CIA Makes New Push To Recruit Chinese Military Officers as Informants (reuters.com)
- Reference: 0180783222
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/02/12/211223/cia-makes-new-push-to-recruit-chinese-military-officers-as-informants
- Source link: https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/cia-makes-new-push-recruit-chinese-military-officers-informants-2026-02-12/
> Just weeks after a dramatic purge of China's top general, the CIA is moving to capitalize on any resulting discord with [1]a new public video targeting potential informants in the Chinese military . The U.S. spy agency on Thursday rolled out the video depicting a disillusioned mid-level Chinese military officer, in the latest U.S. step in a campaign to ramp up human intelligence gathering on Washington's strategic rival.
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> It follows a similar effort last May that focused on fictional figures within China's ruling Communist Party that provided detailed Chinese-language instructions on how to securely contact U.S. intelligence. CIA Director John Ratcliffe said in a statement that the agency's videos had reached many Chinese citizens and that it would continue offering Chinese government officials an "opportunity to work toward a brighter future together."
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/cia-makes-new-push-recruit-chinese-military-officers-informants-2026-02-12/
Not very subtle (Score:2)
This sort of thing used to be done very subtly...it's generally not good practice to let your adversaries know you're actively recruiting fired subordinates, lest those subordinates "commit suicide."
Re: Not very subtle (Score:2)
Demoralizing your enemy by making him more concerned about looking over his shoulder than paying attention to you is not a bad strategy.
Re: (Score:2)
They've been doing this in public (e.g. on YouTube / Twitter / etc) for years. I don't know why this is a new story.
The Donald Trump Clown Car (Score:1, Insightful)
Nobody with the least bit of common sense would undertake anything that entails any kind of risk and assume that anyone involved in the current administration and management of the United States would be remotely capable of protecting their identity, let along doing the right thing.
The good and trustworthy people are all long gone. And it'll take decades to rebuild, assuming it can be done at some point in the future.
Re: (Score:2)
Anyone remember that time that Hillary Clinton leaked the IDs of CIA spies in China to China and the CPC executed them all?
But I watched an interesting interview with John Le Carre (the spy writer) a while ago and he was talking about how the informants he recruited mostly just loved the idea of betraying people and did it for kicks. They probably don't think far enough ahead to imagine being betrayed themselves.
Re: (Score:2)
> Anyone remember that time that Hillary Clinton leaked the IDs of CIA spies in China to China and the CPC executed them all?
No, because it didn't happen. There is no public record, evidence, or official accusation from the FBI, CIA, or Department of Justice linking her to that specific intelligence failure. Also, I think you meant the CCP instead of the CPC, but hey, gaslight on!
Dangerous job under the current regime. (Score:4, Informative)
The documents that Trump shouldn't have had, and stored on the stage in the ballroom included [1]Information on human sources. [archive.org]
Around that time [2]the CIA had dozens of informant captured and executed. [thehill.com]
So, I'd give it a few years. The current regime is probably going to take your details and sell the information back to China after the next presidential election.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20231006070549/https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/trump-papers-included-material-on-human-sources-20220827-p5bd6p
[2] https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/575384-cia-admits-to-losing-dozens-of-informants-around-the-world-nyt/
That is one (Score:2)
helluva good psyop