WASHINGTON, USA — Russia and China have stepped up efforts to recruit recently dismissed or at-risk U.S. federal employees in national security roles.
According to reports on Friday, February 28, 2025, they aim to exploit widespread job cuts across government agencies, according to four individuals familiar with recent U.S. intelligence assessments.
The intelligence findings suggest that foreign adversaries are capitalising on the Trump administration’s plan to implement mass layoffs in the federal workforce—a strategy formally outlined by the Office of Personnel Management earlier this week.
Sources indicate that recruitment efforts are particularly focused on former employees with security clearances and probationary workers who may soon be terminated.
These individuals often hold valuable information about critical U.S. infrastructure and government operations.
At least two countries have already launched recruitment websites and begun aggressively targeting federal employees on LinkedIn, two of the sources said.
“The adversaries think the employees ‘are at their most vulnerable right now,’” one source said.
“Out of a job, bitter about being fired, etc.”
A third source familiar with the intelligence warned of the potential consequences.
“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.
CNN has reached out to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, as well as the embassies of China and Russia in Washington, for comment.
National Security Concerns Intensify
The intelligence appears to confirm fears previously raised by current and former U.S. officials: that large-scale firings could create an opportunity for foreign intelligence services to exploit financially vulnerable or disgruntled former employees.
In recent years, the Justice Department has charged multiple former military and intelligence officials with providing classified U.S. information to China.
Now, intelligence officials warn that the latest round of government downsizing could increase the risk of further breaches.
Career officials at the CIA have been quietly discussing ways to mitigate the threat in recent weeks, sources said.
However, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard suggested earlier this week that those discussions amounted to a “threat” against the administration’s workforce reduction efforts, rather than a neutral assessment of the security risks.
“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 national security officials, who spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity, expressed frustration over the administration’s response, describing it as dismissive of legitimate security concerns.
“Employees that feel they have been mistreated by an employer have historically been much more likely to disclose sensitive information,” said Holden Triplett, a former FBI attaché in Moscow and Beijing who also served as director of counterintelligence at the National Security Council during the first Trump administration.
“We may be creating, albeit somewhat unintentionally, the perfect recruitment environment.”
“This isn’t reality TV,” said another former intelligence official. “There are consequences.”
Government Layoffs Raise Espionage Risks
The warnings come as the CIA and the Department of Defense weigh significant staff reductions.
A Pentagon memo last week indicated that more than 5,000 probationary employees—most of whom have been in their positions for a year or less—could be dismissed in the near future.
The CIA has already fired over 20 officers working on diversity initiatives, some of whom are now challenging their dismissals in court.
In what some officials view as a troubling security lapse, the CIA may have inadvertently exposed sensitive personnel information to potential foreign espionage.
Earlier this month, the agency sent an email to the White House over an unclassified server listing all new hires with less than two years of service—a list that included officers preparing for undercover operations.
Some of these officers, who have had access to classified intelligence, now face possible termination under the administration’s workforce reduction orders.
As the layoffs progress, U.S. officials fear that the intelligence services of adversarial nations will continue their recruitment efforts, leveraging financial hardship and resentment among former federal employees to gain access to sensitive government information.
