A network of companies operated by a secretive Chinese tech firm has been trying to recruit recently laid-off U.S. government workers, according to job ads and a researcher who uncovered the campaign.
Max Lesser, a senior analyst on emerging threats with the Washington-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said some companies placing recruitment ads were "part of a broader network of fake consulting and headhunting firms targeting former government employees and AI researchers."
Little information is publicly available on the four consultancies and recruitment companies allegedly involved in the network, which in some cases shared overlapping websites, were hosted on the same server, or had other digital links, according to Reuters' reporting and Lesser's research.
The four companies' websites are hosted at the same IP address alongside Smiao Intelligence, an internet services company whose website became unavailable during Reuters' reporting. Reuters could not determine the nature of the relationship between Smiao Intelligence and the four companies.
The news agency's attempts to track down the four companies and Smiao Intelligence ran into numerous dead-ends including unanswered phone calls, phone numbers that no longer work, fake addresses, addresses that lead to empty fields, unanswered emails and deleted job listings from LinkedIn.
Lesser, who uncovered the network and shared his research with Reuters ahead of publication, said the campaign follows "well-established" techniques used by previous Chinese intelligence operations.
"What makes this activity significant," he said, "is that the network seeks to exploit the financial vulnerabilities of former federal workers affected by recent mass layoffs."
Reuters could not determine if the companies are linked to the Chinese government or whether any former federal workers were recruited.
Asked about the research, three intelligence analysts told Reuters the network appeared to be a prime example of how foreign-linked entities are trying to gather intelligence from staff fired or forced into retirement by President Donald Trump and billionaire tech tycoon Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.
Once employed by the network, federal employees could then be asked to share increasingly sensitive information about government operations, or recommend additional people who might be targeted for willing or unwitting participation, the analysts said.
A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington told Reuters in an email that China was unaware of any of the entities allegedly involved in the campaign and Beijing respects data privacy and security.
A White House spokesperson said China was constantly trying to exploit the United States' "free and open system" through espionage and coercion. "Both active and former government employees must recognize the danger these governments pose and the importance of safeguarding government information," the spokesperson said.
CNN reported February 28 that U.S. intelligence believes Russia and China are targeting disgruntled U.S. government employees, something both countries have done for years. The companies in the network - which posted job ads to Craigslist, LinkedIn and other job sites - could be concrete evidence such operations are underway, Lesser said.
Reuters reported earlier this month that some U.S. government workers with top security clearances were not given standard exit briefings which, in part, cover what to do if approached by foreign adversaries.
"GEOPOLITICAL RISK CONSULTING"
One of the companies in the network, RiverMerge Strategies, bills itself on its website as a "professional geopolitical risk consulting company" and posted two since-deleted job listings on its since-removed LinkedIn page in mid-February.
One ad that sought a "Geopolitical Consulting Advisor" with experience with government agencies, international organizations, or multinational corporations, displayed that it had more than 200 applications, according to a screenshot of the LinkedIn post.
The other sought a human resources specialist who could "utilize a deep understanding of the Washington talent pool to identify candidates with policy or consulting experience," and "leverage connections to local professional networks, think tanks, and academic institutions."
The U.S. number for RiverMerge Strategies listed on the company's home page is no longer in service. A separate Chinese phone number, until recently listed on the website's contact page, is the same number listed by Shenzhen Si Xun Software Co., Ltd, an information technology company focused on online retail, commercial automation and catering, according to a Google translation of the company's website.
Reuters could not determine the nature of the connection between the network of companies, Smiao Intelligence, and Shenzhen Si Xun Software Co., Ltd. Calls to a phone number listed on the company's website did not go through.
RiverMerge Strategies until recently listed two addresses on its website, one in Singapore and the other in Colorado. The Singapore address led to a hostel building within the campus of the Management Development Institute of Singapore, but the company could not be located during a Reuters visit. Its other address led to an address in Boulder, Colorado, tied to Northwest Registered Agent, a business services firm.
A person listed on LinkedIn as an employee of RiverMerge, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters an acquaintance he met at a networking event in China reached out and asked him to help promote job listings for RiverMerge Strategies.
The acquaintance, who he knows as "Eric," as well as another contact, “Will,” pays the employee $1,000 or $2,000 every two or three months to post the job listings, he said.
A person identifying themselves as William Wells and RiverMerge’s “strategies project manager” responded to an initial Reuters email and asked about Reuters’ request for information.
Even though the Reuters email identified the sender as a reporter, Wells also inquired whether Reuters was seeking a job, and said they would review a resume and set up a short call.
Another company in the network, Wavemax Innovation, placed an ad February 6 on Craigslist offering "Job Opportunities for Recently Laid-Off U.S. Government Employees." The ad, which has since expired, sought workers with backgrounds in project management, research, technology, communications, policy analysis and more.
Reuters could not establish who saw the ad or whether anyone applied to Wavemax as a result.
