One of the panels during last week’s World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting – “Empowering People with Digital Public Infrastructure” – saw the participation of Avathon CEO Pervinder Johar, who provided a vision of a gloomy future of “optimized” and omnipresent surveillance.
Johar, of course, would not put it quite that way. Avathon, which produces AI tech, including the surveillance kind – believes that in the next five to ten years there will be no need for digital ID since facial recognition “and other things” will be built into “smart cities.”
The panel was dedicated to digital public infrastructure (DPI) – a buzzword used by digital ID proponents like the UN, the EU, the WEF, and Bill Gates – and Johar said the financial and identity portions of digital ID will “converge” to produce the result he predicted.
This suggests that the population will be under constant surveillance and identified at all times. Johar had more “good news” – Avathon makes what it calls an industrial AI platform, a surveillance system that the CEO shared has been deployed in Round Rock High School in Texas – “for children’s safety.”
It “utilizes a school’s existing camera infrastructure to proactively detect everything from a weapon to an open door, unauthorized access, or even a fire.”
Another panelist, Hoda Al Khzaimi, Associate Vice Provost for Research Translation and Entrepreneurship at New York University Abu Dhabi Hoda Al Khzaimi, also spoke about the connection between the DPI and “smart cities.”
“Digital public infrastructures came into manifestation because governments want to make sure that they provide seamless services in the rise of smart cities,” said Al Khzaimi, at the same time effectively suggesting that “the optimal application of DPI” is pushing digital ID on citizens.
Al Khzaimi also addressed the issue of DPI data. “What’s positive is that if this data provided by the DPI infrastructure are open and in many kinds of scenarios, you have open marketplaces for these data, users themselves can nudge governments and can nudge providers of these services and to tell them what do you want, and what do you not want and control the trends of how to deploy and build for solutions,” she said.
Al Khzaimi also praised the public-private partnership on the DPI. And while acknowledging the potential for abuse (“you don’t want to subject the citizens to mass analytics if they don’t want to have this mass analytics infrastructure”) she quickly contradicted herself by saying there are cases when this should be done – such as to “analyze population data for health pandemic outbreaks.”
Kapital Co-Founder and CEO Rene Saul spoke about Mexico’s digital passport (which utilizes biometric ID verification at the borders – something Saul did not mention), which he is a holder of, as a positive example of digital ID.
After all, it saved him 35 minutes.
“I arrived to Europe for the first time, and I saw the sign with other three countries that had electronic passport. So, I saved 35 minutes just to enter Europe when it took me one hour. So, that’s one of good examples, and that, and another good example of this technology is, it opened our borders,” said Saul.
Know Your Customer (KYC) was also mentioned as helpful in developing digital services such as those used by banks. KYC itself is an invasive form of digital ID verification that incorporates document scans and biometric ID verification.
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Britain’s most consequential espionage scandal in a generation has narrowed on Keir Starmer’s inner cabinet after The Sunday Times revealed that alleged Chinese agent Christopher Berry was intercepted at Heathrow Airport with a “suitcase full of cash” — and that senior officials, including National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell and Cabinet Secretary Christopher Wormald, held a closed-door meeting, allegedly discussing that advancing the case would harm relations with Beijing, weeks before prosecutors abandoned the insider-threat file.
The revelations, combined with an explosive Opposition letter from Kemi Badenoch and a rare diplomatic intervention from Washington, have plunged Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government into the most serious national-security controversy of its tenure — one now shaking both Westminster and the Five Eyes intelligence alliance. Not since the Kim Philby affair and the exposure of the Cambridge Spy Ring has a British government been so roiled by allegations of insider compromise and appeasement toward a hostile foreign state.
As The Sunday Times reported, Christopher Berry — a 33-year-old academic from Oxfordshire — was stopped under the Terrorism and Border Security Act after a February 2023 flight from China. Police seized £4,000 in cash, believed to have been supplied by his Chinese handler, codenamed “Alex,” linked to the Ministry of State Security.
A witness statement tabled in Parliament last week indicated that Berry funnelled real-time political intelligence through his MSS handler to one of Beijing’s senior leaders, all collected from a former Chinese teaching colleague — a Parliamentary researcher with deep access to senior Conservative MPs. Beijing reportedly viewed those MPs as a strategic threat, fearing that if they rose to higher office they would adopt a far stricter stance toward China’s geopolitical ambitions.
Though Berry was not detained at the time, the incident became central to the espionage case later dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service when the Starmer government declined to certify that China posed an “ongoing threat to national security” — a legal requirement under the Official Secrets Act.
The Sunday Times also revealed that Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Collins, the government’s sole witness, privately acknowledged that the decision not to describe China as an “ongoing threat” was “political.” The paper further disclosed that Jonathan Powell — a former banking executive who rose to become Starmer’s National Security Adviser — chaired a meeting on September 1 attended by Cabinet Secretary Christopher Wormald and MI5 Director-General Sir Ken McCallum, in which “the general theme of discussion was how the UK’s relationship with China was going to be damaged by this case.”
If accurate, that account directly contradicts Starmer’s assurance to Parliament that “no minister or special adviser was involved.” The implication — that Britain’s most senior national-security officials were weighing diplomatic consequences while an active espionage prosecution was still underway — has intensified accusations that the case was derailed by political interference rather than evidentiary weakness.
Within hours of the Sunday Times story, Opposition Leader Kemi Badenoch posted a letter to X accusing Keir Starmer of misleading Parliament and concealing ministerial involvement in the case’s collapse.
