FBI and MI5 warn ‘we need to act’ over danger of ‘game-changing’ Chinese threat
Britain's top intelligence chiefs have teamed up with America's FBI to monitor China's “game-changing” threat.
According to MI5 director general Ken McCallum, the security service will double its investigations into the ruling Communist Party and is already running seven times as many probes into China as it was four years ago.
In a never seen before appearance beside Christopher Wray at the FBI, on Wednesday, the pair warned that if China invaded Taiwan it would “represent one of the most horrific business disruptions the world has ever seen”.
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Speaking of the severity of the situation at MI5's Thames House HQ in London. Mr McCallum explained they were speaking for the first time in public together to “send the clearest signal we can on a massive shared challenge: China”.
He added: “The most game-changing challenge we face comes from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
“It’s covertly applying pressure across the globe. This might feel abstract but it’s real and it’s pressing. We need to talk about it. We need to act.”
Mr McCallum said MI5 had “already more than doubled our previously-constrained effort against Chinese activity of concern".
He added: “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.”
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Later Mr McCallum 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.”
Describing the CCP’s use of clandestine, coercive or corrupt methods to launch “deceptive” plots to buy and exert influence as well as the use of “sophisticated interference efforts”, Mr McCallum said the threat was a “co-ordinated campaign on a grand scale”, while Mr Wray described it as “breathtaking”.
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”, the FBI boss said, adding that he was “confident in saying that China is drawing all sorts of lessons from what’s happening with Russia and its invasion of Ukraine”.
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“I don’t have any reason to think their interest in Taiwan has abated in any fashion,” he said.
Mr Wray told reporters: “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.”
Mr Wray told the audience Beijing’s administration 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”.
But Mr McCallum said the aim was “not to cut off from China”, adding: “We want a UK which is both connected and resilient.”
He said the security chiefs were discussing the activities of certain parts of the Chinese state and “not the Chinese people” who they “wholeheartedly welcome”, adding: “If my remarks today elicit accusations of Sinophobia, from an authoritarian CCP, I trust you’ll see the irony.”
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