White House Alarm Over Britain’s China Spy Scandal — A Mirror of Trudeau’s Five Eyes Rift

Analysis from The Bureau on new revelations in the Starmer government’s China scandal — and how it mirrors Justin Trudeau’s handling of Beijing-linked interference that strained Five Eyes trust.

LONDON — As new details surface from MI5’s counter-intelligence probe into two men accused of gathering information on Conservative China-sceptic MPs, The Sunday Times reports that the White House has privately warned Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government that Britain’s failure to prosecute the alleged Chinese spies could jeopardize U.S.–UK intelligence sharing within the Five Eyes alliance. U.S. officials told the paper that the abrupt collapse of the high-profile espionage case — involving parliamentary researcher Chris Cash and China-based academic Christopher Berry, who was reportedly intercepted returning to Britain with encrypted communications apps used exclusively by Chinese intelligence operatives — has shaken Washington’s confidence in London’s reliability on counter-espionage cooperation.

According to The Sunday Times, American security officials fear the case’s failure “risks undermining the special relationship” after the UK government declined to affirm, on the record, that China constituted a national-security threat at the time of the offences. Senior Republicans, including House China Committee chair John Moolenaar, urged the UK to “take steps to ensure justice is served,” warning that adversaries “must not be allowed to act with impunity.”

The story has triggered echoes in Washington of earlier Five Eyes tensions surrounding Justin Trudeau’s handling of Chinese election-interference intelligence in Canada — when Ottawa was accused of ignoring CSIS warnings about Beijing’s targeting of critics, including Conservative MP Michael Chong, and related United Front activity supporting pro-Beijing candidates for Parliament.

In the aftermath, a Financial Times report earlier this year stated that Peter Navarro, a senior Trump adviser, had floated the idea that “the U.S. should evict Canada from Five Eyes” — a proposal he later denied publicly, calling it “crazy stuff.” But a source with knowledge of political chatter in Washington in early 2025 confirmed to The Bureau that Navarro’s views on Ottawa’s perceived weakness toward China were indeed discussed behind closed doors.

The concerns of compromise extend well beyond Canada’s Parliament — into what Western intelligence agencies describe as China’s deep military-intelligence penetration of Canada’s Level 4 National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg. There, a cluster of Chinese scientists, including Chinese-Canadian researcher Dr. Xiangguo Qiu, were allegedly discovered transferring lethal pathogens to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Canadian intelligence warnings on the case were ignored and later suppressed by Justin Trudeau’s government. That controversy now finds an echo in Keir Starmer’s handling of the proposed new Chinese mega-embassy in London, amid reports this weekend that Britain’s intelligence agencies were barred from providing input on national-security risks linked to the project to avoid upsetting Beijing. Both cases would appear to reinforce growing U.S. concerns about systemic political reluctance within allied governments to act decisively on Chinese intelligence threats.

Meanwhile, in a series of unusually detailed exclusives, the Daily Mail has reconstructed how MI5 and allied agencies traced British information inside the Chinese intelligence system, first identifying Christopher Berry — a former teacher in China — and then tracing links to his Westminster contact, Chris Cash, who worked for the cross-party China Research Group of China-sceptic MPs. According to intelligence sources cited by the paper, “Berry was the entry point into the Chinese system.” Digital forensics reportedly uncovered secure communication apps used only by Beijing agents, installed on burner phones seized from Berry after he returned to the UK in February 2023. Officials alleged Berry had sent 34 reports to a Chinese handler, who in turn transmitted them to Cai Qi, a senior figure in the Communist Party’s Politburo.