The new head of Britain’s foreign intelligence service will warn that the United Kingdom faces an increasingly dangerous and unpredictable security environment driven in large part by Russia’s

determination to sow instability abroad.

In her first public speech as chief of MI6, Blaise Metreweli is set to say on Monday that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to “export chaos” are reshaping the nature of modern conflict and creating complex new challenges for Western security services.

“The export of chaos is a feature, not a bug, in the Russian approach to international engagement,” Metreweli will say, according to extracts released by the Foreign Office, which oversees MI6. “We should be ready for this to continue until Putin is forced to change his calculus.”

Metreweli, who took over from Richard Moore at the end of September, will highlight what she describes as an “aggressive, expansionist” Russia as a central threat facing Britain, alongside a web of increasingly interconnected risks.

Known simply as “C,” Metreweli is the only publicly named member of the notoriously secretive intelligence agency. Before her appointment, she served as MI6’s director of technology and innovation — a role often likened to that of Q, the gadget master in the James Bond films.

In her address, she is expected to stress the need for intelligence officers to blend traditional espionage with advanced technical skills to counter hybrid threats. MI6 staff, she will argue, must be “as comfortable with lines of code as we are with human sources,” and “as fluent in Python as we are in multiple languages.”

Her remarks follow a series of warnings from Western defense and security officials about the expanding use of cyberattacks, espionage and influence operations by countries including Russia, Iran and China. British authorities say such tactics pose a growing threat to global stability.

Last week, the UK imposed sanctions on several Russian media outlets over alleged information warfare and on two Chinese technology companies accused of engaging in “vast and indiscriminate cyber-activities.”

Metreweli’s appointment is also historic. She is the first woman to lead MI6 since the agency’s founding in 1909. Britain’s other major intelligence services have already broken similar barriers: MI5 was led by Stella Rimington and later Eliza Manningham-Buller, while Anne Keast-Butler became head of the cyber and signals intelligence agency GCHQ in 2023. Photo by Secretlondon at English Wikipedia.