Saudi Arabia escalated its missile program with help from China

By Phil Mattingly, Zachary Cohen and Jeremy Herb

Satellite imagery captured on November 13, 2018 shows a suspected ballistic missile factory at a missile base in al-Watah, Saudi Arabia. Image was initially discovered by Planet Labs and the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Washington -- The US government has obtained intelligence that Saudi Arabia has significantly escalated its ballistic missile program with the help of China, three sources with direct knowledge of the matter said, a development that threatens decades of US efforts to limit missile proliferation in the Middle East.
The Trump administration did not initially disclose its knowledge of this classified development to key members of Congress, the sources said, infuriating Democrats who discovered it outside of regular US government channels and concluded it had been deliberately left out of a series of briefings where they say it should have been presented.
The previously unreported classified intelligence indicates Saudi Arabia has expanded both its missile infrastructure and technology through recent purchases from China.
The discovery of the Saudi efforts has heightened concerns among members of Congress over a potential arms race in the Middle East, and whether it signals a tacit approval by the Trump administration as it seeks to counter Iran. 

The intelligence also raises questions about the administration's commitment to non-proliferation in the Middle East and the extent to which Congress is kept abreast of foreign policy developments in a volatile region.
The development comes amid growing tensions between Congress and the White House over Saudi Arabia.
Despite bipartisan criticism over the Kingdom's war in Yemen and its role in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the White House has sought an even closer relationship with the Saudis, as evidenced by its recent decision to sell the Kingdom billions of dollars in weapons and munitions despite opposition in Congress.
While the Saudis' ultimate goal has not been conclusively assessed by US intelligence, the sources said, the missile advancement could mark another step in potential Saudi efforts to one day deliver a nuclear warhead were it ever to obtain one.
The Kingdom's Crown Prince, Mohammed Bin Salman, has made clear that should Iran obtain a nuclear weapon, Saudi would work to do the same, telling 60 Minutes in a 2018 interview that, "Without a doubt, if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible."
Though Saudi is among the biggest buyers of US weapons, it is barred from purchasing ballistic missiles from the US under regulations set forth by the 1987 Missile Technology Control Regime, an informal, multi-country pact aimed at preventing the sale of rockets capable of carrying weapons of mass destruction.
Yet the Saudis have consistently taken the position that they need to match Iran's missile capability and have at times sought help on the side from other countries, including China, which is not a signatory to the pact.
Saudi Arabia is known to have purchased ballistic missiles from China several decades ago, and public reports speculated that more purchases may have been made as recently as 2007. 

The Kingdom has never been assessed to have the ability to build its own missiles or even effectively deploy the ones it does have.
Instead, the Saudis' arsenal of Chinese-made ballistic missiles was a way to signal its potential military strength to regional foes, primarily Iran.
That, the sources told CNN, has shifted based on the new intelligence.

US-supplied air power
For decades, the US worked to ensure that Saudi Arabia had air supremacy in the region, largely through its purchases of American military aircraft, precisely so that it wouldn't seek to go around the US to upgrade its missile capabilities.
"Saudi Arabia needn't race Iran to produce or procure ballistic missiles. It already has a significant conventional military advantage," said Behnam Taleblu of the Washington-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
But questions have arisen in recent months about whether that rationale still stands, particularly as the Trump administration has pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal and the Kingdom faces ballistic missile threats from Iran proxies in Yemen.
Satellite imagery, first reported by the Washington Post in January, suggested the Kingdom had constructed a ballistic missile factory. 

Analysts who viewed the images said they appeared to match technology produced by the Chinese.

A second image of the same missile facility obtained by CNN shows a similar level of activity at the site on May 14, 2019, according to Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute.
"Saudi Arabia's reported interest in domestic ballistic missile production should rightly raise eyebrows," Taleblu said. 

