CCP-Backed Spies Present Threat to UK Every Day: MI5

The UK has seen a 35 percent increase in state threat investigations in the past year, the MI5 director said.

Ken McCallum, director general of MI5, delivers the annual director general's speech at the Counter Terrorism Operations Centre in London, on Oct. 8, 2024. Yui Mok/PA via AP

MI5 Director General Ken McCallum said on Oct. 16 that the agency stopped a Chinese threat just last week. The remarks to reporters came after he gave a speech at MI5 headquarters in London about “fast-rising” foreign state threats.

“We’ve intervened operationally again just in the last week,” he said, according to Bloomberg.

“Do Chinese state actors present a UK national security threat? The answer is: Of course, yes, they do—every day.”

McCallum was asked about the Chinese spy case that collapsed recently when prosecutors unexpectedly dropped charges against two men accused of passing sensitive information to Chinese officials. Prosecutors indicated that they had no grounds to pursue the charges in the case because the UK had not determined China to be an “enemy.”

“Of course, I am frustrated when opportunities to prosecute national security-threatening activity are not followed through for whatever reason,” he said.

“It’s frustrating when they don’t happen, but I would invite everyone to just not miss the fact that this was a strong disruption in the interests of the UK’s national security.”

Witness statements in the case have since been released, revealing areas in which the UK considered China a threat, as well as the UK government’s intention to pursue a “positive” relationship with the Chinese communist regime.

In his speech, McCallum said the UK–China relationship is complex and that there are “good reasons for maintaining a substantive relationship with China,” including giving the UK “a stronger platform from which to push back.”

He said the 2023 National Security Act “closed” the “long-standing weaknesses” in the UK’s legal code, seeming to reference the collapse of the high-profile spy case.

During McCallum’s speech, he said data show that “state threats are escalating.”

“In the last year, we’ve seen a 35 percent increase in the number of individuals we’re investigating for involvement in state threat activity,” he said.

McCallum said this included espionage against a wide range of targets, as well as what would usually be classified as terrorism on a daily basis.

“My teams are routinely uncovering attempts by state actors to commission surveillance, sabotage, arson, or physical violence, right here in the UK,” he said.

He said Russian actors have targeted UK leaders and use online platforms to try to “sow the seeds of violence, chaos and division” in the UK.

Iranian actors were behind more than 20 “potentially lethal” plots in the past year, according to McCallum.

Chinese actors were responsible for a wide array of actions that threatened national security, McCallum said, including cyberespionage; technology theft; poaching experts; harassment and intimidation of critics, as seen with the bounties placed on Hong Kong democracy activists in the UK; and covert attempts to influence politicians.

Earlier in the week, MI5 had warned UK politicians about these covert influence operations by foreign state actors with new guidelines.

It urged politicians to “keep track of odd social interactions” and “overt flattery.”

In McCallum’s Oct. 16 speech, he referenced the Christine Lee case. In 2022, MI5 had alerted politicians that Lee, a lawyer, was “involved in political interference activities” on behalf of the Chinese regime and had facilitated financial donations to politicians.