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Intelligence and Security Committee Russia report/Allocation of Effort

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ALLOCATION OF EFFORT

63. It is clear that Russia currently poses a significant threat to the UK on a number of fronts – from espionage to interference in democratic processes, and to serious crime. The question is how that has happened – and what the Intelligence Community is now doing to tackle it.

Coverage

64. In its Annual Report 2001–2002, the Committee raised a concern that, as resources were being transferred to counter-terrorism, coverage of other areas had become increasingly thin:

These reductions are causing intelligence gaps to develop, which may mean that over time unacceptable risks will arise in terms of safeguarding national security and in the prevention and detection of serious organised crime. The Agencies must be given sufficient resources to enable them not only to fill the staff vacancies that have been created but also to expand sufficiently to ensure that they can meet the new demands now being placed on them.[1]

The Government responded:

The Government recognises that the increase in demand for intelligence to support the campaign against terrorism has meant that the Agencies, amongst others, have been obliged to review their priorities within their own budgets. This process has been carried out professionally and carefully, and the Government will continue to keep the situation under review. It is inevitable that if some areas of activity become relatively more important to the national interest, others become relatively less so and may have less resources devoted to them. All decisions about matching resources to tasks involve a degree of risk. Identifying, quantifying, managing, and where possible mitigating those risks is one of the basic responsibilities of the management of the Agencies. The Government is confident that the judgements taken so far have been the right ones, and that no unacceptable risks with or to national security have been, or will be taken.[2]

65. In its Annual Report 2002–2003, the Committee reported that it believed that the problem of intelligence collection gaps had worsened, concluding that:

The Committee believes that, with the focus on current crises, the Agencies' long-term capacity to provide warnings is being eroded. This situation needs to be addressed and managed by Ministers and the JIC [Joint Intelligence Committee].[3]

In 2003–2004, the Committee again expressed concern:

We remain concerned that, because of the necessary additional effort allocated to counter-terrorism by the Security Service, significant risks are inevitably being taken in the area of counter-espionage.[4]

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MI5

66. MI5's remit – as set out in the Security Service Act 1989 – is the "protection of national security and, in particular, its protection against threats from espionage, terrorism and sabotage, from the activities of agents of foreign powers and from actions intended to overthrow or undermine parliamentary democracy by political, industrial or violent means".[5] MI5 states its objectives in this area as being to "seek to find those trying to pass sensitive UK information and equipment to other countries and ensure they don't succeed" and to "investigate and disrupt the actions of foreign intelligence officers where these are damaging to our country's interests".[6]

67. Twenty years ago, MI5 devoted around 20% of its effort to Hostile State Activity, which includes Russian activity alongside the hostile activity of other states, such as China and Iran.[7] This allocation of effort declined, as the terrorist threat grew. By 2001/02, it had reduced to 16% and by 2003/04 to 10.7%. This fall continued until, by 2008/09, only 3% of effort was allocated by MI5 to all its work against Hostile State Activity (noting that reductions in proportion of overall effort do not translate directly into changes in resource).[8] It was not until 2013/14 that effort began to increase significantly, rising to 14.5%[9] – a level that MI5 says meant that slightly more staff were working on Russia than had been during the Cold War.[10] The past two years have seen ***: currently, ***% is allocated to Hostile State Activity, approximately *** which is dedicated to countering Russian Hostile State Activity.[11]

SIS and GCHQ

68. SIS is the UK's foreign human intelligence (HUMINT) agency, with a "global covert capability"[12] focusing on intelligence gathering. Areas of intelligence coverage work that SIS undertakes in relation to Russia include cultivating agents who are in a position to pass on secret information, particularly in relation to the capabilities and intent of the Russian government, and its intelligence effects work includes ***. In 2001, SIS's operational effort against Russia was ***%. This declined to ***% in 2007. It only began to increase significantly in *** and currently stands at approximately ***%.[13]

69. GCHQ is the UK's signals intelligence (SIGINT) agency – also focusing on intelligence gathering.[14] GCHQ's intelligence effects work primarily comprises Offensive Cyber. Areas of intelligence coverage work that GCHQ undertakes include: applying selectors to emails obtained by bulk interception; targeted interception of the phone calls of ​people of interest; intercepting material transmitted over military communications systems; and hacking into computer systems in order to obtain the information they contain.