"Both the reported missile base and Riyadh's interest in a domestic fuel cycle indicates, however nascent, a desire to hedge against Iran."
The CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on any intelligence related to Saudi Arabia's ballistic missile activity or whether the US believes the Kingdom is contracting in that area with foreign partners.
A spokesman for the Saudi Embassy in the US did not respond to a request for comment.
In a statement, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that China and Saudi Arabia are "comprehensive strategic partners," and that both countries "maintain friendly cooperation in all areas, including in the area of arms sales. Such cooperation does not violate any international laws, nor does it involve the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction."

A State Department official declined to comment on classified intelligence matters, but told CNN that Saudi Arabia remains a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and has accepted an obligation never to acquire nuclear weapons. 

The spokesperson also pointed to a recent statement by a US State Department official reaffirming the US commitment to "the goal of a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems."
Sources said there has been no indication from the administration that there has been an explicit policy shift as it relates to non-proliferation of ballistic missiles in Saudi, but noted the administration's awareness of the intelligence -- and lack of concrete action to halt the advances since it was obtained.

Beyond satellite imagery
US intelligence agencies constantly monitor foreign ballistic missile development and the flow of materials around the world. 

Related intelligence is analyzed on a daily basis and any significant change would likely make it into the Presidential Daily Briefing, according to two former senior US intelligence officials.
The Senate Intelligence Committee has been given access to the Saudi intelligence, though it has not received a specific briefing on the subject, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
But the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which has oversight of the State Department and US foreign policy broadly, learned about the Saudi intelligence earlier this year only after it was discovered by Democratic staff on the committee, including in one instance when a staff member on an unrelated trip to the Middle East was informed of details through a foreign counterpart, two of the sources told CNN.
There had already been at least two classified briefings on issues related to the topic where the information could have been disclosed to senators, according to one source.

When the staff brought the new information to the panel's top Democrat, Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, he immediately requested-- and was granted-- a classified, senators-only briefing for committee members on the details, a rare occurrence that underscored the importance of the discovery and the administration's failure to initially brief the committee on the matter.
Several sources said the analysis presented in the classified briefing, held on April 9, went far beyond the January Washington Post story about the satellite images, and provided concrete evidence that Saudi Arabia has advanced its missile program to a point that would run in direct conflict with long-established US policy to limit proliferation in the region.
The day after the classified briefing, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo testified publicly in front of the committee as part of a routine hearing on the State Department budget.
Over the course of a few hours, the dispute over intelligence sharing began to spill out into the open, turning a relatively benign budget hearing into a debate over a potentially crucial shift in US policy over missile proliferation in the Middle East.
Though at the time, it was hard to notice.
Without going into specifics, Menendez castigated Pompeo for the administration's decision not to share classified information with the committee until it was brought to the administration by the senator himself.
"That's simply unacceptable," Menendez told the country's top diplomat, adding that if Congress is to perform its constitutional duties, the State Department "needs to do a better job of engaging with us, briefing us and responding to our requests."
Later in the hearing, three other Democratic senators obliquely referenced the issue in their questions to Pompeo, citing public reports related to Saudi ballistic missile ambitions.
Neither the senators nor Pompeo mentioned the previous day's briefing, or that their questions or answers were based on specific intelligence.
But in hindsight, the exchanges shed light on the Trump administration's hardline position that countering Iran is the ultimate priority in the region -- regardless of long-held US non-proliferation positions.
In his responses, Pompeo made clear the administration's preference that Saudi Arabia buy US technology, a possible nod, multiple US officials said, to internal opposition inside the Trump administration to restrictions on US sales of ballistic missiles to the Kingdom.
"There've been those who've urged the United States to take a different posture with respect to Saudi Arabia, not to sell them technology," Pompeo said. 

"I think you see the risks that are created. It would be better if the United States was involved in those transactions than if China was."
While Pompeo acknowledged under questioning that it is still US policy to oppose proliferation of ballistic missile technology in the Middle East, a telling exchange occurred later.
Sen. Tom Udall, a New Mexico Democrat, citing the Washington Post report on the satellite images, asked what the US was doing to prevent foreign sales of ballistic missile technology to Saudi Arabia.
Pompeo made clear, intentionally or not, a prevailing administration position that has guided much of its policy in the region -- including its knowledge of the expanding Saudi ballistic missile program.
"This is certainly something that we all need to keep an eye on," Pompeo said, before adding that "most of the folks who are working to build out missile systems" were doing so in direct response to Iran's ability to continue to enhance its missile program under the 2015 nuclear accord.
"Others are doing what they need to do to create a deterrence tool for themselves," Pompeo said. 

