We should reach a standoff with China, says Iain Duncan Smith

Senior Tory MP Sir Iain Duncan Smith has said Britain should impose economic sanctions on China following claims the country hacked the Ministry of Defence.

Sir Iain said he believed there was a conflict within Whitehall over how to deal with China, but warned the country’s aim was to ‘destroy democracy’ and the country must ‘take it upon itself’.

Speaking GB NewsSir Iain Duncan Smith said: “My view on this is very clear that I think there is some conflict within the government. I think the State Department is very much against taking on China because of the business world and all the other reasons they give.

“I think they want to name names in the field of defense and confront China about this. So the reality is that our problem starts with the integrated evaluation. When Rishi Sunak tried to become Prime Minister he said they posed a ‘systemic threat’.

“When we updated the integrator review, it turned out that they were in fact a ‘game-changing challenge’.

“The brilliant thing about it was that we tackled that challenge with ‘robust pragmatism’. That sounds like a screenwriter from Yes, the Prime Minister had entered.

“I have argued endlessly that you have to argue that they are a threat. They are a threat. They know they are a threat. Everyone knows that. The Americans know they are a threat. They were responsible for Covid, so you don’t get a much bigger threat than that.

“Obviously, overnight, someone from the Department of Defense said they knew it was more likely than not that it was China – they were the bad actor. And then in the morning the government became afraid that this was going to happen because they didn’t have the full facts.

‘So the truth is that it is almost certainly China. After all, I think the FBI has described China as the largest cyberwarfare force in the world, dwarfing everyone else’s, including their own.

“There are evil ones. They have one goal in life, which is to destroy democracy, human rights and freedom. They are completely against democracy and they have made it clear from the beginning that their goal in life is to destroy these elements and return the world to autocracy.

“That’s their plan, and we have to execute it.

“I also just said that it has been almost two years since the American services told us – secretly – that China had hacked the election commission and was hacking a large number of parliamentarians.

“It took us a year and a half to finally get back to the shipping box and accept that China had done it. And I think the reason why they don’t want to do this is because what comes next should be sanctions. And sanctions mean you’re at a standoff with China. And that should be the case. America is already in that position; we should be in the same thing.”