If you was in charge of a nation’s military would you allow a piece of equipment designed and built by a geopolitical adversary to be used by your troops, defence administrators or those who may be visiting some highly sensitive military or intelligence sites? Would you do this if you suspected that these pieces of equipment were continually sending data back to the adversary nation in question?Of course you would not. You would look at this particular piece of equipment and go ‘no way’. It would be the only sensible and security conscious option.

Well according to a piece in the Critic I’ve seen this is what Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MOD) has done. The MOD has bought hundreds of Chinese made vehicles, mostly electric ones for MOD use. These vehicles are going in and out of sensitive military areas and most likely gathering from their numerous sensors and cameras vast amounts of detail about the use of these vehicles and who is using them and for what purpose.

What’s even worse is the MOD know of the espionage dangers posed by Chinese vehicles as they’ve warned MOD personnel not to plug MOD devices into the cars and to refrain discussing any matter classified above the level of ‘Official’ whilst travelling in these vehicles. The MOD has also banned Chinese made vehicles from military bases in Hereford and Poole the homes of the Special Air Service and Special Boat Service respectively. The MOD know that these vehicles are a security risk but carry on using them anyway, it’s utter and complete madness.

Ted Jeffery writing in the Critic said:

“Former senior military intelligence officer Philip Ingram, who knows a thing or two about gathering intel, calls this a shocking example of “naivety” on the part of the MoD. He says Chinese cars are nothing but “mobile intelligence-gathering devices”. He adds: “The best spy gadget is one that does something everyone wants so you don’t suspect the ulterior motive. The MoD is stupid not to take the risk seriously.”

The mind-boggling thing is the department knows the risks. Warning stickers on the dashboards read: “MoD devices are NOT to be connected to the vehicle” and “Avoid conversations above OFFICIAL within the vehicle”. So why, given the risks, has the MoD procured an extra 553 Chinese-made vehicles in the past year?

Former Chief of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, tells me ministers and staff are “completely undisciplined”, so dashboard warnings don’t matter. As the former head of Britain’s foreign intelligence service, he spent his career exploiting the enemy’s weaknesses. He adds: “I was trained as a poacher, not a gamekeeper. I understand very profoundly these human frailties and the fact that very, very few individuals will exercise that degree of self-discipline when they’re under pressure.”“

I agree there that this is an utterly mad and slipshod way of treating something like security. Who knows what information the Chinese government has already gathered because of this foolish decision by the MOD to purchase Chinese vehicles for official use. This is because as many of us know Chinese companies have to step in and help Chinese government officials if they request data gathered by Chinese electronic products that have been sold either within or outside of China. There is no way that a Chinese manufacturer can evade this law or overseas customers can request from Chinese manufacturers that intelligence capabilities are removed from products. This capability is there in the product, is deeply built in and cannot be removed or removed easily not even by the end user of the item.

Britain is clearly governed by fools and what’s worse is I can see no way of easily removing such fools and replacing them with those who might have less foolishness. We are, quite frankly, buggered unless something big happens to drive the fools away from the positions that they hold.

Link

Mr Jeffery’s piece on MOD using Chinese kit from The Critic magazine

https://thecritic.co.uk/chinese-whispers-2/