The procedures prospective spies must take to contact the US and contribute information are outlined online by a premier American spy agency in Mandarin, Farsi, and Korean.
The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has continued its apparently successful recruitment of Russian informants by launching a fresh push to find informants in China, Iran, and North Korea.
The agency published instructions online on Wednesday that potential informants can follow to get in touch with US intelligence officers without endangering themselves. The instructions are available in Korean, Mandarin, and Farsi.
The guidelines explain how to contact the CIA via both its official website and the darknet, an area of the internet that can only be accessed with specialized software meant to conceal the user’s identity.
After Russia invaded Ukraine two years ago, the CIA published similar guidelines in Russian.
The organization released a statement saying, “People are attempting to contact us from all over the world, and we are offering them instructions for how to do that safely.”
“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 posts in the three languages were made on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Telegram, and X.
“Difficult targets”
As China increases its cooperation with Russia and Iran, the CIA has become more and more hungry for intelligence.
The US intelligence community refers to North Korea, Russia, China, and Iran as “hard targets”—nations with governments that are challenging to overthrow.
The US is also battling Iran’s nuclear program and its strained relations with Israel.
Along with what US authorities claim are Pyongyang’s weaponry supply to Moscow for the war against Ukraine—an accusation both Moscow and Pyongyang refute—North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is another focus of US intelligence.
Russian-language writings about how to securely contact the agency were posted on the CIA’s social media pages in 2022, and in 2023, videos were added to further aid in the agency’s recruitment of Russians.
China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran employ web access to restrict the information sources that consumers can access, and they all ban access to US platforms like Facebook.
While there are ways to get above this control and surveillance with VPNs and other tools, their very capacity has made them a target. The CIA cautioned potential sources to exercise caution when selecting a program, as it may have a significant impact on their safety.
The CIA noted in its guidelines for Mandarin users, “Use a VPN provider not headquartered in Russia, Iran, or China, or any other country that is considered unfriendly to the United States.”
