An unexpected contact on the professional network. A proposal of work from a headhunter, most likely a young woman, operating from China. The opportunity to earn perhaps £20,000 on the side writing a handful of political reports for a Chinese company peppered with “non-public” or “insider” information. Payment in cryptocurrency or cash preferred.
It might appear clear, on this telling, that something about this approach would be suspicious. However, China’s powerful intelligence agency continues to view it worthwhile to deploy headhunters to attempt this – leading 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 Ken McCallum said operatives from China were approaching Britons on the platform on an unprecedented scale, at a frequency of ten thousand over the preceding two and a half years, attempting to obtain governmental, industrial, military and scientific secrets. But a fresh campaign targeting elected officials and parliament has prompted the spy agency to act again.
A spying alert was issued on Tuesday via the administrative teams of the Commons speaker and his Lords counterpart: a single slide after the persistent attempts of Shirly Shen and Amanda Qiu to contact MPs, lords, their staffers, economic experts, research organizations – anyone who might become a source.
Intelligence Strategy and Legal Changes
In the curious style of UK security services, there was no publication of the protective guidance from MI5 or the Home Office. Yet the service knew its advisory document would become public once it was emailed out to parliament. Sharing it in the media helps the wider public more easily recognize communications with a fraudulent intent.
This warning has the impact of uncovering more information from within parliament, though that is not MI5’s primary purpose. The service wants public figures to understand that simply because interactions on LinkedIn are less overtly risky as on other social platforms, it doesn't imply they are without risk.
Nor is internal security service believed to have been reacting to a particular event in parliament, although the burst of activity does come after the embarrassing collapse of the prosecution of a former parliamentary aide an individual and his friend Christopher Berry on a legal detail in recent months.
Both individuals had been charged of working for China – a charge they denied – but failure to successfully conclude a prosecution under the since replaced previous legislation led to warnings that British democracy had been insufficiently defended.
Updated Legislation and Beijing's Long-Term Goals
The law has since been updated, and the MI5 slide contains a note of its replacement: “Those engaging in espionage activity face substantial legal consequences under the National Security Act.” It is a crime if somebody engages in conduct that is or is likely to “materially assist a overseas spy agency”.
A natural inquiry, though, is what China has to gain. A politician who is not a government minister will have limited knowledge of sensitive information, and an associate of theirs even less. But the Chinese government is particularly focused in parliament: for a period, in 2020 and 2021, the Britain's approach to China on matters such as Huawei or the Uyghur repression or genocide was being influenced by parliamentarians.
Methodological Variations and Persistent Digital Threats
In part there are distinct approaches too. Authoritarian governments like Beijing's export information gathering techniques and the scale of its intelligence apparatus is vast, employing three hundred thousand people. A former US official, a US national cyber director under the US administration, commented it was occasionally assessed that “the Chinese have more English speakers involved in this than Western agencies have personnel with language skills”.
The Chinese government is prepared to develop contacts over the extended period and at times even the intelligence services have found it difficult to distinguish between legitimate relationships and espionage. “China has a minimal requirement for which details is considered to be of value,” security minister a government official told parliamentarians on Wednesday, but a rapid shift in the government situation may mean an individual quickly marginal becomes important.
Another way to think about the relentless efforts at secret intelligence collection is in the wider context of the geopolitical contest between China and the Western nations at a threshold below the level of direct conflict. China has increased its hacking efforts, with the one campaign penetration of phone and data networks in 80 countries, and the another operation compromise of millions internet devices.
Beijing is involved in relentless attempts to find covert sources on British democracy via digital means because it wants to be challenging, to display power and because it can.
