnaissance and attack methodologies, and even with AI-enabled drones adding a new twist. So I think you've got a sense there about some of the ways in which AI is being used to change the way terrorists can carry out acts. But I thought it was interesting that he said that their biggest worry

10:51was artificial intelligence being used to create bioweapons. Not yet realised, but the misuse case to which I'd attach greatest weight is AI's potential to change the stakes on existing or even new bioweapons. These risks are real. So for a long time, they've known that terrorist groups post 9-11 have wanted to get hold of chemical and biological weapons, things like that. But it's been pretty hard to get hold of them or to make them without a lab. And the fear is that AI could make it easier to either obtain the know-how of how to make them, or even that AI at the next level could be used to engineer new viruses and pathogens. Think about a kind of COVID virus made even more deadly. And he said, that is a worry.

11:35Although he was careful to say, we're not there yet. Well, that's good. Phew. Did he talk about killer robots? He did not specifically talk about killer robots. He did not use that phrase. Although he did raise this kind of bigger question, the existential question about whether artificial general intelligence or super intelligence, I think that's what we're now supposed to call it, which is smarter than us, could outthink us. And he said, it's interesting. He said, this is genuinely novel and deserves the serious attention it's getting, including in MI5, to that kind of threat of the AI taking over. So I guess it means that MI5 researchers are going to spend a lot of time reading what horrific sort of sci-fi novels, things like that.

12:21Nothing wrong with sci-fi novels. No, there's nothing wrong with sci-fi novels. But did you get a sense of what that actually means inside MI5? What are they actually doing? Well, it was interesting because he was quite specific about that. He said they've created a new AI threat assessment center. So they've had a terrorism analysis center for some time, a state threats center for some time. And The new thing, I think, is this AI assessment center, where they're going to bring together all the experts. The idea is that they're going to be able to provide an objective assessment of how serious that threat was. I think what you get a sense from him in talking about AI is that the pace at which some of these threats are changing and growing is worrying to him.

13:07And I think that was definitely one sense you got. But there was one threat which I did ask him about, which was this threat from Iran, including to US military bases in the UK, which relates to this pretty wild story about Fairford. So after the break, let's look deeper into what might have been going on there. been so big, tall, and handsome? Not always. I was 6'10 once. Seven days to love it or return it, Mr. Shaq. Not that I would. You never do. No, I never do. So buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply. See our seven-day return policy at Carvana.com. With Vrbo, it pays to book your 38 stay early. Save over $530 when booking seven-plus-night stays at least 60 days in advance

14:08and secure your dream vacation home before it's gone. Verbo, book now, relax longer. Average savings $550. Select homes only. Well, welcome back. We're not focusing on extinction level threats and killer robots. So let's go to Iran instead, Gordon, and what it's up to, including targeting US bases in the UK. Yeah, it was interesting. So amidst these state threats, the head of MI5 said specifically when it came to Iran, there'd been more than 50 arrests linked to Iranian activity in the UK in the last year. Things like targeting Iranian dissidents, Jewish communities in the UK, violence, arson, these kind of activities, which we've known about for some time, to be fair. But the shift that he specifically mentioned was Iran's ambitions to strike harder targets, including

15:10military targets. The other major shift this year has been Iranian ambitions to come at harder targets like military sites. And I think that brings us to this story of RAFF, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. And that is a, it's a US airbase in, do I have the pronunciation right here, Gordon? Gloucestershire. Is that Gloucestershire? The Cotswolds. The Cotswolds. Yes. Vacation choice of none other than J.D. Vance. And it is a, it's a US airbase that dates back to the second world war. I believe it was, it was created in 1944 in advance of D-Day. It's home for gliders launched into France on D-Day. So it is a very old US base in England. So just to kind of go back, I think, because the story itself of what actually happened there

