Dominic Cummings has made a bombshell claim that China successful stole vast amounts of British state secrets in the run up to 2020. Mr Cummings, who served as Boris Johnson’s most senior adviser, has revealed he was informed in 2020 that Beijing pulled off a huge high-level data breach, which involved “strap” material.
“Strap” intelligence is the government term for the highest level of classified information. In an interview this afternoon, Mr Cummings said: “The cabinet secretary said, ‘We have to explain something; there’s been a serious problem’, and he talked through what this was. “And it was so bizarre that, not just Boris, a few people in the room were looking around like this — ‘Am I somehow misunderstanding what he’s saying? Because it sounds f***ing crazy’.”
“Material from intelligence services. Material from the National Security Secretariat in the Cabinet Office. Things the government has to keep secret. If they’re not secret, then there are very, very serious implications for it.”
He further told The Times that Britain’s most senior officials had covered up the leak, and refused to say what specific information had been compromised and how.
Mr Cummings used the shock claim to counter Keir Starmer’s claim that the ongoing Chinese spy trial case scandal only collapsed because the government refused to describe Beijing as a “threat”.
“Anyone who has been read in at a high level with the intelligence services on China knows that the word threat doesn’t even begin to cover it.
“The degree of penetration in espionage, in all kinds of operations, penetration of critical national infrastructure, theft of intellectual property, the whole range of things is absolutely extraordinary. A hundred times worse than it is in the public domain.
“Everybody who has been briefed on the critical analyses of these things from the intelligence services knows this is true. The idea that it is somehow a difficult semantic question of whether to define them as a threat, or how much of a threat, is absolutely puerile nonsense. And everybody in the heart of Whitehall knows this.
“The Strap system was compromised. All sorts of systems were compromised. Fundamental infrastructure for transferring the most sensitive data around the British state was compromised for a long time. For years.”
Mr Cummings said he would be happy to give further details of the mega leak should MPs choose to hold a committee hearing.
The former top adviser also added that it is possible that the current Prime Minister may not have been made aware of the major security breach, warning: “I would strongly suspect that the officials have buried it and it wouldn’t surprise … It wouldn’t even surprise me if not a single current minister even knows about this.”
He said he had been told by the intelligence services that for many years senior ministers had put Britain’s economic relationship with China ahead of the country’s security.
