A surprising contact on LinkedIn. A proposal of work from a headhunter, probably a young woman, based in China. The chance to make perhaps £20,000 on the side writing a handful of political reports for a firm from China peppered with “non-public” or privileged insights. Payment in digital currency or physical money favored.
It may seem obvious, in this scenario, that an element about this method would be amiss. However, Beijing's powerful intelligence agency continues to view it valuable to deploy headhunters to try it – prompting the domestic spy agency to issue multiple warnings about their operations on the internet.
Massive Contact Attempts on Social Media
Last year, the head of MI5 Ken McCallum said operatives from China were contacting UK citizens on LinkedIn on an extraordinary scale, at a frequency of 10,000 over the previous two and a half years, attempting to obtain political, industrial, military and technological classified information. However a new campaign targeting elected officials and parliament has led the intelligence service to take further action.
An espionage alert was distributed on this week via the administrative teams of Lindsay Hoyle and his House of Lords equivalent: a brief presentation after the repeated efforts of certain individuals and Amanda Qiu to contact Members of Parliament, lords, their staffers, economists, research organizations – anyone who might become a source.
Intelligence Strategy and Legislative Changes
In the curious manner of British intelligence, there was no official release of the security advice from the agency or the Home Office. Yet the agency was aware its briefing note would leak once it was emailed out to parliament. Republishing it in the press helps the wider public more easily recognize interactions with a deceptive intent.
The alert has the impact of uncovering more information from within Westminster, though that is not MI5’s primary purpose. The agency aims for people in public life to recognize that simply because interactions on LinkedIn are less overtly risky as on other social platforms, it does not mean they are completely safe.
Nor is internal security service believed to have been reacting to a particular event in the legislature, although the recent actions does come after the embarrassing failure of the legal case of a ex-assistant Christopher Cash and his friend another person on a legal detail earlier in the autumn.
Both individuals had been accused of working for the foreign power – a allegation they denied – but inability to successfully conclude a prosecution under the now repealed previous legislation resulted in concerns that British democracy had been left unprotected.
Revised Legislation and Beijing's Strategic Goals
The law has since been updated, and the MI5 slide contains a note of its replacement: “Individuals involved in espionage activity face significant legal consequences under the new security law.” It is a crime if a person engages in behavior that could potentially “significantly help a foreign intelligence service”.
A natural inquiry, though, is what China has to gain. A politician who is outside ministerial roles will have limited access of classified material, and an contact of theirs less so. But the Chinese government is also interested in parliament: for a period, in recent years, the UK’s approach to China on matters such as Huawei or the Uyghur repression or genocide was being influenced by parliamentarians.
Cultural Differences and Ongoing Digital Risks
To a degree there are distinct approaches too. Autocratic regimes like China’s export information gathering techniques and the scale of its intelligence apparatus is enormous, engaging three hundred thousand individuals. Chris Inglis, a US national cyber director under president Joe Biden, said it was sometimes estimated that “China have more English speakers involved in this than we [western intelligence] have personnel with language skills”.
The Chinese government is prepared to cultivate contacts over the long term and at times even the agencies have found it difficult to distinguish between genuine connections and espionage. “China has a low threshold for what information is deemed to be of value,” security minister Dan Jarvis informed parliamentarians on Wednesday, but a rapid shift in the government situation may result in an individual rapidly marginal becomes important.
Another way to think about the relentless activities at secret intelligence collection is in the wider context of the geopolitical contest between Beijing and the west at a threshold below the level of direct conflict. The nation has increased its hacking efforts, with the Salt Typhoon infiltration of communications systems in numerous nations, and the Volt Typhoon breach of countless internet devices.
Beijing is involved in relentless efforts to find covert sources on British democracy via digital means because it wants to be provocative, to display power and because it can.
