UK faces heightened risk from terrorism – Pool Re

While the UK has experienced few terrorist attacks since 2017, the country continues to face a heightened threat from terrorism, with Brexit amplifying tensions, according to the new Terrorism Threat and Mitigation report 2019 from terrorism reinsurer Pool Re.

“Against the backdrop of political polarisation, disenchantment of some people from the mainstream and declining social cohesion in many communities within the UK, we could well see a cycle of violence and counter violence by terrorist and extremist groups,” it states.

It predicts that a hard or no deal Brexit may lead to an increase in attacks by violent dissident republicans in Northern Ireland, with potential spillover effects.

“A counter reaction by loyalist extremists in Northern Ireland to rising violent dissident Republican (VDR) activities could destabilise the Good Friday Agreement and any Brexit negotiations,” it states. “A reaction by extreme left-wing movements (LWT) off the back of civil disorder over Brexit cannot be ignored either. It also cannot be discounted that any terrorist group or individual will move further up the violence scale and deploy a weapon (or methodology) of mass effect to inflict multiple casualties. The likely perpetrators of such an event remain Islamist extremists and the aviation sector remains one of the most likely targets for this type of scenario.”

The report also highlights the growth of unconventional attack methods, including cyber-attacks and drones, which could be used to attack or disrupt aircraft - for example, as airborne improvised explosive devices – or to disperse chemical, biological or radiological agents.

The report assesses the viability of artificial intelligence as a counter-terrorism tool, examining its advantages and shortcomings and offering a view on how best to embed the technology in counter-terrorism practice.

“While big data and machine learning undoubtedly offer numerous opportunities for improving the efficiency of intelligence gathering and analysis capabilities, the ability of this technology to conduct complex behavioural analysis on individual subjects has almost certainly been overstated,” it states. “Based on all available evidence, it seems neither feasible nor desirable to develop an AI-powered ‘scoring system’ to predict or prioritise terrorism risk at the individual level.”

Rather than enabling automated risk assessment and prioritisation of individuals based on behavioural markers, the true value of behavioural analytics technology lies in its ability to rapidly extract information from multiple, disparate data sets, and present it in a coherent format for the human decision-maker to analyse and interpret, states the report.

“Making sense of the relevance and importance of that data in relation to an individual’s future risk requires complex behavioural assessments which could not possibly be replicated by a statistical model,” it says.

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