A surprising contact on the professional network. A proposal of work from a recruiter, probably a female agent, operating from China. The opportunity to make around £20,000 part-time writing a handful of political reports for a Chinese company peppered with “non-public” or privileged information. Compensation in digital currency or cash preferred.
It may seem obvious, on this telling, that an element about this approach would be amiss. However, China’s influential intelligence agency still considers it worthwhile to use recruitment consultants to attempt this – prompting MI5 to issue multiple warnings about their activity online.
Large-Scale Contact Attempts on Social Media
Last year, MI5 chief the agency's director said Chinese agents were approaching Britons on LinkedIn on an unprecedented scale, at a rate of ten thousand over the preceding 30-month period, attempting to obtain governmental, commercial, military and scientific secrets. But a new initiative targeting politicians and Westminster has prompted the intelligence service to take further action.
An espionage warning was issued on this week via the offices of the Commons speaker and his House of Lords counterpart: a brief presentation after the repeated efforts of certain individuals and other operatives to contact MPs, peers, their staffers, economic experts, thinktanks – anyone who might provide information.
Intelligence Approach and Legal Changes
In the curious style of UK security services, there was no official release of the protective guidance from MI5 or the interior ministry. But the agency was aware its briefing note would become public once it was emailed out to parliament. Republishing it in the press helps the general population more easily recognize interactions with a deceptive intent.
This warning has the impact of flushing out more information from in and around Westminster, although that is not the agency's primary purpose. The service wants public figures to understand that simply because exchanges on LinkedIn are not as toxic as on other social platforms, it does not mean they are without risk.
Additionally, the internal security service believed to have been reacting to a particular event in parliament, though the recent actions occur after the embarrassing failure of the legal case of a former parliamentary aide an individual and his friend Christopher Berry on a legal detail in recent months.
The two had been accused of working for the foreign power – a allegation they denied – but inability to successfully conclude a prosecution under the now repealed Official Secrets Act led to concerns that British democracy had been insufficiently defended.
Updated Laws and China's Long-Term Interests
Legislation has since been updated, and the security briefing contains a note of its successor: “Those engaging in espionage activity face substantial criminal penalties under the National Security Act.” This constitutes a crime if a person engages in behavior that is or is likely to “materially assist a overseas spy agency”.
A natural question, however, is what Beijing has to achieve. An elected representative who is not a government minister will have limited access of classified material, and an contact of theirs even less. Yet Beijing is also interested in parliament: for a time, in recent years, the Britain's China policy on issues such as Huawei or the Uyghur repression or alleged atrocities was being influenced by parliamentarians.
Methodological Differences and Ongoing Cyber Risks
To a degree there are cultural differences too. Authoritarian governments like Beijing's export information gathering methods and the size of its intelligence apparatus is enormous, engaging 300,000 people. A former US official, a American cybersecurity head under the US administration, commented it was occasionally assessed that “China have greater linguistic capacity involved in this than we [western intelligence] have English speakers”.
The Chinese government is willing to develop people over the long term and sometimes even the agencies have found it difficult to differentiate legitimate relationships and espionage. “Beijing has a minimal requirement for what information 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 result in someone quickly marginal turning important.
An alternative perspective to consider the continuous efforts at covert information gathering is in the wider context of the geopolitical contest between China and the Western nations at a level under the level of direct conflict. The nation has stepped up its cyber operations, with the Salt Typhoon infiltration of phone and data networks in 80 countries, and the Volt Typhoon compromise of countless connected equipment.
Beijing is engaged in relentless attempts to find covert sources on British democracy via digital means because it seeks to be challenging, to display influence and because it has the capability.
