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 “non-public” or “insider” insights. Payment in cryptocurrency or cash preferred.
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.
I am offended
In 2023, the MI5 chief, Ken McCallum, said Chinese agents were approaching Britons on LinkedIn on an extraordinary scale, 10,000 over the preceding two and a half years, seeking political, industrial, military and technological secrets.
Guess that shows that I’m not considered one of the top 10k then.
Sigh. As with earlier when in Russia etc. No one ever did try a honeytrap…..insignificant little mouse that I am.
I’m really offended that the only Chinese honey trap tried on me was from someone I met on a train in Xian, who wrote to me at my home address (which I hadn’t given him) enclosing a picture of me (which I don’t remember him taking and in which I wasn’t looking at the camera) saying how charming I looked and asking when I was returning to China 🙂
Mind you, I did spend a lot of time chatting up a lady from an ammunition factory on another train!
How did he get your home address, we wonder? Does not sound like a spy thing to me, but then I don’t know much about that sort of thing.
Somewhere in China there’s a married couple whose wedding photos include me, towering over the pair of them. 20 years ago I was on one of those ‘See China in a Fortnight’ trips (I only went to see the Terracotta Army) and our itinerary was wasting some time in a park somewhere (possibly Nanking) and this couple were having their wedding photos done. They saw me, 6′ tall westerner and decided thats just what they wanted for the mantlepiece, a wedding photo with the gweilo. Sadly I’ve not been inundated with any offers from attractive Chinese ladies since 🙁
“An obvious question, though, is what Beijing has to gain. A politician who is not a government minister will have limited knowledge of classified material, and an associate of theirs less so.”
Remember, everyone wants a job, bigger office, more pay, more budget. If you’re a guy in Beijing and can get 1,000 staff by spinning a line about how important intelligence is from Dave Spart and Sir Tufton Bufton, you might well do it. There is no omnimind in China.
Lots of limited snippets of knowledge can also be pieced together to form a bigger part of the picture
“A politician who is not a government minister will have limited knowledge of classified material”
Where do you think the ministers get their classified material from?
The minister might know what they’ve decided to do about things, but the knowledge is gathered by non-ministers.
That also applies to Chinese bureaucrats – look how many people I get information from ……
I’d say that’s very perceptive of you, WB. Always consider. the motives of the person you’re actually dealing with.
Personally, if anyone offered me crypto for anything I’d run a mile. Cash? I’ll promise anything for for cash. Doesn’t mean you’ll actually get anything, though. And I welcome scammers with open arms. The easiest people to scam are scammers. They’re so concentrated on their scam, they can’t see the scam coming at them. Trouble is, they’ve rarely got any money… 🙁
You see my first thought with something like this is, is someone trying to compromise you? If you are in a position to have valuable information, they enter a dialogue with you. They can then blackmail you by threatening to reveal the dialogue to your employers. Then you’re really on the hook. The LinkedIn communication could be a trawl. There will always be an idiot out there who will bite.
I put my LinkedIn profile to “Open to offers from sexy female spies”
But they keep sending the usual munters
It’s a complete nightmare. Unless you’re going to quit the country, never do a crime like this.
These ‘spies’ are so dim, they thought cultivating the Andrew formerly known as Prince would provide them with classified info. They probably thought he was the equivalent of Xi’s brother.
I would be naturally suspicious of any woman who wants to have sex with me
My rough rule of thumb is: were you fingering girls like this at school? If not, you’re going to get scammed in some way.
Always amazes me how guys spend their time being nice to girls out of their league. They’ll spend hours at the hot girl’s desk fixing her Excel instead of telling her to google vlookup.
That’s why I got into the glamorous world of IT.
For the clunge
You are a perceptive guy, WB. I’ve seen so many guys on the short leash, sitting up & begging, rolling to have their tummy tickled under those circumstances.
So would I Steve, but I’d still say yes.
“I would be naturally suspicious of any woman who wants to have sex with me”
I’d like to think that I would too, but as my dear ol’ pop was wont to say “a standing prick has no common sense”
Tim, I’d guess that it’s because you’re clearly anti-government.
Not just Opposition, who might be government next time round so are useful, but against the whole lot.
Therefore you’re unlikely to have any government secrets (and if you did, you’d probably have already published them)
Why do they bother with this these days?
Far easier to spend some time on War Thunder forums, where classified military documents are leaked with alarming regularity