NIH Staff Warned of ‘Insider’ and ‘Foreign Recruitment’ Threats

By Dave Levitan | March 6, 2025 | 10:20am

Photo by Duane Lempke/Wikimedia Commons

Trump Administration NIH

NIH Staff Warned of ‘Insider’ and ‘Foreign Recruitment’ Threats

In a shocking turn of events, dismantling long-standing government functions and demeaning, insulting, and firing many thousands of federal workers may be opening the country up to some nefarious intrusions. Whomst could have foreseen.

Around 2 pm ET on Wednesday, staff at the National Institutes of Health received an email with an ominous subject line: “Be Vigilant: Protecting NIH from Insider Threat and Foreign Recruitment Threats.” The email, shared by multiple sources with Splinter, said that as the government “undergoes workforce modifications” — an absolute feat of euphemism — staff need to “remain vigilant against those who will seek to exploit this period of transition.”

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It went on to warn that unauthorized disclosure of sensitive research or intellectual property “carry significant implications,” and that staff should be wary of “unsolicited job offers or suspicious collaboration requests.” And further, it suggests that foreign government and “talent programs” have been attempting to recruit both current and former NIH employees — of course, those “who were either dismissed or accepted the early retirement option” aren’t getting this warning, so it perhaps has diminishing returns. “Be mindful of the solicitation methods and what you are asked to provide,” the email said. “Such offers may present a serious risk not only to our national security but the enduring NIH research.”

And as a strange aside, the message noted that a corner of NIH called the Office of Defensive Counterintelligence and Personnel Security, or ODCPS, “works to prevent espionage, unauthorized disclosures and minimize workplace security risks.” This office is… mysterious. Multiple NIH sources told Splinter that they had never interacted with or even heard of ODCPS, and it has essentially zero footprint online. It is absent from the NIH’s own, already quite complicated org chart; Googling it yields nothing of use. Sources did say that this doesn’t necessarily mean it does not exist or is brand new, as website updates can sometimes lag behind administrative reorganizations for quite some time. One staffer noted that the “be vigilant” advice does resemble the sort of training NIH employees have routinely received over the years. An email to the NIH media office asking for more information about ODCPS has not yet been answered, but such is life under communications blackouts.

The message to NIH staff ended with a short list of “What You Can Do,” including fairly mundane advice to stay alert, follow security protocols, properly secure intellectual property or sensitive research material, and finally, to “Trust your instinct—If an offer or request seems too good to be true, or if the nature of the question is odd, it may very well be.” An email address specifically set up to report issues to “NIH ODCPS’ Insider Threat Program” was provided; that email address does not appear to be publicized anytime previously on the internet. Reports to that address, the message said, “are handled discreetly and professionally.”

Generally speaking, the warning is likely a good one, in that any particular “threat” out there probably does look at the chaos Trump and Musk are causing government-wide as an absolutely stellar opportunity to try, well, anything — honest recruitment of fired or undermined experts and highly trained staff up to literal secret stealing. And while it may look like annual trainings federal employees receive, several staffers were still somewhat shocked to see it laid out like this.

Meanwhile, another message was sent to NIH staff around the same time: “During this time of unprecedented changes… some laboratories and spaces may be significantly impacted and may face immediate closures,” [emphasis mine] read a message from the Division of Occupational Health and Safety and the Division of Radiation Safety (offices which do, in fact, appear on the NIH org chart), which went on to offer guidance on how to manage such closures safely.

Perhaps, maybe, possibly, the two warnings are related.

UPDATE: A helpful Bluesky user found an org chart inside NIH’s Office of Research Services that does include ODCPS — only it doesn’t seem to be linked from anywhere in particular, and going directly to the ORS “Organizational Information” page includes a different chart without that office. This does seem like relatively mundane administrative maneuvering that websites have not caught up with, but we will update with any response from NIH.