Deputy PM Oliver Dowden set to brief MPs on cyber threat posed by China

Published

1 year ago

March 25, 2024

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MPs are set to be briefed on the cyber threat posed by China today, while a smaller group of parliamentarians will be told about specific threats against them.

Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden is applying to the Speaker’s office to make a statement to parliament about China on Monday, Sky News understands.

He is expected to tell parliament that Beijing is behind a wave of cyber attacks against MPs and peers, as well as accessing the personal details of 40 million voters in a hack on the Electoral Commission last year.

Meanwhile, three MPs and a peer are due to be told about recent cyber attacks against them.

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Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron is set to brief the 1922 Committee of backbench Conservative MPs on Monday evening as well, and the topic will likely be raised here.

Rishi Sunak has declined to brand China a threat, despite pressure from some wings of the party.

A Downing Street source told Sky News: “The prime minister has always had a robust position on China; we call [their behaviour] out.

“We can’t cut all links with China – that would not be a sensible thing to do, not least on issues such as climate change – and we need to know what they are saying, what they are trying to do, working with partners and our Five Eyes allies.

“But there is no doubt we have an ‘eyes wide open’ approach.”

China’s behaviour will come under particular scrutiny this year with the UK, the US, India and a swathe of other countries holding elections.

Speaking to Sky News, Alicia Kearns, the chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, said: “I think politicians have to be concerned and also vigilant at all times.

“The reality is that hostile states will try to undermine our democracy, even in peacetime – if you want to call it that.

“This is the year where most elections around the world will be taking place as the biggest number of people to vote in one year ever. I am greatly concerned about what might be taking place not only in the UK, but around the world, and the way in which some hostile states may seek to try and influence the outcomes.”

Remarkable volte-face in UK-China relations

By Matthew Thompson, political correspondent

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. As parliament braces itself for yet another day of ominous warnings about the malign influence of China, it is worth a brief trip back to the halcyon days of 2015.

Then chancellor George Osborne landed in Beijing promising a “golden decade” of Sino-British relations.

Not long afterwards, prime minister David Cameron cosied up to Xi Jinping over pints in an English pub. It was an era of warm words, and open doors. China began playing a significant role in major British infrastructure projects such as 5G and nuclear power plants.

And yet, fast-forward less than ten years, and Chinese involvement in 5G has been scrapped; MI5 has outed an alleged Chinese spy working in parliament, and the Intelligence and Security Committee has warned that China is “prolifically and aggressively” targeting the UK.

The “golden decade”, it would be fair to say, has lost some of its lustre.

On Monday, we expect to hear that China is also conducting cyber attacks against sitting MPs. Lord Cameron, now foreign secretary, will be meeting Tory backbenchers to discuss their concerns on issues including China.

It is a remarkable volte-face. Some accuse Cameron and his successors of naivety. Not least the Americans, who warned of threats to UK national security. A more charitable interpretation would be that it was worth a try, to bind China more closely to the liberal international order.

But the Chinese have a phrase: “Honey in the mouth, dagger in the stomach.” It was first used to describe a treacherous Tang-dynasty courtier who lived over a thousand years ago. But its lessons should perhaps have been heeded much more recently than that.

And speaking about threats to MPs, Ms Kearns added: “I’ve had attacks on my emails, which emanated from China.

“The threat is real, they are trying to undermine our democracy.

“And if we do not have a public strategy of which the whole country can unite, we will have gaps in our resilience and that will leave us vulnerable.”

Ms Kearns’s warnings come following reports in The Sunday Times that Alison Giles, parliament’s director of security, is set to brief former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, former Conservative education minister Tim Loughton, crossbench peer Lord Alton of Liverpool and SNP MP Stewart McDonald.

All are critics of the Chinese government and members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), a group of MPs from across the world who probe Beijing’s activities.

Luke de Pulford, the creator and executive director of IPAC, told Sky News the statements from the government follow pressure from the intelligence and security services.

“Ministers are finally able to say what they have wanted them to for ages – which is actually we have got a real problem,” he said.

“This is a very serious security threat,” he added.

The UK’s attitudes to China appear to be hardening.

