Chinese spies target nuclear submarine secrets ‘as high priority’

Britain’s military intelligence boss says disrupting the AUKUS defence pact is a ‘high priority’ for Beijing.

Ken McCallum met his counterparts in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance in Silicon Valley this week. Picture: PA/The Times

China is attempting to steal nuclear technology secrets from Britain and disrupt AUKUS, one of its most crucial security agreements, the head of MI5 has said.

Ken McCallum, the director-general of the security service, warned about attempts to infiltrate the AUKUS pact, the nuclear submarine agreement with the US and Australia, developed to counter an increasingly provocative China.

The trilateral initiative, which was announced by Boris Johnson in 2021, will equip the Royal Australian Navy with nuclear-powered vessels for the first time. It was seen as an attempt to check China’s growing military assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region, where its naval force has more than tripled in two decades.

China has accused the three western countries of going down a “dangerous path” over the deal which would “motivate an arms race, damage the international nuclear non-proliferation regime and harm regional stability and peace”.

McCallum said: “If you saw the wider public Chinese reaction when the AUKUS alliance was announced, you can infer from that they were not pleased.

“Given everything else you know about the way in which Chinese espionage and interference is taking place, it would be safe to assume that it would be a high priority for them to understand what’s happening inside AUKUS and seek to disrupt it if they were able to.”

Australian PM Anthony Albanese with President Joe Biden and UK leader Rishi Sunak after a meeting of the AUKUS members at Naval Base Point Loma in San Diego in March. Picture: Reuters/The Times

Although Britain has operated nuclear-powered submarines for more than 60 years, Australia has never built its own. It has Collins-class diesel-electric submarines, but the new fleet is untraceable and can stay under water for longer.

The collaboration underlines the importance of the Five Eyes alliance between the intelligence agencies of Australia, the UK, the US, Canada and New Zealand, the latter of which is likely to join AUKUS.

McCallum and his Five Eyes counterparts gathered in public for the first time on Tuesday to sound the alarm about the threat from China – and demonstrate that its hacking and theft of western intellectual property will not be tolerated.

McCallum warned that British businesses were vulnerable to Chinese attempts to steal sensitive information and revealed that 20,000 officials had been targeted on LinkedIn to lure them into passing over military, technology and other secrets.

The Times