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The slick ad from China’s feared spy agency, the Ministry of State Security, opens with the shadow of an agent walking through a dark tunnel, a scene reminiscent of the cover of a John le Carré novel.

“Who am I?” asks a mysterious voice. “I am this silhouette by your side . . . I face the ever-changing world and the surging tide of darkness.”

The dramatic ad, which references natural disasters, urban unrest and a pandemic, was released to mark National Police Day this month and is the latest sign of China’s premier intelligence agency emerging from the shadows to tout its role fighting “subversion, separatism, terrorism and espionage”.

This month, the agency, which has increasingly publicised its investigations, accused Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6, of instructing a foreign consultant to spy on China. Last year, it claimed to have arrested a Chinese national working for US intelligence services.

Analysts say the growing public profile of the MSS is part of President Xi Jinping’s increasing focus on security, as China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong seeks to tighten his hold on the country.

Aside from geopolitical tensions with the US and its allies, Xi’s China faces risks from slowing economic growth and an escalating trade rivalry with the EU. Within this fraught environment, analysts say, the MSS has enjoyed growing political stature and strength.

“This greater publicity reflects an increase in the MSS’s political status — not just its comfort with speaking publicly but actually the political backing to make statements on behalf of the government,” said Alex Joske, a consultant at McGrathNicol and the author of Spies and Lies, a book about the MSS.

Founded in 1983 during a shake-up of earlier agencies, the MSS is a civilian secret police service that the US has described as a combination of the FBI and the CIA. Its reach extends throughout Chinese society, from a central ministry to provincial and municipal branches.

The agency, which US counterparts say is responsible for counter-intelligence as well as political security for the Communist regime, has been accused of widespread espionage abroad, including recruiting a far-right Belgian politician as an asset to conduct influence operations in Europe.

Inside China, the MSS has broken with its more low-profile past approach as Xi’s government has stepped up warnings to the public about the dangers of espionage.

In 2021, the agency released details of its recruiting process through the civil service exam and last year launched an official account on WeChat, the country’s most popular social media platform, where it has begun providing daily updates.

The posts range from recounting the story of the first death of a CIA agent in the line of duty, who was killed in 1950 in Tibet, to informing citizens about counter-espionage work against Taiwan’s “separatists”.

“In the past, we saw other things taking precedence over national security,” said Adam Ni, publisher of newsletter China Neican.

Ni said that during the “reform and opening up” period that followed Mao Zedong’s rule, China’s emphasis was on economic growth and maintaining good relationships with trading partners. “But now, increasingly we are seeing more focus and resources diverted to national security.”

He pointed to amendments to anti-espionage law that expanded China’s definition of spying, as well as new legislation on data and raids on foreign consultancieslast year.

“The MSS has a bigger role . . . because of the shift to putting more focus on national security and the need to convince the public there is a genuine risk,” said Ni.

The security publicity campaign had also sought to persuade citizens that espionage was a real and pressing concern, Ni said, often through the use of social media.

In 2016, Beijing marked the first annual “National Security Education Day” with a cartoon titled Dangerous Love that warned hapless young women to be wary of foreigners, who could be spies. In 2021, China followed up with “National Police Day” to celebrate law enforcement.

The MSS’s leadership has also been accorded higher political status, reflecting its increased public role, Joske said. Chen Yixin, the minister of state security, and his predecessor Chen Wenqing have been elevated to more important Communist party positions than past intelligence chiefs.

Chen Wenqing, for example, was the first former MSS minister to be appointed to the party’s 24-member politburo and its central secretariat. In the past, factional politics prevented leaders from elevating MSS heads to such senior positions, Joske said.

The agency’s wider remit comes as the CCP adopts a broader view of security that encompasses data, technology, the environment and other issues.

“A lot more things are being interpreted or viewed within parts of the Chinese Communist party as state security,” Joske said, a shift that would not “bode well for China’s co-operation and engagement with the rest of the world”. Other experts said China’s economic slump could be feeding into the strengthening of the state’s security services, as authorities fear financial risks, including high debt among local governments and enterprises, could spread into social unrest.

“The Chinese economy is in pretty bad shape,” said Xu Chenggang, senior research scholar at Stanford University’s Center on China’s Economy and Institutions. “The Chinese Communist party realises this danger and realises that if a financial crisis occurred, it could be catastrophic.”

The MSS has occasionally commented on the economy on social media as it courts popular support. On Sunday, it published online a comic about the need to protect critical mineral resources from covetous foreign powers.

Since 2022, the agency has also been collaborating with a Shanghai production house on a recreation of a 1980s Chinese cartoon, Black Cat Detective, releasing one episode a year on National Police Day. In this year’s episode, Black Cat, in his retro police uniform with oversized epaulettes and white gloves, defeats data thieves, including archvillain One Ear the mouse, keeping the town of Forest safe and underlining the agency’s increased focus on online security. “Without data security, there is no Forest security,” Black Cat’s boss declares.