16:01is quite fascinating. So walk us back, Gordon, to how this all started. Yeah. So it starts on the early hours of Sunday, September the 27th. And we wake up that Sunday morning with police having declared a major incident just outside the base. They have evacuated 85 houses. Three white vans have been stopped, five people have been arrested, and the bomb disposal teams are searching those vans. So it suddenly looks like this is, if you like, a major plot. That's what everyone thinks. But then the mysteries and oddities start to this, and pretty quickly it becomes murkier. So for instance, how did the police get onto these people? So a local farmer talks to the media the next day and she's remained anonymous, but she says she's returning home from

16:52a party in the early hours of Sunday morning, which I thought farmers have to get up early in the morning to do the farming stuff. I don't know much about farming. Yeah. Are farmers partying in the Cotswolds until the wee hours? After midnight. Yeah. Anyway, but we shouldn't object to people going out. It's fine. But she comes back early hours of the Sunday morning. She sees a driveway blocked. And she says she sees eight to ten people in masks running. And she tries to call the Ministry of Defense police who look after the base. No answer. And then at 1.36 a a.m on this sunday morning she calls the police on 999 the emergency number and she will say she thinks she foiled the attack and she was

17:32the one who tipped off the police to what was happening to these men who were arrested but then it starts again to get a bit more complicated because that doesn't quite fit with the timeline of the police statement which which then comes out. Because they say they'd been called before that at 12.45 a.m. And then it turns out, eventually, that they were called by one of the five men inside the vans, which is kind of weird. And we might come back to what's going on there. But that already kind of makes you go, this is odd. And it looks like the farmer, she'd actually possibly seen the undercover police who'd arrived in the area who were kind of masked and on the move and trying to deal with whatever situation was ongoing, rather than, the men are released on bail, but still under investigation.

18:31And now that's really unusual if they posed a major threat. Two more people since then have also been arrested. But it becomes pretty clear that no explosives have been found. There were no bombs in the vans, just some cans of petrol. So everyone goes, well, what was all that about? Maybe not so much of a threat. I mean, when the story broke, we were actually messaging each other to try to figure out if we would cover the story on the day up. It just kept getting weirder and weirder. And it was like the layers to the story kept piling up and so you couldn't quite get to the bottom of it. We also had, I mean, to add one more layer, there were those strange comments that Donald Trump made on the day of the arrest where he basically said that we'd been watching

19:14these guys for a while. I think he did this from a runway somewhere as he's getting off Air Force One and that the Brits had done an amazing job. So it suggested, strangely, that there was some measure of foreknowledge, that there was an attack in the works, or that there had been a plot. And so that causes even more confusion. Yeah, because it didn't quite fit with the idea that the men had only been arrested when there'd been a call into the emergency services, into the police, and that had tipped them off. And in this case, it turns out by one of the men himself. That didn't fit with the Trump comments. Now, it was fair to say the immediate suspicion was Iran or that Iran might have been involved.

19:54That was all the speculation because it is a base that since March has been used for American bombers to go off and carry out attacks on Iran. I mean, Britain initially resisted allowing bases to be used to attack Iran, and it then turned into allowing bases to be used for what are called defensive strikes. Defensive bombing. Which I think most people would think is a slightly odd legalistic term that was used by the British government to get around the fact that they really annoyed President Trump by saying they can't use the bases for offensive missions. Wasn't the idea that the strikes from British soil would be against missile and drone production facilities? There was a logic to it. Yeah, there was some legalistic division of kind

20:45of targets the US could strike from British soil and what was considered an offensive bobbing run. I also like that, I mean, so after this happens, the Iranians, of course, start threatening the UK and say that, you know, bases on British soil that are being used in these bobbing runs are legitimate targets. They make veiled threats against, I like this term, the British monarchy regime. What American couldn't oppose resistance to the British monarchy regime? It's in our blood. But the threats, we should say the threats are very vague. They're non-specific. It's just kind of this general threat against the UK in response to the UK letting the US conduct strikes from British soil. And so we're in this kind of messy period a couple of days after the arrests where the

