UK Defence Ministry to Probe Old Wi-fi Contract Following Report of Chinese Involvement

Undated file photo of the sign for the Ministry of Defence in London. Tim Ireland/PA Media

The UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) on Sunday said it will launch an investigation after a report suggested the UK’s nuclear secrets could have been put at risk by an old wi-fi contract.

According to the Daily Mail on Sunday, Media Force, one of the armed forces’ wi-fi providers, was partly owned by a Chinese state-owned company for more than three years.

The report said Media Force has worked with the armed force for almost 20 years and is now supplying wi-fi to 46 military bases including the Northwood Headquarters, which hosts the NATO Allied Maritime Command as well as the UK’s nuclear deterrence programme.

Media Force operated under PCCW Global Networks UK between September 2017 and November 2020, until the latter was acquired by British company Wifinity.

PCCW is a Hong Kong-based ICT company partly owned by China Unicom, a Chinese state-owned telecommunications operator.

A number of former and current PCCW executives also held senior positions at China Unicom at the same time.

Lu Yimin was China Unicom president and PCCW deputy chair until he was “transferred” to another state-owned company in January 2018. Before joining China Unicom, Lu worked at the Chinese Communist Party’s General Office of the Central Committee.

Meng Shusen, current president of China Unicom, is a non-executive director at PCCW, while Wang Fang, another non-executive director at PCCW, is a senior director at China Unicom.

Security expert Philip Ingram told the Mail on Sunday he was shocked the MoD allowed the contract to go through, saying the Chinese regime could have obtained information from work and private phones as well as on the UK’s nuclear deterrence deployments.

The MoD said its most sensitive information is protected from wi-fi, and that it will investigate the matter “as a matter of urgency.”

“This issue relates to an historic contract and an organisation no longer involved with Media Force,” the ministry said in a statement.

“We take information security extremely seriously and as a matter of urgency, will be investigating how this contract was enabled,” it added.

“All sensitive material on MoD IT devices is protected via encryption, with our most sensitive information held on systems which are not accessible through wi-fi.”

Wifinity, which bought PCCW Global Networks UK, said it’s an “independent UK-based company” that wholly owns Media Force.

“There is no direct or indirect ownership by any companies associated with the Chinese state,” a spokesperson said.

Wary of Chinese Investment

The relationship between the UK and the Chinese regime has become increasingly strained in recent years following Beijing’s upending of democracy and the rule of law in Hong Kong, its reciprocal sanctioning of British politicians who are vocal critics of its human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and the beating of a Hong Kong protester by Chinese diplomats in Manchester.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Beijing’s constant agitation around Taiwan have further alarmed the West on the ambitions of totalitarian or modern imperialist regimes.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said in a major foreign policy speech on Nov. 28 last year that the so-called “golden era” of the Sino–British relationship is over, and that the UK will strengthen its resilience and economic security.

Since the National Security and Investment Act came into effect last year, successive business secretaries have made 14 interventions in foreign investments over national security concerns, eight of which targeted Chinese buyers.

The blocked or restricted takeovers of British companies involve the UK’s critical infrastructure or technologies that have both civilian and military applications.

Following the acquisition of Newport Wafer Fab by Chinese-owned Dutch company Nexperia, Business Secretary Grant Shapps on Nov. 16 ordered the newly-named Nexperia Newport Limited to sell most of its shares, ruling the takeover had breached national security laws.

After former Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg issued an order in September last year blocking Redrock Investment Ltd.—a subsidiary of China’s state-owned State Development and Investment Corp.—from accessing sensitive information about Britain’s power grid, the acquirer decided not to proceed with the acquisition, according to a notice of revocation of Rees-Mogg’s order published on Dec. 20.

Earlier this month, Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Alicia Kearns wrote to Shapps, urging the minister to review the Chinese takeover of a UK semiconductor company, which was not captured by the new investment law because the name of the acquirer was not mentioned when the takeover was announced in August.