...instead of cobalt or nickel (another metal often used in lithium-ion batteries).

In a new study, the researchers showed that this material, which could be produced at much lower cost than cobalt-containing batteries, can conduct electricity at similar rates as cobalt batteries. The new battery also has comparable storage capacity and can be charged up faster than cobalt batteries, the researchers report.

“I think this material could have a big impact because it works really well,” says Mircea Dincă, the W.M. Keck Professor of Energy at MIT. “It is already competitive with incumbent technologies, and it can save a lot of the cost and pain and environmental issues related to mining the metals that currently go into batteries.”

Dincă is the senior author of the study, which appears today in the journal ACS Central Science. Tianyang Chen PhD ’23 and Harish Banda, a former MIT postdoc, are the lead authors of the paper. Other authors include Jiande Wang, an MIT postdoc; Julius Oppenheim, an MIT graduate student; and Alessandro Franceschi, a research fellow at the University of Bologna.

Alternatives to cobalt

Most electric cars are powered by lithium-ion batteries, a type of battery that is recharged when lithium ions flow from a positively charged electrode, called a cathode, to a negatively electrode, called an anode. In most lithium-ion batteries, the cathode contains cobalt, a metal that offers high stability and energy density.

However, cobalt has significant downsides. A scarce metal, its price can fluctuate dramatically, and much of the world’s cobalt deposits are located in politically unstable countries. Cobalt extraction creates hazardous working conditions and generates toxic waste that contaminates land, air, and water surrounding the mines.

“Cobalt batteries can store a lot of energy, and they have all of features that people care about in terms of performance, but they have the issue of not being widely available, and the cost fluctuates broadly with commodity prices. And, as you transition to a much higher proportion of electrified vehicles in the consumer market, it’s certainly going to get more expensive,” Dincă says.

Because of the many drawbacks to cobalt, a great deal of research has gone into trying to develop alternative battery materials. One such material is lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP), which some car manufacturers are beginning to use in electric vehicles. Although still practically useful, LFP has only about half the energy density of cobalt and nickel batteries.

Another appealing option are organic materials, but so far most of these materials have not been able to match the conductivity, storage capacity, and lifetime of cobalt-containing batteries. Because of their low conductivity, such materials typically need to be mixed with binders such as polymers, which help them maintain a conductive network. These binders, which make up at least 50 percent of the overall material, bring down the battery’s storage capacity.

About six years ago, Dincă’s lab began working on a project, funded by Lamborghini, to develop an organic battery that could be used to power electric cars. While working on porous materials that were partly organic and partly inorganic, Dincă and his students realized that a fully organic material they had made appeared that it might be a strong conductor.

This material consists of many layers of TAQ (bis-tetraaminobenzoquinone), an organic small molecule that contains three fused hexagonal rings. These layers can extend outward in every direction, forming a structure similar to graphite. Within the molecules are chemical groups called quinones, which are the electron reservoirs, and amines, which help the material to form strong hydrogen bonds.

Those hydrogen bonds make the material highly stable and also very insoluble. That insolubility is important because it prevents the material from dissolving into the battery electrolyte, as some organic battery materials do, thereby extending its lifetime.

“One of the main methods of degradation for organic materials is that they simply dissolve into the battery electrolyte and cross over to the other side of the battery, essentially creating a short circuit. If you make the material completely insoluble, that process doesn’t happen, so we can go to over 2,000 charge cycles with minimal degradation,” Dincă says.

Strong performance

Tests of this material showed that its conductivity and storage capacity were comparable to that of traditional cobalt-containing batteries. Also, batteries with a TAQ cathode can be charged and discharged faster than existing batteries, which could speed up the charging rate for electric vehicles.

To stabilize the organic material and increase its ability to adhere to the battery’s current collector, which is made of copper or aluminum, the researchers added filler materials such as cellulose and rubber. These fillers make up less than one-tenth of the overall cathode composite, so they don’t significantly reduce the battery’s storage capacity.

These fillers also extend the lifetime of the battery cathode by preventing it from cracking when lithium ions flow into the cathode as the battery charges.

The primary materials needed to manufacture this type of cathode are a quinone precursor and an amine precursor, which are already commercially available and produced in large quantities as commodity chemicals. The researchers estimate that the material cost of assembling these organic batteries could be about one-third to one-half the cost of cobalt batteries.

Lamborghini has licensed the patent on the technology. Dincă’s lab plans to continue developing alternative battery materials and is exploring possible replacement of lithium with sodium or magnesium, which are cheaper and more abundant than lithium.