"It's just a fact."
Udall, who a source confirmed had been in the classified briefing the day prior, responded after a pause by pressing the administration to stick to the long-held US policy to deter missile proliferation in Saudi "Well, I very much hope that the administration will push back in terms of what's happening in missiles across the Middle East."

Tensions over Saudi policy
The new revelations come at a particularly fraught time in the Saudi-U.S. relationship.
Last year, as evidence of the Saudi government's role in the murder of Khashoggi emerged, GOP Senators including Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and then-Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker of Tennessee publicly condemned the Trump administration's timid response.
"There's not a smoking gun, there's a smoking saw," Graham said after emerging from a classified briefing in December, referring to reports that the Saudi team had included a forensic expert who arrived in Turkey with equipment to dismember Khashoggi's body.

In an interview with Axios on HBO that aired on Sunday, Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner refused to go into details about his private conversations with the Saudi crown prince, and maintained that the Saudis are a key ally in helping the US contain Iran.
Asked whether he would join Khashoggi's fiancée in calling on the Saudi government to release Khashoggi's body, Kushner demurred, saying the decision "would be up to the Secretary of State" and that "we'll do everything we can to try to bring transparency and accountability for what happened."
Anger over the administration's handling of the Khashoggi murder led to bipartisan support for resolutions to end US involvement in the war in Yemen, where the Saudi-led coalition has been accused of indiscriminately bombing civilians. 

The conflict has resulted in widespread famine and put an estimated 14 million people at risk of starvation, according to the United Nations.
In March, lawmakers pushed through the House and Senate a measure that would've forced Trump to get permission from Congress before allowing the US military to aid Saudi Arabia in its fight against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. 

Lawmakers were ultimately unable to override Trump's veto.
Tensions between the administration and lawmakers were again exacerbated by the administration's May 24 announcement that it would declare an emergency over escalating tensions with Iran in order to bypass Congress to complete an $8.1 billion sale of weapons, munitions, intelligence and maintenance to various countries including Saudi Arabia and UAE.
A bipartisan group of seven senators, including Menendez and Graham, on Wednesday said they were introducing resolutions to block all 22 arms sales tied to the administration's move.

There is also an ongoing bipartisan effort to finalize a new sanctions package targeting Saudi Arabia --- one opposed on its face by the Trump administration, which tends to cast its view of the Kingdom as a binary choice: you either support Saudi Arabia or you support Iran.
For Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and sharp critic of the administration's Saudi policy, the choice is not that simple when it comes to ballistic missile proliferation.
"I think it's a total misread of the region to think that the Saudis are the good guys in this equation. The Iranians do really awful things in the region. But so do the Saudis. "
Murphy declined to comment on the Saudi missile intelligence he received during the April 9 briefing, but was willing to address the broader issue, including the long-term implications should the US abandon its policy of missile deterrence in the Middle East.
"For decades the US has had a policy of trying to quell, not ignite an arms race in the Middle East, and for good reason," said Murphy. 

"It stands to reason we would want less weapons pointed at each other."

'It was egregious'
The whole incident puts the panel's Republican chairman, Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho, in a tricky spot. Compared to his predecessor Corker, an avid Trump critic, Risch has refrained from criticizing the administration, and has attempted to strike a balance between tending the concerns of angry committee members while also trying not to undercut Trump's foreign policy strategy.
Risch, who also sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, dismissed complaints that the intelligence omission was intentional and chalked it up to a simple oversight, given the sheer volume of information the intelligence community gathers each day.

"There's no doubt that factual matters that the intelligence community has sometimes don't get into the hands of senators simply because there is too much of it," Risch told CNN, noting that he hadn't received any complaints from Republican members of the panel. 

