The head of MI5, Ken McCallum, was recently joined by the heads of the U.S., Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand, security agencies in a meeting hosted by Stanford University. They did so, for the first time, to warn of commercial secrets being stolen by China.
Stanford University was chosen as the venue for the first public meeting because it lies in the heart of Silicon Valley. In both public statements issued from that meeting, and in a closed session with entrepreneurs and investors, security chiefs warned that cutting-edge research is being stolen at an ever increasing rate. Ken McCallum stated that “We have seen a sustained campaign on a pretty epic scale”.
In the past, MI5 has focused on protecting government secrets from foreign spies, but now the fear is that innovation is often stolen from small companies, start-ups and researchers who may not, previously, had to worry about security. “If you’re working today at the cutting edge of technology, then geopolitics is interested in you, even if you’re not interested in geopolitics,” Mr McCallum said.
MI5 is trying to warn tens of thousands of U.K. companies who are potentially at risk of having their secrets stolen by Chinese agents. Undertaking this new task has required the security service to go public in a way it has not done before. Mr. McCallum said that MI5 had now seen suspected Chinese agents approach over 20,000 people in the U.K. They use professional networking sites like Linked-In, in order to try to cultivate these people to provide sensitive information: This number of 20,000 is double previously reported figures.
In the last year, MI5 has also seen more than 20 instances of Chinese companies actively trying to gain access to sensitive technology developed by U.K. companies and universities through investments, or other means where the full role of China is hidden, often through complicated company structures. That has included at least two Chinese companies seeking to avoid the scrutiny required under law to access sensitive technology of U.K. companies undetected. Another Chinese company is believed to have acquired stolen research data from a top U.K. university. And there are thought to be attempts to bypass and undermine the management and regulatory controls at another two top institutions in order to access and influence cutting-edge research.
MI5, and its allies, also disrupted the acquisition of a sensitive U.K. tech company by Chinese interests, which is linked to U.K. military supply chains, and the supply chains of other major western commercial companies. China has consistently denied accusations of espionage and wrong-doing. Why would anyone be surprised at that? It’s all part of their centralized strategy.
The consequences of research being stolen in cutting-edge fields like Artificial Intelligence are not just a threat to a company’s profitability, but also a major threat for the future of western countries, the head of MI5 warned. “These technologies are at a historic moment, where they are beginning to change our world in some pretty fundamental ways,” Mr. McCallum said. “And we know that authoritarian states are laser-focused on the opportunities that these technologies may present for them. AI, for example, could even offer the chance to interfere with politics in a far more effective way”, he warned.
Concerns over China’ strategy were echoed by other members of the “Five Eyes” alliance.
“China has made economic espionage and stealing others’ work and ideas a central component of its national strategy, and that espionage is at the expense of innovators in all five of our countries,” FBI Director Chris Wray told journalists. “That threat has only gotten more dangerous and more insidious in recent years.”
Chris Wray said there were more than 2,000 current FBI investigations linked to China and that, at one point, his organisation was opening a new investigation every 12 hours.
“All nations spy,” Mike Burgess – the head of Australia’s security service – said at the public part of the event, “but the behaviour we are talking about here goes well beyond traditional espionage.” He argued the scale was unprecedented in human history and needed to be called out.
Decoupling western economies from China would be unrealistic and damaging, the security chiefs argued, and so, instead, the priority is to identify and protect sensitive areas. The chiefs’ appearance at Stanford was timed to coincide with the launch of new guidance to reach those who would previously not have had contact with security services.
The FBI Director described the threat from China as “existential”.
“Existential” is a badly overused word in our current state of politics worldwide, but the situation with China demands our forceful reaction nevertheless.
The Chinese Communist Party obviously has huge goals for the acquisition of information on economics, scientific, and virtually every other form of human endeavour – this includes the geographic acquisition of territory where it thinks it can get away with it.
It is difficult not to conclude that their ultimate goal is to rule the rest of the world, by force if necessary, but certainly by stealth and theft. Time for the rest of the world to wake up and stop this laser-focused campaign before they succeed at a level that will be impossible to reverse. Their attempt is blatant, unrelenting, unapologetic, and even public…..they don’t care if they are caught. They believe they are invincible. Time to teach them they are not! As the old saying goes, “just because you are paranoid (me, in this blog), doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you!”
