MI5 to double probes amid China threat

MI5 will double its investigations into China in the face of the “game-changing” threat posed by the ruling communist party, the head of the security service has said.

Director-general Ken McCallum said MI5 is running seven times as many investigations into China as it was four years ago, and plans to “grow as much again” to tackle the widespread attempts at interference which pervade “so many aspects of our national life”.

In an unprecedented joint address with the director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, at MI5’s Thames House headquarters in London yesterday, an audience of business leaders and academic chiefs also heard warnings that a Chinese takeover of Taiwan could “represent one of the most horrific business disruptions the world has ever seen”.

Mr McCallum said: “Today is the first time the heads of the FBI and MI5 have shared a public platform.

“We’re doing so to send the clearest signal we can on a massive shared challenge: China.

“The most game-changing challenge we face comes from the Chinese communist party. It’s covertly applying pressure across the globe. MI5 has already more than doubled our previously constrained effort against Chinese activity of concern.

“Today we’re running seven times as many investigations as we were in 2018. We plan to grow as much again, while also maintaining significant effort against Russian and Iranian covert threats.”

He later told reporters: “We plan to double again,” adding: “China is the most game-changing threat in the sense that it pervades so many aspects of our national life.”

Mr Wray warned that if China was to try to “forcibly take over Taiwan” it would “represent one of the most horrific business disruptions the world has ever seen”.

Describing the threat as a “complex, enduring and pervasive danger” to “innovative businesses”, Mr Wray said: “We consistently see that it’s the Chinese government that poses the biggest long-term threat to our economic and national security, and by ‘our,’ I mean both our nations, along with our allies in Europe and elsewhere.”

He told the audience the Chinese government is “set on stealing your technology, whatever it is that makes your industry tick, and using it to undercut your business and dominate your market.”