CIA Drops Spy Recruitment Video Targeting China's Military Amid Nuclear Leak Scandal

Last Updated:February 13, 2026, 15:20 IST

The 95-second video, posted to the CIA's YouTube channel on Thursday, follows the removal of General Zhang Youxia, the former vice-chairman of Chinese Central Military Commission.

The Central Intelligence Agency released a new Mandarin-language video that looked to target the recruitment of informants inside the Chinese military, seizing on the fallout from one of the biggest leadership purges that Beijing has seen in decades.

The 95-second video, posted to the CIA’s YouTube channel on Thursday, follows the removal of General Zhang Youxia, the former vice-chairman of the Chinese Central Military Commission (CMC) – the top body that controls the country’s armed forces.

Zhang, 75, was considered the second-in-command (2IC), and the most trusted military ally to President Xi Jinping, before his sudden fall. The CMC, which Xi himself heads, now has just two members left of the original seven, with one being President Jinping himself, and the second being Zhang Shengmin, the Secretary of discipline inspection for the CMC.

The video shows a fictional mid-level Chinese military officer walking through a military installation and reflecting on a system he feels has turned against him.

“Anyone with leadership ability will inevitably be feared and ruthlessly eliminated," says the narrator in Mandarin. “Their power is built on countless lies. But now, these walls of lies are crumbling, leaving us to clean up the mess." The video ends with the officer opening a laptop in a parked car and visiting a page that reads ‘Contact the CIA’ in Chinese with the agency’s address on Tor (link), an anonymising network being listed in the closing credits.

The timing is nothing short of deliberate. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, Xi has removed more than 60 top military officers and defense industry executives since 2023 with analysts saying that the CIA’s campaign is designed to exploit the anxiety and distrust that such sweeping purges tend to create within any institution.

The purge of Zhang goes far deeper than what Beijing has publicly admitted. According to the WSJ’s sources, a high-level briefing was held the morning before China’s defense ministry announced Zhang’s investigation. He stands accused of four things: fraud through bribery for official promotions, including for an officer who rose to become defense minister; building political cliques that undermined party unity, representing institutional obstruction; abusing oversight of a major military procurement agency; and, most strikingly, leaking core technical data on China’s nuclear weapons program to the United States. Some of that evidence reportedly came from Gu Jun, the recently investigated former head of the China National Nuclear Corp., a state enterprise that manages both civilian and military nuclear operations.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe said that the agency’s video campaign had already reached a significant number of Chinese citizens and that it would keep offering Chinese government officials the chance to “work toward a brighter future together."

Beijing has pushed back sharply. “China will take all necessary measures to resolutely combat infiltration and sabotage activities of foreign anti-China forces and resolutely safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests," foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said on Friday. The video’s release comes roughly six weeks before President Trump is expected to travel to China in April for talks with Xi, a meeting framed around easing tensions from ongoing trade disputes.

News world CIA Drops Spy Recruitment Video Targeting China's Military Amid Nuclear Leak Scandal

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