A surprising contact on the professional network. A proposal of employment from a headhunter, probably a young woman, based in China. The chance to earn around £20,000 on the side preparing a small number of geopolitical reports for a firm from China containing “non-public” or privileged insights. Payment in digital currency or cash preferred.
It might appear obvious, in this scenario, that an element about this method would be amiss. Nevertheless, Beijing's influential intelligence agency continues to view it worthwhile to deploy headhunters to attempt this – prompting MI5 to warn repeatedly about their activity on the internet.
Large-Scale Approaches on Social Media
Last year, the head of MI5 Ken McCallum said operatives from China were contacting Britons on LinkedIn on an unprecedented level, at a frequency of 10,000 over the preceding two and a half years, seeking political, industrial, defense and technological secrets. But a new initiative aimed at elected officials and Westminster has prompted the spy agency to act again.
An espionage warning was distributed on this week via the offices of Lindsay Hoyle and his House of Lords equivalent: a single slide after the repeated efforts of certain individuals and other operatives to reach out to MPs, peers, their assistants, economists, research organizations – anybody who might become a source.
Intelligence Strategy and Legal Changes
In the typical style of British intelligence, there was no official release of the protective guidance from MI5 or the Home Office. But the agency was aware its advisory document would leak once it was emailed out to parliament. Sharing it in the press helps the wider public more easily recognize communications with a deceptive purpose.
The alert has the effect of uncovering additional details from in and around Westminster, although that is not the agency's primary purpose. The agency wants people in public life to understand that just because interactions on professional networks are less overtly risky as on other social platforms, it doesn't imply they are without risk.
Nor is internal security service believed to have been reacting to any specific incident in the legislature, though the recent actions occur after the embarrassing failure of the legal case of a former parliamentary aide Christopher Cash and his friend Christopher Berry on a legal detail earlier in the autumn.
The two had been charged of working for China – a charge they rejected – but failure to complete a trial under the now repealed previous legislation led to warnings that British democracy had been insufficiently defended.
Revised Laws and Beijing's Long-Term Goals
The law has now been changed, and the MI5 slide contains a reminder of its replacement: “Those engaging in espionage activity risk substantial legal consequences under the new security law.” It is a criminal offense if a person participates in behavior that is or is likely to “materially assist a overseas spy agency”.
A natural inquiry, though, is what China has to gain. An elected representative who is not a government minister will have limited access of classified material, and an associate of theirs even less. Yet the Chinese government is particularly focused in parliament: for a time, in recent years, the UK’s approach to China on matters such as Huawei or the Uyghur repression or alleged atrocities was being driven by MPs.
Methodological Differences and Persistent Digital Risks
In part there are cultural differences as well. Authoritarian governments like Beijing's utilize information gathering techniques and the size of its intelligence apparatus is vast, employing three hundred thousand individuals. Chris Inglis, a American cybersecurity head under the US administration, said it was occasionally assessed that “the Chinese have greater linguistic capacity involved in this than Western agencies have English speakers”.
Beijing is prepared to develop contacts over the long term and sometimes even the intelligence services have found it difficult to differentiate legitimate relationships and espionage. “China has a low threshold for which details is deemed to be useful,” security minister Dan Jarvis told parliamentarians on this week, but a sudden turn in the government situation may mean an individual quickly marginal becomes important.
Another way to think about the relentless efforts at secret intelligence collection is in the wider context of the geopolitical contest between Beijing and the west at a threshold under the point of outright war. The nation has stepped up its cyber operations, with the one campaign infiltration of phone and data networks in numerous nations, and the another operation compromise of millions connected equipment.
Beijing is involved in persistent attempts to identify secret informants on UK politics online because it wants to be challenging, to demonstrate influence and because it can.
