Clive Woodley, 67, currently attached to the Department of Shock Physics at Imperial College in London, has worked on high-tech weaponry since his youth. So he had much to say about the conference theme: “New Material Technology for Ammunition.” The event “marked a new chapter in the development of artillery, shells and missiles”, according to an official report issued afterwards.

Most of Woodley’s research has been funded by the Ministry of Defence. A former president of the International Ballistics Society, he served as Chief Scientist at the MoD-controlled company QinetiQ from its inception in 2001 — when the MoD privatised its own labs — to 2018. He has advised the MoD about many of its key lethal systems.

Woodley’s contributions in Jinan followed a grand opening ceremony conducted by Qi Xiaoliang, the Communist Party Secretary of the Shandong Institute, one of China’s top military research centres. Joining him, the conference literature makes clear, was almost every leading figure in the Chinese weapons industry, including key figures from Norinco, a Chinese state-owned giant that makes tanks, fighter jets, drones, missiles, big guns, and bombs. Another sponsor was the China Ordnance Society, which brings together 22,000 researchers from both China’s universities and its arms firms, all devoted to “fostering the development needs of national defence”.

Most extraordinary of all was the timing. In 2012, and for some years afterwards, Britain and China basked in a “golden age” of warm relations initiated under David Cameron. China was not then so widely known for the genocide of its Uighur Muslim minority, nor had it crushed Hong Kong’s freedoms. It was not until 2020 that the UK government decreed that equipment made by the Chinese telecoms firm Huawei must be ripped out from Britain’s 5G networks on grounds of national security.

However, the conference in Jinan took place very recently, on 14 and 15 October 2021. It was supposedly “international”, but in fact, the only non-Chinese delegates were Woodley, a Russian and a Pole. A few weeks later, MI6 chief Richard Moore gave a landmark speech, saying the threat from China was now his agency’s “single greatest priority”, and warning that we must beware of “large-scale espionage operations against us, targeting those in research of particular interest to the Chinese state” — in other words, experts such as Woodley.

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Yet the Jinan event was no one-off. Working with an expert who is fluent in Mandarin, I have established that over the past eight years, Woodley has participated at least seven times in seminars and lectures for senior figures from China’s defence industry and university departments that work with its military. He is also a co-editor of two Chinese journals funded by weapons firms. Since 2014, he has had eight papers either published in Chinese journals or co-written with Chinese scientists working with Chinese arms makers — the most recent, in 2021.

And Covid rules permitting, Woodley will soon be jetting off yet again to Beijing. There, over four days in July, he will co-chair the International Conference on Defence Technology, presiding over sessions covering the latest discoveries in sensitive military technologies. Helpfully, Woodley lists their subject areas in his “welcome letter” on the conference website. They include hypersonic weapons (as deployed by the Russians with lethal effect in Ukraine), “explosions and impacts”, new types of armour, quantum computing and “wound ballistics”.

Just as in October, most of those in attendance will be from China’s weapons industry: Woodley’s co-chairs will be two of China’s most eminent defence scientists, Feng Changgen of the Beijing Institute of Technology and Li Baoming of Nanjing University and the Ordnance Science and Research Academy of China. Both are high-ranking members of the Communist Party, and their careers have been dedicated to China’s military.

In recent months, newspapers have carried many stories about China’s involvement with British academics and universities, and the risks this may pose. But until now, Woodley’s activities have gone unreported. The MoD says it does not recognise they might pose any risk. Its spokesperson refused to answer a single question about Woodley’s involvement with China, other than to say: “We have robust procedures in place to make sure research contracts do not contribute to overseas military programmes and that individuals or organisations with foreign-state links cannot access our sensitive research… we ensure that stringent vetting checks are carried out.”

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Imperial College said: “We take our responsibilities to UK national security seriously”, but also refused to answer questions. Its spokesperson added, somewhat bizarrely, that when Woodley wrote papers jointly with Chinese colleagues, he “should not have used” his Imperial College title. Here, Woodley appears not to have got the memo: for the forthcoming Beijing conference, he is, as usual, billed as an Imperial researcher.

As for QinetiQ, its spokesperson said the firm had “robust processes in place to vet our people and their activities both within and outside the business”. He said that Woodley was working there, and that he “frequently engaged with a number of other countries across the world, working collaboratively to support the international scientific community. Our UK Defence customer was both aware of and supportive of all these activities.”

