The CIA is now recruiting informants in China, Iran, and North Korea, a spokesperson said on Oct. 2, following success in recruiting Russians.
“Our efforts on this front have been successful in Russia, and we want to make sure individuals in other authoritarian regimes know that we’re open for business,” the spokesperson said.
The CIA posted the instructions in Mandarin, Farsi, and Korean on its accounts on X, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, LinkedIn, and the Dark Web on how to contact it securely, a CIA spokesperson said in a statement, noting that the CIA was adapting to increased state repression and global surveillance.
The instructions advise potential informants to contact the CIA through official channels while also using trusted virtual private networks (VPNs) or the TOR network and to provide names, locations, contact details not associated with their real identities, and information that could be of interest to the CIA.
“Your safety and wellbeing is our foremost consideration,” the instructions said.
Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea have been designated as foreign adversaries by the United States and by the U.S. Intelligence Community as “hard targets,” where governments are difficult to penetrate.
The CIA has been recruiting Russian informants since 2022, with Russian-language posts across social media containing instructions on how to contact the agency securely. In 2023 and 2024, the CIA expanded the effort with videos.
CIA Director William Burns said in 2023 that disaffection among some Russians over the war in Ukraine was creating a rare opportunity to recruit spies and that the CIA was not letting it pass.
The video, released on the CIA’s official social media channels, aims to appeal to Russian patriotism, calling out corruption among top brass.
“Those around you may not want to hear the truth. But we do. You are not powerless,” one video says.
Last month, Burns and UK foreign intelligence agency MI6 Director Richard Moore, in a joint op-ed in the Financial Times, announced a partnership between their agencies to counter a “reckless campaign of sabotage” waged by Russian intelligence and the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
In 2021, the CIA announced a “China Mission Center” to better address the challenge posed by an “increasingly adversarial” CCP, treating it as a top priority.
Reuters contributed to this report.