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 writing a small number of geopolitical analyses for a firm from China containing confidential or privileged insights. Payment in cryptocurrency or cash preferred.
It may seem clear, on this telling, that something about this approach would be suspicious. However, China’s influential Ministry of State Security continues to view it valuable to use recruitment consultants to attempt this – leading the domestic spy agency to warn repeatedly about their activity online.
Large-Scale Approaches on Professional Networks
Last year, the head of MI5 Ken McCallum said operatives from China were approaching UK citizens on LinkedIn on an extraordinary level, at a rate of ten thousand over the previous two and a half years, attempting to obtain political, industrial, defense and technological classified information. However a fresh initiative targeting politicians and Westminster has prompted the spy agency to act again.
A spying alert was distributed on Tuesday via the offices of the Commons speaker and his House of Lords equivalent: a single slide after the persistent attempts of Shirly Shen and Amanda Qiu to reach out to Members of Parliament, peers, their assistants, economists, research organizations – anyone who might become a source.
Intelligence Strategy and Legal Changes
In the typical manner of British intelligence, there was no publication of the protective guidance from the agency or the Home Office. Yet the agency knew its briefing note would become public once it was sent electronically out to Westminster. Sharing it in the media helps the general population more easily recognize communications with a deceptive intent.
The alert has the effect of uncovering additional details from in and around Westminster, although that is not the agency's main objective. The agency wants people in public life to understand that simply because interactions on LinkedIn are less overtly risky as on other social platforms, it doesn't imply they are completely safe.
Nor is internal security service understood to have been responding to any specific incident in the legislature, though the recent actions occur after the embarrassing collapse of the legal case of a former parliamentary aide an individual and his friend Christopher Berry on a legal detail in recent months.
Both individuals had been charged of working for China – a allegation they denied – but inability to complete a prosecution under the now repealed previous legislation resulted in warnings that the UK's political system had been insufficiently defended.
Revised Legislation and Beijing's Strategic Goals
The law has since been updated, and the MI5 slide contains a note of its successor: “Individuals involved in spying operations face significant legal consequences under the new security law.” It is a crime if a person engages in behavior that is or is likely to “significantly help a foreign intelligence service”.
An obvious question, however, is what Beijing has to achieve. A politician who is outside ministerial roles will have restricted knowledge of classified material, and an associate of theirs even less. But the Chinese government is particularly focused in parliament: for a period, in recent years, the UK’s China policy on issues such as Huawei or the human rights situation or genocide was being driven by MPs.
Methodological Differences and Ongoing Digital Risks
To a degree there are cultural differences too. Autocratic regimes like Beijing's export intelligence collection methods and the size of its spy network is enormous, employing three hundred thousand individuals. Chris Inglis, a American cybersecurity head under the US administration, said it was occasionally assessed that “China have more English speakers engaged in this than Western agencies have English speakers”.
Beijing is willing to cultivate people over the extended period and sometimes even the intelligence services have struggled to differentiate legitimate relationships and espionage. “China has a low threshold for which details is deemed to be useful,” security minister Dan Jarvis told MPs on Wednesday, but a sudden turn in the government situation may mean someone rapidly marginal turning significant.
Another way to consider the continuous activities at secret information gathering is in the wider context of the geopolitical contest between China and the Western nations at a level under the level of outright war. The nation has stepped up its cyber operations, with the one campaign infiltration of communications systems in 80 countries, and the Volt Typhoon breach of millions connected equipment.
Beijing is engaged in relentless attempts to identify covert sources on British democracy via digital means because it seeks to be challenging, to demonstrate influence and because it can.
