A report indicates that China intercepted extensive sensitive documents from the UK government, including those related to national security, over several years by acquiring relevant data centers. This situation was allegedly concealed through legal threats against former officials.
Dominic Cummings, who was an advisor to the British prime minister during Boris Johnson’s administration, recounted being present when a senior civil servant disclosed that China had accessed some of the UK’s most secret documents by purchasing a data company utilized by Whitehall for internal file transfers.
According to Cummings, officials were advised—himself included—that discussing this information was “illegal,” effectively silencing the narrative in 2020. Now, amid criticism over the recent collapse of a Chinese spy trial, Cummings seems determined to speak out, particularly regarding the current left-wing government’s hesitance to label China an “enemy.”
Cummings remarked that, in upcoming podcasts, he finds it hard to fathom how any government could so naively transmit sensitive data through a Chinese-owned data center, describing the situation as both “illegal to discuss” and “mentally wrong.”
A report sheds light on these allegations and includes vague confirmations from four government insiders and a former Tory security minister, who echoed Cummings’ claims. The documents that China accessed reportedly involved top secret materials, including information from intelligence agencies and the Cabinet Office’s National Security Agency.
The UK government asserted that China intercepted data through the acquisition of a company responsible for managing a data center used for file transfers. Anonymous sources described the situation as a product of “stratospheric chaos.”
The Cabinet Office, one of the most influential departments in the UK government, denied these allegations, stating that the systems used for transferring sensitive information remained uncompromised.
Recently, charges against two British individuals accused of espionage for China were dropped. There were allegations that prosecutors faced obstruction from within the government during their investigation. Reports suggested that legal requirements to label spies as working for an “enemy” complicated matters, as the government was hesitant to apply that label to China.
In one reported case, senior civil servants were approached to testify against the suspected spies, though both denied the accusations, claiming the government was committed to nurturing a “positive relationship” with China.
If Cummings’ revelations hold true, they would strongly suggest that the Chinese government is indeed acting as a hostile entity and would underscore the magnitude of the failed spy case. This timing for Cummings to vocalize these issues could reflect a strategy after legal threats attempted to silence him.
Critics have noted that the prime minister and the former top prosecutor did not act to prevent the case’s collapse, leading to suspicions of their complicity in undermining the investigation. The National Security Adviser, Jonathan Powell, is also facing scrutiny.
Even prior to the revelations about the data center, Nigel Farage emphasized that the UK’s lax cybersecurity measures could jeopardize its intelligence-sharing alliance with the US, which has been concerned about the UK’s vulnerabilities concerning China since the Huawei incident in 2020. “This is very serious,” he stated recently.