Others, however, have expressed concern. A former senior MI6 officer told me: “The fact there have been not just one or two talks but a consistent and continuing pattern of meeting and contact is deeply concerning. I can’t think of another case where a British lecturer has visited China many times to talk about weapons technology, nor written papers about it in Chinese journals.”

Woodley’s intentions, he went on, were, presumably, innocent: a desire to share research with colleagues abroad. But he was, the former official added, at best deeply naïve: “An open relationship, with talks or lectures in scientific forums, can all too easily be a cover for attempts by a hostile intelligence service to conduct more in-depth discussions. To me, this looks like a classic example of the way China’s intelligence service works.”

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He added that China may have tried to steal data from Woodley’s laptop or phone during his visits there, without him even knowing it: “Business people travelling to China are always advised to take only burner phones and computers with no sensitive data on them.”

Indeed, in 2013, the year before Woodley’s work with China began, it emerged that Chinese spies had stolen vast amounts of sensitive information from his then employer QinetiQ by hacking its computer system via two employees’ laptops. They stole 13,000 QinetiQ server passwords and acquired more than 1.3 million pages of documents.

I shared my findings with the Tory MP and former army officer Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs. He said that after this article was published, his committee would investigate. Tugendhat said: “This case raises serious concerns about the integrity of our military secrets and the level of cooperation between a British expert and a potentially hostile state, and we will be looking into what exactly has happened — and why no one has raised such concerns before. No one could say his work is dual use. His career has had one end only — the development of weapons.”

Woodley’s activities are particularly concerning, given his long-standing reputation as a giant in his field. His contributions have included the development of plasma-powered cannons, fired by high-voltage electric pulses in place of old-fashioned explosives; ingenious ways of improving firing mechanisms and shells using mathematical modelling, so that big guns can be targeted more accurately; and ways of increasing the violence and speed of their shells’ detonations. Another of his areas of expertise is railguns — next generation hypersonic artillery weapons that fire projectiles at six times the speed of sound, so that a shell fired from London would land somewhere in Manchester in just over a minute.

There is, it should be noted, no suggestion that Woodley has disclosed classified information, or consciously tried to damage Britain’s national interest. Nevertheless, it is a fact that China has acquired a decisive lead in the race to deploy railguns. In 2020, it revealed a prototype mounted on a naval vessel and said it planned to deploy these “superguns” widely by 2025. Britain and America are said to be lagging far behind. In 2019, Woodley delivered a conference paper co-written with Li Baoming and his Nanjing University colleague Qin Linhua. Its title? “Recent Update on the Multi-Physical-Model of Electromagnetic Railgun.”

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Woodley has been visiting China since 2014, when, Mandarin websites say, he gave “an important lecture” to scientists from Norinco. The same year, he joined the editorial board of a journal published in Mandarin, The Chinese Journal of Explosives and Propellants, co-owned by Norinco and the China Ordnance Society. The head of both institutions is a senior member of the Communist Party, Jiao Kaihe.

Woodley’s first paper for the journal was published in its December 2014 issue. It described how microscopic particles of aluminium could speed the detonation of explosives, and so make guns more deadly. The paper stated that this innovation would be “of great benefit to all small arms, medium calibre and large calibre gun systems including naval guns, land-based artillery and direct fire guns”. The paper’s acknowledgements stated: “This work was funded by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), part of the UK MoD, under the Hazard Modelling and Simulation task of the UK Energetics (UK-E) programme.”

Woodley published another paper in the same journal in 2015, and a third in 2018, about mathematical modelling of the behaviour of guns and explosives. His last Chinese Journal of Explosives paper to date, published last August, dealt with new forms of explosives in what were termed “closed bombs”. It was co-written with four Chinese experts from the Xi’an Modern Chemistry Research Institute, part of Norinco. The Institute’s website says it is “China’s largest comprehensive research institution working on explosives and damaging combustion technologies”.

Meanwhile, in 2016 Woodley authored a paper in a second Chinese journal, Defence Technology, which is sponsored by the weapons industry body, the China Ordnance Society. It discussed the use of explosives at low atmospheric pressures and in temperature extremes, stating it was based on research “funded by the MoD”, under its “Weapons Science and Technology Centre” (WSTC).

He also became one of the journal’s three executive editors, along with the two scientists who will be co-chairing the conference with him in July, Li Baoming and Feng Changgen. Feng is a former member of China’s puppet parliament, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, and is based at the Beijing Institute of Technology, one of China’s “seven sons of national defence” — universities with especially close military links and numerous top secret military labs. He sits on the Science and Technology Committee of the State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence, which coordinates China’s weapons research.

