On Monday, January 26th, 2026, the American news website Breitbart News reported that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has achieved significant success in recruiting officials from the Chinese Communist government and external sources.
Since 2025, the CIA has released three Mandarin-language videos aimed at recruiting Chinese officials to assist the United States. In the latest Chinese-language video released in January, the CIA stated: “The CIA wants to know the truth about China, and we are looking for individuals who know and can inform us of the truth.”
During President Trump’s second term in office, the CIA has been actively recruiting insiders directly targeting China. Sources told Breitbart News that the CIA’s efforts in recruiting Chinese government officials and external sources, as well as acquiring other valuable resources, have been highly successful.
Countering China under Communist rule has long been one of the top priorities for both President Trump and CIA Director John Ratcliffe.
Ratcliffe, at the CIA’s Langley headquarters, had displayed a printed chart on his desk showing a decrease in CIA personnel numbers before Trump returned to the White House. With Trump back in the White House and Ratcliffe leading the CIA, the number of CIA personnel began to rise again.
Ratcliffe had shown this chart during meetings with senior officials, emphasizing that besides external intelligence collection, the effectiveness of the CIA personnel—dependent on their numbers—is a crucial measure of CIA performance.
Ratcliffe told Breitbart News, “This is the measuring stick. Are we recruiting personnel? Are we stealing the adversary’s secrets and providing the best intelligence to President Trump so he can continue to make decisions for the benefit of the American people? We do not compromise on this.”
A source close to the White House revealed that in President Trump’s first year of his return to office, Ratcliffe had become Trump’s “secret weapon”.
Just 12 days after the successful capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Trump dispatched Ratcliffe to Venezuela to meet with Venezuelan interim President Delcy Rodriguez.
The source stated, “Ratcliffe has become Trump’s secret weapon. He enters Venezuela, successfully completes any mission assigned by the President, and then disappears into the background. The CIA seems to have adopted a similar approach, so Trump deserves praise for using the CIA as a tool for his ‘America First’ policy.”
CIA Public Affairs Officer Liz Lyons told Breitbart News that under Director Ratcliffe’s leadership, the CIA has refocused on priority missions and is executing President Trump’s national security agenda.
“This is a more proactive CIA, willing to take risks to secure decisive advantages for America,” she said. “In less than a year, the CIA has helped achieve historic victories, particularly in the Middle East and the Western Hemisphere, to safeguard American interests and enhance national security.”
In the past year, the CIA has provided significant assistance in several major global operations for the U.S. government, including the recent “Operation Absolute Resolve,” which led to the capture of Maduro. Last summer, the CIA also played a crucial role in the “Operation Midnight Hammer” targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities. Additionally, the CIA assisted in capturing Mohammad Sharifullah, the mastermind behind the airport bombing during the U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan that resulted in the deaths of 13 American soldiers belonging to the Islamic State-Khorasan (ISIS-K) group.
Since taking office, Ratcliffe has been actively promoting transparency within the CIA. He has declassified thousands of documents related to the assassination cases of former Presidents John F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. He also appointed a group of experienced CIA professionals to review the analysis techniques used in the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) shortly after the 2016 presidential election to learn from mistakes. At the time, the intelligence community made inaccurate conclusions regarding Trump’s relationship with Russia (known as “RussiaGate”). Ratcliffe subsequently declassified this review report for public access.
He also collaborated with Attorney General Pam Bondi to declassify key information from the “RussiaGate” special counsel John Durham’s “Durham Report,” which revealed that “RussiaGate” was a fabrication as part of a coordinated effort to undermine Trump’s first term as president.
In early 2025, Ratcliffe publicly stated that the CIA believed the COVID virus was more likely leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology rather than having a natural origin.
During his attendance at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos in January 2026, President Trump openly stated, “I’ve always said the virus came from Wuhan, those bodies in the streets of Wuhan were put in body bags. We saw it through satellites, they said strange things were happening in China. That’s how it all started, and eventually, we faced the COVID epidemic, causing suffering worldwide.”