China’s Intelligence Agency May Target Ex-Federal Workers

China’s intelligence agency is reportedly looking to recruit federal employees who were dismissed during the Trump administration, according to a new report from a Washington, DC-based think tank.

The report indicates that job listings for these former government workers have appeared on websites connected to China’s intelligence sector. The think tank, FDD, points out the involvement of five companies—Smiao Intelligence, Dustrategy, Rivermerge Strategies, Tsubasa Insight, and Wavemax Innov—that all share the same Chinese-owned server for their websites. FDD employed a method known as passive DNS to uncover these connections based on the linked IP addresses.

FDD also notes that Smiao Intelligence is listed as operating from China, with a .cn domain, making it the oldest of the five organizations. In contrast, Dustrategy, Rivermerge Strategies, Tsubasa Insights, and Wavemax Innov claim to be based in Japan, Singapore, and the US, yet FDD suggests they might not be genuine.

These four companies have either used or still use the same Chinese email provider, which raises further suspicion. Smiao Intelligence is called the only legitimate entity among them, while the others appear to be merely a digital facade, described as employing cloned websites and AI-generated content.

According to the think tank, Dustrategy, Tsubasa Insights, and Wavemax Innov have engaged in partial cloning of legitimate sites aimed at creating a semblance of authenticity. This behavior suggests that one entity likely orchestrated their development, possibly to circumvent the effort of building new websites from scratch.

Therefore, FDD concludes that Smiao Intelligence most likely established these four other companies for espionage-related activities.