British intelligence agencies are working to protect the country's coronavirus vaccine projects from foreign meddling, its new domestic spy chief said Wednesday.
"Clearly, the global prize of having a first useable vaccine against this deadly virus is a large one, so we would expect that a range of other parties around the globe would be quite interested in that research," Ken McCallum, the new director-general of MI5, told reporters.
British scientists from Oxford University and pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca are behind one of the most advanced projects to develop a vaccine, having already tested it on tens of thousands of volunteers worldwide.
McCallum warned that foreign actors could be interested in stealing intellectual property generated in research, "fiddling" with the data and sowing doubt about the integrity of leading studies.
The British, US and Canadian governments in July accused hackers suspected of having close links to the Kremlin of targeting their labs conducting coronavirus virus research.
McCallum said the coronavirus pandemic has also changed the terror risk, explaining that potential attackers were hunting fresh targets given reduced crowds in public spaces due to restrictions on social contact.
"I stepped into this role at the height of the Covid lockdown, and for MI5 just like everyone else, 2020 has been dominated by the pandemic," he said.
McCallum, a maths graduate from Glasgow who is in his forties, became MI5's youngest-ever director-general when he took over in May this year.
He previously headed the investigation into the 2018 nerve-agent poisoning of the Russian former double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, southwest England.
He said tackling terrorism would remain MI5's greatest challenge, with Islamist extremism the biggest threat and right-wing activity a growing risk.
But the country also faces state-sponsored threats, with Russia and increasingly China presenting the biggest challenges, he added.
McCallum said Russia was responsible for "bursts of bad of bad weather" whereas China was "changing the climate".
"If the question is - which country's intelligence services cause the most aggravation to the UK in October 2020? - the answer is Russia," he said, speaking at the Home Office in London.
"If, on the other hand, the question is which state will be shaping our world across the next decade, presenting big opportunities and big challenges for the UK, the answer is China."