Framing the letter, Badenoch sought to explain the rapidly evolving affair to a wider audience. “I don’t blame you if you’ve struggled to follow the China spying case engulfing Parliament. Even MPs are finding it hard to keep up with a story that seems to change by the hour,” she wrote. “I suspect many fair-minded people have assumed this story can’t contain much. It seems too implausible for the government to have deliberately let off people who were accused of spying on MPs. But the story is truly astonishing. The layers of it have unravelled over the past few weeks like something from a spy novel.”
In the letter itself, Badenoch demands full disclosure of all correspondence, meetings, and witness-statement revisions involving Jonathan Powell, the Attorney General, or the Cabinet Office. She references the Sunday Times account directly, noting that “Powell left attendees with the understanding that Deputy National Security Adviser Collins’s witness statement would operate within the language of the report,” implying foreknowledge and coordination between Downing Street and prosecutors. She further alleges that Starmer’s ministers “softened” later witness statements to downplay Chinese espionage, replacing hard intelligence assessments with diplomatic phrasing designed to reassure Beijing. Her conclusion is cutting: “You have shown Britain is weak in the face of espionage, and have emboldened our enemies to believe they can spy on us with impunity.”
As reported previously by The Bureau, the controversy has now drawn international concern. The Chair of the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, John Moolenaar, has issued an extraordinary public rebuke on the court matter — a move almost without precedent between close allies. In a two-page letter dated October 16, 2025, addressed to James Roscoe, chargé d’affaires at the British Embassy in Washington, Moolenaar warned that Britain’s decision to abandon the prosecution risked setting “a dangerous precedent that foreign adversaries can target democratically elected legislators with impunity.” He wrote that the decision “deeply troubles” U.S. lawmakers and “undermines Five Eyes security coordination,” given the substantial amount of evidence against Berry and Christopher Cash, who were accused of funnelling parliamentary intelligence to the Chinese Communist Party.
“I hope the UK government will not allow this case to falter,” Moolenaar said, “and will instead take the steps necessary to ensure that both justice and due process are served.”
The letter, co-signed by senior members of the Committee and publicly released by Congress, marks an exceptional public intervention in a live national-security case involving a Five Eyes partner. Moolenaar added that the decision to drop the prosecution — despite evidence confirming a direct intelligence channel from Westminster to Beijing — “paints a concerning picture,” noting the resumption of high-level UK–China trade talks, negotiations over China’s proposed “super embassy” in London, and London’s ongoing review of its diplomatic posture toward Beijing. “Allowing this PRC aggression to go unchecked,” he warned, “would only incentivize the CCP to further interfere in Western democracies.”
As The Bureau previously detailed, Matthew Collins’s witness statement traced an intelligence pipeline connecting Westminster directly to Beijing’s leadership. Berry, via his handler “Alex,” transmitted reports obtained from Christopher Cash, a parliamentary aide with access to Conservative MPs critical of Beijing. Collins confirmed that some of the same intelligence later appeared in the possession of a senior CCP Politburo Standing Committee member — reportedly Cai Qi, one of Xi Jinping’s closest allies. Collins also documented Beijing’s targeted inquiries into the 2022 Conservative leadership race, focusing on Tom Tugendhat and Neil O’Brien, both members of the China Research Group (CRG) and long-standing critics of the CCP.
Taken together, the Heathrow cash seizure, the Powell-chaired meeting, the Badenoch letter, and the U.S. congressional intervention point to a modern Cold War crisis — a confrontation that has now moved beyond Westminster to test the cohesion of the Western alliance itself.
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President Donald Trump hosted President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House on Friday afternoon, in hopes of inching Ukraine and Russia closer to peace.
Trump told the media Friday evening that the two had a “very good meeting, a very cordial meeting.”
However, the president said that he has told both Eastern European leaders to stop the war and “go by the battle line wherever it is or else it gets too complicated.”
“The meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine was very interesting, and cordial, but I told him, as I likewise strongly suggested to President Putin, that it is time to stop the killing, and make a DEAL! Enough blood has been shed, with property lines being defined by War and Guts,” the president posted to Truth Social Friday evening. “They should stop where they are. Let both claim Victory, let History decide!”
The president pleaded with the leaders to stop shooting, “no more Death, no more vas and unsustainable sums of money spent.”
The meeting comes a day after Trump had a “lengthy” and “productive” conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, during which the two agreed to meet in Hungary.
One of the topics of interest during the bilateral meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy is Ukraine’s desire to purchase U.S. Tomahawk missiles.
During a news conference between the two leaders, they both emphasized their desire to reach a peace agreement. However, Zelenskyy underscored the need for more weapons, including the Tomahawks.
Zelenskyy suggested a trade between Ukrainian drones for U.S. Tomahawk missiles, which the president suggested he would be open to the exchange. However, the president appears to be reluctant to sell Tomahawks, potentially leaving the U.S. short in case they are needed.
The president indicated that the threat of Tomahawks may be bringing Putin to the table; however, he noted that the Russian president wants to end the war, acknowledging that “bad things can happen” with the missiles.
Overall, the president appears confident that he can solve the war. “I am the mediator president,” Trump told the media.
Trump addressed concerns that Putin is trying to buy more time in wanting to meet, which he acknowledged.
The president said he is eager to strike a peace deal between the two countries, noting that he thought the war would be easier to solve, adding that there is a lot of bad blood between the two leaders.
