The Very Visible British Hand: Former MI6 Chief Orders West To Stand Up against China, Again

April 16, 2020 (EIRNS)—Yesterday, John Sawers, former chief of Britain’s MI6, otherwise known as the Secret Intelligence Service, pressed the United States to hold China responsible for the coronavirus pandemic, not the World Health Organization. Today, he attacked China on a different flank, insisting the “West must do more to stop China buying up technology.” This message, delivered in an interview with Sky News, has been played up by major media worldwide.

The immediate pretext for today’s attack was rumors that Imagination Technologies, “one of the jewels in Britain’s technological crown,” as Reuters put it, was going to be relocated to China by the Chinese private equity firm, Canyon Bridge, which bought the company in 2017.

Citing that as an example of China seeking “to expand its global clout,” Sawers asserted that “there is going to be deep rivalry over control of technology. We have more to do in the West to make sure we are independent of China.”

Even as he demurred that he doesn’t see China as “an existential threat in the way the Soviet Union was in the Cold War,” Sawers ruled out a new paradigm of cooperation. “We need to do more to protect Western technology from being bought up by Chinese companies,” he insisted.