70. At the height of the Cold War, 70% of GCHQ's effort was focused on the Soviet bloc.[15] By 2000, this had fallen to 16% and by 2006 effort was at a low point of just 4%. In 2012, this had recovered to 10%, which stayed fairly constant until 2016 when a significant further increase began.[16] Approximately ***% of GCHQ's current operational effort is on Russia.[17]

Defence Intelligence

71. Defence Intelligence has wide-ranging responsibilities for intelligence collection and analysis, and a key role within Government in the preparation of All Source intelligence on Russia. It leads the UK's work on geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) and measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT).[18] It also holds a SIGINT role ***, and has a HUMINT unit which is primarily used to support military operations. Alongside GCHQ, it also has a major role in the UK's Offensive Cyber capability. Defence Intelligence effort on Russia also underwent significant reduction in the early 2000s. Although Defence Intelligence has been unable to provide figures for its allocation of effort over the past 20 years, we have been told that in 2013 there were relatively few All Source analysts in the Russia/Eurasia team (in addition to Russia-focused analysts in other teams). Defence Intelligence has advised that currently *** of its All Source analysts spend more than 50% of their time on Russia and a further *** spend less than 50% of their time on Russia.[19]

Did HMG take its eye off the ball?

72. Following the end of the Cold War, the West aspired to partner with Russia. The threat posed by Russia was considered to be diminished and the proportion of effort allocated to countering the threat decreased accordingly. As can be seen from the figures above, there was a marked drop in allocation of effort. The murder of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 was perhaps the clearest indication that not only had reconciliation failed, but Russia was once again just as hostile towards the West, and towards the UK. However, by 2006, operational effort was being directed to the fight against international terrorism: in 2006/07, MI5 devoted 92% of its effort to counter-terrorism work,[20] with SIS and GCHQ at 33%.[21] The remaining resource was thinly spread across a number of areas – Hostile State Activity being just one, and Russia being just one of the hostile states. This is understandable: the ​threat from international terrorism at that time – just a year after the 2005 terror attacks which claimed the lives of 52 people – had to be the primary focus.

73. If we consider the Russian threat to have been clearly indicated in 2006 with the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, and then take events such as the annexation of Crimea in 2014 as firmly underlining Russian intent on the global stage, the question is whether the Intelligence Community should – and could – have reacted more quickly and increased operational effort on Russia. On figures alone, it could be said that they took their eye off the ball; nevertheless, the Heads of MI5, SIS, GCHQ and Defence Intelligence all sought to defend against this suggestion. MI5 was clear that there was an inevitable reprioritisation due to the terrorist threat:

… back then it's how can we possibly do enough to get ahead of this appalling terrorism problem which … back then was larger than we could see the edges of and one of the things we used to say about it, at exactly the time you're talking about, was we haven't yet found the edges of this problem.[22]

Defence Intelligence viewed it similarly:

So in terms of relative prioritisation, rather than losing focus … our coverage of Russia undoubtedly suffered as a consequence of that prioritisation, which was necessary for the conduct of military operations.[23]

By comparison, SIS and GCHQ saw it as due to the longer lead time required for work on Russia. SIS said:

I don't think we did take our eye off the ball. I think the appetite for work against the Russian threat has sort of waxed and waned. ***.[24]

And GCHQ agreed:

A bit like [SIS's] point, some of the kind of hardcore capabilities that were necessary to keep in the business we maintained and then, really, as the reviews and the discussion around what happened in Crimea really brought minds more to the fore again on Russia, that then led us to move in ramping up again.[25]

74. We fully recognise the very considerable pressures on the Agencies since 9/11, and that they have a finite amount of resource, which they must focus on operational priorities. Nevertheless, reacting to the here and now is inherently inefficient and – in our opinion – until recently, the Government had badly underestimated the Russian threat and the response it required.[26]

75. Accepting the counter-terrorism pressures on the operational organisations, there is nevertheless a question over the approach taken by the policy departments. We have previously discussed the extent to which economic policy dictated the opening up of the UK to Russian investment. This indicates a failure of the security policy departments to engage with this issue – to the extent that the UK now faces a threat from Russia within its own borders. What appears to have been a somewhat laissez-faire policy approach is less easy to forgive than the response of the busy Agencies. We welcome the fact that this has now been recognised and appears to be changing.

