An unexpected contact on the professional network. A proposal of employment from a headhunter, probably a young woman, based in China. The opportunity to earn perhaps £20,000 part-time writing a handful of geopolitical analyses for a firm from China peppered with confidential or privileged information. Compensation in cryptocurrency or physical money preferred.
It may seem clear, on this telling, that something about this method would be amiss. Nevertheless, China’s influential Ministry of State Security still considers it worthwhile to deploy recruitment consultants to attempt this – leading MI5 to warn repeatedly about their activity online.
Massive Approaches on Social Media
Last year, the head of MI5 the agency's director stated operatives from China were approaching UK citizens on the platform on an extraordinary level, at a frequency of ten thousand over the previous two and a half years, attempting to obtain governmental, industrial, defense and technological classified information. But a new initiative targeting politicians and Westminster has prompted the intelligence service to act again.
An espionage alert was distributed on Tuesday via the administrative teams of the Commons speaker and his House of Lords counterpart: a single slide after the repeated efforts of certain individuals and other operatives to contact Members of Parliament, lords, their assistants, economic experts, thinktanks – anybody who might provide information.
Intelligence Approach and Legislative Updates
In the typical manner of British intelligence, there was no official release of the protective guidance from the agency or the interior ministry. But the service was aware its briefing note would become public once it was sent electronically out to Westminster. Republishing it in the media helps the wider public better identify communications with a deceptive purpose.
This warning has the impact of flushing out additional details from in and around Westminster, though that is not MI5’s main objective. The agency wants people in public life to recognize that just because exchanges on LinkedIn 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 parliament, although the recent actions occur after the awkward failure of the legal case of a former parliamentary aide an individual and his associate Christopher Berry on a technicality earlier in the autumn.
Both individuals had been accused of spying for the foreign power – a charge they denied – but inability to successfully conclude a prosecution under the now repealed Official Secrets Act resulted in concerns that British democracy had been insufficiently defended.
Revised Legislation and Beijing's Strategic Interests
Legislation has since been updated, and the MI5 slide contains a reminder of its successor: “Individuals involved in espionage activity face substantial criminal penalties under the new security law.” It is a crime if somebody engages in behavior that is or is likely to “materially assist a foreign intelligence service”.
An obvious inquiry, however, is what China has to gain. An elected representative who is not a government minister 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 time, in 2020 and 2021, the Britain's approach to China on matters such as Huawei or the human rights situation or alleged atrocities was being driven by MPs.
Cultural Differences and Ongoing Digital Risks
In part there are cultural differences as well. Authoritarian governments like Beijing's export information gathering methods and the scale of its intelligence apparatus is vast, employing 300,000 individuals. Chris Inglis, a American cybersecurity head under president Joe Biden, commented it was sometimes estimated that “the Chinese have more English speakers involved in this than we [western intelligence] have English speakers”.
Beijing is prepared to develop people over the long term and sometimes even the intelligence services have struggled to distinguish between genuine connections and espionage. “Beijing has a low threshold for which details is deemed to be useful,” the minister responsible Dan Jarvis told MPs on this week, but a rapid shift in the government situation may mean an individual rapidly marginal turning important.
An alternative perspective to think about the continuous activities at secret intelligence collection is in the wider context of the geopolitical contest between Beijing and the west at a level below the level of outright war. The nation has increased its hacking efforts, with the Salt Typhoon penetration of communications systems in 80 countries, and the another operation compromise of countless connected equipment.
Beijing is involved in persistent attempts to identify secret informants on UK politics online because it wants to be challenging, to display power and because it has the capability.
