CIA targets Chinese officials with recruitment videos
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The CIA has released Chinese-language videos to recruit officials in China, aiming to penetrate Beijing’s censorship and gather intelligence on the Chinese government.
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The seal of the Central Intelligence Agency at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., April 13, 2016. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)
The CIA has released two Chinese-language videos aimed at recruiting officials inside China, in a rare public move to bolster human intelligence gathering against Washington's strategic rival.
The initiative, unveiled on Thursday, builds on an October campaign in which the CIA actively targeted China, Iran, and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) by publishing secure online contact methods aimed at recruiting informants within these adversarial regimes.
According to the agency, the campaign has shown enough impact to warrant expansion. "If it weren't working, we wouldn't be making more videos," a CIA official told Reuters, emphasizing that China remains the agency’s top intelligence focus in what it calls a “truly generational competition.”
The short videos, shared on CIA social media channels, feature fictional portrayals of a senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official and a junior government employee, both of whom become disillusioned with the ruling system and ultimately reach out to the CIA.
This narrative comes as Beijing continues to purge high-ranking officials and military figures, including those considered close to President Xi Jinping.
In one video, a narrator reflects in Mandarin: "As I rise within the party, I watch those above me being discarded like worn-out shoes, but now I realize that my fate was just as precarious as theirs."
The video shows the man contacting the CIA via tablet, followed by a display of the agency's dark web contact details.
Targeting advanced intelligence and cyber secrets
The CIA's campaign goes beyond counterintelligence. The agency seeks insights into advanced military, cyber, and scientific technologies, as well as economic intelligence and China’s foreign policy strategies.
That said, China’s embassy in Washington did not comment directly on the videos, however, Beijing has previously accused the US of conducting a systemic disinformation campaign and rejected efforts to create divisions between the Chinese public and the CCP.
The agency believes its messages are breaking through China’s stringent online censorship, often referred to as the “Great Firewall.”
A generational intelligence rivalry
US intelligence officials have consistently identified China as the most significant military and cyber threat to the United States. In a March assessment, they warned that Beijing possesses the ability to conduct cyberattacks on critical US infrastructure, strike with conventional weapons, and challenge US dominance in space.
The CIA also sees China as a direct rival in artificial intelligence, while the Chinese government aims to surpass the US in AI capabilities by 2030.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe speaks of the scale of the threat, stating, “No adversary has ever posed a more formidable challenge to the US than the CCP,” adding, “It is intent on dominating the world economically, militarily, and technologically.”
Today we released two videos in Mandarin aimed at recruiting Chinese officials. @CIADirector John Ratcliffe: "One of the primary roles of the CIA is to collect intelligence…by recruiting assets that can help us steal secrets."
— CIA (@CIA) May 1, 2025
View the videos here:https://t.co/mhQbzet5X2 https://t.co/CzEsvnAp0n
The CIA is not shy about it either, as they posted on X that Fox News had reported on the two videos in Mandarin.
Ratcliffe framed the video series as part of a broader, innovative strategy: "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."
