The UK is under attack, and we are not prepared.
Earlier this month, Kensington Gardens was closed to the public due to a suspected drone attack on the Israeli embassy. The chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear team from The Metropolitan Police were seen near the park’s bandstand, and police divers were spotted near the Round Pond ornamental lake. The items found were deemed non-hazardous, but had such an attack been successful, we would have been counting the number of casualties. And in a sense, damage is done anyway: perpetrators can create mass disruption and chaos with just a threat of nuclear material, triggering a response that in turn distracts resources from other threats on the horizon.
The UK is sadly too familiar with seeing both overt and covert acts of war playing out elsewhere. Railway lines in Poland, between Warsaw and Lublin, were blown up in November 2025, allegedly by people working for Russian intelligence. German and Swedish rail networks have faced repeated cable-cutting and derailment attempts, with the actions believed to be deliberate sabotage. Arson, also believed to have Russian state actor links, has targeted logistics and energy infrastructure across Poland and the Baltic states. And parcel networks and aviation hubs have been tested with incendiary devices.
The UK must face the fact that these threats are now also happening on our own soil.
The spate of attacks on Jewish communities and buildings across London; and the covert surveillance of sensitive undersea cables in UK waters by hostile actors are two examples. In recent days, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has stated he is “increasingly concerned that a number of countries are using proxies for attacks in this country.”
These are not isolated incidents, acts of vandalism, or public nuisance. These are targeted, strategic ways to undermine and disrupt our democratic way of life. And it’s working.
Fundamentally, this is a form of warfare.
Our security infrastructure and networks were built for a different kind of threat. This doesn’t mean they need to be replaced wholesale in order to be effective. But we are exposed, and we need to be willing to admit it. When tactics are more fragmented, more dynamic, and significantly harder to interpret in real time, the gap between signal and action is where we are most vulnerable.
Closing that gap requires a different approach to resilience, one that hinges crucially on speed. Given our adversaries are operating without constraint or oversight, we urgently need to invest in our ability to detect, understand, and respond faster than an adversary can adapt.
The decision facing governments and the organisations tasked to protect them is simple: The cost of inaction is not measured merely in budget lines. It is measured in lives, in infrastructure failures, and in the slow erosion of public trust in the state’s ability to protect them.
The UK is at a pivotal moment where we still have time to build and enact our resilience to these threats, but only if we acknowledge, immediately, that the threat landscape is evolving faster than our systems can keep pace with. Resilience is the foundation that has to be built before it’s needed, not excavated from the rubble after the last attack.
Harry Mead is the Chief Executive Officer and founder of London-based startup Augur
