10 hours ago
The CIA released videos in Chinese on social media asking disillusioned Chinese officials to share secrets. The clips depict fictional spies seeking freedom, as part of a wider US recruitment campaign.
The videos are part of a larger CIA strategy launched last October to recruit informants in China.(Photo: YT/Central Intelligence Agency)
UPDATED: May 2, 2025 06:14 IST
The CIA on Thursday released two Chinese-language videos aimed at encouraging Chinese government officials to leak sensitive information to the United States — a sign of the agency's efforts to penetrate the Communist Party’s inner circle.
The videos, titled "Why I Contacted CIA: To Take Control of My Fate" and "Why I Contacted CIA: For a Better Life," were posted on social media platforms including Instagram and Facebook, as well as YouTube. The videos showcase fictional Chinese officials secretly contacting the CIA, expressing disillusionment with the country’s political system and a desire to protect their families’ futures.
"As I rise within the party, I watch those above me being discarded like worn-out shoes, but now I realise that my fate was just as precarious as theirs," the narrator says in Mandarin Chinese in one of the videos as the camera shows empty seats around a lavish dinner table.
"My family's fate cannot rest in their hands," the man says before the video depicts him contacting the CIA using a tablet computer. It ends with the CIA logo and dark web contact details for the agency.
The videos are part of a larger CIA strategy launched last October to recruit informants in China, Iran, and North Korea. The agency has posted secure contact instructions online and believes the messaging is breaking through China’s strict internet controls. "If it weren't working, we wouldn't be making more videos," a CIA official told Reuters.
"No adversary had ever posed a more formidable challenge to the US than the CCP," CIA Director John Ratcliffe said. "It is intent on dominating the world economically, militarily, and technologically," he said in a statement. "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."
China's embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment on the videos, but it has previously accused the US of waging a systematic disinformation campaign against China.
(With inputs from Reuters)
ALSO READ: India's response to Pahalgam terror attack should avoid regional war: JD Vance
Published By:
Satyam Singh
Published On:
May 2, 2025
