The United States Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA as it is more commonly known, is looking to recruit disillusioned Chinese officials as “spies” for the USA. That fact isn’t especially newsworthy, as the intelligence community is always trying to recruit foreign individuals.
What is noteworthy is the means the CIA is now going about it. The agency produced a video, or rather two, which were posted on the video sharing service YouTube and other social media platforms on Thursday that were aimed at disillusioned officials with the Chinese government. The Mandarin-language videos followed similar efforts earlier this year that encouraged Russians to share secrets with U.S. officials.
“Today, the CIA released Mandarin-language videos aimed at recruiting Chinese officials to steal secrets,” CIA Director John Ratcliffe said in a statement. “No adversary in the history of our Nation has presented a more formidable challenge or capable strategic competitor than the Chinese Communist Party. Our Agency must continue responding to this threat with urgency, creativity, and grit, and these videos are just one of the ways we are doing this.”
Videos Targeting China
The release of these new videos comes about six months after the CIA shared a text-only video in Mandarin that explained to Chinese citizens how to reach out to the CIA via the “dark web,” NBC News reported. According to the CIA, the video has been seen around 900,000 times since it was first released.
This new content is very much aimed at Chinese Communist Party officials. The first video is meant to speak to lower level officials within the CCP, highlighting the wealth gap that currently exists in the People’s Republic of China between party elites and the general populace; while the second shows a more senior party official at a formal dinner who believes his colleagues are maneuvering against him, a not too uncommon scenario in the RPC.
Both videos are based on the very real situation that exists within the PRC, but they were also produced because the traditional recruitment method of Chinese officials is increasingly nonexistent.
“This unprecedented online recruiting drive reflects the difficulty now faced in HUMINT (human intelligence) operations,” explained Dennis Wilder, a former senior American intelligence official and professor of practice at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. “With ubiquitous surveillance operating in all of China’s major cities, meeting potential recruits among China’s Communist Party elites becomes extremely difficult and dangerous.”
At the same time, the political situation is ideal.
“President Xi has purged six politburo members, 35 central committee members, over 60 generals, and 3.5 million party members since coming to power eleven years ago,” Wilder added. “Given that his campaign against political opponents and corruption within the Party has not abated, there may be fertile ground for this new and innovative approach to recruitment of the Chinese elite.”
Breaching The Great Firewall
Employing social media as a recruiting effort wouldn’t have been possible in the pre-digital age. Moreover, it is taking advantage of the fact that while China has gone to great lengths to stop the flow of outside information into the country, it is nearly impossible to do so.
The CIA is taking advantage of that fact.
However, what is unique is this campaign is that the agency has made it so public, yet, part of the point may be to create a level of curiosity, helping ensure that the videos will find their way to Chinese eyeballs.
“When the CIA rolled out Mandarin-language videos on YouTube urging Chinese Communist Party insiders to consider a career change – ideally one involving a burner phone and encrypted messaging – it was less of a surprise and more of a moment of strategic transparency,” said geopolitical analyst Irina Tsukerman, president of threat assessment firm Scarab Rising.
She noted that we are very much in an age where TikTok dances can trigger cultural revolutions and memes can influence elections.
“Why wouldn’t Langley get into the influence game? Subversion, after all, has entered the social media era – and it’s multilingual,” Tsukerman suggested.
“It is not a surprise the CIA is openly recruiting for sources online,” added Nicholas Eftimiades, assistant teaching professor in the iMPS Homeland Security Program at Penn State University.
It follows similar efforts being carried out by Beijing, Eftimiades noted.
“China’s Ministry of State Security publicly started advertising about a year ago. It is called ‘a walk-in’ when a person volunteers their services to the intelligence community,” said Eftimiades. “The CIA is just opening a public channel to do that using current technology. They will bear the burden of having to sort through and determine which persons may have useful information. The CIA will likely identify more people for debriefing than for use as actual spies. It is a very good idea and replaces the spotting and assessing phase of strategic debriefing programs conducted by several intelligence agencies.”
Not About Winning Hearts And Minds
Even though these videos could be seen hundreds of thousands of times, the campaign isn’t being directed to the masses in the PRC. Rather the campaign is very targeted.
“It’s not about winning hearts and minds across the Middle Kingdom. It’s about planting seeds of doubt in the minds of the right people: the mid-level cadre who’s disillusioned with party politics, the bureaucrat tired of watching friends disappear for thought crimes, the state-owned enterprise manager who wonders if maybe – just maybe – he could do more with his life than rerouting data to the MSS,” said Tsukerman.
The goal also isn’t to gather details on China’s hypersonic missiles, sixth-generation fighter aircraft or the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that may now be in development. While the CIA wouldn’t pass up on finding a way to garner such intelligence, this is about what could be seen as more mundane information that can still be difficult to obtain.
“Lots of Chinese language requirements are unclassified, such as Open Source Center, or minimally classified requiring only a secret level clearance,” said Eftimiades.
Recruiting The Disgruntled
The recruiting effort on social media is no different from that of extremist groups today, even if the message is a bit different. The core concept is built around reaching out to those who are disgruntled, disillusioned and who believes they can somehow make a difference.
“The message is sleek, emotionally calibrated, and just ambiguous enough to pass under the radar in tightly surveilled digital spaces,” said Tsukerman. “It’s not asking for revolution. It’s asking for a quiet conversation behind closed doors – one that starts with ‘We understand’ and ends with a passport and a new identity. The goal isn’t mass defection; it’s strategic vulnerability. Psychological warfare, with a user-friendly interface.”
How Will Beijing Respond?
The PRC certainly won’t sit back and let Western intelligence carry out the recruiting effort. Beijing may respond in waves, and that could include more than firewalls. Tsukerman said the PRC’s infamous Great Firewall could become a “Great Fortress,” while the MSS will likely conduct its own operations to stop the message from getting through.
“VPNs will be hunted down like rare Pokémon, AI filters will be fine-tuned to catch Western phrasing, and any whiff of foreign influence will be memory-holed before it hits 100 views,” Tsukerman suggested.
That could be followed by a the government engaging in its own “performance art” that could include a surge of videos with public pledges, and state-sponsored TikTok clones extolling party purity, where loyal factory workers are seen wiping away tears of patriotic pride.
“Expect the government to out-drama the CIA, flipping the recruitment campaign on its head and turning it into an excuse for another wave of nationalist fervor,” warned Tsukerman. “And then, the darker stuff: publicized espionage trials, televised confessions from unlucky souls caught cooperating with foreign intelligence, and a smattering of new legal provisions criminalizing – whatever the Party decides is suspicious that week. This is about deterrence by example. Turn against the state, and you’ll be made into a very public, very frightened example of what happens next.”
There could also be new laws that are fast-tracked to make merely reading the CIA’s recruitment page a treasonous act. But those actions may also be what the CIA hopes to see happen from its video campaign, as it will create further resentment within the PRC.
“The CIA’s campaign won’t win Oscars. It may not even produce a single defector of value,” said Tsukerman. “But in the high-stakes chessboard of 21st-century intelligence, sometimes a well-placed pawn destabilizes the board more effectively than a queen. Beijing knows that – and that’s why it’s already preparing to knock over the table.”
