Russia, China try to recruit US officials unhappy with massive dismissals - CNN
Most of the efforts are focused on employees with access to state secrets and those who may have valuable information about critical infrastructure and the US government bureaucracy.
According to Censor.NET, this was reported by CNN, citing four unnamed interlocutors who have read the US intelligence reports.
According to the intelligence, the enemies are seeking to take advantage of the efforts of the administration of US President Donald Trump to conduct massive dismissals of federal officials.
According to the two sources, Beijing and Moscow are focusing their efforts on recently fired employees with security clearances and officials on probation who are facing dismissal. These are officials who may have valuable information about critical U.S. infrastructure and government affairs.
The interlocutors said that at least two countries have already set up recruitment sites and started aggressively targeting federal employees on LinkedIn.
A document prepared by the U.S. Navy Criminal Investigative Service, a partially redacted copy of which was seen by CNN, says that the U.S. intelligence community has "high confidence" that foreign adversaries are trying to recruit federal employees and benefit from the Trump administration's plans for massive layoffs. The document also states that foreign intelligence officers have been instructed to look for potential sources on LinkedIn, TikTok, RedNote, and Reddit.
"At least one foreign intelligence officer directed an asset to create a company profile on Linkedin and post a job ad, and to actively pursue federal employees who indicated they were 'open for work,'" the document says.
One of the interlocutors emphasized that the enemies believe that employees are "most vulnerable right now" amid large-scale layoffs.
"It doesn't take much imagination to realize that these federal employees who have been thrown to the curb with a wealth of institutional knowledge are extremely attractive targets for the intelligence services of our competitors and adversaries," another source familiar with the latest US assessments told CNN.
The journalists noted that the intelligence data confirms what had previously been a hypothetical fear: that mass layoffs could offer a rich recruiting opportunity for foreign intelligence services seeking to exploit financially vulnerable or resentful former employees.
Many current officials from various U.S. national security agencies who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity expressed frustration with the Trump administration's response to what they see as very real warnings.
"Employees who believe they are being mistreated by their employers are traditionally much more likely to disclose confidential information. We may be creating, albeit somewhat unintentionally, an ideal recruiting environment," says Holden Triplett, who served on the National Security Council in the first Trump administration.
