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China It poses a daily threat to Britain’s security, the head of the country’s domestic intelligence agency said on Thursday, increasing pressure on officials to explain why two men are being prosecuted on spying charges. Beijing Collapsed just before the trial.
The government, opposition politicians and prosecutors have blamed the failed criminal case as the United Kingdom tries to strike a balance between challenging and engaging. Asian Superpower.
“Do Chinese state actors pose a threat to UK national security? The answer is certainly yes, they do so every day,” MI5 Director General Ken McCallum told reporters during a rare public appearance. He said his agency had intervened to stop the threat from Beijing as recently as last week.
McCallum said Beijing-backed interference included cyber espionage, theft of technology secrets and “attempts to covertly interfere in British public life”.
China accused of espionage
Academic Christopher Berry and parliamentary researcher Christopher Cash were accused last year of providing China with information or documents that could be “detrimental to the security or interests” of Britain.
Then, last month, prosecutors dropped the charges.
Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Parkinson hit out at the government, saying officials refused to testify under oath that China was a national security threat at the time of the alleged crimes between 2021 and 2023.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer declined to intervene, and late on Wednesday the government published witness statements submitted to the court by Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Collins, describing China as “the biggest state-based threat to Britain’s economic security” and saying Beijing’s spying activities “harm the UK’s interests and security”.
McCallum described Britain’s relationship with China as a “complex” mix of risk and opportunity and said MI5 agents “detect and robustly deal with activity that threatens Britain’s national security.”
He said, “Of course I get frustrated when opportunities to prosecute activity that threatens national security are not pursued for any reason,” but he also said that prosecution decisions are out of MI5’s hands.
British intelligence officials have stepped up their warnings about Beijing’s covert activities, and Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee has branded Beijing a “strategic threat” in 2023.
The centre-left Labor Party government, elected last year, has cautiously tried to reset ties with Beijing after years of frosty relations over spying allegations, human rights concerns and support for China. Russia The Ukraine war and the crackdown on civil liberties in the former British colony of Hong Kong.
Cash and Berry were charged under the Official Secrets Act, a century-old law that covers spying for countries deemed enemies of Britain. This has since been replaced by new national security legislation.
Both men have denied wrongdoing, and the Chinese Embassy has described the allegations as fabrications, dismissing them as “malicious slander”.
Russia and Iran
In his annual speech outlining the major threats to the UK, McCallum painted a stark picture, saying the UK faced “multiple overlapping threats on an unprecedented scale” from both terrorist groups and states. He said China is one of the “big three” countries, along with the more reckless Russia and Iran.
“State threats are growing,” he said, adding that the number of people being investigated for spying by MI5 has increased by 35% in the past year, including “investigations against our parliament, our universities, our critical infrastructure.”
He alleged that Russia and Iran are increasingly using “ugly methods” – including “surveillance sabotage, arson or physical violence” – something he said he had not seen from the countries before during his intelligence career.
“Russia is committed to destruction and devastation,” he said. “Over the past year, we and the police have disrupted a steady stream of surveillance plots with hostile intent, targeted at Russian leaders who they perceive as their enemies.”
He said Tehran was also plotting to injure and kill its enemies on British soil, with more than 20 “potentially lethal Iran-backed plots” foiled in the past 12 months.
AI risk
The UK’s official terror threat level is “substantial”, meaning an attack is likely, and McCallum said MI5 had foiled 19 late-stage attack plots since 2020.
He said attacks were coming from small groups or individuals rather than wider networks and the age of suspects was getting younger, with one in five of those arrested last year being under 17.
Some plotters, he said, were inspired by al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group – which are “once again becoming more ambitious” – and others by extreme right-wing ideology. Still others reflect a messy mix of motivations born in the “dirty corners of the Internet.”
The spy chief also said MI5 was looking at potential threats from out-of-control AI.
“Artificial intelligence can never be meant to harm us,” he said. “But it would be reckless to ignore the potential for harm.”