21:34men have been released. It's not really clear what's happening. And then a week after, something really surprising happens, doesn't it? Because the US then pulls out these bombers. And it pulls them out very quickly to the point where I believe some of the planes and flight crews actually left while there were aerial refueling aircraft still being deployed to support their flight. So they fly these 12 B-1 bombers back, I believe, to South Dakota to just, I mean, get them entirely out of the UK and out of Europe. And then there's additional confusion because Vice President J.D. Vance implies publicly that the bombers are withdrawn due to a threat, which would make sense given how quickly they're evacuated. But then Marco Rubio says, well, this is kind of a routine reallocation of resources.

22:29And it is true that there are these kind of bomber deployments that move around quite frequently. I mean, the Air Force will send small groups of bombers to Allied air bases for a few weeks at a time. They're called bomber task force deployments. So there is a kind of, if you put aside the weirdness of all the guys being arrested, you know, outside of the base of the vans, there's on the face of it about how we've been watching these guys for a while. So I mean, it raises this question, I think, of what was the plot and was the plot, which I think it was, was the plot connected to the very speedy evacuation of these bombers from the base? Yeah. I mean, it becomes clear that security had been raised at the base in the run-up to the arrests of the guy in the van.

23:28So people seem to have known that something was up. Local people had talked about seeing increased signs of security. So all of that suggests that there was intelligence about a plot to strike the base in some ways. The report suggests that maybe mid-September this intelligence comes in, possibly from Israel, of a plan to strike US bases, including Fairford, although also maybe some in Germany, including Ramstein, one of the big bases. It looks like there's no concrete details of what this might be. Now, I don't know what you think, but my guess is that this is perhaps intercepts or agent reporting from inside Iran, where there's some kind of chatter going, let's hit US bases in Europe, let's try and strike them. But it's pretty

24:19non-specific. And that is leading in the run-up to the arrest to that increased security and the general kind of atmosphere of something's going on. And perhaps even explains Donald Trump's comments that we'd been watching something of concern for a while. But it's hard then to understand what leads to the sudden withdrawal then afterwards, isn't it? And how specific it was. You could just explain the withdrawal by the fact that these B-1s, I mean, each of them, so there are only 100 B-1 bombers that were built between, I think, the late 80s and the mid to late 90s. The cost of each of those aircraft in 1998 dollars, which is the source that the US Air Force cites for the cost is $283 million, which today

25:06is somewhere between 500 and 550 million. So these are half billion dollar aircraft. There's only 100. If you have 12 of them there, you're talking about over $5 billion of equipment. And even if you have a non-specific threat, it probably makes sense to just remove them. The ability to defend the base is actually pretty limited. In some ways, it does make sense that you could have non-specific threat reporting. If you think it's credible, it makes sense to remove the bombers quickly because you're talking about potentially hundreds of billions or billions of dollars of damage if there actually is an attack. And I think one theory that has emerged is that there was a kind of complicated Iranian plot

26:02underfoot to strike the aircraft, to kill American personnel on the base, and that maybe it was going to look like Ukraine's Operation Spiderweb, which was this amazing Ukrainian attack in June of 2025, where they had more than 100 drones that are smuggled in trucks into Russia, and it launched near a Russian base to destroy their long-range bombers. So if that's a template, I think the withdrawal makes sense. I mean, what do you think? Yeah, no. I mean, if that's what you're worried about, that is something that would be very serious. I mean, that Ukrainian operation destroyed or damaged about a dozen aircraft on the runway, including some of Russia's very advanced bombers, of which they don't have very many, and which they thought were a long way away from Ukraine, and therefore

