New Delhi: In a shift of historic proportions in the world of espionage and counter-intelligence, the two heads of two leading spy agencies—Christopher Wray, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the US, and Ken McCallum, director-general of MI5, UK’s premier spy agency—have stated that the main adversary of the ‘Five Eyes’ spy network is no longer Russia but China.
Set up in 1941, ‘Five Eyes’ is an exclusive and secretive club of spy rings of five governments—Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK, and the US—that collaborate to intercept information within other countries to be used for diplomatic, security, military and economic benefits and gains. It is also the world’s oldest intelligence-sharing spy network.
From the end of the Second World War, during the Cold War era, and till recently, Russia was the declared number one enemy nation of the ‘Five Eyes’ network. Apparently, it is China now.
Speaking on Wednesday at an unprecedented joint address at Thames House in London which is the headquarters of MI5, McCallum said: “China is top of the 5EYES Heads’ (‘Five Eyes’) agenda, and our teams are working together closely on our shared priorities. We’re doing likewise with our close European partners. These alliances will remain at the heart of our response.”
“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.”
A premier US intelligence agency, the FBI employs about 35,000 people who are engaged in protecting the US from terrorist attacks, foreign intelligence, espionage, and cyber operations and to combat public corruption at all levels. MI5 is the UK's top domestic intelligence agency that employs about 4,400 people engaged in a range of intelligence functions from investigations to data analysis to surveillance and communications. Partners for long, the FBI and MI5 are both more than a hundred years old.
While the FBI office in London opened in 1942, it is for the first time that the heads of the two spy organizations shared a public platform. Underlining the significance of the event, FBI chief Wray said: “We’re doing so to send the clearest signal we can on a massive shared challenge: China.” Focusing entirely on the “threat” posed by the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Wray appealed to the audience comprised of business honchos to take the agencies into confidence while doing business with China.
Wray said: “I’m not here to tell you to avoid doing business in or with China altogether... But I do have just a few suggestions for those who do plow ahead... I would encourage everyone to work with the two agencies up here. We can arm you with intelligence that bears on just what it is you’re facing.”
“When it comes to the cyber threat, everything from details about how Chinese government hackers are operating to what they’re targeting... And when incidents do occur, we can work together—our agencies and you—to degrade the threat.” “Our folks will race out to give you technical details that will help you lessen the effects of an attack. Together, we can also run joint, sequenced operations that disrupt Chinese government cyber attacks,” Wray added.
The blunt appeal by the FBI and the MI5 to the business leadership may be indicative of the fact that there may be some rethinking of the utility and effectiveness of economic sanctions in Washington DC and London. While several sanctions have been imposed on China for a long, US-led economic sanctions have been imposed on Russia after it invaded Ukraine in a pre-dawn attack on February 24.
