MI5, Britain's domestic security service, has issued a rare public alert telling universities to end work with the China General Technology Research Institute (also called the China Academy of General Technology), which it says is a front for China's Ministry of State Security and has funded more than 100 UK-linked academics in areas such as AI, cybersecurity and steganography (hiding data inside ordinary files). Continued collaboration could now be prosecuted under the 2023 National Security Act, while China's embassy rejected the claims as "imaginary and purely fabricated". The warning matters because UK universities, financially stretched and heavily reliant on Chinese partnerships and students, now face pressure to review vetting, and analysts say the government must give clearer guidance on which technologies can be shared with China.