26:50safe, and that they weren't. So I think that seems to have been some of the reporting, or that possibility. I mean, it's interesting, because since then, there is still some more information. I mean, on Monday of this week, Britain's Prime Minister Andy Burnham said it was highly likely that whatever happened was coordinated in Iran, directed by Iran's Revolutionary Guard. He also suggested that the UK would crack down on the use of criminal networks as proxies. And we've seen this use of criminal networks and proxies, but in the past to carry out arson attacks. So for instance, we've seen attacks on Jewish ambulances in London, but those were people basically being paid to do it. We also had an interesting incident where a proxy group claimed that the Israeli embassy

27:36in London would be attacked by drones carrying dangerous substances. Now they actually found some jars of powder nearby, but it turns out they weren't actually hazardous. So you then have this kind of slight mismatch, I think, between this really advanced talk of a plot like Spider's Web with, you know, drones, explosive drones coming out of lorries and being able to blow up aircraft, and the kind of five guys who've been arrested, but we should say haven't been charged anyway, who look more like low-level criminals. One of the things is you end up with this dissonance. Were they a distraction, a test of security? Did they not know what they were doing? And is that why one of them then calls the police during the raid? Or was it part of something

28:36bigger? Or was it a stunt? Or was it nothing? It's very, very hard to say, isn't it? What's your view? How mean, how do you marry up this? Because you have these bizarre facts of you have a phone call from one of these guys from inside the van. You have the arrest. You have the fact that they don't have explosives in the van. They don't have drones in the van. And then you have their release a day later. It feels like if there was intelligence implicating these guys directly in an Iranian plot, that they wouldn't have been released. How do you square this information? Well, unless they were unwitting or not realizing what they were doing or thought they were doing something much more low level or like a stunt, maybe making a small fire.

29:31But it certainly is no... That wouldn't be enough to hold them in a UK context. If you imagine, hypothetically, you've got a bunch of guys driving around with petrol in their van near a US base. I mean, in itself, that's not criminal unless you can prove intent to do something. I think that's one of the problems. If you have explosives, if someone have explosives, it's much easier to kind of charge and detain them. But some petrol in a can, what's that? So I think there is a limit to what we can say and the police investigation is underway, but there might be further updates on it. So I think we have to kind of slightly to put one side, those men and what they were doing and ask more seriously, what else might have been going

30:08on? Was there some other intelligence of a potential plot? I guess it would be plausible, and again, this is speculation, that as soon as one of these guys realized where they were and they're outside a US airbase, maybe he was unwitting of who ultimately had tasked them to do something or to drive around and then he realizes where they are and decides to essentially rat himself and the group out because he doesn't want it to go any further. But again, I mean, that's speculation. I mean, you put the question though to Sir Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, right? What did he say? Understanding that he can't comment that much about Fairford specifically, because that's under police investigation. My question to him was, does Iran have the

30:59capability to launch a complex drone attack like the Operation Spider's Web, one by Ukraine, using those kind of explosive drones, because that would be different from using disposable agents, criminals for hire, the kind of thing we've seen Iran do in the past. His answer was interesting because I could see him being careful in his choice of words. He said Iran was principally using hired criminals to do their bidding. And the reality was that the level of capability then to carry out a really sophisticated drone attack like Spider's Web would not be possible with that group. Now, he said that if you look in the Middle East, Iran's Revolutionary Guards have shown more capability of mounting complex attacks which are

31:46more dangerous more sophisticated and so he said he'd be foolish to be in his position and say they could never do it in the uk but it certainly felt like he was saying he hadn't seen that kind of capability of launching that kind of sophisticated drone attack in the UK so far. So in other words, something you might worry about, but not that they'd seen evidence of a really, really high-end capability by Iran to do that kind of thing. And I thought that was interesting because to me, it tells you that maybe there's talk in Iran, which is being picked up by intelligence agencies, maybe Israel, maybe the Americans, saying, we want to attack UK bases. We want to do a big attack. Let's plan something big. But by the time you get to what's actually happening in the UK, you've got either nothing,

32:35or you've got five guys in a van with some petrol doing something much smaller, which isn't to say there couldn't be plans for something bigger as well. But it's a murky picture, I think, isn't it? I guess it could be factually true that MI5 doesn't yet see the capability to do this in the UK. And yet at the same time, I think about the Spiderweb example where my understanding is that the truck drivers in that case didn't actually know what was in the trucks, and that those drones were flown, I believe, via some sort of satellite uplink from Ukraine, if I'm not mistaken. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong there. But it does suggest that, and I believe the Russians, obviously, given the fact that that attack by the Ukrainians was successful, the Russians obviously underestimated Ukraine's capabilities.