"It's not intentional at all. It's just simply that it can't be done."
Menendez doesn't buy into that theory.
"You can't lose track of something like this," said Menendez, who would not discuss the topic of the underlying intelligence at issue. "It was egregious."
Menendez is now pressuring the administration to provide a classified briefing on the issue for all 100 senators.
While frustrations over access to classified information by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee go back years, they have become particularly acute during the Trump administration, senators and aides interviewed for this story said.
"I think our [intelligence community] knows a lot and they don't want to tell us," said Democratic Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, who declined to address the specific subject matter. 

Kaine noted that there are a series of issues -- several related specifically to Saudi, including authorizations to sell civilian nuclear technology to the country -- that have remained shrouded in secrecy, despite repeated requests to the administration to provide briefings or documentation.
Kaine on Tuesday revealed for the first time at least two of the technology sales occurred after Khashoggi's murder, including one that was finalized just 16 days after the journalist was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

The divide between Congress and the administration on Saudi has led to increasingly hostile receptions for Trump officials who come to Capitol Hill to testify.

It's also one that has largely left the US public in the dark as to the administration's actions with its closest allies in the region.
For at least one Democratic Senator who spoke on condition of anonymity even as he declined to address the underlying Saudi intelligence, it's all part of a broader trend of the administration refusing to share intelligence with Congress.
The administration "has taken a position of: you don't need to know anything," the senator said. "Which, of course, is constitutionally inaccurate."

Axis of Evil

China has put 1 million Muslims in concentration camps. A Saoudi murderer had nothing to say.
By Fred Hiatt

Saudi murderer Mohammed bin Salman, left, shakes hands with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping in Beijing on Friday. 

China is a leading oppressor of Muslims, so it should come as no surprise that the crown prince of Saudi Arabia — the kingdom that views itself as defender of the Islamic faith — would visit Beijing to deliver a stern rebuke.
After all, China has penned an estimated 1 million Muslims into concentration camps in western China. 

It has sent ethnic Han Chinese to live with Muslim families and report on anyone who refuses to eat pork or shave his beard. 

It is wrenching children from parents to reprogram them away from their faith and culture in mass orphanages.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman must have had a lot to say when he met Chinese dictator Xi Jinping late last week.
Wait, what’s that you say? 

The prince had nothing to say on behalf of China’s Muslims? 

In fact, he defended what China calls an effort to fight extremism?
Yes, that is in fact what happened. 

And the reason is simple: In return, China defended Saudi Arabia’s right to orchestrate a murder and get away with it.
Your concentration camps are your internal affair. 

My conspiracy to commit murder is my internal affair. 

How nice, we understand each other.
It has been nearly five months since Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was lured to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, murdered and dismembered. 

Little accountability has been achieved since then.
It is not that little has been discovered about the crime. 

Despite a shifting series of lies from the Saudi government, we know quite a lot.
We know that the crown prince, who is second in command to his father, King Salman, told a top aide a year before the killing that he would use “a bullet” on Khashoggi if the exiled journalist did not return to Saudi Arabia and stop criticizing the Saudi regime.
We know that when Khashoggi visited the consulate to take care of some paperwork, he was instructed to return on a set day the following week. 

We know that the Saudi government then sent two planeloads of 15 officials, including close aides to Mohammed, to Istanbul. 

One was a forensic expert who came equipped with a bone saw.
We know that when Khashoggi entered the consulate, this hit squad instructed the consul to leave his office. 

He left and has not been publicly heard from since.
We know, thanks to Turkish eavesdropping, that Khashoggi was then gruesomely murdered. 

We know that when Turkey tried to investigate the crime, Saudi Arabia barred police from the consulate until it had a chance to hose it down and scour it of any possible evidence.
Now Saudi Arabia says it will put some officials on trial for the murder. 

It will not say who, but it is clear that henchmen, not ringleaders, are at risk. 

If executions occur, they will be more likely used to eradicate witnesses than deliver justice.
For all this knowledge, the consequences so far have been modest. 

Trump, in defiance of U.S. law, refuses to report to Congress on the administration’s conclusions regarding Mohammed’s culpability. 

