A surprising contact on LinkedIn. An offer of employment from a headhunter, probably a young woman, based in China. The opportunity to make around £20,000 on the side writing a handful of political analyses for a Chinese company containing confidential or “insider” insights. Payment in digital currency or cash favored.
It may seem obvious, in this scenario, that an element about this approach would be amiss. However, China’s powerful intelligence agency continues to view it valuable to use headhunters to try it – prompting MI5 to issue multiple warnings about their activity on the internet.
Large-Scale Approaches on Social Media
Last year, the head of MI5 Ken McCallum said Chinese agents were approaching Britons on LinkedIn on an extraordinary scale, at a rate of ten thousand over the preceding 30-month period, seeking political, industrial, military and scientific secrets. However a new initiative targeting politicians and parliament has led the intelligence service to take further action.
An espionage warning was issued on this week via the offices of Lindsay Hoyle and his House of Lords counterpart: a brief presentation after the repeated efforts of certain individuals and other operatives to contact MPs, lords, their assistants, economic experts, research organizations – anybody who might become a source.
Security Approach and Legislative Changes
In the typical style of British intelligence, there was no publication of the security advice from MI5 or the interior ministry. But the service was aware its advisory document would leak once it was sent electronically out to parliament. Sharing it in the press helps the wider public more easily recognize interactions with a fraudulent purpose.
The alert has the impact of flushing out more information from within parliament, although that is not the agency's primary purpose. The agency wants people in public life to understand that just because exchanges on LinkedIn are not as toxic as on X or Facebook, it doesn't imply they are without risk.
Additionally, the domestic spy agency believed to have been responding to a particular event in parliament, although the burst of activity does come after the awkward collapse of the legal case of a former parliamentary aide Christopher Cash and his associate another person on a technicality earlier in the autumn.
Both individuals had been accused of spying for the foreign power – a allegation they rejected – but inability to successfully conclude a trial under the now repealed Official Secrets Act resulted in concerns that the UK's political system had been left unprotected.
Updated Legislation and China's Long-Term Goals
The law has now been changed, and the security briefing contains a note of its successor: “Individuals involved in espionage activity face significant legal consequences under the new security law.” It is a criminal offense if a person participates in conduct that could potentially “significantly help a overseas spy agency”.
An obvious inquiry, however, is what Beijing has to achieve. A politician who is outside ministerial roles will have limited access of classified material, and an associate of theirs less so. But the Chinese government is also interested in the legislative body: for a time, in 2020 and 2021, the Britain's China policy on matters such as Huawei or the human rights situation or alleged atrocities was being influenced by MPs.
Cultural Differences and Persistent Cyber Threats
In part there are cultural differences as well. Autocratic regimes like China’s export information gathering methods and the scale of its spy network is enormous, engaging three hundred thousand people. Chris Inglis, a US national cyber director under president Joe Biden, said it was sometimes estimated that “the Chinese have more English speakers involved in this than Western agencies have English speakers”.
The Chinese government is willing to cultivate people over the extended period 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 deemed to be of value,” security minister Dan Jarvis told MPs on this week, but a rapid shift in the political cycle may mean an individual quickly peripheral becomes significant.
Another way to think about the continuous activities at covert information gathering is in the wider context of the international competition between China and the Western nations at a level below the point of outright war. China has stepped up its cyber operations, with the one campaign penetration of communications systems in 80 countries, and the Volt Typhoon breach of millions internet devices.
Beijing is engaged in persistent attempts to find covert sources on British democracy online because it seeks to be provocative, to display power and because it can.