33:26I mean, we're talking about, I believe the base that was struck in that case was well east of Moscow, right? Yeah, it's really remote. It's like you can have this case where the Internal Security Service, MI5, says, well, we don't see this capability yet. And yet the sort of the things that you need you need to pull an attack like this off, it's not a particularly high bar. I mean, the counterpoint here is I think that the Western and in particular Israeli signals intelligence coverage of Iran and the IRGC is extremely potent. And it's probably much harder for the Iranians to pull something like this off without Western intelligence or the Israelis actually seeing it. No, which appears to be what they did. I mean, I do think it would probably be harder to get

34:17the explosives and the drones into the UK, if you're the Iranians, than it was for the Ukrainians to get it into Russia over a land border. So I still think it's harder, but I guess what MI5 are saying is we can't not worry about this, but it's not what we've seen so far. But what I think is so interesting about this as a case is no one's been charged yet. so those men might be entirely innocent. So put that aside. You've still got the fact that a dozen US bombers have left their base, and it looks like they've been forced to do so by an Iranian threat. I mean, it feels to me that is almost the most significant thing, is the fact it's had an effect by even the possibility of this threat. And as

35:06you were saying before, it's partly the fact that we're learning, aren't we, that bases, US military bases in the Middle East, but also maybe in the UK, are not as safe as people thought they were. Yeah. I mean, you're absolutely right. I mean, in many ways, it's an Iranian win, even if they did nothing, right? Even if there wasn't, I guess, a credible or active plot with a whole bunch of disposable agents and, you know, trucks and drones and explosives that are already in the UK. I mean, the B-1s are back in South Dakota. It makes us look weak. It creates a bit of a strain on US-UK relations because in some ways, the withdrawal suggests that we don't trust you to defend the base. And I don't think this will have a particularly

36:01strategic implication on the conflict, but it also means that the logistical pipeline for those bombers to then, at least in the near term, for those bombers to actually reach Iran is much longer, right? It's a more complicated thing now to actually conduct any runs with those B-1s. So you're right. I mean, in many ways, this is an Iranian win without firing a shot. I mean, I think it also, one of the major implications of it, and to this point, we could talk extensively about what's been going on in the Middle East since the beginning of Operation Epic Fury, is it does highlight this kind of ongoing and persistent threat to US bases, doesn't it? Because this is not just a UK story. This is almost an example in the UK of what we've already seen over the last

36:51eight months in the Middle East, isn't it? Iran, since the start of this conflict, deliberately target US bases across the Middle East. I mean, multiple bases. And one of the interesting things is, I mean, we actually don't have that many details of what's been hit because the US Department of Defense stroke war has been pretty sparse with its details. And so, of course, have been the hosting countries. But we do know a lot of them have been hit. I mean, mainly not by drones, although drones in some cases, often by ballistic missiles, but very specifically targeting US bases to effectively drive the US out of those bases. And quite a few, we think, have been rendered inoperable effectively, haven't they?

