🔗 Share this article

An unexpected contact on LinkedIn. A proposal of work from a headhunter, most likely a young woman, based in China. The opportunity to make perhaps £20,000 on the side preparing a handful of geopolitical analyses for a Chinese company peppered with confidential or “insider” insights. Compensation in digital currency or physical money preferred.

It may seem clear, on this telling, that something about this approach would be amiss. Nevertheless, China’s powerful intelligence agency still considers it worthwhile to deploy recruitment consultants to try it – prompting MI5 to warn repeatedly about their activity online.

Massive Approaches on Professional Networks

In 2023, MI5 chief Ken McCallum said Chinese agents were contacting UK citizens on the platform on an unprecedented level, at a rate of 10,000 over the preceding 30-month period, seeking political, commercial, defense and technological classified information. But a new initiative targeting elected officials and parliament has prompted the spy agency to act again.

A spying warning was issued on Tuesday via the administrative teams of the Commons speaker and his House of Lords equivalent: a single slide after the persistent attempts of Shirly Shen and other operatives to reach out to MPs, lords, their assistants, economic experts, thinktanks – anyone who might become a source.

Intelligence Approach and Legislative Updates

In the curious style of British intelligence, there was no publication of the security advice from the agency or the Home Office. Yet the service knew its advisory document would become public once it was emailed out to parliament. Sharing it in the press assists the general population better identify interactions with a fraudulent intent.

This warning has the effect of uncovering more information from within Westminster, though that is not MI5’s main objective. The service aims for people in public life to recognize that simply because exchanges on professional networks are less overtly risky as on X or Facebook, it does not mean they are completely safe.

Nor is internal security service believed to have been reacting to a particular event in parliament, though the burst of activity does come after the awkward collapse of the prosecution of a former parliamentary aide an individual and his associate Christopher Berry on a technicality in recent months.

Both individuals had been charged of working for the foreign power – a charge they denied – but inability to complete a prosecution under the now repealed previous legislation led to concerns that the UK's political system had been insufficiently defended.

Revised Legislation and Beijing's Long-Term Interests

Legislation has now been changed, and the security briefing includes a note of its successor: “Those engaging in espionage activity face significant criminal penalties under the National Security Act.” This constitutes a criminal offense if somebody participates in conduct that is or is likely to “materially assist a foreign intelligence service”.

An obvious inquiry, though, is what Beijing has to gain. A politician who is outside ministerial roles will have restricted access of classified material, and an associate of theirs less so. Yet Beijing is also interested in parliament: for a period, in recent years, the Britain's approach to China on issues such as Huawei or the Uyghur repression or alleged atrocities was being driven by parliamentarians.

Cultural Variations and Ongoing Cyber Risks

In part there are cultural differences too. Authoritarian governments like China’s export information gathering techniques and the size of its intelligence apparatus is enormous, employing 300,000 individuals. A former US official, a American cybersecurity head under president Joe Biden, said it was sometimes estimated that “the Chinese have more English speakers involved in this than we [western intelligence] have personnel with language skills”.

Beijing is willing to cultivate contacts over the extended period and at times even the agencies have found it difficult to differentiate legitimate relationships and spying. “Beijing has a low threshold for what information is deemed to be useful,” the minister responsible a government official told MPs on this week, but a rapid shift in the political cycle may mean an individual rapidly peripheral turning important.

Another way to think about the continuous activities at covert information gathering is in the wider context of the geopolitical contest between Beijing and the Western nations at a threshold below the point of outright war. The nation has increased its cyber operations, with the Salt Typhoon penetration of communications systems in numerous nations, and the another operation breach of millions internet devices.

Chinese authorities is engaged in persistent efforts to find covert sources on British democracy online because it wants to be challenging, to demonstrate power and because it can.