Foreign adversaries like Russia and China are stepping up efforts to turn federal employees who have been fired or fear they will be soon into intelligence assets, focusing mostly on those who have or did have security clearances to pass them along info in exchange for cash, CNN reports.
A source familiar says the ChiComs and Russians think the employees “are at their most vulnerable right now… Out of a job, bitter about being fired, etc.” Another said “It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see that these cast aside federal workers with a wealth of institutional knowledge represent staggeringly attractive targets to the intelligence services of our adversaries.”