37:33Famously, we had the drone strike against the US embassy at Riyadh, which actually hit the CIA station there. Although I think it's still unclear if the Aradians were actually targeting the floor of the embassy that had the station or if they just got lucky. I mean, 18, I believe, U.S. service people have been killed by Aradian drones and ballistic missiles, a very significant number of civilian and military casualties. And, you know, I mean, it's interesting, because going to your point on the Department of Defense slash Wars, kind of unwillingness to share details of this, because obviously, it's not a good look for us. There was an estimate done, I mean, this is now a dated estimate from the spring. But there was an estimate done by the American Enterprise

38:21Institute that estimated that the cost of repairing damage to 11 bases or installations that had been hit in the region across, I think, seven countries was about $5 billion. And some of these are so badly damaged that it probably doesn't make sense to actually rebuild them. And so in some ways, Fairford is this kind of example of the Iranians kind of pushing the US footprint away from Iran throughout the conflict. I think an example of this earlier in the conflict was the sort of push of the logistical chain eastward to Diego Garcia, right? Yeah. Out of the region. And Fairford is this kind of interesting example on the Western flank, where an Iranian threat pushes the US, at least temporarily, out of a base in the UK and moves the bombers westward into the continental

39:12United States. So there's this kind of this story that has been percolating throughout the conflict, but rarely makes headlines that the US footprint in the region, which I mean, if you look at a map of the region and how many bases and installations we have, it's probably more than any American would actually suspect. But many of these have been significantly damaged and we've had to sort of push the footprint out and away from Iran response to the fact that we can't stop these drones and ballistic missile strikes. Yeah. And it's interesting, isn't it? Because it also raises a question for countries hosting US bases, particularly under the Trump administration. Does hosting US base bring you security

39:48or does it bring you risk because you're going to be targeted because of that? And I think that is a kind of different equation for Gulf states, one that they've not had to think about in the past. And I mean, it would be very complicated for the UK. So it is clear, you know, this is a Iranian strategy to target these bases. I guess what's also interesting when you kind of look at Fairford particularly and the potential threat, as we say, we don't know exactly what it looked like. It is hard to stop these drones, aren't they? I mean, you're looking at a base with a big perimeter within a civilian area where people can move and drive around. It is quite hard in the new world of drones to be able to kind of defend against the use of drones in that context.

40:31You know, it's different from the ballistic missiles and Iran might be sending. But even even in Fairford, who are involved in the plot, or you don't have the plate numbers for the trucks that they might be using, you don't have an address, it seems like we have none of this at this point. defend an installation from... We're not talking about a drone or ballistic missile that's going to be fired from outside the UK in this case. We're talking about a drone, a small, probably commercially available drone that could be launched from somewhere around Fairford, laden with explosives, hit a B-1 and do significant damage, the circle you have to draw around the base and the area you have to cover from a policing or internal security perspective is really large. And I think that's

41:33probably why you saw the evacuation of the bombers, because there actually isn't a way for the UK to guarantee their security. So I think the best example of that is the Leipzig attack, which we talked about a few weeks ago, where you had a small, effectively a commercial drone, quadcopter drone, with some explosive attached to it, which flew into, in that case, a cargo plane and didn't explode. But it was being locally controlled. It wasn't particularly high tech, didn't require a lot of people, required two people, it sounds like, were involved in that plot, which is a Russian plot. But you imagine trying to defend against that at a big base like Fairford, where you've got these very expensive bombers. I mean,

42:13that is hard. I mean, it is really, really hard to defend against. And it is a kind of new threat, isn't it? It's a new worry about the vulnerability of these bases to that kind of specific threat. Yeah, and it's going to be an ongoing problem because the offense is much cheaper than the defense. You know, it's not a one-to-one comparison, but when you look at how expensive it has been for Gulf countries to try to defend themselves against Iranian drone and ballistic missile strikes, I mean, it's absurd. You know, I mean, there are estimates to suggest that the UAE, for example, spent at least $10 shooting down drones for every $1 Iran spent on them. And I think the same economics apply even at a slightly different case inside the UK, where if you're using networks of

42:57disposable agents, if you're using cheap drones, if you're using explosives that are smuggled in and are not particularly complex. The offense is much cheaper than the defense. And you only have to, the defense has to be perfect. The offense just has to get through once or twice to create, you know, a massive geopolitical incident or to destroy a bunch of, you know, very expensive military hardware or to kill people. And it also makes me think, I mean, you know, so there's this bigger implication about the security of US bases, not just in the region, but in the UK. And it makes me think also, if you kind of tie it back to MI5 director's remarks of what does this drone threat look like when you pair it up with artificial intelligence?

