Influence is power Beijing wants vast spy net to catch fish of all sizes

An unexpected connection on LinkedIn. An offer of work from a headhunter, most likely a young woman, based in China. The chance to earn perhaps £20,000 part-time writing a handful of geopolitical reports for a Chinese company peppered with “nonpublic” or “insider” insights. Payment in cryptocurrency or cash preferred.

- Dan Sabbagh Defence and security editor

It may seem obvious, on this telling, that something about this approach would be amiss. Nevertheless, China’s powerful Ministry of State Security (MSS) still considers it worthwhile to deploy recruitment consultants to try it - leading MI5 to warn repeatedly about their activity online.

An espionage alert was issued on Tuesday via the offices of Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons speaker, and his Lords equivalent: a single slide following the repeated efforts of Shirly Shen and Amanda Qiu to contact MPs, peers, their staffers, economists and thinktankers.

The alert has the effect of flushing out more information from in and around Westminster, though that is not MI5’s primary purpose. The agency wants people in public life to recognise that just because interactions on LinkedIn are not as toxic as on X or Facebook, it does not mean they are without risk.