Chinese military intelligence services are using Western professional networking platforms and online job sites to obtain secrets, according to a threat notice issued by the FBI, Britain’s MI5 security service and three other allied security agencies.
The People’s Liberation Army spy units have been detected using numerous online sites to target government and military personnel of five allied states, the joint notice states.
“These actors use an aggressive online recruitment strategy whereby intelligence officers or their affiliates pose as employees of private consultancies, think tanks or human resources firms, and place online job advertisements for foreign policy and defense analysts (or similar),” the notice said.
The three-page notice was published by the FBI and MI5 on Wednesday. It was also signed by the security services of Australia, New Zealand and Canada – members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance.
The warning comes amid several recent U.S. prosecutions of alleged Chinese spies and illegal influence agents, and large-scale Chinese government-linked hacking and infrastructure pre-sabotage activities.
The security notice is a rare public identification regarding the threats posed by Chinese military intelligence services — one of three main services used by Beijing to obtain secrets. The others are the Ministry of State Security, the civilian service, and the Chinese Communist Party spying and influence units.
The effort to obtain Western secrets involves pressuring potential recruits to provide non-public information to online spies linked to PLA intelligence services, the report said.
“China’s military intelligence services ultimately seek to acquire privileged military, political and economic intelligence that can provide China with a strategic and tactical advantage over the Five Eyes,” the report said.
According to the report, military spies try to recruit and cultivate long-term relations with people with access to secrets related to defense, foreign affairs and security and intelligence information.
Other targets include Indo-Pacific-based military personnel with information about regional allied military capabilities and activities.
A third category of recruitment targets includes people with access to government information, such as academics, journalists, freelance writers, think tank employees, or all those who are linked to defense, security, policy and economic sectors in the five nations.
The military spies pose as online human resources recruiters or consultants who pose as fake, but often legitimate-looking, “cover companies” that claim to be located outside China.
The recruitment process is described in the report as an initial contact of targets by posting ads on sites like LinkedIn, Indeed and Upwork — social networking platforms widely used by professionals and current and former government officials and military personnel.
Those selected by the PLA for recruitment are those suspected of having access to sensitive information.
To test the target recruits, they are then asked to write a trial report on a topic of interest to Beijing, such as China’s bilateral relations, the Indo-Pacific region, and related defense issues, or international trade.
Later requests shift the level of requests to seeking more sensitive information.
“At some point in the recruitment process, intelligence officers typically move the conversation to a more ’secure’ platform, such as encrypted messaging applications,” the report said.
Payments to the agents range from a few hundred to several thousand dollars for the reports with the potential for providing more money for secrets and other sensitive information. Payments are. Made through online platforms such as PayPal, Payoneer, Zelle, Skrill, and Wise. Western Union electronic transfers are also used.
The report said that while the recruits often do not have access to secrets, unclassified information on government policy, or military strategy, capabilities and installations can be gathered and combined with more sensitive data to provide the PLA with a comprehensive operational picture of U.S. and allied militaries.
Some of the information “can place the lives of frontline military or other personnel at risk, can weaken our economic prosperity, and enable interference in our democratic processes,” the report said.
Those who make unauthorized disclosures or classified information to the Chinese can face prosecution on espionage-related charges, the report said.
“Five Eyes agencies have identified individuals who have undertaken these activities, leading to criminal prosecutions, job losses, and security-clearance revocation,” the report said.
U.S. authorities have arrested more than a dozen people in recent months on an array of charges. They include suspects involved in Chinese efforts to smuggle advanced microchips out of the United States, cyberespionage and critical infrastructure network penetration, acting as illegal Chinese agents, money-laundering and involvement in illegal drug trafficking.
Among the more damaging Chinese military intelligence operations against the United States was the case of Su Bin, a Chinese national who led a PLA operation to hack into Boeing computers from 2009 to 2014.
The operation obtained some 630,000 Boeing computer files on the C-17 military transport aircraft, and the advanced F-22 and F-35 aircraft, the military’s most advanced radar-evading stealth fighter jets.
Su pleaded guilty in 2016 to breaking into Boeing networks and was sentenced to nearly four years in prison.
A company partly owned by Su, Lode Tech, was identified by former Defense Intelligence Agency counterspy Nicholas Eftimiades in February as taking part in a covert effort to train Chinese pilots in advanced aerial warfare and aircraft carrier operations.
The former pilots included American, German, Canadian and British military pilots.
A report by the private intelligence company Grey Dynamics said the PLA military intelligence service, known in the past as the General Staff Department and by the acronym 2PLA, was reorganized in 2016 and again in 2024.
The current PLA military spy arm is now the relatively new Intelligence Bureau that is part of the joint staff department within the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Military Commission.
“This move enhanced the new Intelligence Bureau with the 2PLA functions and personnel but also further enhanced its profile and capabilities,” the report said.
Another major restructuring of military intelligence took place in 2024 with the creation of military aerospace, cyberspace and information support forces.
“This flattening and specialization of military information, cyber, and space capabilities reflects a doctrinal shift toward highly focused intelligence-enabled combat support and tighter political control over these domains,” the report said.
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