Exclusive: US intel shows Russia and China are attempting to recruit disgruntled federal employees, sources say

Foreign adversaries including Russia and China have recently directed their intelligence services to ramp up recruiting of US federal employees working in national security, targeting those who have been fired or feel they could be soon, according to four people familiar with recent US intelligence on the issue and a document reviewed by CNN.

The intelligence indicates that foreign adversaries are eager to exploit the Trump administration’s efforts to conduct mass layoffs across the federal workforce – a plan laid out by the Office of Personnel Management earlier this week.

Russia and China are focusing their efforts on recently fired employees with security clearances and probationary employees at risk of being terminated, who may have valuable information about US critical infrastructure and vital government bureaucracy, two of the sources said. At least two countries have already set up recruitment websites and begun aggressively targeting federal employees on LinkedIn, two of the sources said.

A document produced by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service said the intelligence community assessed with “high confidence” that foreign adversaries were trying to recruit federal employees and “capitalize” on the Trump administration’s plans for mass layoffs, according to a partly redacted copy reviewed by CNN.

It added that foreign intelligence officers were being directed to look for potential sources on LinkedIn, TikTok, RedNote and Reddit.

At least one foreign intelligence officer directed an asset to create a company profile on Linkedin and post a job advertisement, and to actively pursue federal employees who indicate they are “open to work,” the NCIS document says.

The adversaries think the employees “are at their most vulnerable right now,” another of the sources said. “Out of a job, bitter about being fired, etc.”

“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,” a third source familiar with the recent US assessments told CNN.

The intelligence seems to confirm what was previously a hypothetical fear for current and US officials: that the mass firings could offer a rich recruitment opportunity for foreign intelligence services that might seek to exploit financially vulnerable or resentful former employees. The Justice Department has charged multiple former military and intelligence officials for providing US intelligence to China in recent years.

“China has always been committed to developing relations with the United States on the basis of mutual respect and non-interference in each other’s internal affairs,” said Chinese embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu. “We oppose groundless speculation on China without factual basis.”

CNN has reached out to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence as well as the embassy of Russia in Washington for comment.

Officials have been discussing the risk

Career officials at the CIA have been quietly discussing that risk and how to mitigate it in the recent weeks, current and former intelligence officials previously told CNN. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard earlier this week suggested that those discussions represented a “threat” made by disloyal government employees — rather than a clinical warning of the potential risks posed by President Donald Trump’s aggressive cost-cutting strategy — and that those involved should be penalized.

“I am curious about how they think this is a good tactic to keep their job,” Gabbard told Fox News’ Jesse Watters on Tuesday. “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. It is not to the American people or the Constitution. It is to themselves.

“And these are exactly the kind of people that we need to root out, get rid of so that the patriots who do work in this area, who are committed to our core mission can actually focus on that,” she said.

Multiple current officials across national security agencies who spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity expressed frustration at the administration’s response to what they see as very real warnings — not partisan swiping.

“Employees that feel they have been mistreated by an employer have historically been much more likely to disclose sensitive information,” said Holden Triplett, who served as director of counterintelligence at the National Security Council in the first Trump administration and is a former FBI attaché at the US embassies in Moscow and Beijing. “We may be creating, albeit somewhat unintentionally, the perfect recruitment environment.”

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