The centre was formed “to address the global challenge posed by the People’s Republic of China that cuts across all of the Agency’s mission areas,” Burns said, according to a CIA statement shared with the media.
Adversaries Taking Apart CIA Informant Networks
The large number of compromised informants in recent years demonstrated the growing prowess of other countries in employing innovations like biometric scans, facial recognition, artificial intelligence, and hacking tools to track the movements of CIA officers in order to discover their sources, the report suggested.
The warning was primarily aimed at front line officers, the people involved most directly in the recruiting and vetting of sources, the report said, citing unnamed people who had read the cable.
The cable reminded CIA case officers to focus not just on recruiting sources, but also on security issues including vetting informants and evading adversarial intelligence services, the report added.