Pentagon looks to build a deep-cover spy program to confront China
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Who is named
The characters and things this document talks about — 19 in alls. Each links to everything else the record knows about them.
People 7
John Ratcliffe George Kollitides David S. Cohen Michael Ellis Tom Rakusan Steve Feinberg Jacob Bliss
Organisations 7
Joint Special Operations Command Economic Defense Unit China CIA Cerberus Capital Management Trump Administration Pentagon
Places 1
Claims made
Every claim in this document. Firsthand = asserted on its own basis; secondhand = recounted from elsewhere, carrying no independent weight.
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The Pentagon is looking to build a more robust deep-cover spying program to conduct economic warfare against China and other U.S. competitors, according to half a dozen people familiar with the initiative.
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This new next-generation spying program — in which U.S. operatives would go undercover as businesspeople or other private-sector personnel, without any overt U.S. government affiliation — is intended to be a covert prong of the Pentagon’s larger economic warfare campaign, the people said.
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This new spy program of “nonofficial cover officers,” or NOCs, is being overseen by Tom Rakusan, a 39-year CIA veteran and now senior adviser to Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg, according to those familiar with it, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive initiative.
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Tom Rakusan retired from the CIA in 2021.
Rakusan, who retired from the CIA in 2021, rose to deputy director of operations — the CIA’s top spy runner — in 2017.
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Tom Rakusan rose to deputy director of operations at the CIA in 2017.
Rakusan, who retired from the CIA in 2021, rose to deputy director of operations — the CIA’s top spy runner — in 2017.
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Tom Rakusan led the CIA’s response to Russia’s 2016 election‑interference campaign.
He later led the CIA’s response to Russia’s election-interference campaign in the 2016 presidential election.
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After leaving the agency, Rakusan joined Cerberus Capital Management, the private equity firm co‑founded by Feinberg, and followed the billionaire to the Pentagon in 2025.
Cerberus Capital Management Pentagon Steve Feinberg Tom Rakusan
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The program is currently in the planning phase and is not operational.
The program is in the planning phase and is not operational, they said.
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The Defense Department, in response to questions from The Washington Post, denied such an initiative is underway. “This query appears to be built on information that is simply not true,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Jacob Bliss said in a statement.
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The CIA declined to comment on the program.
The CIA declined to comment.
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Congressional committees have not been briefed on the initiative.
Congressional committees do not appear to have been briefed on the initiative.
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The Trump administration has embraced economic warfare as a key tool of statecraft. It has imposed tariffs and export controls, made investments in critical U.S. resources and technologies, coordinated with private capital to shore up support for key components of the defense‑industrial base, and prioritized economic intelligence.
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In a September speech, CIA Deputy Director Michael Ellis said the United States is broadening its espionage against China, targeting Chinese companies in such areas as artificial intelligence, biotechnology and advanced semiconductors.
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Ellis’s predecessor as CIA deputy, David S. Cohen, argued in a recent article published in Foreign Affairs that the U.S. intelligence community should go a step further. The U.S. should end a long‑standing prohibition on sharing economic secrets gathered via espionage with U.S. companies working on advanced technology to give them a competitive advantage, he wrote.
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Some of the Pentagon’s economic‑warfare‑related activities have been overt. Feinberg announced the formation of an Economic Defense Unit this year as part of a drive toward “deterring, denying, disrupting, and helping to defeat adversaries through economic means,” according to a memo Feinberg wrote to senior Pentagon officials announcing the unit’s formation.
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In February 2026, Feinberg appointed George Kollitides to run the Economic Defense Unit.
Feinberg tapped George Kollitides, another Cerberus alumnus and senior adviser at the Pentagon, to run the EDU in February.
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That office has since announced hundreds of millions of dollars in public investments in refineries and mining interests domestically and abroad. One deal used $750 million in Pentagon funds to help secure a major deposit of rare earth minerals in Brazil.
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Multiple individuals familiar with the program said the EDU was once seen as the potential home for this enhanced deep‑cover initiative. But the increased press and congressional scrutiny directed toward the EDU and its investments — and the possibility that such attention will only increase if Democrats retake Congress in November — has led to an abandonment of that idea, said one person familiar with the current planning.
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A former senior CIA official said Tom Rakusan wants to build his own CIA inside the Pentagon.
“Rakusan just wants to build his own CIA down in the Pentagon,” said a former senior CIA official familiar with the discussions around the program.
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He was “a pipe swinger,” recalled a White House official from the first Trump administration, keen to hit the Russians back hard after their 2016 interference in the U.S. presidential election.
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Tom Rakusan traveled in Iraq on a Czech passport during his CIA career.
Rakusan undertook high‑wire operations throughout his CIA career, traveling in Iraq on a Czech passport, according to former officials.
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The reaction inside Langley to the Pentagon initiative has been frosty, according to the former agency official. The CIA has traditionally been resistant to other agencies stepping on what it perceives as its core human‑spying turf, insisting that such efforts be coordinated under the CIA chief of station in the country concerned.
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A covid‑era internal CIA report revealed that roughly 75 percent of all deep‑cover agency officers would be eligible for retirement by the mid‑2020s, another former CIA official said.
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One such attempt in the 2000s, championed by Congress’s intelligence committees and known inside the CIA as the Global Deployment Initiative, was a particularly acute example of this dynamic, former intelligence officials say, because of the proposed size and rapidity of the NOC buildup and insufficient oversight of it. The program collapsed, with many young NOCs being forced to go “inside” the building at CIA or leave the agency.
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In one illustrative post‑9/11 case, a group of Joint Special Operations Command‑affiliated NOCs operating in a remote corner of Africa had their cover exposed when they stumbled upon a group of geologists and engineers who began asking questions about their activities, according to an investigation by the High Side, a Substack focused on special operations and intelligence.
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The Pentagon faces multiple challenges with deep‑cover spying, former officials say. Military service records are difficult to hide, and the rise of biometrics and other “digital dust” means working under alias has become increasingly fraught.
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The new Pentagon NOC initiative would likely function as a sort of “Title 60” entity, said multiple former officials — a half‑joking reference to a nonexistent hybrid legal authority combining elements of Title 10 and Title 50.
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The Pentagon’s budget is $1.5 trillion.
The effort also reflects shifting power dynamics inside the Trump administration, with an ascendant Pentagon seeking a record budget of $1.5 trillion.
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CIA Director John Ratcliffe has promised a more muscular approach to recruiting human sources overseas and stealing adversaries’ secrets.
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But some former officials say the CIA remains cautious about undertaking aggressive spying operations, with an assertive Pentagon willing to shoulder greater risks.
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Where it collides
1 claim in this document contradict another account. Collision is shown as structure — it never edits a belief, it makes the disagreement legible.
- In a September speech, CIA Deputy Director Michael Ellis said the United States is broadening its espionage against China, targeting Chinese companies in artificial intelligence, biotechnology and advanced semiconductors.
collides with Michael Ellis is a lawyer and former Trump White House official rather than a career intelligence officer. · China Warns US to Stop All Spying After CIA Deputy Director Declares Chinese Firms Legitimate Intelligence Targets
Syndication
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