While Delhi has been handling ISI, the same needs to be the case when it comes to dealing with MSS, China’s agency.
In 2020, Australian policymakers decided to constitute a specialised team, “the Counter Foreign Interference Taskforce” that would work under its intelligence agency, Australia’s national security agency (ASIO) in order to carry out intelligence-led disruptions to stop attempts to monitor and harass members of Australia’s diaspora communities and identify people who were being possibly recruited or were already recruited by the intelligence agency of specifically one foreign county, China.
China’s intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security has a dedicated desk to handle matters related to Australia, as it has a dedicated set of officers who handle India and Indians. Since then, in the last four years, the task force has executed more than 120 such counter intelligence operations alone to fulfil its objectives, which come to 30 attempts that were successfully identified every year or more than two attempts every month.
Some of the operations include intervening to stop an Australian field expert on foreign policy and trade from being entrapped by the intelligence officers of the Ministry of State Security, who had approached him for a consulting role and insights in lieu of a handsome remuneration, a fully paid travel to and stay in a city outside Australia to decide the consultations details.
ASIO, however, stopped this cultivation, at the very last moment. These are the attempts that the ASIO was able to stop from reaching the intended conclusions. However, there are many such cases, where ASIO could not intervene in time. A few years ago, the Chinese agencies successfully cultivated and recruited a former Australian politician who, for years, worked on their payroll, sharing key details and even moved ahead to recruit a close family member of the Prime Minister for the agency.
By the time ASIO became aware, a lot of sensitive information had already landed on the desk of the MSS. In a similar counter operation that was carried out by the task force they were able to intervene in an MSS-led operation in which leading Australian academics and political figures were invited to a conference outside Australia with all expenses including airfares, paid. Once they reached there, they were introduced to individuals who said that they were bureaucrats but in reality were mid-level MSS officers.
They were able to entrap one academic and one politician. The ASIO, after becoming aware of this entrapment, helped one of the two as he was found to not to be aware that he was working for the MSS, the other did not receive any help from the ASIO as he continued helping the MSS despite being clearly aware that they were Chinese intelligence. According to people who are aware of the intelligence activities carried out by both the Chinese agency and the Pakistani intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, their preferred form of reaching out to victims is through social media, as this form of conducting espionage is easy.
“This form of espionage is low-cost, low-risk, loweffort—and can be conducted at scale. Hundreds of friend requests can be sent each day,” as Mike Burgess, Director-General of ASIO recently remarked without mentioning the country or countries who were using this method. In what should ring alarm bells in Delhi, Burgess stated that the country was facing an unprecedented level of interference from foreign countries at multiple levels. “Australians need to know that the threat is real. The threat is now. And the threat is deeper and broader than you might think.”
There was “a particular team in a particular foreign intelligence service with a particular focus on Australia—we are its priority target,” he warned, without taking any names but it was clear that he was referring to the MSS. While Delhi has largely been able to decipher and counter the tools and modus operandi that are employed by its traditional foe, Islamabad, as far as its intelligence operations are concerned, the same needs to be the case when it comes to dealing with MSS, whose operations are more nuanced, quiet and silent unlike their iron-clad brothers, ISI.
The India-China strategic rivalry that has taken new meanings in the last couple of years, has witnessed renewed focus of the MSS in CCP efforts to hurt India. From targeting power stations to disrupting electricity to recruiting subject experts through LinkedIn to trying to entrap selected journalists through financial assistance or honey trap, it has been on an offensive drive and has succeeded in reeling in some of its intended targets. It is not known whether the Indian external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) has a task force similar to what Australia.
Among friendly countries, the Central Intelligence Agency, ASIO and Mossad regularly put out in public their achievements and details of not so successful operations. Sources in the security establishment said, irrespective of R&AW’s policy of not publicizing its work, agencies responsible for protecting the sovereign and security interest of India have details of politicians or journalists who are working for foreign entities, and have been taking timely steps to neutralise disruption from them. Since 2020, at least two journalists have been arrested by the Indian security agencies under the allegations of working for foreign intelligence agencies, including the MSS.
In India, instances of trapping individuals by foreign countries’ agencies or meetings to extract sensitive information often occur within the supposedly safe confines of foreign embassies. Sources recalled one such meeting held a couple of years in one of the embassies where a couple of high profile politicians were involved. However, they accept that the challenge posed by China was enormous, given the resources and technology it has at its disposal.
Secondly, the main target of MSS and the two other similar organizations—the General Staff Department and the United Front Work Department—is the United States which has a wellfunded box of tools to conduct counter-espionage and to stop Chinese penetration. In this context, Chinese agencies devise their strategies and procure tools by keeping not just India but the US in mind.