MI5 Chief: Chinese Spies Targeted More Than 20,000 Britons on LinkenIn

MI5 Director General Ken McCallum gives his annual threat update at MI5 headquarters in Thames House, London, on July 14, 2021. (Yui Mok/PA)

Chinese agents have targeted at least 20,000 Britons on websites such as LinkedIn in a bid to get information, the UK’s chief spy said on Tuesday.

Speaking ahead of a summit of Five-Eyes security chiefs in California, MI5 Director-General Ken McCallum said his teams “detect massive amounts of covert activity by the likes of China in particular” besides those from Russia and Iran.

“Activity not aimed just at government or military secrets. Not even aimed at our critical infrastructure but increasingly [at] promising startups,” he said.

“Innovative companies spun out of our universities, academic research itself, and people that understandably may not think national security is about them.”

Last month, the Cabinet Office said the Chinese regime has been headhunting government and military officials and people in key positions in industry and the wider society.

It came after The Times of London reported that a single agent had approached “thousands” of targets.

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Mr. McCallum said the MI5 is now aware of over 20,000 cases.

“We think we’re above 20,000 cases where that initial approach has been made online through sites of that sort,” he said.

It’s double the figure released by the agency in April 2021, when it said there had been 10,000 over the five years prior.

Agents who make initial contacts with UK targets may not be based in the UK, and the UK has not been able to prosecute anyone for spying in the UK because of outdated laws, but Mr. McCallum is hopeful that under the new National Security Act, British police, prosecutors, and courts “will more often draw relevance to state threats’ work in the way that is entirely routine on our counter-terrorism work” as the MI5 proceed further with its investigations.

Last year, MI5 issued an alert to Parliament about Christine Ching Kui Lee, who the spy agency said had allegedly “acted covertly in co-ordination with the UFWD and is judged to be involved in political interference activities in the UK.”

The agency said Ms. Lee had been “engaged in the facilitation of financial donations to political parties, parliamentarians, aspiring parliamentarians and individuals seeking political office in the UK, including facilitating donations to political entities on behalf of foreign nationals.”

But Mr. McCallum subsequently said no legal action could have been taken in many cases because the UK’s archaic law didn’t criminalise being a covert agent of a foreign power.

As part of the National Security Act 2023, foreign agents will be required to register their activities under a foreign influence registration scheme that’s expected to be ready next year.

In March this year, the police arrested two people, including one well-connected parliamentary researcher, over suspicion of offenses under section 1 of the Official Secrets Act, 1911.

The men, who have not been officially named or charged, have been released on bail.

The Metropolitan Police told The Epoch Times on Wednesday that their bails, initially set to end early this month, have been extended until January next year. The Parliamentary researcher has denied allegations against him via his lawyers.

Mr. McCallum was speaking ahead of a first-ever public gathering of heads from the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance—the United States, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, to discuss threats from the Chinese regime amid the technology arms races areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, biometrics, and robotics, among others.

The summit was held in California’s Silicon Valley and hosted by former U.S. Secretary of States Condoleezza Rice on behalf of the Hoover Institution, of which she’s director and senior fellow.

At the event, FBI Director Christopher Wray said his agency has seen about a “1,300 percent increase” in investigations pertaining “to attempts to steal intellectual property or other secrets by some form of the Chinese government, or some arm of the Chinese government” over the past years.

The UK is set to host the first global AI summit to discuss guardrails needed to mitigate the risks brought by the new technology.

China has been invited to the talks despite oppositions from critics, which ministers saying the country is a major player in AI that can’t be ignored.

Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden said last month that the government is considering whether to designate the genomics sector as critical national infrastructure after MPs questioned him about Chinese threats including by genomics giant BGI.