New CIA recruitment video targets Chinese military personnel

The CIA’s latest YouTube video offers instructions on how to contact the agency on the encrypted Tor Browser.

The CIA has released a new Chinese-language recruitment video on its YouTube channel, encouraging members of China’s military to spy for the United States.

Released on Thursday, the video is the latest addition to a YouTube series targeting Chinese and Russian citizens with information about how to securely contact the US spy agency using the encrypted Tor Browser.

The videos typically focus on a fictional character who is having doubts about their government before deciding to spy for Washington.

The latest video by the CIA, which runs just under two minutes, focuses on a Chinese military officer going through the motions of his job while sharing his growing alarm with his country’s leadership, who are said to be “protecting only their own selfish interests” in the clip.

The video then moves to the officer at home with his wife and daughter, observing that he cannot “allow these madmen to shape my daughter’s future world”.

Alluding to ancient China’s military strategist Sun Tzu’s The Art of War text, the narrator observes that while the greatest winner is the one who “triumphs without fighting”, China’s leadership is eager “to send us to the battlefield”.

In its final scenes, the video cuts to the protagonist removing a bag from a work safe and then driving through a military checkpoint to a deserted car park. Sitting alone, he logs onto a computer to contact the CIA, which he says is a “way of fighting for my family and my nation”.

The video ends with a dramatic flourish of words: “The fate of the world is in your hands” – before sharing instructions on how to download the Tor Browser to contact the CIA.

The accompanying text below the YouTube video asks users: “Do you have information about high-ranking Chinese leaders? Are you a military officer or have dealings with the military? Do you work in intelligence, diplomacy, economics, science, or advanced technology fields, or deal with people working in these fields?”

Beijing did not immediately comment on the CIA’s video, but its Ministry of Foreign Affairs has described previous US intelligence recruitment drives as malicious “smears and attacks” against China that deceive and lure Chinese personnel to “surrender”.

The CIA’s network in China was famously dismantled by Beijing between 2010 and 2012, leading to the death or imprisonment of at least 30 people, according to a 2018 investigation by Foreign Policy magazine.

The collapse of the US spying network was linked in part to a botched communication system.