2010–2012 killing of CIA sources in China

Between 2010 and 2012, espionage networks operated by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) inside China were dismantled by Chinese intelligence authorities in a major security breach. The breach severely hindered U.S. intelligence gathering in China for years afterward.

A large number of informants working with the CIA were killed as a result of the breach, while many others were imprisoned. Initial estimates placed the number of sources killed at between 18 and 20. Later assessments concluded that at least 30 sources were lost in total. U.S. officials described the incident as one of the worst intelligence breaches suffered by the CIA in decades, with the scale of losses said to rival those caused in the Soviet Union by the leaks of Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen.

Investigators disputed the cause of the breach. One line of inquiry focused on the possibility of a mole or turncoat within the CIA who leaked the identities of informants. In January 2018, a former CIA officer named Jerry Chun Shing Lee was arrested in connection with the case on suspicion of helping to dismantle the network; he later pleaded guilty.

A separate explanation centered on a compromised communications system. According to reporting by Foreign Policy, the CIA had used a communications system — originally brought over from its operations in the Middle East — to contact informants in China, under the mistaken assumption that the internet-based system made the agency "invincible." Yahoo News reported in November 2018 that the compromised system consisted of websites, some of which could be identified using carefully crafted Google search queries, a technique known as "Google hacking." In September 2022, Reuters published screenshots of nine specific websites that were part of the communications system, which reportedly totaled more than 350 websites overall. The sites were written in a variety of languages, suggesting the system was used to communicate with CIA operatives in at least 20 countries, including Iran, China, Brazil, Russia, Thailand, and Ghana.

In the aftermath, the CIA has worked to rebuild its intelligence network in China, an effort officials have described as expensive and time-consuming. The underlying cause of the breach remains disputed among investigators, with some attributing it to a human mole and others to the compromised communications system. In 2023, CIA Director William Burns stated that the agency had "made progress" in rebuilding its intelligence networks in China.