A surprising contact on the professional network. A proposal of employment from a headhunter, most likely a young woman, based in China. The chance to earn perhaps £20,000 on the side preparing a small number of political analyses for a Chinese company peppered with “non-public” or privileged information. Payment in cryptocurrency 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 the domestic spy agency to warn repeatedly about their activity on the internet.
Large-Scale Contact Attempts on Professional Networks
Last year, MI5 chief the agency's director said Chinese agents were contacting Britons on the platform on an extraordinary level, at a rate of 10,000 over the preceding two and a half years, attempting to obtain governmental, commercial, military and technological classified information. But a fresh campaign aimed at politicians and parliament has prompted the intelligence service to take further action.
A spying warning was issued on Tuesday 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 staffers, economists, research organizations – anyone who might become a source.
Intelligence Strategy 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. Yet the agency was aware its briefing note would leak once it was emailed out to parliament. Republishing it in the media helps the general population better identify communications with a fraudulent intent.
The alert has the effect of uncovering additional details from within parliament, though that is not the agency's main objective. The service wants public figures 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 understood to have been reacting to any specific incident in the legislature, although the recent actions does come after the embarrassing failure of the legal case of a former parliamentary aide Christopher Cash and his associate Christopher Berry on a legal detail earlier in the autumn.
The two had been charged of spying for the foreign power – a allegation they rejected – but inability to complete a trial under the now repealed Official Secrets Act led to warnings that British democracy had been insufficiently defended.
Revised Legislation and Beijing's Strategic Interests
The law has now been changed, and the MI5 slide includes a reminder of its successor: “Those engaging in spying operations risk significant criminal penalties under the new security law.” It is a criminal offense if somebody participates in conduct that is or is likely to “significantly help a overseas spy agency”.
A natural inquiry, though, is what Beijing has to gain. A politician who is outside ministerial roles will have limited access of sensitive information, and an contact of theirs even less. But Beijing is particularly focused in parliament: for a time, in 2020 and 2021, the Britain's approach to China on issues such as Huawei or the human rights situation or genocide was being driven by parliamentarians.
Cultural Differences and Persistent Cyber Risks
In part there are distinct approaches too. Authoritarian governments like China’s utilize intelligence collection methods and the scale of its intelligence apparatus is vast, engaging 300,000 people. A former US official, a US national cyber director under the US administration, commented it was occasionally assessed that “the Chinese have more English speakers engaged in this than we [western intelligence] have English speakers”.
Beijing is willing to develop contacts over the extended period and sometimes even the intelligence services have struggled to distinguish between legitimate relationships and espionage. “Beijing has a minimal requirement for which details is considered to be of value,” security minister Dan Jarvis told MPs on Wednesday, but a rapid shift in the political cycle may result in an individual quickly peripheral becomes important.
An alternative perspective to consider the continuous activities at secret intelligence collection is in the broader framework of the international competition between Beijing and the west at a threshold below the point of outright war. The nation has increased its hacking efforts, with the one campaign penetration of communications systems in numerous nations, and the Volt Typhoon breach of millions internet devices.
Chinese authorities is engaged in relentless efforts to find covert sources on UK politics online because it seeks to be provocative, to demonstrate power and because it has the capability.