Congress so far has taken no action to insist that Trump follow the law — or that Mohammed be punished for this crime. 

The U.N. secretary general has been similarly inert.
Still, it would not be right to say that the regime is paying no price in the West. 

Mohammed bin Salman, who toured triumphantly through U.S. business and academic capitals not long before the murder, knows he would not be welcome now. 

Think tanks, universities, even businesses to varying degrees understand that public association with the regime is no longer a smart marketing strategy. 

Congress has expressed misgivings about the Saudis’ brutal war in Yemen and their nuclear ambitions, and it may yet have something to say about the Khashoggi murder. 

The U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions is investigating.
So the crown prince turned east. 

He understood that human rights violators always find absolution in Beijing. 

And he must have understood that if he, as guardian of Islam’s two holiest sites, absolved China of its anti-Muslim depradations, he would be especially welcome.
After all, it was only a fortnight ago that the Turkish government, which is competing with Saudi Arabia for leadership of the Muslim world, broke its long silence to criticize the repression of Muslim Uighurs in western China. 

“It is no longer a secret that more than 1 million Uighur Turks incurring arbitrary arrests are subjected to torture and political brainwashing,” a Turkish spokesman said.
There was no such rudeness from the crown prince on Friday. 

You can have your concentration camps. I can have my murder.

China’s Khashoggi Can Still Be Saved

Photojournalist Lu Guang has fallen victim to Chen Quanguo's vendetta

BY KATHLEEN E. MCLAUGHLIN 

Chinese photographer Lu Guang attends the Pingyao International Photography Festival in Pingyao, in Shanxi province, China, on Sept. 20, 2014. 

In early November, the renowned Chinese-born photographer Lu Guang traveled from his home in New York to the city of Kashgar, in China’s western region of East Turkestan. 

He was there to give a workshop for local amateur photographers, one of many he’s conducted in recent years. 

Lu’s photos have helped the world to understand the fate of some of China’s most vulnerable people, including coal miners and cancer patients poisoned by industrial pollution.
But Lu’s arrival in East Turkestan rang alarm bells in the Chinese state. 

The photographer, a three-time winner of World Press Photo awards, is known for his images of lives of people on the margins. 

In East Turkestan, where the authorities have interned at least a million people in so-called reeducation camps, he was a dangerous element. 

Agents from the Ministry of State Security, China’s equivalent of the KGB, detained him and others; his arrest—though no specific crime—was confirmed on Dec. 10.
Yet Lu’s arrest may not just be because of the security paranoia that now seizes East Turkestan, or the general climate of repression in Xi Jinping’s China. 

Instead, it may go back to coverage of the catastrophe that made him famous—and that the official in charge of East Turkestan’s brutal repression also presided over.
Lu, born in 1961, grew up in Zhejiang province, where as a young man he worked in a silk factory but after learning to use a camera started a photo studio. 

He subsidized his documentary work by doing wedding and family portraits, cutting a very unusual path in China—where most photographers work for censored publications—as an independent photojournalist. 

This independence, coupled with his drive to highlight the lives of China’s most marginalized people, has made Lu a hero to some and a target to others—including officials.
“Lu is a born educator. He’s someone who gives back. He realizes that he was very fortunate to have been given a camera once in his life, and how it changed his life,” said Robert Pledge, the president and editorial director of Contact Press Images, the agency that represents Lu.

In 2002, after spending months recording the horrors of an AIDS catastrophe ripping through China’s heartland of Henan, Lu sent off a package of his pictures to the World Press Photo competition, one of the world’s top prizes for documentary photographers.
The images he had made showed the ravages of a deadly calamity the Chinese government had tried to keep quiet. 

He put faces to the crisis: a 13-year-old orphan lighting incense at the grave of his parents, both dead from AIDS; a woman caring for her dying husband; seven toddlers bundled up in a row in a village orphanage.
While some of Lu’s pictures were published, they never made it to the international prize judges that year. 

Instead, it seems, they were intercepted by officials eager to conceal the disaster he illustrated in devastating detail. 

