For China, everyone's an enemy unless proven otherwise

If you trust no one, you will collect intelligence on everyone. This is the starting point for understanding the Overseas Key Individuals Database (OKIDB), according to a serving intelligence officer with experience operating in China.

"Everyone is considered a potential enemy unless they prove they are friends," said the person, who asked not to be named.

China has mobilised this paranoia at home to create a giant surveillance state and those same principles look to have been used by Zhenhua Data when compiling the OKIDB and the broader set of databases known as the Internet Big Data Military Intelligence System.

The idea is to collect millions of data points on people in key areas, from a wide variety of sources, as it could prove useful one day.

"The individual pieces of intelligence are like tiles in a mosaic, which make sense when they are arranged the right way," the intelligence officer said.

And in a connected, digital world, there is no better source for such collection than social media platforms such as Facebook or LinkedIn, which can be cheaply and easily mined for information.

"Ninety per cent of military-grade intelligence data can be obtained from open data analysis," said Liang Haoyu, the big data director at GTCOM, a company previously listed as a partner of Zhenhua.

Facebook was the greatest intelligence-gathering tool ever invented before TikTok came along.
— Former Western intelligence officer

A former Western intelligence officer added that "Facebook was the greatest intelligence-gathering tool ever invented before TikTok came along".

But such open-source intelligence is useful only for those who can effectively mine and then process the terabytes of data on offer.

It should be noted that China is not alone in its thirst for open source data – the US is also understood to be active in this area. But the size and scope of Beijing's collection has surprised some.

According to the intelligence officer, "the OKIDB represents a global mass surveillance system on an unprecedented scale."

On its website, Zhenhua, which translates to China Revival, claims to have collected 3 billion "articles" or data points from "40,000 distinct sources".

The Australian Financial Review has viewed a version of the larger database, which comprises 2.5 million individuals globally and 658,000 organisations.

"It [the OKIDB] differs from the intelligence-gathering practices of Western nations in that it deliberately collects on people whom we would consider 'civilians' and not normally subject to collection even in foreign countries," the intelligence officer said.

In Australia, this would explain why the likes of businessman David Gonski and software engineer Mike Cannon-Brookes feature on the database, alongside more obvious candidates including Peter Gilmour, a former special forces commander, and Simon Farbenbloom, who is in charge of free trade agreements within the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

The appearance of an individual on the database only indicates they are considered a "key person" by analysts at Zhenhua and in no way suggests any level of co-operation or contact with Beijing.

In Australia, the list viewed by the Financial Review runs to more than 35,000 people, but the actual number is likely to be far larger as some of the data was corrupted while being exfiltrated.

"Although the OKIDB looks like an automated collection system for open source intelligence, it in fact involves significant and ongoing manual involvement by human operators," the intelligence operative said.

Those appearing on the OKIDB have been selected because of positions they have held, their family relationships and their ability to either make decisions or access information.

But more than any single piece of data, the value in the OKIDB appears to be how it interacts with other data sets collected by companies linked to the Communist Party, Chinese military or the intelligence community on the mainland.

"It is not the data contained in a single dataset, but the way this data, and that contained in the 200 or so other datasets can be combined, which makes the overall data extremely powerful," the intelligence analyst said.

This allows the profiling of key people and organisations, which can then be mapped to get a broader view of the networks that exist in a particular country.