The agency has stepped up recruitment to counter Russia and China, William Burns wrote in an op-ed<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The director of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has admitted that his country no longer enjoys undisputed superiority in global politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In an op-ed<\/a> published by Foreign Affairs magazine on Tuesday, William Burns acknowledged that China\u2019s rising military and economic strength, Russia\u2019s willingness to use military force in Ukraine, and a growing number of regional powers pursuing independent foreign policies have all led to \u201ca world of intense strategic competition in which the United States no longer enjoys uncontested primacy.\u201d<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n With American power facing more challenges than at any point since the end of the Cold War, the CIA has increased its recruitment efforts in Russia and opened a new \u201cmission center\u201d<\/em> focused exclusively on China, Burns revealed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Much of the article makes a case for continued military aid to Ukraine, arguing \u2013 as other Washington officials have \u2013 that cutting Kiev off from Western weapons would send a message of \u201cAmerican fecklessness\u201d<\/em> to China, thus encouraging President Xi Jinping to attack Taiwan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Burns also claims that discontent within Russia has created a \u201conce-in-a-generation recruiting opportunity for the CIA.\u201d<\/em> However, while the agency has been attempting to recruit informants via its Telegram and X accounts, Burns did not elaborate on any successes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov noted last week that\u00a0\u201csomeone should have told the CIA that VKontakte [a social media network] is much more popular in our country than X,\u201d<\/em>\u00a0which was banned in Russian in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhile Russia may pose the most immediate challenge, China is the bigger long-term threat,\u201d<\/em> Burns continued, adding that the CIA has spent the last two years \u201creorganizing itself to reflect that priority.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The agency has doubled the proportion of its budget spent on China, hired more Mandarin speakers, and competed for influence with Beijing in Latin America, Africa, and the Indo-Pacific, he said. In 2021, the agency opened \u201ca new mission center focused exclusively on China,\u201d<\/em> he said, adding that the center is the only one of around a dozen such facilities to focus on a single country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, current and former intelligence officials told the Wall Street Journal last year that the CIA has struggled<\/a> to recruit Chinese sources and informants. While Burns boasted of the CIA\u2019s work in Latin America, officials told the journal that agents working in the region are routinely surveilled by their Chinese counterparts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The CIA suffered a devastating blow to its intelligence-gathering abilities in 2010, when Chinese authorities began identifying, arresting, and reportedly executing CIA agents in the country. An investigation by the New York Times put the number of spies killed or imprisoned at 20, while Foreign Policy magazine has claimed that at least 30 agents were executed between 2010 and 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Burns admitted last year that the CIA was once again running agents in China, the Chinese Foreign Ministry threatened to \u201ctake all measures necessary to safeguard national security.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite the CIA\u2019s struggles, Burns\u2019 Russian counterpart, Sergey Naryshkin, told the Russian \u2018National Defense\u2019 magazine in September that Moscow still considers Washington its\u00a0\u201cmost dangerous and uncompromising geopolitical opponent.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0Speaking to Russian media earlier this month, Naryshkin\u00a0warned<\/a>\u00a0that the US is currently attempting to recruit Russian students to build a\u00a0\u201cfifth column\u201d<\/em>\u00a0in Russia ahead of the presidential election in March.<\/p>\n\n\n\n