Technology is no longer simply a tool that criminals use. It is reshaping crime itself: accelerating it, globalising it, and making it more harmful. So said National Crime Agency (NCA) Director General Graeme Biggar in a speech on the release of the National Strategic Assessment 2026.
Overall, the threat from serious and organised crime increased, he said. “Technology has enabled criminals to get smarter, faster and more connected, to each other and to victims.” None of the nine threats (child sexual abuse, cyber crime, drugs, firearms, fraud, illicit finance, modern slavery, organised acquisitive crime and organised immigration crime) last year or the year before showed a decrease: drugs, organised immigration crime, and illicit finance are all assessed to have increased in 2025.
Drugs remain the single biggest driver of serious crime in the UK, he said. “They fuel violence and anti-social behaviour on our streets โ half of homicides, thefts and robberies are drug-related.” Among uses of tech, new drugs like synthetic opioids are made, and drones are used to fly drugs and other contraband into prisons.
Import
Criminals are getting more inventive in attempting to hide drugs as they cross borders, he said. “We are seeing more ‘chemical concealments’, where cocaine is altered at a molecular level to bond with another material โ charcoal, glue, plastic. It crosses the border as something innocent, and is extracted at the other end. The cocaine is not hidden inside a box of bananas. Itย is the box of bananas.”
His speech also covered organised immigration crime; and growing crime online – referencing the high-profile cyber-attacks on Transport for London (TfL), the Legal Aid Agency, M&S, the Co-op, Kido nurseries, and Jaguar Land Rover. He summed up that criminal markets are converging; global instability is creating ungoverned spaces; harms from serious and organised crime are being felt more intensely โ by individuals, by communities, by the economy; ‘and technology is no longer merely enabling crime. It is driving crime.’ He described the proposed National Police Service (NPS) under Labour’s Policing Reform as ‘the next necessary step’, building on the NCA and Counter Terrorism Policing. On fraud, he argued that the national fraud functions provided by the City of London Police should transfer to the NPS.
For the assessment, visit https://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/nsa-2026.
Continent
Meanwhile the European Union’s police agency Europol deployed to Spain and Scotland to support enforcement against a Scottish violent organised crime network. And the European Public Prosecutorโs Office (EPPO) in Turin led on an operation in Italy, Poland, France, the UK’s HM Revenue and Customs and police; and Switzerland against counterfeit cigarette smuggling. Europol has launched a European Centre Against Migrant Smuggling (ECAMS).
