Banning Chinese staff isn't racist, they could be spies, judge rules

Times

6 hours ago

Bosses at businesses connected to national security can legally ban the recruitment of Chinese and Russian workers as they could be spies, a judge has ruled.
Richard Baty, sitting at an employment tribunal, said it was not discriminatory to prevent citizens from nations that pose a threat to Britain from taking up certain jobs — specifically in defence — because of the possibility of espionage.
The judge said that precautionary measures were applicable to potential job candidates from China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.
His ruling came in a dispute between a Chinese scientist and an artificial intelligence company with ties to the British and US defence departments, which was triggered when security concerns were cited for not giving her a job.
Tianlin Xu had applied for a £220,000 lead role at Binary AI, a software company in London, but the company's founder and director, James Patrick-Evans, rejected her application.
The company uses artificial intelligence to identify flaws in software used by western governments to prevent state-backed hackers from targeting them. It has long been suspected that the Russian and Chinese governments are behind hacks Russia and China have long been suspected of orchestrating such attacks. Last year, Dutch counterterror investigators reported that both governments were behind cyberattacks on the Netherlands.
The tribunal hearing in London was told that British defence officials had 'strongly advised' the 32-year-old company boss against hiring a Chinese citizen.
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After her application was rejected, Xu sued Binary AI on grounds of race discrimination, claiming that the decision not to give her a job was based on 'racial stigma' and 'stereotyping'.
But the tribunal dismissed her arguments, with Baty ruling that it was 'paramount that the security and operational capability of the software that drives our everyday lives should remain intact and free from malicious hackers and state actors wanting to persuade political outcomes or obtain sensitive information'.
The judge added that the British government and the Five Eyes alliance — which includes the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand — 'have been under constant attack by many of these malicious groups, mainly from state-backed hacking groups from countries such as North Korea, Russia, China and Iran'.
Hacking groups, the judge said, had attempted to obtain 'malicious remote access into software that forms the backbone of UK infrastructure such as 5G telecoms, NHS health networks, power plant controllers and water infrastructure systems. It is therefore imperative that the security of the software that drives these systems is verified, controlled and secured'.
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Referring to the claimant specifically, Baty said that any Chinese individual could legally be precluded from 'working in a role, such as the lead AI role, which involved working closely on matters concerning national security'.
The judge noted that the recruitment prohibition 'was a decision of customers' — the British and US defence chiefs — rather than Binary AI or Patrick-Evans.
He pointed out that Patrick-Evans legitimately understood that he would not be able to offer the woman the role 'because he believed that, because she was a Chinese national, she would not be able to obtain the security clearance necessary.'