SINGAPORE — A consultancy presenting itself as a Singapore-based geopolitical advisory firm appeared to have all the ingredients needed to impress a prospective employee: experienced diplomats, international credentials and jobs for people who understand the inner workings of governments.
But scrutiny of the operation has exposed a very different picture.
An investigation by Channel NewsAsia (CNA) found that the website of a purported consultancy called Great Vision contained fabricated credentials and was actively seeking applicants with backgrounds in Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), regional institutions and prominent think-tanks.
The episode is raising a larger question for Singapore: Why are apparently bogus organisations going to such lengths to attract people who understand how governments make decisions?
The “Former Diplomat” Who Wasn’t
One of Great Vision’s most impressive-looking executives was listed as “Dr Jade Chan”, described as the consultancy’s managing partner and an experienced former Singapore diplomat.
According to the biography published on the website, Chan had supposedly served at Singapore diplomatic missions in Jakarta, Hanoi and Brussels, advised the ASEAN Secretariat and accumulated roughly two decades of experience in diplomacy and strategic analysis.
The profile also claimed that she held a PhD in international relations from the London School of Economics and had been involved in issues ranging from South China Sea dialogue to bilateral trade negotiations.
There was a fundamental problem with that résumé.
Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told CNA that Chan had never worked for the ministry.
CNA also reported that it could not identify a LinkedIn or social-media profile matching the extensive professional credentials attributed to her.
Attempts to contact Great Vision produced another red flag. Although the organisation described itself as headquartered in Singapore, CNA reported that its website provided neither a physical office address nor a telephone number. Emails sent to the address provided on the site were returned undelivered.
The mystery surrounding its executives, however, was only part of the story.
The Recruitment Ads Were Even More Revealing
Great Vision advertised a senior consulting position focusing on political and geopolitical risk.
The preferred candidates included people with previous roles at Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the ASEAN Secretariat, European Union institutions or major international think-tanks.
Another vacancy sought an intelligence and research analyst.
For that position, previous experience at Singapore-based think-tanks — with the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) specifically cited as an example — was described as highly desirable.
Applicants were also asked to provide relevant work samples.
That detail matters.
Unlike a conventional phishing operation focused primarily on passwords or money, recruiting experienced diplomats, policy analysts and researchers potentially provides access to something less obvious but extremely valuable: professional networks, institutional knowledge and an understanding of how governments interpret geopolitical events.
Why Former Officials Can Be Valuable Even Without Classified Documents
Muhammad Faizal Bin Abdul Rahman, a research fellow at RSIS, told CNA that fabricated professional personas can help create an appearance of credibility and competence, making an organisation more attractive to potential recruits.
Professor Simon Chesterman of the NUS AI Institute said the apparent interest in former MFA personnel could indicate an interest in people possessing privileged knowledge, networks or a sophisticated understanding of how government operates.
That does not necessarily mean obtaining classified documents.
Former officials and experienced analysts can possess valuable knowledge accumulated through years inside institutions: how decisions are debated, which arguments carry influence, how officials assess particular countries and how policy may change during a crisis.
Following publication of CNA’s investigation, MP Yip Hon Weng, who chairs the Government Parliamentary Committee for Defence and Foreign Affairs, highlighted this broader danger.
The valuable target, he suggested, may increasingly be the “mental map” carried by experienced officials — their understanding of how policymakers interpret crises, personalities and relationships.
Taken together, seemingly unclassified insights could potentially reveal much more about how a country thinks.
Great Vision Was Not the Only Questionable Organisation
CNA reviewed nine suspicious websites as part of its latest investigation.
Great Vision was the only one among those nine that explicitly expressed a preference for applicants with previous experience in Singapore institutions.
But investigators found several organisations attempting to manufacture credibility by claiming relationships with respected Singapore institutions.
One particularly striking example was an organisation calling itself Global Asia Think Tank.
Its website claimed that the organisation was supported by Singapore’s MFA and worked with the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore and RSIS at Nanyang Technological University.
The institutions disputed those claims.
MFA told CNA that it “does not and has not supported” Global Asia and characterised references made by Global Asia and Great Vision as misrepresentations.
