Ken McCallum, the spy agency’s director-general, also warned that MI5 had “redoubled” its effort against Chinese activity over the same period as part of an unprecedented joint warning with his FBI counterpart. Britain’s spy chief said the “game-changing challenge” MI5 faced came from an “increasingly authoritarian Chinese Communist Party” that was heavily targeting industrial secrets and intellectual property across the West. A particular focus of Chinese state activity was Western universities, McCallum said, and following a reform of the Academic Technology Approval Scheme (ATAS), “over 50” students linked to the People’s Liberation Army had left the UK. The scheme, run by the UK government, is open to international students from China and other countries subject to immigration control who want to take part in research into military technology or other sensitive subjects. The spy chief did not elaborate on the Chinese students who left, a fraction of the 150,000 who study in the UK, but it was part of a wider warning about Beijing’s spying activities which mainly targeted universities, the military and high-tech businesses and related organisations. . McCallum stood by Christopher Wray, the director of the US FBI, who warned that “we consistently see the Chinese government as the greatest long-term threat to our economic and national security.” It was a threat that was “more serious” than “even many sophisticated business people realize,” Wray said. The US agency opened one China-related investigation every 12 hours, a level of activity that had increased by 1,300% over the past seven years. McCallum added that the “scale of China’s ambitions is huge” and that Beijing was focusing on “core technology areas where it would otherwise be impossible for China to catch up with the West by 2050”. Artificial intelligence was a particular area of interest for China, the head of the domestic spy agency added.