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Until the pandemic, Woodley visited China almost every year. In 2015, he attended the autumn seminar at the State Key Laboratory of Explosion Science, part of the Beijing Institute of Technology. The following year he gave a week-long series of seminars at Li Baoming’s lab in Nanjing about his work at QinetiQ — which, photos reveal, were illustrated with slides bearing the QinetiQ logo. According to reports in Mandarin, as well as his lectures and seminars, he held private talks with his Chinese colleagues.

In 2018, he co-chaired the first International Conference on Defence Technology in Beijing, together with Feng and Li. The event was sponsored by Norinco, the China Ordnance Society, and the China South Industries Group Corporation, another major weapons maker. The event was attended by personnel from Norinco, several “seven sons” universities, and the Army Engineering University, which describes itself as “the premier research and educational institution for the PLA Ground Force”. The second of these conferences, in the autumn of 2020, had to be held online thanks to the pandemic. By then, the “golden age” was well and truly over, amid emerging evidence that China had concealed the true source of the Covid outbreak. Nevertheless, Woodley was there.

I have tried repeatedly to ask Woodley questions about his publications and trips to China in a series of emails. When he failed to respond, I visited his home in Kent. He told me that if I didn’t leave he would call the police, slammed the door in my face, and refused to accept my questions in writing. Among the things I had wanted to ask were whether he has received any payment for his work with Chinese colleagues and journals; what security precautions he has taken during his visits; and whether he considers collaborating with researchers from China is any different to working with experts from countries allied with Britain.

Charles Parton, a former diplomat and China expert at the Royal United Services Institute, who has written extensively on the need for the UK to improve its defences against China, told me that the curious case of Mr Woodley “requires urgent investigation and explanation. What was discussed with whom and in what terms? Were any benefits received? It also shows badly we need to up our defences. We need to define the areas of scientific research where we can cooperate with Chinese scientists and those which we must rule out on security grounds.”

Espionage expert Professor Anthony Glees, the founder of the Institute for Intelligence and Security Studies at Buckingham University, added: “Engaging with China over weapons research today represents the height of folly and could have potentially catastrophic consequences. Even with the best intentions, Woodley’s visits to China and his relationships with those who are bound to be Chinese intelligence assets places him in the utmost danger.”

As the scale of the strategic threat China poses becomes clearer, it may just be that Woodley’s friendships could have endangered the rest of us, too.

China’s top diplomat Wang Yi has already said that the US and China now stand at the “brink of a new Cold War”. But this time America faces a far stronger enemy, and the prize at hand is even greater.

The old Cold War was essentially an intercontinental nuclear arms race between the USSR and the USA, a balance of terror that came to be known by the acronym MAD — Mutually Assured Destruction. After the near-catastrophe of the Cuban missile crisis, this hugely expensive military competition led to a stalemate that allowed for diplomacy to resurface, and eventually for Gorbachev’s Perestroika reforms.

The US won the first Cold War, largely due to its rival’s economic ineptitude, and afterwards political scholar Francis Fukuyama was so jubilant that he somewhat prematurely declared the End of History. Not Quite.

But if the old Cold War was a nuclear arms race, then Cold War II is a race for quantum supremacy. Control over Big Data determines which of the world’s superpowers emerges triumphant, because to reliably master quantum supremacy is to master the world.

Last October, US technology giant Google announced that it had built a quantum computer that performed calculations in 200 seconds that would have taken a conventional supercomputer 10,000 years to perform. What this could mean for human civilisation is unprecedented. A stable quantum computer with that much computing power would transform complex financial risk management into child’s play, take years off pharmaceutical research and development, leave vast amounts of personal data open to manipulation, and trigger a revolution in artificial intelligence and machine learning, which in turn would give modern militaries unmatched advantage in war.

Most crucially, a powerful quantum computer able to shave 10,000 years off its calculations would render previously unbreakable internet encryption useless, and replace it with unbreakable quantum encryption. Quantum calculations would be able to crack any current encryption code in existence. It follows, therefore, that whichever nation masters quantum supremacy first could instantly hack the entire internet, from the highly personal information of world leaders to every nation’s state bank encryption.

Whereas classical computers store and transmit information in bits — binary states of 0 or 1 — a quantum bit (or a “qubit“) can occupy both 1 and 0 at the same time, enabling exponentially greater simultaneous calculations. The leap forward this represents is akin to the difference between an abacus and modern computers. To put this into context, a quantum computer with ‘only’ 500 qubits would be able to encode more bits of information than there are atoms in the observable universe. Let there be no doubt that, if reliably achieved, quantum supremacy changes the world.