Last year, a parliamentary worker was arrested on suspicion of spying for the country, and in 2022 the head of MI5 warned alongside his FBI counterpart that China was a “game-changing challenge”.

It is a far cry from the “golden era” the then prime minister Lord Cameron announced between the UK and China alongside Chinese premier Xi Jinping in 2015.

There has also been concern over the way Chinese-owned technology companies, like ByteDance’s TikTok or Huawei, handle data.

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Ms Kearns added: “I should be clear, this is the Chinese Communist Party, this is not the Chinese people, this is not in their interests.

“This is a Chinese Communist Party trying to achieve its objectives and goals at the cost of ours, and the reality is they will continue to try to make us vulnerable by making us dependent on them at home, whether it comes to data or technology.

“And they will continue to try to extract data with technology such as TikTok, and they will continue to try to undermine us by buying up allies around the world and rewriting the multilateral system.”

The Chinese embassy has been approached for comment.

Politics

Trump’s use of presidential seal at memecoin event raises legal questions

Published

3 hours ago

May 24, 2025

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Trump’s use of presidential seal at memecoin event raises legal questions

President Donald Trump is facing scrutiny after speaking at a private event for top investors in his $TRUMP memecoin while standing behind a lectern emblazoned with the official presidential seal — a move that may violate federal law.

The event took place Thursday at Trump National Golf Club in Virginia, where Trump addressed 220 investors in his cryptocurrency project.

According to US law, the presidential seal cannot be used in any manner that could imply government approval or sponsorship. Violators can face fines or up to six months in prison.

Trump, who arrived at the club aboard a military helicopter, praised attendees and took aim at the Biden administration’s crypto stance.

When asked about potential conflicts of interest, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president’s involvement was personal. “It is not a White House dinner,” she told reporters. “It’s not taking place here at the White House.”

Trump features presidential seal at private properties

This isn’t the first time Trump has featured the presidential seal at his private properties. Forbes has previously reported its use as golf markers at several Trump-owned clubs.

In a May 22 letter to the Justice Department, 35 House members asked the public integrity section acting chief, Edward Sullivan, to launch an inquiry over the memecoin dinner to determine whether it violated the federal bribery statute or the foreign emoluments clause of the US Constitution.

Under the emoluments clause, a US president is barred from accepting any gift from a foreign state without the approval of Congress.

Bloomberg reported that a majority of the attendees at the memecoin dinner were likely foreign nationals based on their connections to crypto exchanges.

“US law prohibits foreign persons from contributing to US political campaigns,” said the letter. “However, the $TRUMP memecoin, including the promotion of a dinner promising exclusive access to the President, opens the door for foreign governments to buy influence with the President, all without disclosing their identities.”

Trump embraces crypto despite previous skepticism

Trump’s embrace of crypto marks a sharp turn from his skepticism during his first term. The $TRUMP memecoin, launched earlier this year, peaked at $74.34 before falling to $14.44 by May 22.

High-profile guests at the dinner included Tron founder Justin Sun, ex-NBA player Lamar Odom, and Asian crypto executives Sangrok Oh and Vincent Liu.

Sun, who reportedly invested over $40 million in $TRUMP tokens and spoke at the dinner, also has deep ties to Trump’s crypto ventures. He’s the top backer of World Liberty Financial, a Trump-affiliated firm currently under regulatory scrutiny.

Magazine: Crypto scam hub expose stunt goes viral, Kakao detects 70K scam apps: Asia Express

Politics

Judge overturns fraud convictions in Mango Markets exploit case

Published

6 hours ago

May 24, 2025

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Judge overturns fraud convictions in Mango Markets exploit case

A US federal judge has vacated key fraud and manipulation convictions against Avraham Eisenberg, the trader at the center of the case involving a $110 million exploit of the decentralized exchange Mango Markets.

On Friday, US District Judge Arun Subramanian ruled that the evidence presented at trial failed to support the jury’s conclusion that Eisenberg made materially false representations to Mango Markets.

The decision vacates Eisenberg’s convictions for commodities fraud and market manipulation and acquits him of a third charge, significantly weakening the government’s case.

