all the hallmarks

Oh Lordy it’s Fu Manchu again. Headline:

Gordon Brown aide a victim of honeytrap operation by Chinese agents

Lede:

A top aide to Gordon Brown has been a suspected victim of a “honeytrap” operation by Chinese intelligence agents.

Substance:

The aide, a senior Downing Street adviser who was with the prime minister on a trip to China earlier this year, had his BlackBerry phone stolen after being picked up by a Chinese woman who had approached him in a Shanghai hotel disco.

So the hotel tart nicked his Blackberry, and presumably a load of other stuff. A not untypical encounter. But:

A senior official said yesterday that the incident had all the hallmarks of a suspected honeytrap by Chinese intelligence.

Crap. A honeytrap operation is carried out for the purposes of later blackmail. But never mind. In addition to controlling every single Chinese overseas student, Chinese intelligence is at the centre of a web controlling every hotel prostitute in China. Not to mention all the hackers:

The incident highlights the growing threat of Chinese intelligence to Britain and the West. Last December Jonathan Evans, the director-general of MI5, warned that China was carrying out state-sponsored espionage against vital parts of Britain’s economy, including the computer systems of big banks and financial services firms.

On that subject, see Bruce Schneier. Is there anybody in China not employed by the great hive mind of Chinese Intelligence? What happens when Chinese Intelligence has its annual review and march past? Do they all go past in divisions, the tarts swinging their handbags at the podium in salute?

I suspect the proximate cause of this story was that the man’s name had gone round the Westminster rumour mill to the extent that he was on the verge of being outed, so the ever popular Chinese spies story was spun out of the wreckage.

More generally, I think the spy mania represents a kind of competition anxiety. You heard the same about the Japanese a decade and a half ago when they were taking over the world, and about the Germans in thre latter years of the nineteenth century. It’s inconceivable that the Chinese could beat us in a competition for global wealth and power conducted according to rules we set ourselves: therefore it must be a fiendish web of espionage.

Comments

[Madam Miaow]

"Is there anybody in China not employed by the great hive mind of Chinese Intelligence?"

BWA-HA-HA!!!! We will vanquish! We will win this thing called the "Human Race" for which we have no respect, empathy or sensitivity.

Prepare to be assimilated, puny white man. Yes, and your little dog, too. For our time has come. THE DRAGON AWAKES .....

(How much can you get for a second-hand Blackberry?)