An unexpected connection on LinkedIn. An offer of work from a headhunter, probably a young woman, operating from China. The opportunity to earn perhaps £20,000 on the side preparing a small number of political analyses for a Chinese company containing confidential or “insider” insights. Compensation in cryptocurrency or cash preferred.
It may seem clear, on this telling, that an element about this approach would be amiss. However, China’s influential intelligence agency continues to view it worthwhile to deploy headhunters to try it – prompting the domestic spy agency to warn repeatedly about their operations on the internet.
Massive Contact Attempts on Professional Networks
Last year, the head of MI5 the agency's director said Chinese agents were contacting Britons on LinkedIn on an unprecedented level, at a frequency of 10,000 over the preceding 30-month period, seeking political, industrial, military and technological secrets. But a new campaign aimed at politicians and parliament has led the spy agency to take further action.
A spying warning was issued on Tuesday via the administrative teams of Lindsay Hoyle and his Lords equivalent: a brief presentation after the repeated efforts of certain individuals and other operatives to reach out to MPs, lords, their assistants, economic experts, thinktanks – anyone who might become a source.
Intelligence Strategy and Legislative Changes
In the typical style of UK security services, there was no publication of the security advice from the agency or the Home Office. But the agency knew its briefing note would leak once it was emailed out to Westminster. Sharing it in the media assists the general population more easily recognize communications with a deceptive purpose.
This warning has the impact of uncovering more information from in and around Westminster, though that is not the agency's primary purpose. The agency aims for public figures to understand that simply because interactions on professional networks are not as toxic as on X or Facebook, it doesn't imply they are without risk.
Nor is domestic spy agency understood to have been reacting to any specific incident in parliament, although the burst of activity occur after the embarrassing failure of the prosecution of a ex-assistant Christopher Cash and his associate Christopher Berry on a legal detail earlier in the autumn.
Both individuals had been accused of working for China – a charge they rejected – but inability to complete a prosecution under the now repealed previous legislation resulted in concerns that British democracy had been insufficiently defended.
Revised Laws and China's Strategic Goals
Legislation has since been updated, and the MI5 slide contains a note of its successor: “Those engaging in spying operations risk significant criminal penalties under the new security law.” This constitutes a crime if somebody engages in behavior that is or is likely to “materially assist a overseas spy agency”.
An obvious inquiry, though, is what China has to achieve. An elected representative who is not a government minister will have limited knowledge of classified material, and an contact of theirs less so. Yet Beijing is particularly focused in the legislative body: for a period, in 2020 and 2021, the UK’s approach to China on issues such as the telecom firm or the Uyghur repression or genocide was being influenced by parliamentarians.
Cultural Variations and Ongoing Cyber Threats
To a degree there are cultural differences too. Authoritarian governments like Beijing's export intelligence collection methods and the size of its intelligence apparatus is enormous, employing 300,000 individuals. A former US official, a US national cyber director under president Joe Biden, commented it was occasionally assessed that “the Chinese have greater linguistic capacity engaged in this than we [western intelligence] have English speakers”.
Beijing is prepared to develop people over the extended period and sometimes even the agencies have struggled to distinguish between genuine connections and spying. “China has a minimal requirement for what information is considered to be useful,” the minister responsible a government official told parliamentarians on this week, but a rapid shift in the government situation may mean an individual rapidly peripheral turning significant.
An alternative perspective to think about the relentless efforts at covert information gathering is in the wider context of the geopolitical contest between Beijing and the west at a threshold below the level of direct conflict. China has stepped up its cyber operations, with the Salt Typhoon penetration of phone and data networks in 80 countries, and the Volt Typhoon compromise of millions connected equipment.
Chinese authorities is involved in persistent efforts to find covert sources on British democracy online because it wants to be provocative, to display power and because it can.
