A surprising contact on LinkedIn. An offer of work from a recruiter, most likely a female agent, operating from China. The opportunity to earn perhaps £20,000 part-time writing a handful of geopolitical analyses for a Chinese company containing confidential or “insider” information. Compensation in digital currency or physical money preferred.
It may seem obvious, in this scenario, that an element about this method would be amiss. Nevertheless, China’s influential intelligence agency still considers it worthwhile to deploy recruitment consultants to try it – leading MI5 to issue multiple warnings about their activity on the internet.
Large-Scale Contact Attempts on Professional Networks
In 2023, the head of MI5 the agency's director said Chinese agents were approaching UK citizens on LinkedIn on an unprecedented scale, at a frequency of 10,000 over the previous two and a half years, seeking political, industrial, defense and scientific secrets. However a fresh campaign targeting politicians and Westminster has prompted the intelligence service to act again.
A spying warning was distributed on this week via the administrative teams of the Commons speaker and his Lords counterpart: a single slide after the repeated efforts of Shirly Shen and other operatives to contact MPs, lords, their assistants, economic experts, research organizations – anybody who might provide information.
Security Approach and Legislative Changes
In the typical manner of UK security services, there was no publication of the security advice from MI5 or the Home Office. But the agency was aware its advisory document would leak once it was emailed out to parliament. Republishing it in the press helps the general population more easily recognize communications with a deceptive purpose.
This warning has the impact of flushing out more information from in and around Westminster, although that is not the agency's main objective. The service wants people in public life to understand that simply because exchanges on LinkedIn are less overtly risky as on other social platforms, it does not mean they are without risk.
Nor is domestic spy agency believed to have been reacting to any specific incident in parliament, though the recent actions does come after the awkward failure of the legal case of a former parliamentary aide Christopher Cash and his associate Christopher Berry on a technicality in recent months.
Both individuals had been accused of working for China – a charge they rejected – but inability to complete a trial under the now repealed Official Secrets Act led to warnings that British democracy had been left unprotected.
Updated Legislation and Beijing's Long-Term Goals
Legislation has since been updated, 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 participates in behavior that could potentially “significantly help a overseas spy agency”.
An obvious question, however, is what Beijing has to achieve. A politician who is outside ministerial roles will have limited access of classified material, and an associate of theirs even less. Yet the Chinese government is also interested in parliament: for a time, in recent years, the Britain's approach to China on matters such as Huawei or the human rights situation or genocide was being driven by MPs.
Cultural Variations and Ongoing Cyber Threats
In part there are distinct approaches too. Autocratic regimes like Beijing's export information gathering techniques and the size of its intelligence apparatus is enormous, engaging three hundred thousand individuals. Chris Inglis, a American cybersecurity head under president Joe Biden, said it was sometimes estimated that “China have greater linguistic capacity engaged in this than we [western intelligence] have English speakers”.
The Chinese government is prepared to develop people over the long term and at times even the intelligence services have struggled to distinguish between legitimate relationships and espionage. “Beijing has a minimal requirement for what information is considered to be useful,” the minister responsible a government official informed MPs on this week, but a sudden turn in the political cycle may mean an individual rapidly peripheral turning significant.
Another way to think about the continuous efforts at covert intelligence collection is in the broader framework of the international competition between China and the west at a threshold below the point of outright war. China has stepped up its cyber operations, with the Salt Typhoon penetration of communications systems in 80 countries, and the Volt Typhoon breach of millions connected equipment.
Beijing is involved in persistent attempts to find secret informants on UK politics via digital means because it wants to be challenging, to display influence and because it has the capability.
