Singapore-registered firm used fake employees and recruitment methods mirroring foreign intelligence playbook

“It’s a low-cost, set-and-forget kind of system that is easily discardable,” said Associate Professor Dylan Loh from Nanyang Technological University’s (NTU) Public Policy and Global Affairs programme, who added that AI has made it easier to create such front organisations en masse. “There are certainly more sophisticated ways of intelligence-gathering, but those require more resources and manpower.”

Some of these operations are also carried out by for-profit intermediaries on behalf of state actors, said Assoc Prof Loh, and these contractors “sometimes do not put as much care and attention into the endeavour as one might expect”.

“In any case, they can afford to be amateurish, so to speak, because you don’t need an 80 or 90 per cent recruitment rate. You just need one or two good sources that could prove quite consequential.”

HIGH-VALUE TARGETS

Infoassa’s job advertisements, which it has been posting since as early as January, reflect a clear target profile: Individuals with former government, military, parliamentary or think-tank experience, and often with expertise in international relations or security studies. 

CNA found multiple such advertisements on various job boards. These included the US-based Workable and the Taiwanese platform Cake.me, as well as in online communities such as Effective Altruism and Jobs That Are Left, which cater to candidates seeking opportunities in politically progressive organisations.

The posts mostly sought applicants for remote, part-time roles like the one Maria applied for, and for a pay of between US$1,500 to US$4,000 per month. In her case, although she had already decided not to move forward with her application, Infoassa sent her a recruitment offer anyway, which included a writing test. In the test brief, seen by CNA, Maria was asked to complete a 1,500 word report primarily pertaining to US considerations ahead of an upcoming Trump-Xi summit in September.

She told CNA the brief unsettled her further. In addition to stilted English and awkward formatting, it asked her to “try to avoid using open-source information” and to “indicate the source of the information” provided. She did not get back to Infoassa.