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The US Central Intelligence Agency has launched a Chinese-language social media campaign to encourage Chinese government officials and workers to assist the agency.
Robert Dougherty and Daniel Croft
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Tue, 13 May 2025
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Government
The two Chinese-language social media videos were released earlier this month and encourage disillusioned residents of the People’s Republic of China to contact the agency.
In one video, a senior Chinese Communist Party official reaches out to the agency after becoming more fearful that he and his family will be eliminated by party politics in China.
In a second video, a junior government worker, with access to classified information, begins questioning the harsh conditions of their daily life in the PRC and contacts the agency.
The concept of enticing crucial CCP staff and industrial or military personnel to divulge secrets to the US is nothing new. The idea was floated earlier this year by American entrepreneur and Anduril Industries founder Palmer Luckey, who appeared on a podcast with former US Navy Seal and US Central Intelligence Agency contractor Shawn Ryan.
“We can build the factories quickly. But the hardest part is going to be training the kids. Like, we’re going to need to basically get serious about training people to run factories well efficiently using modern techniques. And we do have a lack of those,” he said.
“During the Cold War, we gave a lot of visas to people to come to the United States to immigrate here from hostile powers like the Soviet Union if they were in a critical role in those countries.
“You basically said you’re important over there. You are one of the puzzle pieces that keeps everything held together for their missile program. ‘Come over to the United States, we’ll give you a job at NASA’ … I think we need to start doing that again. I think that’s one of the ways that we can beat China.
“There [are] a lot of people who hate what China has become … To be clear, I’m not saying we need to import people because we can’t survive without immigration. But if we can steal their very best manufacturing engineers, deprive China of those people and then put them to work here helping us catch up with China on manufacturing, that’s a great trade.
“We’re trying to steal the very best people from our greatest foe. Surely, we can agree that that’s usually worth doing … It’s not just that there’s a need for them here, it’s that it’s going to hurt China by taking them.
“China’s got plenty of rice pickers. Taking a rice picker is not going to hurt. Taking the head of an advanced silicon manufacturing facility that can make cutting-edge computer graphics chips, that is going to really, really hurt them.
“Look at Venezuela. Let’s take whoever’s running their oil and gas machinery over there. Imagine what would happen if we identified their top 10 most competent people who are running their oil and gas organisations and we gave them all defector visas … You would destroy the whole Venezuelan economy overnight.”
China responds
China has responded to the CIA adverts, slamming them and saying that it would be taking extra action against “infiltration and sabotage activities of foreign anti-China forces”.
A spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry labelled the videos a “damning confession” of the CIA “stealing” the secrets of other nations.
“The US not only maliciously smears and attacks China but also blatantly deceives and lures Chinese personnel to turn to its side, and even directly targets Chinese government officials,” said spokesperson Lin Jian.
“This is a serious violation of China’s national interests and a naked political provocation.”
While not from the government, Chinese users have also responded with their own video mocking the original advertisements that encourages those residing in the US who are sick of “Wall Street elites” that “manipulate finance” to take up arms and fight back, with a shotgun sound suggesting they are enticing Americans to use their guns to shoot their leaders.
The video is difficult to find online, but it has been shared by YouTube creator Carl Zha in an analysis of the CIA and Chinese videos.
This story was originally published on Cyber Daily’s sister brand, Defence Connect. Cyber Daily has updated the article to include the response from China.
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