On the other hand, this feels very unofficial and off-brand. It doesn't feel like it's a part of the U.S. government. Was that intentional? If so, why?

Why does it feel more like the site of a small (and potentially underfunded) start-up than the world's biggest and baddest intelligence agency?

The US Gov has struggled to hire millennials for some time. My guess is this is to try to appeal to the younger generations

I think you hit the nail on the head. Once you think of it that way it makes a lot of sense.

I think you're right about the motivation. But I also think it's wrong-headed.

They should lean into who they are: The biggest, baddest, most secretive government organization on the planet. THAT's their brand. That appeals to some and turns away others. But trying to pretend they're anything else will fail to persuade anyone. Those who are attracted to the truth about the CIA are likely to be turned off by this mass-appeal approach. And those who hate them are unlikely to feel differently based on this.

It's like the Freemasons: What makes them attractive to those who are interested is the secret nature of the organization. Trying to make the organization more friendly and open is counter-productive.

Lean into the mystique, gosh darn it. Very few "brands" genuinely and organically have that kind of mystery about them. The CIA, like them or not, definitely have it.

My guess is that the set of people attracted to that mystique is demographically skewed, and the demographics it favors are probably already well-represented. The copy in this new redesign seems specifically oriented towards doing better on that score.

I would imagine the CIA has a particular interest in diversity -- on the operations side, they probably need people who can plausibly pass as locals in a wide variety of countries, and on the analyst side, they probably need native speakers of lots of languages, people familiar with lots of cultural contexts, etc.

Do you think it’s basically a pay gap and career track gap? Or more systemic than that for young people not being interested?

Pay gap for sure, last time I looked I would be taking a 20-50% pay cut on similar roles

There are plenty other reasons I wouldn’t work at the CIA, but the pay is insulting for some positions. I saw a job there that sounded interesting, but demanded some relatively specific skills and the lower end of the salary range was less than I made starting out doing bullshit enterprise type work. On top of that I hear qualifications for higher level pay grades are bureaucratic and generally non-negotiable.

> It doesn't feel like it's a part of the U.S. government

From my perspective, this feels very much on brand. It's a strong design playing on the "cybersecurity" feel. My 2c, as with anything related to design, YMMV.

I totally agree. This website looks a free Wix template that someone set up over the weekend for some amateur placeholder website, not like a website I would expect from a huge and important organization, and especially not from a government organization.

Click on the "Motivational Speaker" template here and compare them: https://www.wix.com/website/templates

Yes! That's absolutely what it feels like.

It is odd. I can't find it right now, but the spending bill that there was so much drama about had budgets for some websites ( including 1MM budget for a public facing website about local offenders something or other ). I am tempted to scour the bill now to see if CIA got budget upgrade for that purpose as well.

Clicking on Motivational Speaker while at that URL gave my ARM iMac a kernel panic. I guess the CIA doesn't like being poked fun of.

Looks like it was redesigned for job seekers. Having said that, the layout feels a bit off in places (odd placement for 'Our Agency, etc.)

Also, the etching style applied to the main portrait is visually distracting and it looks like a fingerprint over the person's face.

My particular feelings are particularly mixed when it comes to the logo in the upper left. The text is blurry. Get someone who's proficient with Photoshop to export this correctly from the source. As it is now it reminds me of exports produced with Paint Shop Pro back in the early 00s, they were ok but just not sharp/on-point.

Plus, I get we're catering to progressives here but in a 73% white nation would it not be cool to at least aim one non-historical FP image at that demographic?

From my experience working in (municipal) government, every agency/department wants their own look and feel. Everybody wants to be special instead of having a unified look.

I'm not saying one is more right over the other, but it's a reason why it happens.

United States involvement in regime change: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

Won't see any mention of this under "Our Legacy", I'm sure.

Not until after you sign the NDA

Recently read both Legacy of Ashes and The Jakarta Method. The declassified documents directly from the CIA should damn them to the grave. The United States in the post WW2 period turned rightful fear and skepticism of the USSR into violent paranoia, subverting democracy anywhere people dared assert control over natural resources or accept participation of socialist/communist political parties.

Whether they did it at the direction of business interests isn't too important. The result of a bloody Cold War in the 3rd World was a cheap non-unionized labor force where organizing for better wages and conditions is dangerous and often illegal.

A better world was possible. The Non-Aligned Movement attempted to thread the needle between the US and the Soviet Union, but the CIA's mission was to make sure there was no 3rd option.

or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_violations_by_the...

Them pretending this stuff never happened is no fun, I'd like to see them try to justify MKULTRA

Unlike your resume, which contains a complete accounting of every bad thing you've done, right?

Resume

======

...

- Dropped 3 production tables, losing lead data worth up to $6 million

- Designed O(n^2) solution which was fixed in six-person all-nighter a year later when our search p99 plummetted.

