A surprising connection on the professional network. An offer of work from a headhunter, most likely a young woman, operating from China. The opportunity to earn perhaps £20,000 part-time writing a handful of geopolitical analyses for a firm from China peppered with “non-public” or privileged information. Compensation in digital currency or physical money preferred.
It may seem obvious, in this scenario, that something about this method would be suspicious. However, China’s influential intelligence agency still considers it valuable to use recruitment consultants to attempt this – prompting the domestic spy agency to issue multiple warnings about their activity online.
Large-Scale Approaches on Professional Networks
In 2023, the head of MI5 Ken McCallum said Chinese agents were contacting Britons on the platform on an unprecedented scale, at a frequency of ten thousand over the previous 30-month period, attempting to obtain political, industrial, military and scientific secrets. But a new campaign targeting elected officials and Westminster has led the spy agency to act again.
An espionage alert was distributed on this week via the offices of the Commons speaker and his House of Lords equivalent: a brief presentation after the persistent attempts of Shirly Shen and Amanda Qiu to reach out to Members of Parliament, peers, their assistants, economic experts, thinktanks – anyone who might become a source.
Intelligence Approach and Legislative Changes
In the curious manner of British intelligence, there was no official release of the protective guidance from the agency or the Home Office. But the agency was aware its briefing note would leak once it was sent electronically out to Westminster. Republishing it in the press assists the wider public better identify communications with a deceptive purpose.
This warning has the effect of uncovering more information from in and around Westminster, though that is not MI5’s primary purpose. The agency aims for public figures to understand that simply because exchanges on professional networks are less overtly risky as on other social platforms, it does not mean they are completely safe.
Additionally, the internal security service understood to have been responding to any specific incident in the legislature, although the recent actions occur after the embarrassing failure of the legal case of a former parliamentary aide Christopher Cash and his associate Christopher Berry on a legal detail earlier in the autumn.
The two had been charged of spying for the foreign power – a allegation they denied – but inability to complete a trial under the since replaced Official Secrets Act led to warnings that British democracy had been insufficiently defended.
Revised Legislation and Beijing's Long-Term Goals
Legislation has now been changed, and the security briefing includes a note of its replacement: “Those engaging in espionage activity risk substantial legal consequences under the new security law.” This constitutes a criminal offense if a person participates in conduct that is or is likely to “significantly help a foreign intelligence service”.
A natural question, though, is what Beijing has to achieve. A politician who is not a government minister will have limited knowledge of classified material, and an associate of theirs less so. But the Chinese government is also interested in the legislative body: for a time, in recent years, the Britain's China policy on matters such as Huawei or the human rights situation or genocide was being influenced by MPs.
Cultural Differences and Persistent Digital Risks
To a degree there are cultural differences too. Autocratic regimes like China’s export intelligence collection techniques and the size of its intelligence apparatus is vast, employing three hundred thousand individuals. A former US official, a US national cyber director under the US administration, commented it was occasionally assessed that “China have more English speakers engaged in this than Western agencies have personnel with language skills”.
The Chinese government is willing to cultivate people over the extended period and at times even the intelligence services have found it difficult to distinguish between genuine connections and espionage. “Beijing has a low threshold for which details is considered to be useful,” security minister Dan Jarvis informed MPs on this week, but a sudden turn in the government situation may result in an individual quickly marginal turning significant.
An alternative perspective to consider the continuous activities at covert information gathering is in the broader framework of the international competition between China and the west at a level below the point of outright war. 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 involved in relentless efforts to find secret informants on UK politics via digital means because it wants to be challenging, to display power and because it can.