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This is why the US and China are in a race to determine who will first achieve quantum supremacy. And just as in the old Cold War, the economy will be a decisive factor. In August last year, the US Department of the Army issued a request for information on quantum technologies for ‘Threat Military Applications’, stating that “A global race has ensued to exploit and operationalise quantum technologies for the use of military effects.”

In December 2018, President Trump authorised the National Quantum Initiative Act (NQI), providing for $1.2b (£1b) to be invested in quantum technology over five years. Trump then signed an Executive Order to establish a National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee composed of 22 experts from industry, research and federal agencies.

But China also has an awesome quantum programme to match its rival. President Xi  has funded a multi-billion dollar quantum computing initiative  aiming to achieve significant breakthroughs by 2030. In November 2018, China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC), the country’s largest defence electronics company, unveiled a prototype quantum radar that it claims can detect stealth aircraft in flight.

Chinese researchers also claim to have built a satellite that can send quantum-entangled encrypted messages between distant locations. Meanwhile, a team of researchers at the US Army Research Laboratory in Adelphi, Maryland, is working on a similar approach called quantum teleportation.

Though China apparently suffers from a skills shortage hampering her companies’ attempts to supersede their U.S. competitors, a January 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment report to the Senate  concluded that the US lead in science and technology had been significantly eroded, as China rapidly catches up.

China has the funds, and is biding its time. Meanwhile, Beijing’s key aim is to disrupt its rivals as the country rises to supremacy, increasing the risks of the ‘Thucydides trap’.

Last week, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison revealed ongoing and multiple state-backed cyber attacks on a wide range of the country’s systems. The attackers primarily used a tactic called “remote code execution vulnerability”, which involves hackers attempting to insert their own software code into a vulnerable system like a server, in order to steal information. Cyber-security experts have said that some of the same computer code and tactics used in these cyber-attacks were also used in a February 2019 hack into Parliament House, also blamed on China.

Beijing has also imposed tariffs on Australian barley, stopped buying Australian beef and urged Chinese tourists and students to avoid the country, after Morrison called for an independent inquiry into the coronavirus.

Sydney’s cyber-attack was deemed serious enough for the Australian PM to confirm that he “spoke to Boris Johnson last night”. But Britain is also beset by problems with potential Chinese spytech, largely of our own making. The US security services have long warned us  that Chinese 5G equipment from Huawei poses a spying threat. The Chinese state is suspected of inserting “hidden backdoors” into Huawei’s 5G equipment to spy on data passed through mobile and data networks.

Google’s former Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt, who is now chairman of the Pentagon’s Defence Innovation Board, reaffirmed this month that “There’s no question that Huawei has engaged in some practices that are not acceptable in national security”.

He compared Huawei to “signals intelligence” – or spy agencies – and said that information “from Huawei routers has ultimately ended up in hands that would appear to be the state”. However it happened, he said, “we’re sure it happened”.

To protect China’s Huawei deal from being rescinded, Beijing has unleashed a series of economic threats against Britain. The state-backed Global Times warned that the British economy faces “substantial damage” if Boris Johnson’s government did not change course on Huawei as well on the political situation in Hong Kong.

Beijing, it said, would “strike back… where the UK steps out of line”. Citing British operations in China, in particular the HSBC bank, as well as Chinese investment at a nuclear plant in Somerset, the editorial said Britain “does not have many cards to play” and “further moves to cut co-operation could lead to the UK shooting itself in its own foot”. In response, in a review called Project Defend, Downing Street is now investigating how to reduce reliance on China for critical products.

In response to China’s threats to Britain, the US State Department issued what only a few years ago would have been considered a shockingly bullish reply.

“The United States stands with our allies and partners against the Chinese Communist Party’s coercive bullying tactics,” it stated: “Shenzhen-based Huawei is an extension of the Chinese Communist Party’s surveillance state. Beijing’s aggressive behavior shows why countries should avoid economic overreliance on China and should guard their critical infrastructure from CCP influence. Australia, Denmark, and other free nations have recently faced pressure from CCP interests to bow to China’s political wishes. The United States stands ready to assist our friends in the U.K. with any needs they have.”

China’s cyber warfare is also evident on Twitter, the social media company disclosing that it had discovered hundreds of thousands of accounts linked to state disinformation operations. The People’s Republic was exposed as running the largest operation, followed by Russia and Turkey, using manipulation to spread pro-Beijing propaganda and pushing deceptive narratives about the political dynamics in Hong Kong.