An email to the address posted in the ad was not returned. When Reuters visited the Singapore address posted to the company’s website there was no sign of the company, just a vacant field. A search of Singapore's corporate registry for the company was equally barren.
Asked how it verifies job listings, LinkedIn said it uses automated technologies and a team of reviewers to find and remove inauthentic activity and profiles. The spokesperson said on Tuesday RiverMerge Strategies' profile had been restricted.
In response to questions about Reuters' findings, an FBI spokesperson warned that Chinese intelligence officers can represent themselves as think tanks, academic institutions and recruiting firms to target "current, former, and prospective" U.S. government employees.
Agents for the Chinese government have used similar tactics in the past.
In 2020 a Singaporean national named Jun Wei Yeo pleaded guilty in a U.S. federal court to acting as an agent of a foreign power, starting in 2015. Prosecutors alleged he worked to spot and assess Americans with access to non-public sensitive information and paid them to write reports for unnamed Asian clients, without disclosing the work was actually for the Chinese government.
That operation relied on a fake consulting company and job advertisements, according to court records.
Chinese intelligence operatives told Yeo how to recruit targets, including by asking them if they were "dissatisfied with work, were having financial troubles [or] had children to support," according to court records.
China's foreign ministry denied any knowledge of Yeo's case and accused the U.S. of repeatedly accusing Beijing of espionage, saying "it has reached a state of extreme suspicion," the South China Morning Post reported at the time.
Foreign intelligence services often use job recruitment scams to recruit sources without them even knowing they are working for a foreign government, David Aaron, a former Department of Justice prosecutor now in private practice, told Reuters.
“I would expect China’s intelligence services to dial those efforts up as they see a wave of government employees suddenly having to look for new jobs,” Aaron said, adding that while many former government employees are motivated by patriotism, some may be vulnerable to deceptive tactics.
© Thomson Reuters 2025.
30 Comments
Wasabi
Everyone is trying to capitalise on the weak trump president. china and russia will both win a lot.
Of course Maga too as they are already tired of so much win, right?
isabelle
Trump's disastrous policies again making America weaker, and its enemies stronger.
All Chinese companies are "linked to the Chinese government" in some way.
All companies of any size must have a CCP cell, and China's 2017 intelligence law mandates that everyone must cooperate in matters of state security. No limits are delineated, so the CCP can essentially compel people to do whatever it wants (as it does anyway, with or without a "law" [sic]):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Intelligence_Law_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China
The usual lies.
JJE
Reads like the latest anti-China hit job thriller, pitched at the anti-Trump crowd - for good effect.
This will reel in some gullible types. Neutered critical thinking skills a must. Subsceptability to dramatic plots even better.
Wesley
Nothing compared to the anti-US and anti-West ccp propaganda that's brainwashing all the wu-maos.
JJE
Precisely the exact same thing occurs in reverse in the US.
Yawn.
John-San
I don't know about making America weaker but Trump is making the USA weaker.
HopeSpringsEternal
Nothing new here, and if Chinese Govt. thinks the many being fired from US Govt. for holding multiple jobs, never showing up at office and not creating compelling work "value" have serious $valuable info, then good luck!
Cephus
"Reads like the latest anti-China hit job thriller, pitched at the anti-Trump crowd - for good effect.
This will reel in some gullible types. Neutered critical thinking skills a must. Susceptible to dramatic plots even better."
You are spot on!! The reason below is clear.
"The news agency's attempts to track down the four companies and Smiao Intelligence ran into numerous dead-ends including unanswered phone calls, phone numbers that no longer work, fake addresses, addresses that lead to empty fields, unanswered emails and deleted job listings from LinkedIn."
Peter14
A huge opportunity for any nation with hard feelings towards the US, to recruit disillusioned Americans recently laid off by Trumps advisors. Many who voted Trump into office are now jobless and facing a nation with no universal health care, rising medical costs and shrinking social security support.
China, Russia, Iran and even North Korea have found themselves in the rare times that is an American implosion on itself thanks to Trump mismanagement. Creation of a pool of angry Americans with critical knowledge of Government, infrastructure and defense who have nowhere to turn for financial support may turn to foreign operatives, not even aware they are foreign operatives, to get a fast dollar or ten thousand, for information.
Another crisis created by Trump and his goonies, one more for the pile.
Cephus
Peter14
"A huge opportunity for any nation with hard feelings towards the US, to recruit disillusioned Americans recently laid off by Trumps advisors. Many who voted Trump into office are now jobless and facing a nation with no universal health care, rising medical costs and shrinking social security support.
China, Russia, Iran and even North Korea have found themselves in the rare times that is an American implosion on itself thanks to Trump mismanagement. Creation of a pool of angry Americans with critical knowledge of Government, infrastructure and defense who have nowhere to turn for financial support may turn to foreign operatives, not even aware they are foreign operatives, to get a fast dollar or ten thousand, for information.
Another crisis created by Trump and his goonies, one more for the pile."