Eisenberg, a self-proclaimed “applied game theorist,” was convicted in 2024 for artificially inflating the price of Mango’s MNGO token by over 1,300% in a matter of minutes and using the resulting gains as collateral to withdraw $110 million in crypto assets from the platform.

Judge sides with Eisenberg

The Justice Department argued that he deceived Mango’s smart contract-based lending system, but Eisenberg’s defense maintained that he merely exploited poorly designed, permissionless code — without making any false representations.

Judge Subramanian agreed, writing that “Mango Markets was permissionless and automatic,” meaning the system couldn’t be deceived in a legal sense. “There was insufficient evidence of falsity,” the judge added, siding with Eisenberg’s interpretation of DeFi mechanics.

The judge also rejected prosecutors’ argument that the case should be heard in New York. Eisenberg was in Puerto Rico at the time of the trades, and the court found that no meaningful activity tied to the alleged crime occurred in New York.

The DOJ had cited a Poughkeepsie-based Mango user and a third-party vendor in Manhattan, but the judge ruled these were not enough to establish proper venue.

The US government must now decide whether to refile the vacated charges, though the Trump administration has recently signaled a reduced focus on crypto enforcement. Eisenberg still faces civil suits from both the SEC and CFTC.

While this ruling clears Eisenberg in the Mango Markets case, he remains behind bars.

Eisenberg charged with child pornography

In a separate case, Eisenberg was sentenced to nearly four years in prison on May 1 after pleading guilty to possessing child pornography — a charge stemming from unrelated evidence uncovered during his arrest.

In December 2022, US federal law enforcement authorities arrested Eisenberg in Puerto Rico. FBI officials charged the hacker with one count of commodities fraud and one count of commodities manipulation.

A jury found Eisenberg guilty of wire fraud, commodities fraud, and commodities manipulation in April 2024. The defense argued that the exploit was not a cybercrime and represented a “successful and legal trading strategy.”

Magazine: Crypto scam hub expose stunt goes viral, Kakao detects 70K scam apps: Asia Express

Politics

US House members call for investigation into Trump’s memecoin dinner

Published

17 hours ago

May 23, 2025

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<div>US House members call for investigation into Trump's memecoin dinner</div>

Members of the US House of Representatives called for the Justice Department to investigate Donald Trump’s May 22 dinner for his top memecoin investors, citing concerns about “foreign influence over US policy decisions” and “potential corruption and emoluments clause violations.”

Under the emoluments clause, a US president is barred from accepting any gift from a foreign state without the approval of Congress. Bloomberg reported that a majority of the attendees at the memecoin dinner were likely foreign nationals based on their connections to crypto exchanges.

Congress, Donald Trump, Investigation, Memecoin — *May 22 letter to DOJ official calling for investigation into Trump memecoin dinner. Source:* *Representative Sean Casten*

The call for an investigation and a press conference asking Trump to “release the guest list” for the dinner both occurred hours before the event, which was held at the Trump National Golf Club outside Washington, DC. A group of protesters, joined by Senator Jeff Merkley, gathered outside the venue with signs stating “illegal crypto party” and “democracy is not for sale.”

Though some of the dinner attendees covered their faces with masks to conceal their identities, protesters and members of the media confirmed that Tron founder Justin Sun appeared at the event, as well as other Trump supporters who posted to social media. The complete list of attendees was not available at the time of publication.

The memecoin dinner still has the potential to affect pending legislation in Congress

In addition to the call for a DOJ investigation, Democratic lawmakers in the House and Senate proposed legislation to address what they called “Trump’s crypto corruption” as Congress considered a bill to regulate stablecoins and a market structure bill.

Several Senate Democrats who initially voted against advancing the stablecoin bill, called the GENIUS Act, later sided with Republicans to set up a debate in the chamber.

Representative Maxine Waters introduced a bill to limit the access of any US president, vice president, members of Congress and their families to cryptocurrencies. Members of the Senate will also propose an amendment to the GENIUS Act to address Trump’s connection to World Liberty Financial, a crypto platform backed by the president’s family that issued its USD1 stablecoin.

Magazine: AI cures blindness, ‘good’ propaganda bots, OpenAI doomsday bunker: AI Eye