A surprising connection on the professional network. An offer of work from a headhunter, probably a young woman, based in China. The chance to make around £20,000 part-time writing a small number of political analyses for a firm from China containing confidential or “insider” insights. Compensation in digital currency or physical money favored.
It might appear obvious, on this telling, that something about this method would be suspicious. Nevertheless, Beijing's powerful intelligence agency still considers it valuable to deploy recruitment consultants to attempt this – leading the domestic spy agency to issue multiple warnings about their operations online.
Massive Contact Attempts on Professional Networks
Last year, the head of MI5 Ken McCallum said operatives from China were approaching UK citizens on LinkedIn on an extraordinary scale, at a frequency of 10,000 over the previous two and a half years, seeking political, industrial, defense and technological classified information. However a fresh initiative aimed at elected officials and parliament has led the spy agency to take further action.
A spying alert was issued on this week via the administrative teams of the Commons speaker and his House of Lords counterpart: a single slide after the persistent attempts of certain individuals and other operatives to contact Members of Parliament, lords, their assistants, economic experts, thinktanks – anybody who might become a source.
Security Strategy and Legislative Changes
In the curious style of UK security services, there was no official release of the security advice from MI5 or the interior ministry. Yet the service knew its briefing note would leak once it was sent electronically out to Westminster. Republishing it in the press helps the wider public more easily recognize communications with a fraudulent purpose.
This warning has the impact of uncovering more information from within Westminster, although that is not the agency's main objective. The service wants people in public life to understand that just because interactions on professional networks are less overtly risky as on other social platforms, it doesn't imply they are completely safe.
Nor is internal security service understood to have been reacting to any specific incident in parliament, though the recent actions occur after the embarrassing failure of the prosecution of a former parliamentary aide Christopher Cash and his associate another person on a legal detail earlier in the autumn.
The two had been charged of working for China – a allegation they denied – but failure to successfully conclude a prosecution under the since replaced Official Secrets Act led to concerns that the UK's political system had been left unprotected.
Updated Laws and Beijing's Long-Term Goals
The law has now been changed, and the MI5 slide includes a reminder of its replacement: “Those engaging in spying operations risk substantial legal consequences under the new security law.” It is a crime if a person engages in behavior that is or is likely to “materially assist a foreign intelligence service”.
A natural inquiry, however, is what Beijing has to gain. An elected representative who is outside ministerial roles will have limited access of sensitive information, and an associate of theirs less so. But Beijing is particularly focused in parliament: for a period, in recent years, the UK’s China policy on issues such as Huawei or the human rights situation or alleged atrocities was being driven by MPs.
Methodological Differences and Ongoing Digital Threats
In part there are distinct approaches too. Autocratic regimes like Beijing's export intelligence collection techniques and the size of its intelligence apparatus is enormous, engaging 300,000 people. A former US official, a US national cyber director under president Joe Biden, said it was sometimes estimated that “China have greater linguistic capacity engaged in this than we [western intelligence] have English speakers”.
Beijing is willing to develop people over the extended period and sometimes even the intelligence services have struggled to distinguish between legitimate relationships and spying. “China has a minimal requirement for which details is considered to be useful,” security minister a government official informed parliamentarians on Wednesday, but a sudden turn in the political cycle may mean someone rapidly peripheral becomes significant.
An alternative perspective to think about the relentless activities at covert intelligence collection is in the wider context of the international competition between China and the west at a level under the level of outright war. The nation has stepped up its cyber operations, with the one campaign infiltration of communications systems in numerous nations, and the Volt Typhoon breach of countless connected equipment.
Chinese authorities is engaged in relentless efforts to find secret informants on British democracy online because it wants to be challenging, to demonstrate power and because it has the capability.