...

I would interview someone that puts this on their resume, no questions asked. Hiring? Not sure, but the honesty is definitely appreciated.

Here is another banger: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Intelligence_Committee_...

I listened to the podcast "Wind of Change", which explored the rumor that the CIA had written the hit Scorpions rock ballad as a psy-op to undermine the soviet union. As a non-American, it was quite fascinating to hear about proven past CIA ops like Project Azorian or the Mission: Impossible-inspired face masks. Moral objections aside, it seems like it could be an interesting place to work. You just might not be allowed to put it on your resumé.

> You just might not be allowed to put it on your resumé.

"Department of Defense" or "State Department". There's an office that actually can check your resume for you if you work for a top secret agency, usually on your way out to make sure you're good :)

Oddly and timely, the Scorpions just posted on Twitter about Winds of Change - seems like they are Reaaly Really good if it was the CIA ha

https://twitter.com/scorpions/status/1346121593915912206?s=2...

So something cool I noticed at the bottom of the page. There's a "Report Information" button that brings up a modal outlining several ways to report information to the CIA. The most interesting one to me being the option to report via Tor.

From the dialog:

> We go to great lengths to keep these channels secure, but any communication sent using the internet involves some risk. You can reduce some risk by using the Tor browser, a virtual private network, and/or a device not registered to you. You can access the Tor browser at ciadotgov4sjwlzihbbgxnqg3xiyrg7so2r2o3lt5wz5ypk4sxyjstad.onion.

"Coming soon: Waterboarding as a Service"

https://www.sis.gov.uk/ is much nicer, I feel. SIS are also slightly odd for an intelligence agency in that they explicitly say they are looking for people to manage people with "secrets" as opposed to vague statements about safety and things like that. And it ends with

    Although our work is secret, everything we do is legal 
    and is underpinned by the values that define the UK.

    We’re #secretlyjustlikeyou

I bet someone had fun drafting that

Time to pour out another Shasta for King Terry!

Not the first time for a rebrand, but interesting to see what this one looks like.

The CIA was pushing on to my campus with a rebrand in the late 1980's, early 1990's. They were trying to entice CompSci grads with "defend your country" and "solve complex computer problems" vibes. (I hear the NSA is more targeted in recruiting, rather than open casting...) I had no idea what the CIA was, but they were touting lifetime careers of bleeding-edge projects.

I interviewed with them for my first internship in 1990. This was smack in the middle of Gulf War I. I really wanted the job because it just seemed like a cool gig: the CIA was mysteriously sexy to 21-year old me. I was asked to write essays about America's importance in the world, and not being a writer, clearly failed that step in round 2. I often wonder how much different my life would have been if I was hired...

Fascinating how entirely generic each and every page with a design like this looks.

You might find it interesting then, to learn about the Swiss style:

https://www.printmag.com/post/swiss-style-principles-typefac...

It is a bit worrisome that the CIA's poor reputation will cause virtuous people to steer clear of it, and it will only attract those who agree with it's tactics. This will cause it to only polarize further. Those who disagree with the government cannot change it from the outside.

Anybody look through the dev console to see if there are comments or hidden easter eggs? If they are recruiting techy people, techy people love easter eggs...

Those alt texts are oddly specific.

> alt="A woman with medium-light skin and long dark hair."

Interesting. Government accessibility requirements maybe?

Yep. All government sites have to be accessible due to section 508. These descriptions look like they were generated by some ML vision algorithm.

I've always wondered about this. What exactly should you describe in an alt text? Are there established guidelines one could reference to determine what is appropriate?

Accessibility guidelines in the alt spec used to say "correctly describe the intended purpose of the image if the image was missing or unable to be loaded".

It would have probably been a bit more on the nose to be like "A woman of a non-white race showing our agency is capable of diversity"

Have a read through the section 508 guidelines [0] from the US government, they link off to a couple of good sites detailing what the text should be.

[0] - https://www.section508.gov/content/guide-accessible-web-desi...

Similar to what Facebook does automatically [0] which was easily visible with an outage they had in 2019 [1].

[0] - https://research.fb.com/videos/automatic-alt-text-for-photos...

[1] - https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/3/20681231/facebook-outage-i...

Does the font read like sPoNeGeBoB text to anyone else or is that just me?

anyone know who designed this rebrand?

When I clicked on the "Spy Kids" link, that page made requests to DoubleClick and a Youtube tracker. So, now I'm tracked by the CIA and by ad networks that know I visited the CIA site. Yay capitalism.

You think you wouldn't be tracked worse under socialism/communism?

Honestly, it's not at all clear. The US has exceeded the Stasi on many fronts in the level of tracking at this point, but who knows what they would have done in 2020 if they still existed.

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