43:45One of the major threats that Ken McCallum is talking about in the remarks you heard this morning. Yeah, that's right. Because one of the things we've seen already in the Ukraine-Russia conflict is that they are using artificial intelligence to basically allow the drones to fly semi-autonomously. So you might have electronic warfare jamming to try and jam the radio frequencies or stop a drone hitting a target. And that's one of the ways that they try and protect places. But with AI, you can basically leave it to fly more autonomously and find its way or find the right target. You've got a quite scary future. It's not quite killer robots, but it is kind of AI-controlled drone swarms launched from somewhere, maybe a large number

44:24of drones. That sounds like killer robots. That sounds like more words to describe killer robots, Gordon. Yeah, it's not quite Terminator, but it's kind of close. This has the potential to change military basing strategy, do you think? I mean, to be significant. Is that what we're seeing now, the start of? I mean, I think so. And again, I think the petri dish for all of this is Ukraine, where you've seen the Ukrainians kind of moving to a strategy where they've got more dispersed bases, hardened bases, bunkers, smaller installations, right? It's having these kind of large vulnerable bases is looking increasingly antiquated, I think. You know, and when you, you know, to kind of, I guess, peel out a bit of what the actual AI plus drones threat is, I mean, it raises the prospect

45:15that, you know, to your point, you have more drones attacking all at once because they're autonomous or semi-autonomous. I was a very interesting demonstration done in China earlier this year where they actually televised a soldier who's actually supervising, I think, more than a couple hundred autonomous drones, right? So you don't have, it's not one person flying one drone, it's one person more or less in control or sort of directing hundreds of these things. So you have more drones if they're sort of AI powered and thinking about the right attack vector, how you swarm effectively a target, you have more effective attacks, right, on that target, a base or whatever it might be. And it means that people can't keep

46:00up. How do you defend against that using, you know using even the existing technology that we have on, and put aside the kind of surface to air interceptors, but the Ukrainians are using drone interceptors. I mean, how do you keep up with this? And the drones to that cost point, it's like a drone swarm is not, they're not using drones that cost millions of dollars, using drones that cost hundreds of dollars. So we're sort of looking into this world. And I think Fairfax is a good example of why you get the B1s out so quickly is because if you're facing the prospect of many drones coming from somewhere you didn't anticipate, your ability to sort of defend against it from a cost standpoint, to defend against it from a

46:43saturation standpoint, to jam the radio frequencies of those drones, all gets called into question. We're not quite there yet, but that's where we're headed, which is, I think, quite frightening. Yeah, I think it is pretty frightening. We don't know exactly what was planned at Fairford. We don't know exactly what the intelligence was and how firm it was and how clear it was about a plot. But the fact there was even the possibility of something which was enough to drive those bombers out, I think, tells you a lot about this new world of drones, of AI and of threats that Ken McCallum was talking about. So I think that is a pretty interesting case study, really, Fairford, of the new world of transnational threats that we're facing

47:31and of how states can, even when Iran is on the back foot, it can still find new ways of using technology to project risk, even in Toghastusha. So I think that's a good place to leave it david um in gloucestershire uh listen out next week next monday for the penultimate episode of our series on kim philby he's reaching he's reaching his end isn't he david killer robots you know makes kim philby look like sort of a you know a very quaint sort of threat doesn't it does those were the days we've also got the series coming up soon which is gonna be terrific on the cia watergate and uh don't forget if you're a club member you can hear some great bonus material related to kim philby including a very interesting interview with paul greengrass the film director of the

48:18born films talking about mole hunts and the legacy of philby uh so do sign up for the club at the rest is classified.com for