CIA launches drive to recruit informants in China, Iran, North Korea

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has launched a new drive to recruit informants in China, Iran and North Korea, adding to what it says has been a successful effort to enlist Russians.

On Wednesday, the agency posted online instructions in Korean, Mandarin, and Farsi detailing steps that potential informants can take to contact US intelligence officials without putting themselves in danger.

The instructions include ways to reach the CIA on its public website or on the darknet, a part of the internet that can only be accessed using special tools designed to hide the user's identity.

The CIA posted similar instructions in Russian two years ago following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"People are trying to reach out to us from around the world and we are offering them instructions for how to do that safely," the agency said in a statement.

"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 messages in the three languages were posted on Telegram, YouTube, X, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

'Hard targets'

The CIA's thirst for intelligence has grown as China expands cooperation with Russia and Iran.

Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are known within the US intelligence community as "hard targets" — countries whose governments are difficult to penetrate.

The US is also grappling with Iran's tensions with Israel and its nuclear programme.

North Korea's nuclear weapons programme is another US intelligence target, along with what US officials say are Pyongyang's arms supplies to Moscow for the war against Ukraine, an allegation that Moscow and Pyongyang deny.

The CIA began recruiting Russians in 2022 by posting Russian-language texts on its social media accounts on how to contact the agency securely, followed by videos in 2023.

China, Russia, North Korea and Iran all block access to American platforms like Facebook, for example, and use web access to control what sources of information users can access.

VPNs and other tools offer ways around this censorship and surveillance, but that ability has made them a target. In its instructions to potential sources, the CIA warned its audience to be selective, as their well-being could depend on choosing the right programme.

"Use a VPN provider not headquartered in Russia, Iran, or China, or any other country that is considered unfriendly to the United States," the agency wrote in its instructions for Mandarin users.