A surprising connection on LinkedIn. An offer of employment from a headhunter, probably a young woman, based in the Asian nation. The opportunity to make perhaps £20,000 part-time writing a handful of geopolitical analyses for a firm from China containing confidential or “insider” insights. Payment in digital currency or physical money preferred.
It might appear clear, on this telling, that an element about this method would be amiss. However, Beijing's powerful Ministry of State Security still considers it worthwhile to use headhunters to try it – prompting MI5 to warn repeatedly about their operations online.
Massive Contact Attempts on Professional Networks
Last year, MI5 chief Ken McCallum said Chinese agents were approaching Britons on LinkedIn on an extraordinary scale, at a frequency of 10,000 over the preceding 30-month period, seeking governmental, industrial, military and scientific secrets. But a new campaign aimed at politicians and parliament has led the intelligence service to take further action.
A spying alert was distributed on Tuesday via the administrative teams of the Commons speaker and his House of Lords counterpart: a brief presentation after the repeated efforts of Shirly Shen and Amanda Qiu to reach out to Members of Parliament, lords, their staffers, economists, research organizations – anybody who might provide information.
Intelligence Strategy and Legal Changes
In the typical style of UK security services, there was no publication of the security advice from the agency or the Home Office. But the agency knew its briefing note would become public once it was sent electronically out to parliament. Republishing it in the media helps the general population better identify communications with a deceptive intent.
This warning has the effect of uncovering additional details from within Westminster, though that is not the agency's main objective. The service aims for people in public life to recognize that just because exchanges on LinkedIn are less overtly risky as on X or Facebook, it doesn't imply they are completely safe.
Nor is internal security service understood to have been reacting to any specific incident in the legislature, although the burst of activity does come after the awkward collapse of the prosecution of a ex-assistant an individual and his associate Christopher Berry on a legal detail earlier in the autumn.
Both individuals had been accused of working for the foreign power – a allegation they rejected – but inability to successfully conclude a prosecution under the now repealed previous legislation resulted in warnings that British democracy had been left unprotected.
Updated Legislation and Beijing's Strategic Interests
The law has now been changed, and the MI5 slide includes a note of its replacement: “Individuals involved in spying operations risk substantial criminal penalties under the National Security Act.” This constitutes a crime if a person participates in conduct that is or is likely to “materially assist a overseas spy agency”.
A natural inquiry, however, is what Beijing has to achieve. A politician who is not a government minister will have limited access of sensitive information, and an contact of theirs even less. Yet 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 Uyghur repression or genocide was being driven by MPs.
Methodological Variations and Persistent Digital Risks
To a degree there are cultural differences too. Autocratic regimes like China’s utilize information gathering methods and the size of its spy network is enormous, employing 300,000 people. A former US official, a US national cyber director under the US administration, said it was sometimes estimated that “China have greater linguistic capacity involved in this than we [western intelligence] have personnel with language skills”.
Beijing is prepared to develop contacts over the extended period and at times even the agencies have struggled to differentiate legitimate relationships and espionage. “Beijing has a low threshold for what information is considered to be useful,” the minister responsible a government official told parliamentarians on this week, but a sudden turn in the political cycle may result in an individual rapidly marginal turning important.
Another way to think about the continuous efforts at covert information gathering is in the wider context of the geopolitical contest between China and the west at a level under the point of outright war. China has stepped up its cyber operations, with the Salt Typhoon penetration of communications systems in numerous nations, and the Volt Typhoon compromise of countless connected equipment.
Beijing is involved in persistent attempts to find covert sources on British democracy via digital means because it seeks to be challenging, to display influence and because it has the capability.