Laughable, pathetic views to the point of wondering what are schools for?
Peter14
Is that a "coded comment" regarding the topic of this article? Seems to be gibberish.
Wasabi
So much incompetence from trump, I dont know if I should laugh or cry.
RichardPearce
For something that is supposed to have been set up by a professional intelligence service with lots of staff and experience, this seems rather amateurish and lacking in resources.
What it does look like is what a scammer somewhere in the world looking for desperate people who might be willing to pay a fee, or at least banking information, counting on the Chinese Chinese addresses to provide anyone trying to track who was behind it a reason to stop looking for the next link in the chain.
Intelligence agencies tend to operate on a longer timeliness than scam artists because the first are interested in possibly wary specific individuals/groups, the second are interested in a specific type (desperate and vulnerable) who are not wary at all.
Cephus
"For something that is supposed to have been set up by a professional intelligence service with lots of staff and experience, this seems rather amateurish and lacking in resources.'
That's very true, perhaps it was setup by Democrats sympathizers to rally their ever dwindling pathetic base. That party knows no bounds they will do or say anything for attention.
bass4funk
On the contrary, he’s making the U.S. stronger and it less dependent on other nations, particularly the rogue ones and it’s about time.
Peter14
That is a bad joke and you seem to be only fooling yourself. Trump demanding and begging others to invest in America is the opposite of becoming less dependent on other nations.
iron man
So the root cause is the CCP, who twisted trump's spurred ankle, please get real. The cart lost all its wheels. heh horses want a good regular troughing to fill your belly.. Welcome to the private sector.
I'veSeenFootage
How does firing thousand of necessary workers and letting them be hired by the CCP (which is what this article is about) make the US stronger? Keep it on topic.
JJE
One is losing all sense of proportion, not to mention all rational thought processes, if one believes the premise of the article - let alone all these "necessary workers are being hired by the CCP" nonsense - unchallenged. The real question is whether it existed in the first place in that case.
bass4funk
No, the people out of power are though thinking the opposite.
Then they get hit with tariffs, those that do, won’t, simple.
Nibek32
China is particularly recruiting ex federal workers from defense positions. This would be concerning, but since the trump govt is just sending out war plans to civilians on group text messages these days, maybe it doesn’t matter anymore.
sakurasuki
Always blame in to China, who really put those worker in financial instability? Is it China?
How those workers can really feed their family, pay for their bill, send their kids to college? Nobody really cares right? Event only very few journalist track how many people really being fired.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/doge-continues-to-hollow-federal-workforce-after-already-firing-more-than-30000
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_United_States_federal_mass_layoffs
I'veSeenFootage
This article isn't blaming anything on china.
Most americans care, actually. And are showing it in town halls.
bass4funk
And most are the people that didn’t vote for this President.
Negotiated a bunch of new deals for manufacturing in the US, lowered the price of eggs and fuel, and has reduced inflation, sending the worst illegals back and that’s just two months into his Presidency, and what do the left have? Anger and more anger and Trump and nothing else, no solutions, no nothing.
JJE
Why would China want to hire a bunch of useless bureaucrats?
Cephus
JJE,
"Why would China want to hire a bunch of useless bureaucrats".
Excellent question! CCP is not that dumb. The Dems victimhood comes in various way depending on the topic of the day.
patkim
But how does making the middle-class and lower-class poorer, taking away benefits and disregarding veterans, letting people get sick through misinformation and taking away health care, taking away people's employment opportunities, taking away people's freedom of speech, taking away their choice of religion, making people afraid that they could get locked up just because they have a tattoo, or because the color of their skin, and taking away funds to help people rebuild after natural disasters, make the U.S. stronger?
By deciding without any proof or research which jobs should be taken away, and that you have to be white and rich to be hired, he is basically making America weaker.
By saying saying that rules and laws only apply to certain people, he is basically creating a Fascist state.
By taking away people's freedoms that are guaranteed in the Constitution, he is lowering the quality of life for Americans.
By wasting taxpayers' money on frivolous activities like going to the Superbowl, going to Daytona, renaming a body of water that people could care less about, firing and then rehiring people, and playing rounds of golf, he is taking away the ability for Americans to live fruitful lives.
chatanista
Of course most Americans care and the best way to show it is by turning up at the election. They did exactly that on November 5. The results were crystal clear. Like it or not the people have spoken.
I'veSeenFootage
Completely avoided the question as usual.
How does firing thousand of necessary workers and letting them be hired by the CCP (which is what this article is about) make the US stronger?
Bret T
@patkim
Nice list of CNN talking points. Writer?
"By wasting taxpayers' money on frivolous activities like going to..."
Americans want to see a vibrant leader out in public, not hiding in the basement of the White House slurping Jello while his wife use an autopen to run our government. It's not wasted money. Have you noticed how the crowds react? It's called "morale building", bringing back the American pride/spirit, letting Americans know and see who is in charge.