Britain’s enemies can cripple the country without firing a shot, security chief warns
Britain’s enemies no longer need to start a conventional war to cause serious damage to the UK economy, a security chief has warned.
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Harry Mead, co-founder and CEO of resilience technology company Augur, said hostile states are increasingly using sabotage, intimidation, proxy activity and online disruption to hit Britain below the threshold of open conflict.
Writing exclusively for LBC Opinion, Mr Mead said recent incidents, including arson attacks on properties linked to the Prime Minister and the encounter between a Russian warship and a yacht in the Channel, showed grey-zone warfare was no longer something happening elsewhere.
“For years sabotage from hostile states happened elsewhere,” he said. “But the events are no longer happening elsewhere. They’re happening directly to us.”
He warned that hostile states had learned they did not need to launch a conventional attack to have an impact on Britain.
Instead, he said, they could pay proxies, lean on criminal networks, use online campaigns to seed confusion, test infrastructure and stretch police and security services.
Mr Mead said the aim was often not mass harm, but disruption.
“Even when an incident does not cause mass harm, it can still succeed in its purpose, which is to spark disruption,” he said.
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He warned that the targets of grey-zone activity were not limited to military sites or government buildings, but could include the infrastructure used by ordinary people every day.
That could mean delayed container ships, grounded aircraft, compromised power stations, telecoms networks going down, or hospitals losing the ability to operate properly.
“This is the impact of grey-zone activity and it is increasingly targeted at the infrastructure and hubs that underpin growth and productivity,” he said.
“This leads to greater national dissent and disruption, which is precisely what they are aiming for.”
Mr Mead said Britain’s security architecture was still built around neat categories such as crime, terrorism and war.
But grey-zone activity, he warned, was deliberately designed to blur those lines, meaning the full picture may only become clear after damage has already been done.
He said organisations responsible for protecting people, places and critical operations needed to move faster, and could no longer rely on gathering information only after an incident had happened.
Mr Mead argued that Britain already has much of the infrastructure needed to respond, but is failing to use it properly.
He said critical infrastructure sites and transport hubs may have hundreds or even thousands of camera and sensor feeds running at once, leaving human operators expected to spot suspicious behaviour, hostile reconnaissance, unauthorised access or emerging incidents in real time.
“It’s no wonder that increasingly, it is too hard for human operators to interpret all this data in real time and frankly, too often detections are down to chance,” he said.
He said artificial intelligence could help security teams prioritise information, identify anomalies earlier and build a clearer picture of complex environments.
But he stressed that the answer was not replacing human judgement with machines.
“It is not about automation, it is about enablement,” he said.
“In security, human judgment remains essential in understanding context, managing escalation and holding accountability.”
Mr Mead said Britain had world-class security services, a dedicated police force and deep technical expertise, but warned national resilience could not sit only at the centre of government.
He said it had to extend across infrastructure, venues, businesses and transport systems being tested by hostile actors.
“The threat is here, the target is our economy and the people of our nation,” he said.
He added: “Our solution is also within reach; we are more than capable of overcoming this threat.
“It is time we took action, empowered those who seek to protect us and put our adversaries back on the back foot.”