Chinese spies have attempted to make contact with over 20,000 people in the United Kingdom through online channels, the director of MI5 has claimed in a BBC interview.

McCallum made the comments during a gathering of the Five Eyes alliance at Stanford University in California. Five Eyes is a global security intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the US. The alliance held its first public joint meeting on Tuesday to make public warnings over the theft of trade secrets through Chinese espionage. 

In both public statements and a closed session with entrepreneurs and investors, security chiefs warned that cutting-edge research is being stolen.

“We have seen a sustained campaign on a pretty epic scale,” Ken McCallum told the BBC.

In the past, MI5 concentrated on defending government secrets from foreign spies, but today there is concern that innovation is frequently stolen from start-ups, small businesses, and researchers who may not have been concerned about security in the past.

"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, explaining that trade secrets are now being poached from smaller companies as well as larger enterprises. 

McCallum specifically mentioned that AI was among the sensitive technologies that MI5 believed were being targeted by Chinese espionage. 

“These technologies are at a historic moment where they are beginning to change our world in pretty fundamental ways,” stated McCallum, “and we know that authoritarian states are laser-focused on the opportunities that these technologies may present to them.” 

In order to warn tens of thousands of potentially vulnerable UK companies, MI5 is being forced to make public statements that it has never made before.

According to Mr. McCallum, MI5 has now observed suspected Chinese operatives approaching over 20,000 individuals in the UK via professional networking sites like LinkedIn in an effort to persuade them to divulge sensitive material, which is a twofold increase over the number that had been previously reported.

The MI5 chief also warned British researchers earlier this year they are key targets for hostile actors, who are stealing British research with “dispiriting regularity”.

He said, “If your field of research is relevant to advanced materials or quantum computing or AI or biotech, to name but a few, your work will be of interest to people employed by states who do not share our values.”

The MI5 has also observed over 20 instances in the past year of Chinese companies considering or actively attempting to gain access to sensitive technology developed by UK businesses and universities through investments or other means where the full role of China is hidden, frequently through complex company structures.

That has included at least two Chinese companies seeking to avoid the scrutiny required under law to access sensitive technology of UK companies undetected.

Another Chinese company is believed to have acquired stolen research data from a top UK university. Additionally, it is believed that efforts are being made to get around and undermine the management and regulatory restrictions at two more prestigious institutions in order to access and shape cutting-edge research.

Additionally, MI5 and its allies thwarted the purchase of a critical UK tech firm that was itself connected to the supply chains of both the UK military and other significant Western corporations. China has consistently denied accusations of espionage and wrongdoing.

The espionage threat of China remained the focus for several members of the panel, with FBI director Chris Wray saying, “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.

“That threat has only gotten more dangerous and more insidious in recent years.”

He claimed that the FBI was currently conducting more than 2,000 inquiries related to China and that at one point, his organisation was starting a new inquiry every 12 hours.

"All nations spy," Mike Burgess - the head of Australia's security service - said at the public event featuring the five spy chiefs, "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.

The security officials stated that it is more important to identify and safeguard vulnerable regions since decoupling Western economies from China would be impractical and harmful. They showed up at the same time as the introduction of new guidance, which was intended to reach people who would not have previously interacted with security agencies.

The meeting was held in the background of Middle Eastern events as well as concerns about rising domestic radicalization and threats.

"We can focus on more than one thing at one time," the FBI Director said, describing the threat from China as "existential".

Image source: FBI