Hundreds of former officials at the CIA, FBI, and DHS were hired at Big Tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter between 2017 and 2022, an analysis of LinkedIn data has found.
The analysis, conducted by the Daily Caller, revealed that 248 former officials from the three agencies were hired by Google, Facebook (now known as Meta), Twitter and TikTok during the period, with dozens of the employees appointed to executive positions at the companies.
Via the Daily Caller:
Google hired 130 former DOJ, DHS, CIA and FBI employees, the Daily Caller’s key term cursory search on LinkedIn found. Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, employed 47 people for those three entities who were previously at the DOJ, FBI or DHS. TikTok, the Chinese-based app embattled with national security concerns, employed 25 former DOJ, FBI, DHS or CIA employees. Twitter had 46 executives who had previously spent time working for the three-letter agencies.
In particular, Twitter directly recruited a number of career FBI employees who had spent over 20 years with the bureau.
The search found numerous LinkedIn users touting work history in intelligence agencies didn’t fully identify themselves, choosing to censor their last names. The users presumably fully identify themselves at some point in the recruitment, hiring and vetting process.
The deep ties between Twitter and the FBI have been a recurring feature in the Twitter Files, a series of disclosures of the company’s internal communications released to the public after Elon Musk granted access to a number of journalists.
The documents revealed FBI agents “repeatedly priming” Twitter officials in 2020 to treat stories about Hunter Biden’s shady business dealings as a “Russian hack and leak operation.”
Other parts of the government, including the State Department, also used their influence over Twitter to label American conservatives using the platform as agents of “Russian influence.”
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.