A surprising contact on the professional network. A proposal of employment from a recruiter, most likely a young woman, operating from China. The opportunity to make perhaps £20,000 part-time preparing a handful of geopolitical analyses for a firm from China peppered with “non-public” or “insider” information. Payment in cryptocurrency or physical money preferred.
It might appear clear, on this telling, that an element about this approach would be suspicious. Nevertheless, Beijing's influential Ministry of State Security still considers it valuable to use headhunters to attempt this – prompting MI5 to issue multiple warnings about their activity online.
Large-Scale Contact Attempts on Professional Networks
In 2023, MI5 chief Ken McCallum stated operatives from China were contacting Britons on LinkedIn on an extraordinary scale, at a rate of ten thousand over the previous 30-month period, attempting to obtain political, commercial, military and technological classified information. But a new campaign aimed at elected officials and parliament has led the intelligence service to act again.
An espionage warning was distributed on this week via the offices of the Commons speaker and his House of Lords counterpart: a brief presentation after the persistent attempts of certain individuals and Amanda Qiu to contact MPs, peers, their assistants, economists, research organizations – anybody who might become a source.
Intelligence Approach and Legislative Changes
In the curious style of UK security services, there was no publication of the security advice from MI5 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 assists the wider public more easily recognize interactions with a deceptive purpose.
This warning has the effect of uncovering more information from within parliament, although that is not MI5’s main objective. The agency aims for people in public life to understand that simply because exchanges on professional networks are not as toxic as on other social platforms, it does not mean they are completely safe.
Nor is internal security service understood to have been responding to a particular event in the legislature, though the recent actions does come after the embarrassing failure of the prosecution of a former parliamentary aide an individual and his associate Christopher Berry on a legal detail in recent months.
Both individuals had been charged of working for the foreign power – a charge they rejected – but inability to successfully conclude a prosecution under the since replaced Official Secrets Act led to concerns that the UK's political system had been left unprotected.
Updated Laws and Beijing's Strategic Goals
The law has now been changed, and the security briefing contains a reminder of its successor: “Individuals involved in espionage activity risk significant criminal penalties under the National Security Act.” This constitutes a crime if a person engages in conduct that is or is likely to “materially assist a overseas spy agency”.
An obvious question, though, is what China has to gain. An elected representative who is outside ministerial roles will have limited access of sensitive information, and an contact of theirs less so. But Beijing is also interested in the legislative body: for a period, in 2020 and 2021, the UK’s approach to China on matters such as Huawei or the human rights situation or alleged atrocities was being driven by parliamentarians.
Cultural Variations and Ongoing Cyber Risks
In part there are distinct approaches too. Authoritarian governments like China’s utilize intelligence collection techniques and the size of its intelligence apparatus is vast, engaging three hundred thousand people. A former US official, a US national cyber director under the US administration, commented it was sometimes estimated that “China have greater linguistic capacity engaged in this than we [western intelligence] have English speakers”.
Beijing is prepared to cultivate contacts over the long term and sometimes even the intelligence services have found it difficult to differentiate genuine connections and espionage. “China has a low threshold for what information is considered to be of value,” security minister a government official informed MPs on this week, but a sudden turn in the political cycle may mean an individual rapidly peripheral becomes significant.
An alternative perspective to think about the continuous efforts at secret intelligence collection is in the broader framework of the geopolitical contest between Beijing and the Western nations at a threshold under the level of direct conflict. China has stepped up its hacking efforts, with the one campaign infiltration of communications systems in 80 countries, and the Volt Typhoon compromise of millions connected equipment.
Beijing is involved in relentless attempts to find secret informants on UK politics online because it seeks to be provocative, to display influence and because it has the capability.
