A surprising contact on LinkedIn. An offer of work from a recruiter, probably a young woman, based in China. The opportunity to earn perhaps £20,000 on the side writing a small number of political analyses for a Chinese company peppered with “non-public” or “insider” insights. Compensation in digital currency or physical money preferred.
It might appear clear, on this telling, that an element about this approach would be amiss. Nevertheless, China’s powerful intelligence agency continues to view it worthwhile to deploy recruitment consultants to try it – prompting MI5 to issue multiple warnings about their activity on the internet.
Large-Scale Approaches on Social Media
In 2023, the head of MI5 the agency's director stated Chinese agents were contacting Britons on LinkedIn on an unprecedented scale, at a rate of ten thousand over the preceding 30-month period, seeking political, industrial, military and scientific classified information. But a new initiative aimed at politicians and Westminster has led the intelligence service to take further action.
A spying alert was issued on this week via the administrative teams of Lindsay Hoyle and his House of Lords counterpart: a single slide after the persistent attempts of certain individuals and Amanda Qiu to contact Members of Parliament, peers, their assistants, economists, thinktanks – anybody who might become a source.
Security Strategy and Legislative Changes
In the typical style of UK security services, there was no publication of the protective guidance from MI5 or the interior ministry. But the agency knew its advisory document would leak once it was sent electronically out to Westminster. Sharing it in the press assists the wider public more easily recognize communications with a deceptive purpose.
The alert has the effect of flushing out additional details from in and around Westminster, though that is not the agency's primary purpose. The agency aims for public figures to understand that just because exchanges on LinkedIn are not as toxic as on other social platforms, it doesn't imply they are without risk.
Additionally, the domestic spy agency believed to have been responding to any specific incident in parliament, though the burst of activity occur after the embarrassing failure of the prosecution of a former parliamentary aide Christopher Cash and his friend Christopher Berry on a technicality in recent months.
Both individuals had been charged of spying for the foreign power – a allegation they rejected – but inability to complete a trial under the since replaced previous legislation resulted in warnings that British democracy had been insufficiently defended.
Revised Legislation and China's Long-Term Goals
Legislation has since been updated, and the MI5 slide contains a note of its successor: “Those engaging in espionage activity face substantial criminal penalties under the National Security Act.” This constitutes a crime if a person engages in behavior that could potentially “significantly help a foreign intelligence service”.
A natural question, though, is what Beijing has to gain. A politician who is not a government minister will have limited knowledge of sensitive information, and an associate of theirs even less. Yet the Chinese government is also interested in the legislative body: for a period, in 2020 and 2021, the UK’s China policy on matters such as Huawei or the Uyghur repression or genocide was being driven by MPs.
Methodological Variations and Persistent Cyber Risks
To a degree there are distinct approaches too. Authoritarian governments like Beijing's export intelligence collection techniques and the scale of its spy network is vast, employing 300,000 people. Chris Inglis, a American cybersecurity head under president Joe Biden, commented it was occasionally assessed that “China have greater linguistic capacity engaged in this than we [western intelligence] have personnel with language skills”.
The Chinese government is willing to cultivate people over the long term and at times even the agencies have struggled to distinguish between legitimate relationships and espionage. “China has a minimal requirement for what information is considered to be useful,” security minister Dan Jarvis told parliamentarians on this week, but a sudden turn in the political cycle may result in an individual rapidly marginal becomes significant.
An alternative perspective to consider the relentless efforts at secret intelligence collection is in the wider context of the international competition between China and the Western nations at a threshold under the point of direct conflict. China has increased its hacking efforts, with the Salt Typhoon infiltration of communications systems in 80 countries, and the Volt Typhoon compromise of millions internet devices.
Beijing is involved in relentless efforts to find secret informants on UK politics online because it seeks to be provocative, to display influence and because it has the capability.
