British police have created a new unit that will specialize in combating threats emanating from a number of states, primarily Iran, China and Russia, Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner Matt Jukes said, Sky News reports.
He noted that there had been a 25% increase in intelligence coming into counter-terrorism police, "a significant increase on our usual levels."
"In simple terms, that means more intelligence about potential terrorism and violent extremism, flowing through our systems than in recent years, from online reports, public reports and from MI5," Jukes told a briefing of journalists.
The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre run by MI5, which assesses the UK threat level, has kept the level at "substantial" meaning an attack is "likely" but "continues to review all of this information," Jukes said.
Scotland Yard has also opened a unit to deal with "hostile state actors," mainly related to the "triple threat" from Iran, Russia and China.
In the last five years there have been 20 arrests under the Official Secrets Act, but half of those were in 2023, which Jukes described as "the most acute period since the Cold War."
