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calvinmorrison | on: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's letter to staff about affair
If you're the CIA, wouldn't you want to plant employees, or 'hire' employees at major firms like this? I guess I assume they do already. Probably each major corporation has 10-50+ employees getting kick backs from the government.
thinkingemote | parent | next
Most large US companies if they want to have the government as a client, have special rooms with employees with security clearances that work mostly on projects that the CEO and even their line managers do not know what they are. HR also have a special employees or a private section that deal with these people. There is some deniability also: the managers can tell the truth under oath and say they have no knowledge about the projects!

It's part of normal business operations not some secret illegal shady kick backs operation within some kind of spy movie.

There's no need to secretly infiltrate a company when the company is working happily with you. People underestimate how close big business and 3 letter agencies actually are in many cases.

derektank | parent | next
The US intelligence agencies would have a hard time planting employees in US firms while remaining within the bounds of FISA. They certainly have assets inside major Chinese firms though, of course.
calvinmorrison | root | parent
I sincerely doubt anyone gives a shit about whatever "FISA" is, sounds like a credit card company or a shoe brand tbh.
dcrazy | root | parent | next
I can’t tell if this is excellent sarcasm or complete ignorance.
nozzlegear | root | parent
Why do you doubt that? And who do you suppose wants to work for the CIA in this aspect, when the job description is pushing pencils as an intern at a tech company trying to get sad old men to have sex with them?
jackweirdy | parent | next
They do, according to Jonna Mendez, but those placed don’t collect a company salary, only a government salary. This causes some contention since they are paid far less than salaried employees and get no equity, so it leads to high turnover
JoshTriplett | root | parent | next
> but those placed don’t collect a company salary, only a government salary

Technically, they collect the company salary, and then the CIA reduces their pay by the same amount. (They have to be indistinguishable from ordinary employee, including to payroll.)

At one point, they couldn't keep any excess if the company pay was higher. Now, they're apparently allowed to keep an amount that doesn't significantly exceed comparable federal pay.

dcrazy | root | parent
From the context, I believe the question was about infiltrating _American_ companies. If Mendez has made that claim, do you happen to know where she said it?
jackweirdy | root | parent
She gave 2 fireside chat style events at the commonwealth club of California and it was at one of those. They’re on YouTube, how I found them. There is other press coverage though.

Infiltrated is not necessarily the right word. Company executives know, but few other employees do

dcrazy | root | parent
Can you be more precise about whether you’re referring to the American company or its foreign subsidiaries? My understanding is that it would be a violation of the CIA’s charter to plant a spy within an American company’s domestic arm, though of course the CIA does set up American front companies. Embedding officers within foreign subsidiaries of American multinationals seems more likely, but even that sounds close to crossing the line.
Traster | parent
It doesn't quite work like that. You don't go off and find some super smart person who can easily get a job at Nvidia and tell them "Hey you, go work for this company". You find someone who already works at Nvidia, and you bump into them at their kids' little league game, and you get chatting and build a rapport and over time you build trust and before you know, you've got a trusted source inside Nvidia. They don't even need to know they're a plant. And then, if you really do need something more than information you can go further. But you start with someone already at the company and you target them, rather than the other way around.

And that's not even talking about the less clandestine methods of just ringing their General Counsel and saying "Hey buddy we're the US government we need X Y Z".