MI5 and FBI chiefs: Chinese spies pose a ‘breathtaking’ threat
THE heads of MI5 and the FBI united yesterday to warn of the ‘breathtaking’ threat from China, whose interference in Britain has seen spy investigations rise sevenfold.
In an unprecedented joint speech, director general Ken McCallum revealed MI5 has doubled its capacity to combat Beijing’s spies.
And he warned it will have to grow as much again to stop China stealing the ‘crown jewels’ from British businesses, universities and institutions.
He insisted ‘we aren’t crying wolf’ over the threat as FBI director Christopher Wray suggested an increasingly aggressive China is gearing up for a war in Taiwan after learning the lessons of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In a joint historic address at MI5 headquarters in London yesterday, Mr Wray said China’s ruling Communist Party had given away a vital ‘clue’ about its future plans.
‘We’ve seen China looking for ways to insulate their economy against potential sanctions, trying to cushion themselves from harm if they do anything to draw the ire of the international community,’ he said. ‘In our world we call that kind of behaviour a clue.’
He said a takeover of Taiwan would unleash ‘one of the most horrific business disruptions the world has ever seen’, predicting that British and American companies and investments would become ‘hostages’ with the ‘catastrophe’ costing billions. It is the first time in history that the head of MI5 and the FBI have shared a public platform, but the two leaders said they wanted to ‘send the clearest signal’ about the danger posed by the Chinese Communist Party.
In the past four years, MI5 has seen a seven-fold increase in investigations into hostile activity from China, whose widespread attempts at interference pervade ‘so many aspects of our national life’, Mr McCallum said.
He warned the scale of the Communist Party’s determination to infiltrate Britain’s governance was such that they were even recruiting people in local government at the outset of their careers. The Glasgowborn spymaster accused China of seeking to ‘bend our econ- omy, our society, our attitudes’ by using Britain’s democratic, media and legal systems for ‘its own gain’.
Yet many unwitting Westerners are still acting as Chinese pawns by defending the Communist Party, he warned.
Mr McCallum insisted ‘we aren’t crying wolf’, telling an audience of business leaders and academics that China is ‘standing on your shoulders to get ahead of you’.
He said: ‘The Chinese Communist Party [is] 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.’ Mr McCallum revealed MI5 has identified 50 Chinese students linked to the People’s Liberation Army who have been removed from the UK.
He said spies had traced attacks on a ‘wide range of Government and commercial targets’ to China, including a sophisticated campaign to target British ‘critical aerospace companies’.
Later, Mr Wray called the scale of the threat from China ‘breathtaking’ and increasing at a ‘blistering’ pace, saying its hacking programme is ‘bigger than that of every other major country combined’. The FBI chief said China wanted to ‘ransack’ Western companies and warned their ‘thuggish behaviour’ even extended to a plot to run over a candidate in a Congressional election in New York.
‘We aren’t crying wolf’