A surprising contact on the professional network. An offer of work from a recruiter, most likely a young woman, operating from China. The opportunity to make perhaps £20,000 part-time preparing a handful of political reports for a Chinese company peppered with confidential or privileged insights. Payment in cryptocurrency or physical money preferred.
It may seem obvious, on this telling, that an element about this method would be amiss. However, Beijing's influential intelligence agency still considers it worthwhile to use recruitment consultants to attempt this – prompting the domestic spy agency to issue multiple warnings about their activity on the internet.
Massive Contact Attempts on Professional Networks
In 2023, the head of MI5 Ken McCallum said operatives from China were contacting UK citizens on the platform on an extraordinary level, at a rate of 10,000 over the previous two and a half years, seeking governmental, commercial, defense and technological secrets. However a fresh campaign targeting politicians and Westminster has prompted the spy agency to take further action.
A spying alert was distributed on this week via the offices of Lindsay Hoyle and his House of Lords equivalent: a brief presentation after the repeated efforts of Shirly Shen and Amanda Qiu to contact MPs, peers, their assistants, economists, thinktanks – anybody who might provide information.
Intelligence Approach and Legislative Changes
In the curious manner of British intelligence, there was no publication of the protective guidance from the agency or the interior ministry. But the agency was aware its briefing note would become public once it was sent electronically out to Westminster. Republishing it in the press helps the general population better identify interactions with a deceptive purpose.
This warning has the effect of uncovering more information from in and around parliament, though that is not MI5’s main objective. The agency aims for public figures to understand that simply because interactions on LinkedIn are not as toxic as on other social platforms, it doesn't imply they are without risk.
Nor is domestic spy agency understood to have been responding to a particular event in the legislature, although the burst of activity does come after the awkward collapse of the prosecution of a ex-assistant an individual and his associate Christopher Berry on a technicality earlier in the autumn.
Both individuals had been accused of spying for the foreign power – a allegation they denied – but failure to successfully conclude a trial under the since replaced Official Secrets Act resulted in warnings that the UK's political system had been left unprotected.
Revised Legislation and China's Long-Term Interests
The law has now been changed, and the MI5 slide includes a reminder of its replacement: “Those engaging in espionage activity face substantial legal consequences under the new security law.” It is a crime if somebody participates in conduct that is or is likely to “materially assist a foreign intelligence service”.
An obvious question, though, is what China has to achieve. A politician who is not a government minister will have limited knowledge of classified material, and an associate of theirs even less. Yet the Chinese government is also interested in parliament: for a time, in recent years, the UK’s approach to China on issues such as the telecom firm or the human rights situation or alleged atrocities was being driven by MPs.
Methodological Variations and Persistent Cyber Risks
In part there are distinct approaches as well. Autocratic regimes like Beijing's utilize information gathering techniques and the scale of its intelligence apparatus is vast, employing three hundred thousand individuals. A former US official, a US national cyber director under president Joe Biden, commented it was sometimes estimated that “China have more English speakers engaged in this than Western agencies have English speakers”.
The Chinese government is willing to develop people over the long term and sometimes even the intelligence services have struggled to differentiate genuine connections and spying. “Beijing has a low threshold for what information is considered to be of value,” security minister Dan Jarvis informed parliamentarians on this week, but a rapid shift in the political cycle may result in someone rapidly marginal becomes important.
Another way to think about the relentless activities at covert intelligence collection is in the wider context of the geopolitical contest between Beijing and the west at a threshold below the point of direct conflict. China has increased its cyber operations, with the one campaign infiltration of phone and data networks in 80 countries, and the Volt Typhoon compromise of millions internet devices.
Beijing is engaged in relentless attempts to identify secret informants on British democracy via digital means because it seeks to be provocative, to display influence and because it can.
