LONDON –
The head of Britain’s cyber-intelligence agency on Tuesday accused China of trying to “rewrite the rules of international security”, saying Beijing is using its economic and technological clout to clamp down at home and exert control abroad. .
Jeremy Fleming, director of GCHQ, said that despite the war raging in Europe since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Beijing’s growing power is “the national security issue that will define our future.”
In a rare public address to the Royal United Services Institute think tank, Fleming argued that the communist authorities in Beijing want to “gain a strategic advantage by shaping the global tech ecosystem.”
“When it comes to technology, the politically motivated actions of the Chinese state are an increasingly urgent issue that we need to recognize and address,” Fleming said. “That’s because it’s changing the definition of national security to a much broader concept. Technology has become not just an area of opportunity, for competition and collaboration, but a battlefield for control, values. and influence.”
He argued that the one-party system in Beijing seeks to control China’s population and sees other countries “as potential adversaries or potential client states, to be threatened, bribed or coerced.”
Relations between Britain and China have grown increasingly frosty in recent years, with UK officials accusing Beijing of economic subterfuge and human rights abuses.
British spies have given increasingly negative assessments of Beijing’s influence and intentions. Last year, the head of the MI6 foreign intelligence agency, Richard Moore, called China one of the biggest threats to Britain and its allies.
In 2020, then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson followed the US in banning Chinese tech company Huawei as a security risk and ordering it removed from the UK’s 5G telecommunications network by 2027.
Fleming warned that China is seeking to fragment the internet infrastructure to exert greater control. He also said that China is trying to use digital currencies used by central banks to spy on user transactions and as a way to avoid future international sanctions of the kind imposed on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
Fleming argued that China’s BeiDou satellite system, an alternative to widely used GPS navigation technology, could contain “a powerful anti-satellite capability, with the doctrine of denying other nations access to space in the event of a conflict.”
Fleming warned that the world is approaching a “sliding door” moment in history, a reference to Gwyneth Paltrow’s 1998 film in which a woman’s fate hinges on a seemingly trivial moment.
He called on Western companies and researchers to tighten intellectual property protections and for democratic countries to develop alternatives that can prevent developing nations from “mortgaging the future by accepting China’s vision of technology.”
He said the world’s democracies cannot afford to be left behind in cutting-edge fields like quantum computing, and warned of a possible weakness in semiconductors, the critical chips used in everyday electronics. Taiwan, which China considers a breakaway province to be reclaimed by force if necessary, leads the world in its production.
“Events in the Taiwan Strait, any risk to that vital supply chain, have the potential to directly impact UK resilience and future global growth,” Fleming said.
Fleming also referred to the war in Ukraine, saying that Russia is running out of weapons and Ukraine’s “courageous action on the battlefield and in cyberspace is turning the tide.”
“Russia’s forces are exhausted,” he said. “The use of prisoners to reinforce, and now the mobilization of tens of thousands of inexperienced recruits, speaks of a desperate situation.”
GCHQ, formally known as Government Communications Headquarters, is one of Britain’s three main intelligence agencies, along with MI5 and MI6. He did not reveal the sources of his intelligence on China and Russia.