A surprising contact on the professional network. A proposal of work from a headhunter, most likely a young woman, operating from the Asian nation. The chance to earn around £20,000 on the side preparing a handful of political analyses for a Chinese company peppered with confidential or privileged insights. Compensation in digital currency or physical money preferred.
It may seem clear, in this scenario, that an element about this approach would be amiss. However, China’s powerful Ministry of State Security still considers it worthwhile to use recruitment consultants to try it – prompting the domestic spy agency to issue multiple warnings about their activity online.
Massive Approaches on Professional Networks
In 2023, 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 30-month period, seeking governmental, commercial, military and technological classified information. But a fresh initiative targeting politicians and Westminster has led the intelligence service to take further action.
A spying warning was distributed on Tuesday via the offices of Lindsay Hoyle and his House of Lords equivalent: 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.
Intelligence Approach and Legal Changes
In the typical style of British intelligence, there was no official release of the protective guidance from the agency or the interior ministry. Yet the agency knew its briefing note would become public once it was emailed out to Westminster. Sharing it in the media assists the general population better identify communications with a fraudulent purpose.
The alert has the effect of uncovering additional details from within parliament, though that is not MI5’s primary purpose. The agency wants public figures to recognize that just because exchanges on professional networks are less overtly risky as on X or Facebook, it does not mean they are without risk.
Nor is internal security service believed to have been responding to any specific incident in parliament, although the recent actions does come after the awkward failure of the legal case of a ex-assistant Christopher Cash and his friend Christopher Berry on a legal detail in recent months.
The two had been accused of working for China – a allegation they denied – but inability to complete a prosecution under the since replaced previous legislation led to concerns that the UK's political system had been insufficiently defended.
Updated Legislation and Beijing's Long-Term Goals
Legislation has since been updated, and the MI5 slide 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 engages in conduct that is or is likely to “materially assist a overseas spy agency”.
An obvious question, however, is what China has to gain. An elected representative who is outside ministerial roles will have restricted access of sensitive information, and an associate of theirs less so. But Beijing is also interested in the legislative body: for a period, in 2020 and 2021, the UK’s China policy on matters such as Huawei or the human rights situation or genocide was being driven by MPs.
Cultural Differences and Ongoing Digital Risks
In part there are distinct approaches too. Autocratic regimes like Beijing's utilize intelligence collection techniques and the scale of its spy network is vast, employing three hundred thousand individuals. A former US official, a US national cyber director under the US administration, said it was sometimes estimated that “China have greater linguistic capacity engaged in this than Western agencies have English speakers”.
The Chinese government is prepared to develop contacts over the long term and sometimes even the agencies have found it difficult to distinguish between genuine connections and espionage. “China has a low threshold for what information is considered to be of value,” the minister responsible a government official informed MPs on this week, but a rapid shift in the government situation may result in someone quickly peripheral becomes important.
An alternative perspective to think about the relentless efforts at secret information gathering is in the wider context of the geopolitical contest between China and the west at a level below the level of direct conflict. The nation has increased its hacking efforts, with the Salt Typhoon infiltration of communications systems in 80 countries, and the Volt Typhoon breach of countless connected equipment.
Beijing is engaged in persistent efforts to identify secret informants on UK politics online because it wants to be provocative, to demonstrate power and because it can.
