LONDON (AP) — Technology and online platforms are increasingly being used to threaten the United Kingdom, including by hostile countries, extremists and far-right groups, senior British police officials said Thursday.
There is a “continual battle” against threats online, said Vicki Evans, a senior national coordinator for counterterrorism at the Metropolitan Police, and police need help from technology companies because “it's not something we can do alone.”
Islamic extremism remains the biggest threat but over the past five years, threats from far-right groups and hostile states have significantly grown, said Laurence Taylor, head of counterterrorism police.
According to Evans, the threat from hostile states is the “most rapidly escalating mission” for counterterrorism police.
In July, two Romanian men were jailed over the stabbing of a journalist from a Persian-language television station, which the judge said was carried out on behalf of Iran's government.
In June, a Ukrainian man and Romanian man were jailed for their role in setting fire to property linked to U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer — a plot which fits the description of Russian state-backed sabotage. And in May, a U.K. border official and former Hong Kong police officer were convicted of spying for China.
Evans said that in 2025, there were more than 20 Iranian-backed plots, including assassinations, kidnappings and other serious crimes against the U.K. Additionally, police are still investigating whether arson attacks against Jewish sites earlier in the year have a link to Iran.
Russia has been organizing a “constant stream of surveillance plots” against people and institutions in Britain, aiming to target people Russian officials believe are enemies, “infiltrate” ordinary life and identify people who will “peddle” Russian narratives or carry out proxy work on behalf of the Russian state, she added.
Across Europe, Russia has recruited dozens of people on apps like Telegram to carry out vandalism or set fires — including at a warehouse in London that stored communications equipment meant for Ukraine.
Dylan Earl, the ringleader of that plot, was recruited on Telegram by the Wagner Group, a mercenary organization acting on behalf of Moscow that has been designated a terrorist group by the U.K. government.
Evans also said that teenagers as young as 15 have been arrested by police in relation to proxy plots. The challenge for law enforcement, she added, is that “anyone could be targeted,” especially online.
"This isn’t something that’s happening elsewhere,” Evans said, speaking to journalists at New Scotland Yard, the Metropolitan Police headquarters. “It’s happening here. This risk is in our neighborhoods, in our online spaces and in our workplaces.”
Taylor said that the threat level in the U.K. was raised in April from “substantial” to “severe,” partly because cases linked to extreme far right ideologies are “growing substantially.”
Police have noted an increase in “vile” content, particularly online, which creates a “cocktail of racism, misogyny and extreme homophobia,” he said.
Extreme views, he said, appear to be being challenged less and less and so conditions have been created where previously unacceptable views are now more prevalent.
As an example, he gave the case of an 18-year-old woman, Alina Burns, who was imprisoned for almost 20 years in May after attacking a stranger with an ax — an attack that Taylor said was motivated by her extreme right-wing mindset.
Alfie Coleman — a 22-year-old sentenced on Wednesday for 13.5 years for trying to buy a gun from an undercover MI5 officer — was radicalized online from the age of 14, Taylor said.
Evans said that those behind the exploitation are specifically designing online content to attract young people by blending it with propaganda and gaming footage, historical images and music. The young are then prompted to carry out violent acts — such as being asked to “recreate” in real life horrific attacks from video games, she said.
In some cases, Evans said, “sadistic online groups,” ask people to compete against each other to cause harm online and offline — by using cyberattacks, extremism, serious violence or even child sexual abuse or terrorism.
The extent of “lawful but awful” content online, including extreme violence and gore, she said means that some people now have a skewed sense of what is normal or acceptable. Those people are particularly vulnerable to manipulation, including by state actors, she said.
Although the government has said that Britain will ban social media for those under 16, that is not enough, said Evans, adding that pressure needs to be put on technology companies to help curb harmful content online.
Laws and policies regulating harmful content online quickly go out of date while social platforms have powerful mechanisms to push content to young people, she said.
“The tipping point is very swift and steep,” for some people who are drawn into harmful content online, she said.
FILE - This 2024 photo provided by the Metropolitan Police shows damage to a warehouse in east London that was storing goods for Ukraine, after a fire that prosecutors said was organized on behalf of Russia's intelligence services. (London Metropolitan Police via AP, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Christopher Nolan has never been afraid to dream a little bigger. It’s almost a calling. With every film, he’s pushed himself and the medium further — playing with form, storytelling, visuals and audience expectations to create lasting cinematic spectacles. A student of Hollywood history, the Oscar-winner is always looking to fill gaps in cinematic culture and show audiences something they haven’t seen before: “The Odyssey,” he realized, was a massive one.
All Nolan films are epics in their own ways. But for “The Odyssey,” he knew he had to do something fitting of the Homeric poem and its foundational place in Western culture, something worthy of the biggest screens and the resources it would require. The goal was to make something accessible and realistic, which meant going to far flung locations, using real ships on real seas, and taking audiences into the cave with the Cyclops, inside the Trojan Horse and to the bleak expanse of Hades. Opening in theaters worldwide on July 17, it’s also the first feature to be shot entirely on IMAX film.
“We all know the title, we all know what it means, we know what it promises and hopefully for the audience coming to see the film, they’ll feel we made good on that promise because that’s the fun of ‘The Odyssey,’” Nolan said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “It’s the ultimate adventure story.”
The journey would require a deep dive into Greek mythology, Bronze Age scholarship and many translations, a monthslong scouting expedition and a 91-day shoot spanning six months and six countries during which the cast and crew endured all manner of challenging weather, landscapes and the treachery of the open seas.
