CIA reveals plans to increase focus on China, technology, climate change, & diversity in internal announcement leaked to US media

The head of the CIA has announced a number of changes, including the launch of two new mission centers focused exclusively on China and new technology respectively, as well as streamlining the agency’s talent recruitment.

The new China Mission Center “will further strengthen our collective work on the most important geopolitical threat we face in the 21st century, an increasingly adversarial Chinese government,” Director William Burns said in an internal statement leaked to the US media on Thursday.

China has been in the crosshair of consecutive US administrations, which have ramped up pressure against Beijing, from the Obama-era “pivot to Asia,” through Trump’s trade wars and Covid-19 coverup accusations, to Biden’s closer engagement with Taiwan. The China center is meant to enhance the CIA’s intelligence-gathering and other activities targeting Beijing.

The other new bureaucratic unit, intended to work in tandem with the first, is called the Transnational and Technology Mission Center. Its purpose is to tackle global issues like pandemics and climate change, as well as monitor new technologies that would help the US stay competitive in the 21st century, including by assisting CIA operations.

A mission center can draw on resources across the CIA, and having one dedicated to a certain part of the world or area of activity makes it easier to get personnel, funding, and attention of the leadership to relevant goals. Tasks like counterterrorism and counterintelligence have their own mission centers. The impending organizational reform to create a mission center for China was reported in August by Bloomberg.

While two new CIA mission centers will be created, two existing ones – dedicated to Iran and North Korea – will be folded into the Near East Mission Center and the East Asia and Pacific Center respectively, according to media reports. China was handled by the latter before meriting a more dedicated approach.

Burns’ statement also reiterated the CIA’s intention to become more diverse, which is perceived by the leadership as a key to boosting the scope of talent available to the agency. It earlier drew some praise and a lot of mockery over a recruitment ad which touted its credentials as a go-to employer for people who view themselves through an intersectionality lens.

The official announcement comes on the heel of revelations that the CIA has taken some serious blows to its human assets. According to a cable sent by Langley to all stations, the contents of which were also leaked to the New York Times this week, dozens of informants recruited by the agency have been killed, captured, or compromised in alarming numbers over the past several years.

More shocking revelations about CIA activities came from Yahoo! News, which said that under Director Mike Pompeo the agency was preparing plans to assassinate or abduct WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The agency was reportedly ready to engage in battles on the streets of London to stop a possible exfiltration of Assange by Russian operatives, which never happened. The US is currently trying to extradite the Australian citizen from Britain to try him over alleged computer crimes under the Espionage Act.

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