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The writer is senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and an adviser to Gallos Technologies
Russian and Chinese espionage against the west has entered a hyperactive mode. In the past few months, several suspected intelligence officers and agents have been uncovered by police in Britain, Norway and the US. In return, Russia and China have begun seizing random westerners on flimsy espionage charges. A dangerous cycle is unfolding.
While there are no statistics on the number of Russian and Chinese intelligence officers and agents operating in the west, arrests over the past couple of years give a good indication of the rise in activity.
Five Bulgarians arrested in the UK on charges of spying for Russia have just had their first court hearing, and British prosecutors have alleged that the fugitive German fraud suspect Jan Marsalek has been involved in spying for Russia. Norway has detained an academic suspected of being a Russian intelligence officer working undercover as a Brazilian researcher, and a suspected GRU officer has been arrested trying to infiltrate the International Criminal Court.
Britain has arrested a parliamentary researcher and an academic on suspicion of spying for China. Two US Navy sailors of Chinese origin have been detained on further espionage charges. In Sweden, two brothers of Iranian origin — one of whom had served in Sweden’s military intelligence agency, Must — have been convicted of spying for Russia.
This deluge of activity represents a marked change in tactics on both sides. Major General Gunnar Karlson, a former Must chief, tells me that Russian and Chinese espionage is increasing “because they feel they need more results, and they’re willing to take more risks”. Western authorities, meanwhile, are increasingly opting for prosecution rather than simply expelling the spy or disrupting the espionage, which used to be the norm. “Since you don’t normally take cases to court unless the prosecutor thinks there’s a potential for a guilty verdict, this demonstrates that the intelligence services have better evidence,” Karlson says.
However, this public naming and shaming is not as successful as the Five Eyes intelligence partners and their allies might have hoped. Russia and China are “absolutely not embarrassed by anything”, Karlson says. “It has a disruptive effect but not a deterrent one.”
Instead, the response has been to detain random westerners as pawns in their negotiations. China seized two Canadians, Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, on accusations of espionage in retaliation after Ottawa arrested Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on suspicion of violating sanctions. While Beijing denied any connection between the cases, the “two Michaels” were released in 2021 after Meng’s charges were dropped and she returned to China. Russia is detaining Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich on equally dubious espionage charges.
This is probably because even if Moscow and Beijing do not appear to be deterred by seeing their spies arrested or tried, they are still determined to get their agents back. And if they can’t identify and arrest equivalent western spies, any westerner will do. China’s recently amended Counter-Espionage Law puts “documents, data, materials, and items related to national security and interests” under the same protection as state secrets — but without identifying what “national security” or “interests” are. That makes any westerner in China vulnerable to arrest. Russia applies a similarly expansive interpretation of what national security means.
The result is that the more Russian and Chinese spies are arrested, the higher the threat to westerners travelling in those countries. The threat is not only to those with a security service or government background — and this is something that tourists and business travellers would do well to understand. “It’s obviously regrettable . . . I’d like to see the Hermitage,” Karlson says. “But you can live with it.’
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