He entered the same series again a year later, and won first prize in 2004 for contemporary issues, establishing his place as China’s most influential documentary photographer.
“People saw the pictures. When we talked about dying people and orphans—Lu Guang helped people to see it,” recalled Wan Yanhai, an activist who started his career with the Chinese Ministry of Health and now lives in the United States. 

“Without the photos, I think the world might not have been shocked. It might not have been awakened.”
The importance of China’s homegrown AIDS epidemic, born out of government malpractice in a rush to profit off the blood of poor people, is often overlooked. 

The Henan AIDS catastrophe killed uncounted thousands. 

It also embarrassed government officials across the country, and while many of them still rose through the ranks of the Chinese Communist Party after the scandal, every activist who exposed the deadly epidemic was silenced or pushed into exile.
Li Keqiang, the governor of Henan during the crisis as it evolved from 1998 to 2004, is now the premier of China. 

And Chen Quanguo, the deputy party boss in charge of managing the AIDS crisis, moved on to manage the government’s crackdown first in Tibet, now in East Turkestan.
News of China’s AIDS catastrophe, untold thousands infected with HIV after the government established a program to encourage farmers to sell their blood plasma in poor, rural parts of Henan, first emerged in 2000. 

China had painted AIDS as a foreign disease, and the result was a whole country unprepared to deal with the virus when it entered the blood-selling system. 

Chinese investigative journalists first broke the story, and some of Lu’s photos were published in the mainland not long after, even before he won the World Press Photo prize.
“When the photos were published, people understood what was happening,” Wan said.
Chinese officials also have long memories, and Lu’s arrest may stem from a grudge stemming back to that first triumph. 

The party official in charge of East Turkestan is the same man who was charged with handling the AIDS crisis all those many years ago. 

Over the years, Chen Quanguo has taken on some of the party’s most unsavory jobs—the Henan AIDS crisis, a crackdown in Tibet, and now East Turkestan. 

As one source close to Lu Guang said, given the security state in East Turkestan, there is no chance that Chen didn’t know Lu was in town.
First in Henan, and later in Tibet, Chen has been a hard-line enforcer the Communist Party’s worst tendencies. 

In 2007, the physician and AIDS activist Gao Yaojie, who now lives in exile in New York, told Reuters that when Chen visited her, he denied ever meeting anyone with AIDS in Henan—at a time when people were dying by the thousands.
Chen’s police state now holds the photographer who exposed the AIDS crisis with documentary evidence. 

According to the statement from Lu Guang’s wife, police in East Turkestan have admitted Lu is in their custody, but so far there is no news about what charges he might face.
In similar cases, international pressure has helped push China to follow the rules, rather than simply disappearing critical voices.
Like the late Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Lu is a legal permanent resident of the United States. 

Also like Khashoggi, he’s vulnerable to the dangers of retribution for an old feud in the country of his birth. 

This is the time for international, and especially American, organizations to speak up on behalf of Lu. He deserves better than to be disappeared into the depths of an increasingly unaccountable security state.
“He should be released. They have to come to grips with the fact that he is who he is, a documentary photographer with strong journalistic instincts,” Pledge said. 

“There’s nothing criminal about that activity.”

Chinese Espionage

MI6 chief questions China's role in UK tech sector
By Gordon Corera

Alex Younger returned to St Andrews University - where he studied - for his second public speech in his four years as MI6 chief

The chief of MI6 has raised questions over Chinese technology companies being involved in the UK's communications infrastructure.
Australia has already blocked Chinese company Huawei from supplying equipment for its 5G mobile network, and New Zealand has said it will consult before a final decision.
MI6 boss Alex Younger said Britain needs to decide how comfortable it is "with Chinese ownership of these technologies".
In a rare speech, he also said British intelligence needs to innovate faster than its adversaries to cope with threats the country faces.
Russia posed a threat through hybrid warfare -- including cyber attacks, he said, but warned that Moscow should not underestimate the UK's capabilities.
MI6 will continue to strengthen ties in Europe, he said, and it had been involved in disrupting terrorist attacks against France and Germany.
In a wide-ranging speech and discussion, Mr Younger said the UK's adversaries had been probing its institutions and defences in ways that fall short of traditional warfare.
These adversaries regarded themselves as in "a state of perpetual confrontation" with the UK.

