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The Sun
7 days ago
- The Sun
CIA features Malaysian coins at intelligence memorial
THREE Malaysian coins have captured attention after being highlighted by the United States Central Intelligence Agency in their weekly artefact presentation on their official X social media platform. The featured currency includes coins valued at 20 sen (minted in 2018), 10 sen (from 2017), and 5 sen (also from 2018). These coins were found positioned at the foot of the Nathan Hale memorial statue, which stands outside the CIA's original headquarters facility in Langley, Virginia. All three coins bore distinctive small artistic elements: the 20 sen piece displayed artwork depicting a traditional broom figure, the 10 sen coin showed what appeared to be imagery of a woman or child, and the 5 sen coin contained markings resembling animal tracks. The intelligence agency has not disclosed the identity of whoever placed these coins at the memorial site, nor has it revealed the timeframe when they were deposited. According to CIA documentation on their official website, it has become customary for intelligence officers to place coins at the statue's base prior to undertaking overseas assignments. The agency explains that this ritual is steeped in tradition: 'Legend suggests this practice brings fortune and ensures Hale's protective spirit watches over officers during their international missions.' The memorial honours Nathan Hale, recognised as America's inaugural intelligence operative, who faced execution in 1776 when he was just 21 years old. His capture occurred while conducting surveillance on British military operations during the American Revolution. The bronze statue portrays Hale with his hands restrained, his gaze fixed resolutely into the distance. While CIA personnel typically deposit American quarter dollars bearing George Washington's likeness, some opt for alternative currency that holds special significance or personal value. Certain officers choose to leave exactly 76 cents as tribute to the Revolutionary War year of 1776, whilst others select international currency such as these Malaysian coins, which often feature meaningful artwork or inscriptions. The CIA Museum staff regularly gather the accumulated coins from around the statue's perimeter. These collected coins are subsequently contributed to both the CIA Officers Memorial Foundation and the Third Option Foundation - charitable organisations dedicated to supporting wounded intelligence personnel and the families of those who made the ultimate sacrifice in service.
New Straits Times
7 days ago
- New Straits Times
CIA showcases Malaysian coins placed at intelligence memorial
KUALA LUMPUR – Three Malaysian coins were recently featured by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as part of a weekly artefact highlight on its official X account. The coins – a 20 sen piece minted in 2018, a 10 sen from 2017, and a 5 sen from 2018 – were collected at the base of the Nathan Hale statue outside the CIA's Original Headquarters Building in Langley, Virginia. Each coin carried a tiny illustration. The 20 sen had a stick figure drawn on it, the 10 sen appeared to depict a woman or child, while the 5 sen bore a small paw print. The CIA did not reveal who placed the coins or when they were left there. "Before going overseas, CIA officers leave a coin at the statue's base. According to legend, doing so brings good luck and ensures that Hale will keep the officers safe on their mission," the agency explained on its website. The statue honours Nathan Hale, regarded as America's first intelligence officer. He was executed in 1776 at the age of 21 after being caught spying on British troops during the American Revolutionary War. The statue depicts him with bound hands, gazing resolutely into the distance. Officers typically leave a US quarter bearing George Washington's image. Others choose coins with symbolic or personal meaning. Some leave 76 cents to mark the year 1776, while others, like those who left the Malaysian coins, opt for foreign denominations marked with drawings or messages. The CIA Museum periodically collects the coins left at the statue. The money is donated to the CIA Officers Memorial Foundation and the Third Option Foundation, both of which support injured officers and the families of those who died in the line of duty.
