7 votes

The CIA is trying to recruit Gen Z—and doesn’t care if they’re all over social media

2 comments

  1. [2]
    nacho
    Link
    Sounds to me like the CIA still will care deeply about the social media activity of the overwhelming majority of Gen z folks. It'll be a huge issue for their recruitment, if this is the...

    So it’s absolutely not a nonstarter [to be on social media], unless there’s things on your social media that expose what might be considered weaknesses or vulnerabilities, like a party shot of you throwing down a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black. But it’s not a deal-breaker, and the smart case officer uses their public persona to their advantage to support their cover.

    • Douglas London, a 34-year veteran of the CIA’s Clandestine Service, the elite branch that runs all of the Agency’s undercover operations.

    Sounds to me like the CIA still will care deeply about the social media activity of the overwhelming majority of Gen z folks.

    It'll be a huge issue for their recruitment, if this is the approximate threshold for what's "social media that expose what might be considered weaknesses or vulnerabilities."

    4 votes
    1. Greg
      Link Parent
      Yeah I had to read that line a few times - my two guesses are that he really did mean "a bottle", as in a propensity to drink so much that they could be taken advantage of by an adversary, and/or...

      Yeah I had to read that line a few times - my two guesses are that he really did mean "a bottle", as in a propensity to drink so much that they could be taken advantage of by an adversary, and/or that he means the applicants with the mindset they want will already have gone to the effort of scrubbing anything even vaguely controversial from their public persona before applying and he's judging them for not hiding it rather than for doing it.

      I'm not a great fan of that latter logic, but then I'm not a great fan of the CIA, so I'm sure there are a lot of things he and I wouldn't think alike on.

      7 votes