​
Future resourcing

76. The recent changes in resourcing to counter Russian Hostile State Activity are not (or not only) due to a continuing escalation of the threat – but appear to be an indicator of playing catch-up. SIS and GCHQ planned to change their operational effort against Russia still further – to ***% and ***% respectively by 2020.[27] MI5 is *** and seeking to *** on Hostile State Activity. All three organisations were clear that this was about relative priorities. For example, MI5 told us that:

We quite frequently find ourselves quarter on quarter taking *** decisions about … how we will *** across these different subject areas and at the moment we have stuck with some of the resourcing that's surged towards hostile state work after Salisbury, despite the fact that our CT [Counter-Terrorism] investigations suspensions rate remains higher than we want it to be.[28]

In this respect, it must be a matter for Ministers. The Home Secretary told us that, in his view, resourcing on Russia *** and that there "needs to be more resources in … countering the Hostile State Activity".[29] He did, however, caution that the threat is wider than Russia alone and the growth in Russia-focused resources cannot be at the expense of efforts on other escalating threats. The Foreign Secretary similarly recognised the importance of not ignoring other priorities:

One of my concerns is that some of the short-term problems that Russia is causing us that we are having to address is actually crowding out thinking that we need to be doing on the longer-term changes to the international order, namely the rise of China. So I have been trying to make sure that we find time to actually look at what is changing in the world in its entirety.[30]

77. With pressures from International Counter-Terrorism work, the Chinese threat, Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, we recognise that it is difficult to single out the Russian threat as deserving greater allocation of effort. It is therefore essential that the strategy is right – enabling smarter working and effective co-ordination.

  1. ↑ Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament Annual Report 2001–2002, Cm 5542.
  2. ↑ As quoted in the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament Annual Report 2002–2003, Cm 5837.
  3. ↑ Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament Annual Report 2002–2003, Cm 5837.
  4. ↑ Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament Annual Report 2003–2004, Cm 6240.
  5. ↑ Section 1(2) of the Security Service Act 1989.
  6. ↑ www.mi5.gov.uk/espionage
  7. ↑ Written evidence – MI5, 31 October 2018.
  8. ↑ Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament Annual Reports: 2001–2002, Cm 5542; 2003–2004, Cm 6240; 2008–2009, Cm 7807.
  9. ↑ Written evidence – MI5, 31 October 2018.
  10. ↑ Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament Annual Report 2016–2017, HC 655.
  11. ↑ Written evidence – MI5, 12 March 2019; MI5's overall resource has increased significantly over this period. *** allocation of effort on Hostile State Activity has ***, spending on Hostile State Activity has ***. This operational effort also benefits from the support of corporate and 'enabling' services across MI5 (which is not reflected in these figures).
  12. ↑ www.sis.gov.uk
  13. ↑ Written evidence – SIS, 17 December 2018.
  14. ↑ SIGINT is intelligence gathering through the interception of communications between people, and through the interception of other electronic signals.
  15. ↑ Oral evidence – GCHQ, *** December 2018.
  16. ↑ Written evidence – GCHQ, 8 March 2019.
  17. ↑ Written evidence – GCHQ, 14 December 2018.
  18. ↑ Geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) consists of collecting and analysing intelligence on geographical features and the human activities that occur in a geographical context. Measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT) uses technical means to detect and analyse the 'signatures' of targets, in order to locate, analyse and track them.
  19. ↑ This represents ***% of Defence Intelligence's current analytical resource being focused on Russia (written evidence – Defence Intelligence, 6 March 2019).
  20. ↑ Written evidence – MI5, 31 October 2018.
  21. ↑ Written evidence – SIS, 17 December 2018; Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament Annual Report 2007–2008 Cm 7542. Defence Intelligence told us that it seconded its analytical effort on counter-terrorism to the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) when it was established in 2003. This was estimated to be 20 posts by 2006/07 – just 1% of its then workforce (written evidence – Defence Intelligence, 21 March 2019).
  22. ↑ Oral evidence – MI5, *** December 2018.
  23. ↑ Oral evidence – Defence Intelligence, *** December 2018.
  24. ↑ Oral evidence – SIS, *** December 2018.
  25. ↑ Oral evidence – GCHQ, *** December 2018.
  26. ↑ We note that the Agencies 'horizon scan' and that this is a matter of prioritisation of resources.
  27. ↑ Written evidence – HMG, 3 April 2018.
  28. ↑ Oral evidence – MI5, *** November 2018.
  29. ↑ Oral evidence – Home Secretary, 31 January 2019.
  30. ↑ Oral evidence – Foreign Secretary, 7 February 2019.

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