AllAfrica
05-05-2025
- Politics
- AllAfrica
CIA mind games and the wages of betrayal in China
[ The following report is derived from Marco Mayer's recent conversation with Francesco Sisci in Rome. ] All main international media are highlighting the news that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has put two videos online ['Secure Contact with the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)', link here] to recruit Chinese officials as their informants and agents. How do you judge the technical quality and media impact of the message? The videos are very well made; they go to the heart of the problems afflicting the Chinese hierarchy's two poles – the boss and the secretary. Both can lose their job and their fortune or freedom in the radical selection process of the Chinese bureaucratic system. The leadership in China is organized as a pyramid. So, the higher you go in the pyramid, the more people are eliminated or are at risk of being eliminated in the selection. Those people have grudges and reasons to be dissatisfied. They could betray because they first feel betrayed by the system by their leaders. They once could think that by retiring, they could still be influential and 'go into business' using their network of relationships within the party. Today, however, they are sidelined and left aside. Furthermore, they risk being investigated and losing their privileges and their freedom. In theory, many people are interested in this propaganda/provocation – most Chinese cadres and secretaries. In a closed environment of growing suspicion in which no one knows the intentions of the other today, with a history of illustrious defections in the past, the video is destined to multiply suspicions and contribute to poisoning the environment. This applies to cadres at every level and to the supreme leaders who may suspect their subordinates of being ready to betray and sell themselves to the CIA. I don't think that, in the end, many will choose to work for the CIA. In every case, the risk of being arrested for treason and the resulting penalty is infinitely greater than that of simply being sidelined. However, the hanging risk is enough to increase the already high entropy of the system. The leaders will be more suspicious and, therefore, more demanding. The screws of controls will be tightened more and more; in turn, it could suffocate life in the party and increase dissatisfaction. Then there is the concern that the CIA may say or leak that so-and-so or so-and-so have worked for America, meaning investigations and controls will follow. There are already reports in China indicating suspicion that among the Chinese who are now returning home, they are infiltrated with spies and that relatives of Chinese abroad, in theory 'patriotic,' are playing a double game or worse. The videos in this atmosphere give substance to every distrust. China can shrug off the videos and the spies could then find more space or close in on themselves and increase repression – and thus create the conditions for which people spy or would want to sell themselves to America. There is a system problem. The total Chinese control of imperial tradition works when it is indeed total, when China was the world (and there was no alternative to turn to, as with the empire) or was totally closed, as with Mao. However, when the closure is limited to China alone because the Chinese can turn outside for economic issues and trade relations, they can escape totalizing control. Then, total control is not an advantage but becomes a ball and chain. Other authoritarian systems can be totalitarian if they manage to impose a strong communist or nationalist ideology that brainwashes and closes off trade relations and does not push millions of Chinese to do business with the outside world. However, China has a semi-open system and cannot close itself off at the cost of losing trade relations that constitute its great economic engine. The present Chinese nationalist approach becomes unconvincing, for its apparatuses are selected based on great loyalty to the leader, not just the system or the country. The cure for this virus is only sunlight, openness and air, which makes everything more transparent. It then becomes more difficult to control and exploit the dissatisfaction of its cadres by foreign powers and agents, such as the CIA. Moreover, in an open system, people can vent their frustration and grudges and have fewer reasons to feel betrayed and thus betray. But this means changing the Chinese political system. Is Beijing ready? Otherwise, we could see in the coming months more games of cloak and dagger, of dogs chasing their tails, and the present paranoia risks becoming psychosis. In this case, with or without spies recruited, the CIA wins. Another important thing is that the Chinese are well aware of the risks that the videos create, almost like a deadly plague virus, of their profound gravity. So, they will react, probably very harshly, and the possibilities of a trade agreement, even a limited one, are receding. Beijing will not want to deal with those who make these videos and will not trust them. It will, therefore, try to put the American administration in difficulty. This article first appeared on Appia Institute and is republished with permission . Read the original here.
Forbes
02-05-2025
- Politics
- Forbes
The CIA Using YouTube To Recruit 'Disillusioned' Chinese Officials
The CIA is looking to recruit disillusioned Chinese officials as "spies" for the USA(Photo by Mark ...) The United States Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA as it is more commonly known, is looking to recruit disillusioned Chinese officials as "spies" for the USA. That fact isn't especially newsworthy, as the intelligence community is always trying to recruit foreign individuals. What is noteworthy is the means the CIA is now going about it. The agency produced a video, or rather two, which were posted on the video sharing service YouTube and other social media platforms on Thursday that were aimed at disillusioned officials with the Chinese government. The Mandarin-language videos followed similar efforts earlier this year that encouraged Russians to share secrets with U.S. officials. "Today, the CIA released Mandarin-language videos aimed at recruiting Chinese officials to steal secrets," CIA Director John Ratcliffe said in a statement. "No adversary in the history of our Nation has presented a more formidable challenge or capable strategic competitor than the Chinese Communist Party. Our Agency must continue responding to this threat with urgency, creativity, and grit, and these videos are just one of the ways we are doing this." The release of these new videos comes about six months after the CIA shared a text-only video in Mandarin that explained to Chinese citizens how to reach out to the CIA via the "dark web," NBC News reported. According to the CIA, the video has been seen around 900,000 times since it was first released. This new content is very much aimed at Chinese Communist Party officials. The first video is meant to speak to lower level officials within the CCP, highlighting the wealth gap that currently exists in the People's