Cybersecurity firms in the United States and New Zealand have uncovered a massive effort linked to the Chinese Communist Party intended to drive political outcomes in other countries.
Breitbart News reports:
Reports from an American private cyber intelligence company and the government of New Zealand painted very similar pictures of the Chinese Communist government using malicious online activity to influence politics in other countries.
They call the method “spamouflage,” and cybersecurity experts first noticed it taking off in 2017, following Trump's election. Readers should note that Trump made a point of taking on China and trying to end the United States' dependency on the foreign and often hostile superpower.
Spamouflage entails creating accounts on social media apps like X (formerly known as Twitter) posing as American citizens, often using fake names and photos, and using artificial intelligence to generate posts that drive political discord.
In one example, an X user going by “Harlan” claimed to be a handsome 29 year old army veteran from New York, supporting Donald Trump, but months later, claimed to be from Florida.
Breitbart News continues:
The sock puppets for these Chinese hackers present themselves as “frustrated by American politics and the West.” They churn out “divisive narratives about sensitive social issues, including gun control, homelessness, drug abuse, racial inequality, and the Israel-Hamas conflict.” Much of this content appears to be AI-generated or blatantly copied and pasted from other political accounts. In some cases, strange word choices and broken English alerted suspicions and gave the accounts away. One expert noted that while some attempts are successful, most Spamouflage doesn't garner much engagement.
Spamouflage has grown increasingly active as the U.S. presidential campaign moves along, producing content critical of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump at first, then looping in Vice President Kamala Harris once President Joe Biden was deposed as the Democrat Party's presidential candidate for 2024.
While some experts suggest that the goal of spamouflage is to influence the election results, others think the objective has more to do with the image projected internationally, with the hopes that portraying America in decline, China will elevate itself, and finally position themselves as the leading global super power.
Breitbart News explains:
Graphika suggested this might be happening because American voters are not the primary audience for Spamouflage's influence campaigns. Instead, the goal is “leveraging social divisions in a polarized information environment to portray the U.S. as a declining global power with weak leaders and a failing system of governance.”
Intelligence officials say that Iran and Russia are also involved in Spamouflage, and that Iran has been particularly active on the Israel/Palestine debates. Senior analyst for emerging threats at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Max Lesser, suggests that America and its allies should anticipate the operation growing, and including even more countries, and potentially moving to criminal organizations and terror groups.
“We're going to see a widening of the playing field when it comes to influence operations, where it's not just Russia, China and Iran but you also see smaller actors getting involved.”