Russia 'must not underestimate us'
Russia's actions included the poisoning of Sergei Skripal with a nerve agent in Salisbury in March this year.
The former Russian spy had come to the UK in a spy swap after being pardoned by Russia. 

"To the extent that we assumed that had meaning, that is not an assumption we will make again," Mr Younger said.
The aim of the UK's response to that poisoning had been to make the Russian state conclude its activities were not worth the risk.

Alex Younger warned Russia "not to underestimate our determination and our capabilities"

The expulsion of Russian intelligence officers by the UK and allies had significantly degraded Russian intelligence capability, he said.
He urged Russia "not to underestimate our determination or capabilities, or those of our allies. We can do this to any opponent at any time."
He said that even though the Russian state sought to destabilise the UK, 'we do not seek to destabilise Russia.' 

If that country responds positively, then so would the UK. 

"We do not seek an escalation," he said.
Since his last speech two years ago, Mr Young said MI6 and its sister agencies disrupted multiple attack plans linked to so-called Islamic State (ISIS).
MI6 "will always work with our sister agencies to strengthen our indispensable security ties with Europe".
UK intelligence agencies, he said, have played "an important contribution" in helping European countries, particularly France and Germany, prevent terrorist attacks in their countries or against their citizens.
On the killing of Jamal Khashoggi Mr Younger said: "It was an appalling attack -- shocking.
"We have made it very clear to the Saudis that we expect to see a transparent effective investigation. And much will hang on the results of that investigation."

Jamal Khashoggi had gone to Istanbul to obtain a marriage document

The MI6 chief -- known as "C" -- was speaking at St Andrews University, where he studied economics and computer science as an undergraduate. 

It was only his second public lecture since he arrived.
In the speech, Mr Younger revealed details of his own career and background that had not been publicly known before.
After graduating from St Andrews he said he joined the Scots Guards Regiment and then MI6.
His first job was penetrating an organisation "intent on genocide" in the Balkans in the mid-1990s.
He said carrying out that mission involved traveling under a false identity and "many nights drinking obscure homemade alcohol" to create the relationships needed to provide intelligence.
Certain aspects of the intelligence world had not changed and would not change, he said, with MI6 still trying to understand the motivations, intentions and aspiration of people in other countries.
"Even in the era of artificial intelligence you need human intelligence," he said. 

But there had been significant changes.

Mr Younger is "perplexed" over why the UAE jailed British academic Matthew Hedges

The impact of technology was a major focus of his remarks. 

MI6 was "pioneering a fourth generation of espionage" to make sure technology worked to its advantage.
Data analytics has made the world more transparent with implications for spies. 

That was evident by the way that a non-governmental investigative group -- Bellingcat -- was able to expose the Russian military intelligence officers involved in the Salisbury attack.
That was a sign that the traditional "cover" used by spies -- traveling around the world under false identities -- does not stand up to scrutiny in a way it did in the past.
The data age posed a potentially "existential challenge" to traditional ways of operating. 

"Our task now is to master covert action in the data age," he said.

China's role in 5G

Mr Younger was asked about the role of China in building new 5G communications networks.
There have been concerns that this could open the way for intercepting of communications and sabotage.
New Zealand has just announced it would not allow the Chinese company Huawei to be involved.
Huawei has been involved in previous UK communications infrastructure projects.
"We have got some decisions to take here," Mr Younger said.

"We need to decide the extent to which we are going to be comfortable with Chinese ownership of these technologies and these platforms in an environment where some of our allies have taken a quite definite position.
"We need to have a conversation. It's not wholly straightforward."
Cyber was now the fastest growing directorate of MI6, he said, and the service was increasingly working with the private sector tech community.
Mr Younger stressed that a priority was ensuring the broadest possible range of people considered coming to work for MI6 including those who had never thought about it in the past.
"If you think you can spot an MI6 officer, you are mistaken".