A surprising contact on LinkedIn. An offer of work from a recruiter, probably a young woman, operating from China. The opportunity to make perhaps £20,000 on the side preparing a handful of political analyses for a Chinese company containing confidential or privileged information. Compensation in cryptocurrency or physical money favored.
It may seem obvious, on this telling, that an element about this method would be suspicious. Nevertheless, China’s influential intelligence agency still considers it valuable to deploy recruitment consultants to try it – prompting the domestic spy agency to warn repeatedly about their operations on the internet.
Massive Approaches on Professional Networks
Last year, the head of MI5 Ken McCallum stated operatives from China were approaching Britons on LinkedIn on an extraordinary scale, at a rate of 10,000 over the preceding two and a half years, seeking political, industrial, military and scientific secrets. However a fresh campaign targeting politicians and parliament has prompted the intelligence service to take further action.
A spying warning was issued on Tuesday via the offices of the Commons speaker and his Lords counterpart: a brief presentation after the repeated efforts of Shirly Shen and Amanda Qiu to reach out to MPs, lords, their staffers, economic experts, research organizations – anybody who might provide information.
Security Strategy and Legal Changes
In the curious style of UK security services, there was no publication of the security advice from the agency or the interior ministry. But the service was aware its briefing note would become public once it was emailed out to Westminster. Sharing it in the press assists the wider public better identify communications with a fraudulent intent.
This warning has the effect of flushing out more information from in and around Westminster, although that is not the agency's primary purpose. The agency aims for public figures to recognize that just 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 understood to have been reacting to a particular event in parliament, though the burst of activity does come after the awkward failure of the prosecution of a ex-assistant Christopher Cash and his friend Christopher Berry on a legal detail in recent months.
Both individuals had been accused of working for the foreign power – a charge they denied – but failure to successfully conclude a prosecution under the now repealed Official Secrets Act led to warnings that the UK's political system had been insufficiently defended.
Revised Laws and Beijing's Long-Term Interests
The law has now been changed, and the MI5 slide includes a reminder of its successor: “Those engaging in spying operations face substantial criminal penalties under the new security law.” It is a criminal offense if a person engages in behavior that is or is likely to “materially assist a overseas spy agency”.
An obvious question, though, is what Beijing has to gain. A politician who is outside ministerial roles 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 time, in recent years, the UK’s China policy on matters such as the telecom firm or the human rights situation or genocide was being influenced by parliamentarians.
Cultural Variations and Ongoing Cyber Risks
In part there are cultural differences as well. Autocratic regimes like Beijing's export intelligence collection methods and the scale of its intelligence apparatus is enormous, employing 300,000 individuals. A former US official, a American cybersecurity head under president Joe Biden, said it was occasionally assessed that “China have more English speakers involved in this than Western agencies have personnel with language skills”.
The Chinese government is prepared to cultivate contacts over the long term and at times even the intelligence services have struggled to distinguish between legitimate relationships and espionage. “China has a minimal requirement for which details is considered to be useful,” the minister responsible a government official told MPs on this week, but a sudden turn in the government situation may mean someone quickly marginal turning important.
An alternative perspective to think about the continuous activities at covert intelligence collection is in the broader framework of the geopolitical contest between Beijing and the west at a threshold below the level of outright war. China has stepped up its hacking efforts, with the Salt Typhoon penetration of phone and data networks in numerous nations, and the Volt Typhoon compromise of countless internet devices.
Chinese authorities is engaged in relentless attempts to find secret informants on UK politics online because it seeks to be challenging, to demonstrate power and because it has the capability.
