China pursuing 'very promiscuous' strategy to obtain intelligence
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China is engaged in a “very promiscuous” strategy to obtain intelligence and scientific knowledge from all sorts of organisations, including universities in Britain and Ireland, a former British spy chief has said.
Nigel Inkster, former director of operations and intelligence at MI6, told an event in Dublin that there needs to be “much more rigorous policing” of this threat.
His comments come just days after Nato’s top military adviser, during an official visit to Ireland, warned that universities, including those engaged in high tech research, should be keeping their intellectual property in a “vault”.
Admiral Robert Bauer said this was because such intellectual property is being “stolen on a daily basis” by China.
Mr Inkster, who now works as a senior adviser on cyber-security and China at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said he did not want a “McCarthyist” approach involving “systemic discrimination” of Chinese people, but a “realistic” one.
“There are real issues,” he told the Institute of International and European Affairs in Dublin. “The fact is China is engaged in a very promiscuous effort to collect all manner of available intelligence about China and the rest of the world for all sorts of purposes.
“So I think there is a need for much more rigorous policing of this kind of activity. I think there is a need for universities engaged in advanced scientific and technical research to be more aware of the vulnerabilities and risks.”
He said China is seeking "dominance” in the next generation of technologies.
“That is the plan and what they are doing with Western universities, in terms of collaboration, is part of that," he said.
But he added: “We need to be careful, we don’t want to end up in a situation where, like in the US, the FBI were turning over ethnic Chinese scientists and creating fear and alienation in US-China diaspora.
"I have skin in this game: my wife is ethnically Chinese, I have two three-quarters ethnically Chinese grandchildren in the US. I do not want a world where there is systemic discrimination against Chinese simply by virtue of the colour of their skin.”