CIA Releases Videos Urging Chinese Officials to Share Secrets with the U.S.

The CIA has launched a Chinese-language social media campaign targeting Chinese government officials, encouraging them to defect and leak secrets to the United States. This rare public outreach effort is seen as an aggressive move by the U.S. intelligence agency aimed directly at China’s ruling Communist Party of China (CCP).

On Thursday, the CIA released two videos across several platforms—including YouTube, Facebook, Telegram, Instagram, and X—featuring fictionalized portrayals of Chinese officials who become disillusioned with the CCP and seek to contact the CIA. These dramatizations depict individuals wrestling with fear, uncertainty, and moral conflict. In one video, a character resembling a senior CCP member expresses anxiety for his family’s safety amid the political purges he observes around him. He describes seeing fellow officials treated like “worn-out shoes,” discarded without warning, regardless of their loyalty or rank.

A Chinese-language description of the video on YouTube elaborates that the man, despite reaching the pinnacle of his career, realizes that his position offers no real protection in the unstable political environment. The narrative suggests that the official, deeply worried about losing everything he has built, is driven to reach out to the CIA in a bid to secure his family's safety and preserve his life's work.

The videos are accompanied by instructions on how to “safely” and “securely” contact the CIA, including advice on using the Tor browser, which allows anonymous communication on the dark web. The campaign is clearly designed to signal to potential informants within China that the CIA is both accessible and prepared to protect those who come forward.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe emphasized in a Fox News interview that one of the agency’s core missions is to collect intelligence for the U.S. President and policymakers. He noted that a major method for doing so involves recruiting foreign assets to provide classified or sensitive information. This public campaign appears to be an extension of that strategy, albeit in a highly visible and provocative format.

China’s embassy in Washington has not issued an immediate response to the campaign, leaving open questions about how the Chinese government might react officially or diplomatically.

Desmond Shum, a Chinese businessman-turned-dissident who now lives in the United Kingdom, characterized the CIA’s move as its most aggressive public action against the CCP in recent history. He suggested that this kind of outreach is especially provocative and is likely to infuriate top Chinese leaders, particularly President Xi Jinping.

According to Shum, Xi’s pursuit of lifelong rule and consolidated power is driven by a desire to guarantee the Communist Party's absolute control over China. The campaign challenges that control directly by attempting to turn members of the Chinese government against the state, which Shum believes will be viewed as a serious provocation by Beijing.

In summary, the CIA's public campaign marks a notable escalation in intelligence operations against China, using social media and fictional storytelling to appeal to Chinese officials’ fears and frustrations. Its broader goal is to penetrate the opaque Chinese government structure by encouraging defections from within.