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Similar to Iran, China has also been engaging in ‘hostage diplomacy’. Chinese courts sentenced Australian Cam Gillespie to death for drug smuggling, seven years after his arrest, and also increasing the sentence of a convicted Canadian drug smuggler from life imprisonment to death, shortly after Huawei Director Meng Wanzhou was detained in Canada. Two Canadians, a former diplomat and a businessman, were also arrested in China on allegations of espionage after Meng’s arrest.

India, another US ally, has been experiencing increased tensions along its 2,500 mile disputed Himalayan border with China. In one of the worst incidents for years, up to 20 Indian soldiers were killed last week in skirmishes with Chinese counterparts.

The conflict between these two rival nuclear powers largely centres on the effects of climate change on the glaciers. Roughly 47% of the water used by India comes from the river Ganges, fed by the Kosi river rising in Chinese-controlled Tibet. As a result, both countries are building dams in order to better control the most vital of resources.

To make matters more complicated, and volatile, this border dispute also involves a third nuclear power in the form of Pakistan.

President Trump has offered American mediation over the border dispute, but the move was largely interpreted as being hostile to China. Meanwhile US Secretary of State Pompeo recently confronted China’s foreign minister Yang Jiechi with a list of China’s actions around the globe. “I ticked through a few of them,” he said: “Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjiang, what they’re doing in India, what they’ve done in the economic zones along the Philippines and Malaysia and Indonesia and Vietnam, the coercion on Australia.”

Yet the US does not have the strength to fight the new cold war alone, and it will require a new NATO-style containment and security policy for Asia, whereas until recently, most European nations had not been alert to the threat posed by an increasingly assertive China.

This has led to a particularly insidious and weak policy response, barely disguised as typical and unoriginal European anti-Americanism, but dressed up as realpolitik. “Analysts have long talked about the end of an American-led system and the arrival of an Asian century,” the European Union’s Foreign Policy chief Josep Borrell Fontelles stated: “This is now happening in front of our eyes… the pressure to choose sides is growing. As the EU, we should follow our own interests and values and avoid being instrumentalised by one or the other.”

French Foreign Minister Yves Le Drian declared in the French Senate that “regarding China, I do not think we should be locked into a logic of confrontation bipolar world. To not start a second Cold War we must affirm Europe’s autonomy”.

Indeed, Macron’s chief diplomatic advisor Emmanuelle Bonne is reported to have confirmed to Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi about “France’s readiness to step up strategic communication with China” assuring China that “France respects China’s sovereignty, appreciates the sensitivity of Hong Kong-related issues, and has no intention of interfering in Hong Kong affairs.”

Germany’s powerful business lobbies are also drawn towards China, while Italy considers herself a “most trusted ally” to the country. Chinese investment in infrastructural projects like the high-speed rail link from Greece to Budapest, also presents economic and political vulnerabilities due to China’s Belt and Road initiative.

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But those in Europe who argue that the continent’s interests lie in “remaining neutral” while this US-China Cold War II unfolds, are deluding themselves and everyone else. They seem not to have yet realised, blissfully wish to ignore, or indeed wilfully mislead others about the fact that ‘deciding’ which side to take is a choice we simply no longer have.

Through its cyber espionage, aggressive domination of supply chains, and belligerent domestic political and foreign policies, China has made that choice for us.

Although some may wish to ignore it, or make the argument for a parochial ‘national hobbitism’, the stakes are too high to avoid choosing a side.

Attaining quantum supremacy changes everything, and whoever masters it will have instant access to, and domination of, the rest of the world for the foreseeable future. If China wins that struggle, the sort of organ harvesting, social-credit enforcing, Uighur-Muslim interning, dark tyranny that governs most of the Chinese mainland will come to dominate the rest of the world.

By this, I do not mean to imply that we should go to war with China. Of course not. But we must at the very least recognise that we are in the midst of a new Cold War, and this will help us formulate appropriate policy responses with our eyes open. Quantum supremacy changes everything. Similar to Tolkien’s One Ring, it is a power too great to be wielded by one man in Beijing alone. If this were to happen, global democracy could be in permanent retreat.

That was the harsh lesson learned by Bilbo Baggins, when he left his Shire in support of the free world. And even though the Hobbits were initially oblivious to it, the battle eventually came to them regardless. The rise of Mordor was simply too powerful and too dangerous an event to countenance, even for the little people in the Shire.