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The intelligence services of Russia, China, and other foreign adversaries are attempting to recruit U.S. federal workers who lost their jobs in the DOGE-directed massive layoffs, according to a report.
The countries appear to be attempting to take advantage of President Donald Trump’s plans to downsize the federal government, sources familiar with American intelligence on the matter told CNN.
The countries are targeting terminated employees with security clearances and probationary employees who could soon be terminated, “who may have valuable information about U.S. critical infrastructure and vital government bureaucracy,” the outlet reported.
At least two countries, which were not identified, have reportedly started setting up recruitment websites and are “aggressively targeting” these workers via LinkedIn.
Thousands of probationary workers have already been terminated while many more could imminently face the same fate.
Leaders in the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management notified all department and agency heads Wednesday that they must submit “reorganization plans” that “focus on initial agency cuts and reductions” by March 13. The directive comes as part of Trump’s DOGE executive order to eliminate “waste, bloat, and insularity.”
Eleven workers at the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence were terminated following Trump’s executive orders terminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs. This group sued, but a federal judge on Thursday denied the request for a preliminary injunction, allowing the intelligence agency to move ahead with the firings.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard also fired more than 100 U.S. spies across 15 different spy agencies after she said sexually explicit chats were unearthed on an official government instant messaging forum.
The Independent has contacted the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for comment.
The intelligence community believes with “high confidence” that foreign foes are trying to enlist fired U.S. federal employees and “capitalize” on the Trump administration’s sweeping reorganization plans, according to a redacted document from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service viewed by CNN.
Foreign intelligence officers were being ordered to look for potential sources on social media platforms — including LinkedIn, TikTok, RedNote and Reddit — while at least one foreign intelligence officer ordered an asset to create a company profile on Linkedin with a job posting and look for federal employees whose profiles state they are “open to work,” the document read.
These countries believe that U.S. federal workers “are at their most vulnerable right now,” one source told CNN. “Out of a job, bitter about being fired, etc.”
It’s not surprising that foreign adversaries see value in these workers and might be looking to exploit the mass layoffs, another source told the outlet:
“It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see that these cast-aside federal workers with a wealth of institutional knowledge represent staggeringly attractive targets to the intelligence services of our competitors and adversaries,” the source said.
Inside the CIA, there are ongoing conversations about the security risks of terminating employees who may possess classified information and/or knowledge of the agency’s operations and inner workings, CNN previously reported.
When it comes to intelligence agencies, “you take whatever number of employees who are gonna get cut loose and they have knowledge of sensitive programs — that by definition is an insider risk,” a U.S. official told CNN earlier this week. “You’re just rolling the dice that these folks are gonna honor their secrecy agreement and not volunteer to a hostile intelligence service.”
Days later, Gabbard characterized the CIA’s internal discussions of risk as a “threat.”
“I am curious about how they think this is a good tactic to keep their job,” she said on Fox News Wednesday, though many have likely already been fired..
“They’re exposing themselves essentially by making this indirect threat — using their propaganda arm through CNN that they’ve used over and over and over again — to reveal their hand, that their loyalty is not at all to America. … not to the American people or the Constitution. It is to themselves,” Gabbard claimed in an attack that could alienate even more fired employees.
The CIA similarly tries to recruit disgruntled government workers in adversarial nations “all the time,” a former intelligence official said.
“Employees that feel they have been mistreated by an employer have historically been much more likely to disclose sensitive information,” said Holden Triplett, who previously led the FBI offices in Moscow and Beijing and served as the director for Counterintelligence at the National Security Council during Trump’s first term. “We may be creating, albeit somewhat unintentionally, the perfect recruitment environment,” he told CNN.
