M16 Adjusts Targets to Focus Primarily on Communist China Threat

In a rare public address on Thursday, the head of Britain’s M16 foreign intelligence service has realigned its operations to focus primarily on the threat posed by the Communist China.

 At the Aspen Security Conference this week, Richard Moore, the director of what is known as the Secret Intelligence Service, said: “M16 has never had any illusions about communist China”.

 Moore added that unlike its CIA counterpart, M16 is a dedicated human spying agency and does not engage in intelligence analysis.

 Moore, a former M16 spy recruiter with extensive overseas experience, said there was a growing awareness among governments and the Western public of some of the threats posed by China to the US, the UK and its allies. This has meant a major shift in the focus of British intelligence.

 US intelligence officials said that Chinese counterintelligence agents have captured dozens of US agents recruited in China since 2010, thus limiting the ability of US intelligence to access its secrets. Nonetheless, Moore said it is not difficult to understand the strategic intentions of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

 If you read “Made in China 2025”, it lays out the ambitions of the Communist Chinese Party in global technology dominance. However, when you try to understand how they are implementing this strategy, how they are organizing it, what their tactical intentions are and then what the capabilities they are building, Moore said it’s a black box.