Espionage is the art of extracting human intelligence from human stupidity. Take the alleged spies Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry. For two men who have protested their innocence ever since they were arrested on charges of snooping for China, it is unfortunate that Cash told Berry in July 2022: “You’re in spy territory now.”

No wonder security officials initially considered the case a “slam dunk”. Yet, in the end, even that message was not enough to meet the evidence threshold. While the dropping of the charges reveals a great deal about where power lies between Beijing and London, it also shows how little has changed within the intelligence realm. Codenamed spy handlers, clandestine rendezvous with shadowy politburo figures, secret summits about invading Taiwan: if the story sounds like a lost John le Carré thriller, that is perhaps because the world of spying has shed its Cold War skin but not its soul.

If Berry and Cash were indeed agents for the CCP, it would have been a classic case of China cultivating foreigners who were located in the country and had a passion for the culture. As a 20-something intern and then parliamentary researcher, Cash was lowly enough to be beneath suspicion, with MP Alicia Kearns underestimating the value of the information he could provide. Even the nature of the intel holds a certain quaint charm. This was not the clinical hacking of military blueprints from afar, but instead the warm murmur of parliamentary gossip and political titbits.

Cash is not the only example of Britain’s adversaries exploiting old-school physical proximity to Parliament. Last year, Russian diplomats joined a guided tour before dashing into a restricted area of the House of Lords, a level of boredom one reaches only after two years of diplomatic isolation. In 2022, MI5 issued an alert about Chinese agent Christine Lee infiltrating Parliament as part of an influence operation in which she targeted key Westminster powerbrokers including Labour MP Barry Gardiner. Meanwhile, alleged spy Yang Tengbo enjoyed warm relations with politicians and Prince Andrew, becoming a highly dubious friend for the now former Duke in a field that already had strong competition.

The traditional motives of sex, money and status have not gone out of style either. Beijing and Moscow still fall back on honeytraps, presumably because they are easy to set up, hard to resist and a good way to reach Tory MPs. Lee funnelled donations to parties and politicians, while the meeting between Berry, a little-known teacher, and Cai Qi, an ally of Xi Jinping, shows how prestige can work its magic.

That is not to say the spy services are entirely reliant on human intelligence. As Dominic Cummings highlighted this week, China’s skill in hacking is a cause for concern. According to Boris Johnson’s ex-advisor, Beijing successfully compromised a Whitehall system used for transferring information and so acquired “vast amounts of data classified as extremely secret and extremely dangerous for any foreign entity to control”. Then there are Moscow’s disruptive hacking operations and Beijing’s breach of the Electoral Commission.

AI holds even greater possibilities, with “agentic” models currently under development potentially able to take control of cars and computers. Although understanding of China’s progress on AI remains limited, there are concerns that the absence of Western “guardrails” could enable Beijing to gain vital insights more rapidly.

The case against Berry and Cash hinged upon language contained within the 1911 Official Secrets Act. Yet, from Beijing’s appetite for gossip to the value of a face-to-face conversation, it exposed just how traditional much of modern espionage remains. As AI opens up untold opportunities to hack and influence from the other side of the world, we may look back on this as one of the last instances of old-fashioned espionage.

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Bethany Elliott is a writer specialising in Russia and Eastern Europe.

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