Report: The German Intelligence seeks to attract young people at a computer games exhibition
Germany’s foreign intelligence agency (BND) is seeking to attract young workers to its ranks by participating with a large pavilion at the international computer games fair Gamescom.
“There are similarities between the visitors to Gamescom and the people we would like to have in our ranks,” BND press secretary Julia Lehner said.
She added that the German intelligence agency is actively looking for new recruits, pointing out that the shortage of specialist workers also affects the BND.
Unlike most other visitors to the exhibition, the BND employees at Gamescom don’t wear name tags.
The BND has about 6,500 employees, including 4,000 in Berlin, 1,000 in Pullach near Munich and 1,500 abroad or elsewhere in Germany.
Lehner said her BND colleagues were there to give a practical overview of their daily work.
The BND’s stand at the fair attracts interested people by inviting them to solve computer tasks in a game-like manner, for example by asking them to find data sets that point to a fictitious terrorist attack.
This task illustrates that the German foreign intelligence agency is primarily interested in computer experts who are familiar with the World Wide Web and the world of programming.
According to Lehner, the German intelligence agency is a good choice for gamers because there are certain similarities between the world of gaming and the world of intelligence.
“Our employees are passionate about computers and technology, and they go on missions, play roles, and assume different identities to obtain information – similar to characters in video games,” Lehner said.