“The Odyssey” was an epic undertaking — the hardest film anyone involved had ever made. Matt Damon, who stars as Odysseus, said that Nolan warned him as much before they started filming.
“He told me it was going to be hard, which I kind of, I blew off at first. I’m like, ‘Yeah, yeah, it’s going to be hard. And he said ‘no, no, this is going to be really hard,'” Damon said. “He did not disappoint.”
That was by design.
“I mean, it’s ‘The Odyssey,’” Nolan said. “This should be a difficult film to make, and it was.”
Unlike Odysseus’s extended journey home, the production was also efficient: They finished nine days early.
When Hollywood movies take on the ancient world, they often fall back on familiar tropes — using accents, elevated language, 19th century orchestral scores and neoclassical touchstones to convey antiquity. Nolan wanted to do something different and found inspiration in the text of the poem, in which he observed an earthy sensibility that stood in contrast to the grandeur of the story.
“You want to question people’s assumptions about how things should be portrayed in movies and what those are based on,” Nolan said. “There’s a challenge to that and a risk to that.”
That meant making some bold choices, including colloquial language, American accents, and blending elements from various stories, including “The Iliad,” “The Aeneid” and “Agamemnon,” to give the audience more clarity. His Trojan Horse, which he’s been thinking about since he was briefly attached to direct “Troy” over 20 years ago, does not have wheels.
For the score, he challenged composer Ludwig Göransson to use bronze gongs, aulos and the lyre to create a new kind of soundscape, and to come up with a four-note theme where the last would be the pluck of a bow.
And paramount to this story of homecoming and coming-of-age, his characters needed to be relatable.
“The movie has so much scale,” said Tom Holland, who plays Odysseus’s son Telemachus. “There are times where it feels like you’re on this kind of action-adventure roller coaster, but he doesn’t sacrifice any of the heart and the intimacy between our characters.”
Among the large ensemble cast are many famous names: Anne Hathaway is Odysseus’s wife Penelope, Zendaya is the goddess Athena, Charlize Theron is the nymph Calypso and Lupita Nyong’o is Helen, and her twin sister.
Robert Pattinson, Nolan said, is “unleashing his inner Alan Rickman” as the villainous suitor Antinous.
“He’s continually saying to Telemachus, ‘I’m going to be your stepdad, I’ll be your daddy,’” Nolan said. “It was such a fascinatingly creepy and amusing basis for villainy.”
Leading the charge was Damon, an actor Nolan knew he liked working with after “Interstellar” and “Oppenheimer. ”
“You need somebody who will take the audience on this journey,” Nolan said. “With Matt, he’s able to combine that iconic sort of superhero thing with a very, very emotionally accessible and comprehensible person.”
The film begins with the words “a time of apparent magic,” a promise of what’s to come in this mythical world of gods, monsters, superstitions and natural phenomena. The pursuit of the real led them all over the world. Troy was constructed in Morocco, the cave of the Cyclops was found in foothills of Greece, Iceland’s black sands, shot in the midnight sun, are used for Hades and the island of Favignana, near Sicily, played Ithaca, where much of the cast and crew hiked 45 minutes every day before work to reach a 15th-century castle, 1,030 feet (313.9 meters) above sea level.
On the seas, they used a real ship, the Draken, a reconstruction of a 1,000-year-old Viking ship that production modified slightly to make it look more of the Mycenaean era. The actors learned to row. The ship’s crew played extras.
But Nolan’s love of in-camera effects doesn’t mean he rejects other kinds. “Tenet,” “Interstellar” and “Inception” all won Oscars for visual effects, after all. And in “The Odyssey” there are things that can’t be found in the natural world, from the six-headed Scylla to the Cyclops, the design of which was inspired by the Francisco Goya painting “Saturn Devouring His Son.” Bill Irwin, who brought the robots to life in “Interstellar,” delivered the performance.
“We knew we were going to need every trick in the book, from animatronics to puppetry to computer graphics,” Nolan said. “But I knew I needed a performer … He doesn’t treat the Cyclops as just a monster.”
What it adds up to is something that, miraculously for a 3,000-year-old tale, feels fresh.
“Chris has created something that’s totally new,” said Hathaway. “That’s a remarkable achievement.”
Nolan productions always inspire a certain amount of hysteria, but excitement for “The Odyssey” reached a fever pitch. Initial screenings for the 70 mm IMAX showings — his favorite format — sold out in under an hour a year in advance. When all showtimes went on sale last month, ticketing sites crashed. High profile locations like the AMC Lincoln Square in New York and AMC CityWalk in Los Angeles are virtually sold out for weeks, and scalpers on eBay are attempting to sell tickets for more than $500. But the 70 mm IMAX screens account for only about 32 theaters out of thousands in North America — there are other ways to see the film, including 70 mm, digital IMAX and other large format presentations.
For Nolan, the audience is the north star; Entertaining is a responsibility he takes seriously. In fact, he said, a film isn’t really done until it reaches the audience: They’re the ones who finish the piece.
“The audience tells you what it is,” Nolan said. “And that means that for us, this is an exciting moment, but a very frightening moment, because it’s real. There’s nothing to hide behind. We made this film for a theatrical audience, and it goes out in the world as that. And we’ll see what the world makes of it.”
Director Christopher Nolan, left, and Emma Thomas pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'The Odyssey' on Monday, July 6, 2026, in London. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)
