A surprising contact on LinkedIn. A proposal of employment from a recruiter, probably a young woman, operating from China. The chance to earn perhaps £20,000 on the side preparing a small number of political reports for a firm from China containing confidential or “insider” information. Compensation in cryptocurrency or physical money preferred.
It may seem clear, on this telling, that an element about this approach would be suspicious. Nevertheless, China’s influential Ministry of State Security still considers it valuable to deploy headhunters to attempt this – leading MI5 to warn repeatedly about their activity online.
Large-Scale Approaches on Professional Networks
Last year, MI5 chief the agency's director stated Chinese agents were contacting UK citizens on the platform on an extraordinary scale, at a frequency of 10,000 over the preceding two and a half years, attempting to obtain governmental, industrial, defense and technological secrets. But a new campaign aimed at elected officials and parliament has led the intelligence service to act again.
A spying warning was distributed on this week via the offices of Lindsay Hoyle and his House of Lords equivalent: a single slide after the repeated efforts of certain individuals and other operatives to contact Members of Parliament, peers, their assistants, economists, thinktanks – anybody who might provide information.
Security Strategy and Legislative Changes
In the typical style of UK security services, there was no publication of the protective guidance from MI5 or the Home Office. But the service was aware its briefing note would leak once it was sent electronically out to Westminster. Sharing it in the press helps the wider public better identify interactions with a deceptive intent.
The alert has the impact of flushing out more information from in and around Westminster, though that is not MI5’s primary purpose. The service wants people in public life to recognize that simply because exchanges on professional networks are less overtly risky as on other social platforms, it doesn't imply they are completely safe.
Additionally, the internal security service understood to have been responding to any specific incident in parliament, although the burst of activity occur after the awkward collapse of the prosecution of a former parliamentary aide Christopher Cash and his associate Christopher Berry on a legal detail in recent months.
The two had been accused of working for the foreign power – a charge they rejected – but inability to successfully conclude a trial under the now repealed Official Secrets Act led to warnings that British democracy had been insufficiently defended.
Revised Legislation and China's Long-Term Interests
Legislation has since been updated, and the MI5 slide contains a note of its successor: “Those engaging in espionage activity risk significant legal consequences under the new security law.” It is a criminal offense if a person engages in behavior that is or is likely to “materially assist a overseas spy agency”.
A natural question, though, is what China has to achieve. An elected representative who is not a government minister will have limited access of sensitive information, and an contact of theirs less so. Yet Beijing is also interested in parliament: for a time, in 2020 and 2021, the UK’s approach to China on issues such as Huawei or the Uyghur repression or genocide was being influenced by parliamentarians.
Cultural Variations and Persistent Cyber Threats
In part there are cultural differences as well. Autocratic regimes like China’s utilize information gathering techniques and the scale of its spy network is enormous, employing 300,000 individuals. A former US official, a US national cyber director under president Joe Biden, commented it was sometimes estimated that “China have greater linguistic capacity engaged in this than we [western intelligence] have personnel with language skills”.
The Chinese government is prepared to cultivate people over the extended period and sometimes even the intelligence services have struggled to differentiate genuine connections and spying. “Beijing has a low threshold for which details is considered to be of value,” the minister responsible a government official informed parliamentarians on Wednesday, but a sudden turn in the government situation may result in an individual quickly peripheral becomes important.
Another way to consider the relentless efforts at secret intelligence collection is in the wider context of the geopolitical contest between China and the west at a level below the level of direct conflict. China has stepped up its cyber operations, with the one campaign infiltration of communications systems in 80 countries, and the Volt Typhoon breach of millions connected equipment.
Beijing is involved in persistent attempts to find covert sources on UK politics via digital means because it seeks to be provocative, to demonstrate influence and because it has the capability.
