A surprising connection on the professional network. An offer of work from a headhunter, probably a young woman, operating from China. The opportunity to make perhaps £20,000 part-time preparing a small number of geopolitical analyses for a firm from China 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 approach would be amiss. However, Beijing's powerful intelligence agency continues to view it valuable to deploy headhunters to try it – prompting MI5 to issue multiple warnings about their activity on the internet.
Massive Contact Attempts on Professional Networks
Last year, MI5 chief the agency's director said operatives from China were contacting UK citizens on the platform on an unprecedented scale, at a frequency of 10,000 over the previous two and a half years, attempting to obtain political, industrial, military and scientific classified information. However a new initiative targeting elected officials and Westminster has led the spy agency to take further action.
An espionage alert was issued on this week via the offices of the Commons speaker and his House of Lords counterpart: a single slide after the repeated efforts of Shirly Shen and Amanda Qiu to reach out to MPs, lords, their staffers, economists, research organizations – anyone who might become a source.
Security Strategy and Legal Changes
In the typical style of British intelligence, there was no official release of the security advice from the agency or the interior ministry. But the service was aware its advisory document would become public once it was sent electronically out to Westminster. Republishing it in the press assists the wider public more easily recognize interactions with a deceptive purpose.
This warning has the impact of flushing out additional details from in and around Westminster, though that is not MI5’s main objective. The agency wants public figures to understand that just because exchanges on professional networks are not as toxic as on other social platforms, it does not mean they are without risk.
Nor is internal security service understood to have been reacting to a particular event in parliament, although the burst of activity does come after the embarrassing collapse of the prosecution of a ex-assistant Christopher Cash and his friend another person on a technicality in recent months.
Both individuals had been accused of spying for China – a allegation they denied – but failure to successfully conclude a prosecution under the now repealed Official Secrets Act resulted in concerns that British democracy had been insufficiently defended.
Revised Laws and Beijing's Strategic Interests
The law has since been updated, and the MI5 slide includes a reminder of its replacement: “Individuals involved in espionage activity risk significant legal consequences under the new security law.” It is a criminal offense if somebody participates in conduct that is or is likely to “materially assist a foreign intelligence service”.
An obvious question, however, is what China has to achieve. An elected representative who is not a government minister will have restricted access of sensitive information, and an associate of theirs even less. But the Chinese government is particularly focused in parliament: for a period, in 2020 and 2021, the Britain's approach to China on issues such as Huawei or the Uyghur repression or alleged atrocities was being influenced by parliamentarians.
Cultural Variations and Persistent Cyber Threats
To a degree there are distinct approaches as well. Authoritarian governments like China’s utilize intelligence collection techniques and the scale of its spy network is vast, engaging 300,000 people. A former US official, a American cybersecurity head under the US administration, said it was occasionally assessed that “China have more English speakers involved in this than we [western intelligence] have personnel with language skills”.
The Chinese government is willing to develop people over the long term and at times even the intelligence services have struggled to distinguish between genuine connections and spying. “Beijing has a minimal requirement for which details is deemed to be of value,” the minister responsible a government official told parliamentarians on Wednesday, but a rapid shift in the government situation may mean an individual rapidly marginal turning significant.
An alternative perspective to think about the relentless efforts at covert information gathering is in the wider context of the international competition between China and the Western nations at a threshold under the level of outright war. The nation has stepped up its hacking efforts, with the Salt Typhoon infiltration of communications systems in 80 countries, and the Volt Typhoon breach of countless internet devices.
Beijing is involved in relentless attempts to identify covert sources on British democracy online because it wants to be challenging, to display influence and because it has the capability.
