A surprising contact on the professional network. An offer of employment from a recruiter, probably a young woman, operating from China. The chance to earn around £20,000 part-time writing a handful of geopolitical reports for a firm from China containing “non-public” or privileged information. Payment in cryptocurrency or physical money preferred.
It may seem clear, on this telling, that an element about this method would be amiss. Nevertheless, China’s powerful intelligence agency continues to view it valuable to deploy headhunters to attempt this – prompting MI5 to issue multiple warnings about their activity online.
Massive Contact Attempts on Social Media
Last year, MI5 chief Ken McCallum stated Chinese agents were contacting Britons on LinkedIn on an unprecedented scale, at a rate of ten thousand over the preceding two and a half years, attempting to obtain political, commercial, defense and technological secrets. However a new initiative targeting elected officials and Westminster has prompted the intelligence service to take further action.
An espionage warning was distributed on Tuesday via the offices of Lindsay Hoyle and his Lords counterpart: a single slide after the persistent attempts of certain individuals and Amanda Qiu to reach out to Members of Parliament, peers, their assistants, economists, thinktanks – anyone who might provide information.
Intelligence Strategy and Legislative Changes
In the typical style of UK security services, there was no publication of the security advice from MI5 or the Home Office. But the agency was aware its advisory document would become public once it was emailed out to parliament. Sharing it in the media helps the general population better identify communications with a deceptive purpose.
The alert has the impact of flushing out additional details from in and around Westminster, though that is not MI5’s primary purpose. The service aims for public figures to understand that simply because interactions on LinkedIn are less overtly risky as on X or Facebook, it does not mean they are completely safe.
Additionally, the internal security service understood to have been reacting to a particular event in the legislature, though the burst of activity does come after the awkward collapse of the prosecution of a former parliamentary aide an individual and his friend Christopher Berry on a technicality earlier in the autumn.
The two had been accused of working for China – a charge they rejected – but failure to complete a prosecution under the now repealed previous legislation resulted in warnings that the UK's political system had been left unprotected.
Revised Laws and China's Long-Term Interests
Legislation has now been changed, and the security briefing contains a reminder of its replacement: “Those engaging in espionage activity risk significant criminal penalties under the National Security Act.” It is a crime if a person participates in conduct that could potentially “significantly help a foreign intelligence service”.
A natural question, however, is what China has to achieve. A politician who is outside ministerial roles will have limited access of sensitive information, and an contact of theirs less so. Yet the Chinese government is also interested in the legislative body: for a time, in 2020 and 2021, the Britain's approach to China on issues such as the telecom firm or the human rights situation or alleged atrocities was being driven by MPs.
Cultural Variations and Ongoing Cyber Threats
To a degree there are cultural differences too. Autocratic regimes like China’s export information gathering techniques and the scale of its spy network is vast, employing 300,000 people. Chris Inglis, a US national cyber director under the US administration, said it was sometimes estimated that “the Chinese have more English speakers involved in this than Western agencies have personnel with language skills”.
Beijing is prepared to develop contacts over the extended period and sometimes even the intelligence services have found it difficult to distinguish between legitimate relationships and espionage. “China has a low threshold for which details is considered to be of value,” the minister responsible Dan Jarvis told parliamentarians on this week, but a sudden turn in the government situation may mean someone rapidly marginal becomes important.
An alternative perspective to think about the relentless efforts at secret intelligence collection is in the wider context of the international competition between China and the west at a threshold below the level of outright war. China has stepped up its hacking efforts, with the one campaign penetration of phone and data networks in numerous nations, and the another operation breach of millions connected equipment.
Beijing is engaged in persistent efforts to find secret informants on UK politics via digital means because it wants to be provocative, to display power and because it can.
