A surprising contact on LinkedIn. An offer of employment from a headhunter, most likely a young woman, operating from China. The opportunity to earn around £20,000 part-time preparing a small number of geopolitical reports for a firm from China peppered with confidential or privileged insights. Compensation in cryptocurrency or cash preferred.
It might appear obvious, on this telling, that an element about this approach would be amiss. However, China’s powerful intelligence agency still considers it worthwhile to deploy recruitment consultants to try it – leading MI5 to warn repeatedly about their activity on the internet.
Large-Scale Contact Attempts on Social Media
In 2023, MI5 chief Ken McCallum said operatives from China were contacting Britons on LinkedIn on an extraordinary scale, at a rate of 10,000 over the preceding two and a half years, attempting to obtain governmental, industrial, defense and scientific secrets. However a new campaign aimed at elected officials and parliament has prompted the intelligence service to take further action.
An espionage warning was distributed on this week via the administrative teams of the Commons speaker and his Lords counterpart: a brief presentation after the persistent attempts of Shirly Shen and other operatives to contact MPs, peers, their assistants, economic experts, thinktanks – anybody who might provide information.
Security Strategy and Legal Updates
In the typical style of British intelligence, there was no publication of the security advice from the agency or the Home Office. But the service knew its briefing note would become public once it was sent electronically out to Westminster. Republishing it in the media assists the general population more easily recognize interactions with a fraudulent purpose.
The alert has the effect of uncovering more information from in and around Westminster, although that is not the agency's primary purpose. The service aims for public figures to understand that simply because exchanges on professional networks are less overtly risky as on other social platforms, it does not mean they are completely safe.
Nor is domestic spy agency understood to have been reacting to any specific incident in the legislature, although the recent actions occur after the awkward collapse of the legal case of a ex-assistant Christopher Cash and his friend Christopher Berry on a legal detail in recent months.
The two had been charged of spying for China – a allegation they rejected – but failure to complete a trial under the now repealed previous legislation led to warnings that the UK's political system had been insufficiently defended.
Updated Legislation and Beijing's Strategic Goals
Legislation has now been changed, and the security briefing includes a reminder of its replacement: “Individuals involved in spying operations risk substantial legal consequences under the National Security Act.” This constitutes a criminal offense if a person engages in behavior that is or is likely to “significantly help a overseas spy agency”.
A natural inquiry, though, is what Beijing has to achieve. A politician who is not a government minister will have limited knowledge of classified material, and an associate of theirs even less. But Beijing is particularly focused in parliament: for a time, in 2020 and 2021, the Britain's China policy on matters such as the telecom firm or the human rights situation or genocide was being influenced by MPs.
Methodological Differences and Ongoing Cyber Threats
To a degree there are cultural differences as well. Authoritarian governments like Beijing's export intelligence collection techniques and the size of its intelligence apparatus is vast, employing three hundred thousand individuals. A former US official, a American cybersecurity head under president Joe Biden, said it was sometimes estimated that “China have more English speakers involved in this than Western agencies have personnel with language skills”.
The Chinese government is prepared to develop people over the long term and sometimes even the agencies have struggled to distinguish between genuine connections and espionage. “China has a low threshold for which details is deemed to be of value,” security minister Dan Jarvis informed MPs on this week, but a rapid shift in the political cycle may mean an individual rapidly marginal becomes important.
An alternative perspective to consider the relentless efforts at covert intelligence collection is in the wider context of the geopolitical contest between Beijing and the Western nations at a threshold below the point of outright war. China has increased its cyber operations, with the Salt Typhoon penetration of communications systems in numerous nations, and the Volt Typhoon breach of millions internet devices.
Beijing is involved in relentless efforts to find covert sources on UK politics via digital means because it wants to be challenging, to demonstrate influence and because it can.