Republic of China between party elites and the general populace; while the second shows a more senior party official at a formal dinner who believes his colleagues are maneuvering against him, a not too uncommon scenario in the RPC. Both videos are based on the very real situation that exists within the PRC, but they were also produced because the traditional recruitment method of Chinese officials is increasingly nonexistent. "This unprecedented online recruiting drive reflects the difficulty now faced in HUMINT (human intelligence) operations," explained Dennis Wilder, a former senior American intelligence official and professor of practice at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. "With ubiquitous surveillance operating in all of China's major cities, meeting potential recruits among China's Communist Party elites becomes extremely difficult and dangerous." At the same time, the political situation is ideal. "President Xi has purged six politburo members, 35 central committee members, over 60 generals, and 3.5 million party members since coming to power eleven years ago," Wilder added. "Given that his campaign against political opponents and corruption within the Party has not abated, there may be fertile ground for this new and innovative approach to recruitment of the Chinese elite." Employing social media as a recruiting effort wouldn't have been possible in the pre-digital age. Moreover, it is taking advantage of the fact that while China has gone to great lengths to stop the flow of outside information into the country, it is nearly impossible to do so. The CIA is taking advantage of that fact. However, what is unique is this campaign is that the agency has made it so public, yet, part of the point may be to create a level of curiosity, helping ensure that the videos will find their way to Chinese eyeballs. "When the CIA rolled out Mandarin-language videos on YouTube urging Chinese Communist Party insiders to consider a career change – ideally one involving a burner phone and encrypted messaging – it was less of a surprise and more of a moment of strategic transparency," said geopolitical analyst Irina Tsukerman, president of threat assessment firm Scarab Rising. She noted that we are very much in an age where TikTok dances can trigger cultural revolutions and memes can influence elections. "Why wouldn't Langley get into the influence game? Subversion, after all, has entered the social media era – and it's multilingual," Tsukerman suggested. "It is not a surprise the CIA is openly recruiting for sources online," added Nicholas Eftimiades, assistant teaching professor in the iMPS Homeland Security Program at Penn State University. It follows similar efforts being carried out by Beijing, Eftimiades noted. "China's Ministry of State Security publicly started advertising about a year ago. It is called 'a walk-in' when a person volunteers their services to the intelligence community," said Eftimiades. "The CIA is just opening a public channel to do that using current technology. They will bear the burden of having to sort through and determine which persons may have useful information. The CIA will likely identify more people for debriefing than for use as actual spies. It is a very good idea and replaces the spotting and assessing phase of strategic debriefing programs conducted by several intelligence agencies." Even though these videos could be seen hundreds of thousands of times, the campaign isn't being directed to the masses in the PRC. Rather the campaign is very targeted. "It's not about winning hearts and minds across the Middle Kingdom. It's about planting seeds of doubt in the minds of the right people: the mid-level cadre who's disillusioned with party politics, the bureaucrat tired of watching friends disappear for thought crimes, the state-owned enterprise manager who wonders if maybe – just maybe – he could do more with his life than rerouting data to the MSS," said Tsukerman. The goal also isn't to gather details on China's hypersonic missiles, sixth-generation fighter aircraft or the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that may now be in development. While the CIA wouldn't pass up on finding a way to garner such intelligence, this is about what could be seen as more mundane information that can still be difficult to obtain. "Lots of Chinese language requirements are unclassified, such as Open Source Center, or minimally classified requiring only a secret level clearance," said Eftimiades. The recruiting effort on social media is no different from that of extremist groups today, even if the message is a bit different. The core concept is built around reaching out to those who are disgruntled, disillusioned and who believes they can somehow make a difference. "The message is sleek, emotionally calibrated, and just ambiguous enough to pass under the radar in tightly surveilled digital spaces," said Tsukerman. "It's not asking for revolution. It's asking for a quiet conversation behind closed doors – one that starts with 'We understand' and ends with a passport and a new identity. The goal isn't mass defection; it's strategic vulnerability. Psychological warfare, with a user-friendly interface." The PRC certainly won't sit back and let Western intelligence carry out the recruiting effort. Beijing may respond in waves, and that could include more than firewalls. Tsukerman said the PRC's infamous Great Firewall could become a "Great Fortress," while the MSS will likely conduct its own operations to stop the message from getting through. "VPNs will be hunted down like rare Pokémon, AI filters will be fine-tuned to catch Western phrasing, and any whiff of foreign influence will be memory-holed before it hits 100 views," Tsukerman suggested. That could be followed by a the government engaging in its own "performance art" that could include a surge of videos with public pledges, and state-sponsored TikTok clones extolling party purity, where loyal factory workers are seen wiping away tears of patriotic pride. "Expect the government to out-drama the CIA, flipping the recruitment campaign on its head and turning it into an excuse for another wave of nationalist fervor," warned Tsukerman. "And then, the darker stuff: publicized espionage trials, televised confessions from unlucky souls caught cooperating with foreign intelligence, and a smattering of new legal provisions criminalizing – whatever the Party decides is suspicious that week. This is about deterrence by example. Turn against the state, and you'll be made into a very public, very frightened example of what happens next." There could also be new laws that are fast-tracked to make merely reading the CIA's recruitment page a treasonous act. But those actions may also be what the CIA hopes to see happen from its video campaign, as it will create further resentment within the PRC. "The CIA's campaign won't win Oscars. It may not even produce a single defector of value," said Tsukerman. "But in the high-stakes chessboard of 21st-century intelligence, sometimes a well-placed pawn destabilizes the board more effectively than a queen. Beijing knows that – and that's why it's already preparing to knock over the table."