The ministry said it had contacted the websites seeking removal of false references to MFA and would work with relevant agencies on further action if the requests were ignored.
The Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy similarly said it had no relationship with Global Asia and had not authorised the organisation to use its name.
RSIS told CNA it had no knowledge of the entity.
A Seminar That Apparently Never Happened
Global Asia’s attempts at establishing credibility went further.
The organisation claimed to have held an in-person seminar at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy on June 18.
CNA checked the school’s event calendar and found no evidence that the event took place.
More strikingly, CNA reported that an image presented on Global Asia’s website as evidence of the supposed seminar had been generated using an OpenAI image-generation model.
According to CNA’s investigation, the image was generated on June 26 — eight days after the event supposedly occurred.
Investigators also found that Global Asia’s three most recent articles reproduced material from Taiwanese and American think-tanks word-for-word without attribution.
Real Academic, Fake Affiliation
Another organisation examined by CNA was Afforesight, which described itself as an independent think-tank headquartered in Singapore.
Its website listed Dr Zhao Litao, a genuine senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s East Asian Institute, as one of its experts.
But Zhao told CNA he had never heard of the organisation and had never authorised it to use his name, photograph or biography.
The East Asian Institute likewise said it had no affiliation with Afforesight and requested the removal of Zhao’s profile.
Afforesight’s claimed Singapore headquarters raised further questions.
CNA visited the listed address at 8 Biomedical Grove and found that the relevant floor was occupied by a pharmaceutical research facility. There was reportedly no indication on the building directory that Afforesight operated there.
At Least 16 Singapore-Linked Suspicious Entities Documented
The findings are part of a broader pattern that researchers and journalists have been tracking.
CNA reported that since the middle of 2025, analysts have documented at least 16 Singapore-linked entities carrying false or misleading claims.
An earlier CNA investigation examined Infoassa, a Singapore-registered company accused of using fabricated employees while recruiting an American former government employee.
According to that investigation, its methods resembled techniques identified by researchers investigating suspected foreign-intelligence recruitment operations: credible-looking organisations, invented professional identities and job opportunities aimed at people with valuable government or policy experience.
The pattern does not, however, prove that every suspicious website is operated by the same group.
CNA said it had found no evidence establishing that all of the websites it investigated were commonly controlled.
RSIS’ Faizal said connected actors could not be ruled out because of similarities in tactics, but that remains a possibility rather than an established fact.
One strategy, he suggested, could be to create numerous websites rather than relying on a single operation. Even if most are identified or ignored, only a small number may need to successfully attract a target.
AI Makes Fake Institutions Much Easier to Build
Generative artificial intelligence has dramatically lowered the cost of creating convincing online organisations.
A sophisticated-looking think-tank once required writers, designers, photographs, research material and extensive website development.
Today, AI systems can rapidly generate executive portraits, biographies, reports, logos, corporate language and promotional material.
The result is a new verification problem.
A polished website, professional headshots and pages filled with policy analysis are no longer strong evidence that an organisation — or even the people supposedly working for it — actually exists.
That becomes particularly important when an organisation is seeking applicants from government, defence, intelligence or strategic-policy backgrounds.
Why Singapore Could Be an Attractive Target
Singapore occupies an unusually influential position for its size.
It is a major financial and diplomatic hub, hosts respected universities and policy institutes and maintains relationships with the United States, China and countries throughout Southeast Asia.
Singapore will also assume the ASEAN chairmanship in 2027.
Faizal told CNA that foreign powers could have an interest in understanding how Singapore’s foreign policy may respond to a changing strategic environment and whether there are pressure points that could potentially be exploited.
Ahead of Singapore’s ASEAN chairmanship, insights into how officials may pursue regional consensus or multilateral cooperation could become particularly valuable.
That makes the apparent recruitment focus more significant than a collection of fake résumés and fabricated websites.
The concern is not merely that someone invented a diplomat named “Jade Chan”.
It is that an organisation constructed enough of a professional façade to try to attract the kind of people whose careers may have given them something far harder to find online:
an insider’s understanding of how Singapore thinks.
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