Reposted from Substack
Rachel Maddow looks at how China has learned to take advantage of Donald Trump's divisiveness within American society by mimicking his supporters online using techniques that were successful for Russia in the 2016 election. Tiffany Hsu, technology reporter for The New York Times, joins to discuss how China is stepping up its disinformation game.
New York Times.
Covert Chinese accounts are masquerading online as American supporters of former President Donald J. Trump, promoting conspiracy theories, stoking domestic divisions and attacking President Biden ahead of the election in November, according to researchers and government officials.
The accounts signal a potential tactical shift in how Beijing aims to influence American politics, with more of a willingness to target specific candidates and parties, including Mr. Biden.
In an echo of Russia’s influence campaign before the 2016 election, China appears to be trying to harness partisan divisions to undermine the Biden administration’s policies, despite recent efforts by the two countries to lower the temperature in their relations.
Some of the Chinese accounts impersonate fervent Trump fans, including one on X that purported to be “a father, husband and son” who was “MAGA all the way!!” The accounts mocked Mr. Biden’s age and shared fake images of him in a prison jumpsuit, or claimed that Mr. Biden was a Satanist pedophile while promoting Mr. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.
So that’s bad, and it’s not like we haven’t seen these tactics used and work before, but what’s worse is that some platforms — like Xwitter — are totally welcoming to this kind of thing.
And it seems like the US isn’t their only target. Taipei Times.
China will continue to play up conflicts in Taiwan with more diverse tactics of information manipulation, Taipei-based think tank Doublethink Lab said in a report published yesterday.
The think tank analyzed the strategies and impact of the Chinese disinformation campaign on Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections on Saturday last week and pointed out possible manipulation methods in the future.
Before last month, news outlets and social media accounts controlled by or affiliated with Chinese authorities focused on amplifying controversial issues in Taiwan to intensify social conflicts, a strategy they have adopted since 2022, the report said.
These foreign actors select certain narratives by Taiwanese politicians or pundits to spread US skepticism and defamatory information about the ruling party or its leaders, it said.
Leading up to the elections, Chinese actors began to create fake news, such as accusing the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of starting rumors about China pressurizing Taiwanese rock band Mayday to make pro-China comments, it said.
So they’ve been at this for some time. And they intend to use AI to accomplish their goals. NDTV.
New Delhi: Microsoft has warned that China is gearing up to disrupt the upcoming elections in India, the United States and South Korea by using artificial intelligence-generated content. The warning comes after China conducted a trial run during Taiwan's presidential election, employing AI to influence the outcome.
Last month, Microsoft's co-founder Bill Gates met Prime Minister Narendra Modi In New Delhi and discussed the use of AI for social causes, women-led development and innovation in health and agriculture.
Across the world, at least 64 countries, in addition to the European Union, are expected to hold national elections. These countries collectively account for approximately 49 per cent of the global population.
According to Microsoft's threat intelligence team, Chinese state-backed cyber groups, along with involvement from North Korea, are expected to target several elections scheduled for 2024. Microsoft said that China will likely deploy AI-generated content via social media to sway public opinion in favour of their interests during these elections.
"With major elections taking place around the world this year, particularly in India, South Korea and the United States, we assess that China will, at a minimum, create and amplify AI-generated content to benefit its interests," Microsoft said in its statement.
Even the Epoch Times has noticed and that’s saying something.
This is kind of funny because the narrative from the Right is that Biden is “bought and paid for” by the Chinese. Supposedly, through his brother and his son Hunter China has funneled $Millions worth of influence peddling to the Biden family, and to Joe.
I mean both Hunter and Devon Archer have testified that Joe wasn’t involved in their business in any way — but let’s not let what people say under oath, or what all the documentation and contracts say have anything to do with it, right?
So then, why are they mounting this giant Social Media Cyber attack against Biden and in favor of Donald Trump?
Why are they trying to spin our election in that way? I mean, if Trump is supposedly so “tough” on China?
Maybe it’s because the tariffs that Trump imposed on China didn’t hurt them, but it cost American jobs.
The sweeping tariffs that former President Donald J. Trump imposed on China and other American trading partners were simultaneously a political success and an economic failure, a new study suggests. That’s because the levies won over voters for the Republican Party even though they did not bring back jobs.
The nonpartisan working paper examines monthly data on U.S. employment by industry to find that the tariffs that Mr. Trump placed on foreign metals, washing machines and an array of goods from China starting in 2018 neither raised nor lowered the overall number of jobs in the affected industries.
But the tariffs did incite other countries to impose their own retaliatory tariffs on American products, making them more expensive to sell overseas, and those levies had a negative effect on American jobs, the paper finds. That was particularly true in agriculture: Farmers who exported soybeans, cotton and sorghum to China were hit by Beijing’s decision to raise tariffs on those products to as much as 25 percent.
The Trump administration aimed to offset those losses by offering financial support for farmers, ultimately giving out $23 billion in 2018 and 2019. But those funds were distributed unevenly, a government assessment found, and the economists say those subsidies only partially mitigated the harm that had been caused by the tariffs.
So that was a FAIL.
Maybe it’s the fact that Trump constantly praises China.
Donald Trump once again heaped praise on Chinese President Xi Jinping on Sunday but threatened to escalate economic tensions with China by hiking tariffs on Chinese imports by more than 60 percent if elected president.
Asked by Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures” if he plans to ramp up a trade war with China — as some of his critics have suggested — and whether or not a 60 percent hike in tariffs would be in the cards during a second Trump term, the former president replied, “No.”
But while Trump maintained he is not looking to start a trade war and did “great” with China, he said he would consider tariffs even “more than” the 60 percent recently reported by the Washington Post.
“Look, I want China to do great, I do. And I like President Xi a lot, he was a very good friend of mine during my term,” Trump told Bartiromo.
Bartiromo cut Trump off. “Well, look, Covid, Covid cover up, intellectual property theft, the list is long from our number one adversary. So I don’t know if he is a friend.”
“I got along with him great, I’m not sure he loved what I was doing,” Trump added, before saying he doesn’t think Xi wants him to return to the White House.
And the fact that Trump told Xi that he was right to build detention camps for the Uighurs.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump told China’s Xi Jinping that he was right to build detention camps to house hundreds of thousands of ethnic minorities, former U.S. national security adviser John Bolton alleged in a new book that could make the president’s tough-on-China mantra a hard sell.
At a summit in Japan in 2019, with only interpreters present, Xi gave Trump an explanation for the Chinese camps for Uighurs, who are ethnically and culturally distinct from the country’s majority Han population and are suspected of harboring separatist tendencies, Bolton wrote.
“According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which he thought was exactly the right thing to do,” the book said.
That would be a stunning statement coming from the president of the United States, where the First Amendment protects the right to religious beliefs and practices and prevents the government from creating or favoring a religion. It could drive a wedge between Trump and his Republican China hawks on Capitol Hill.
Yeah, ok, not like he wouldn’t like to do his own detention camps right here.
And, by the way, Trump has suggested he would abandon Taiwan to China in they invaded.
Former President Donald Trump's comments suggesting the United States should not help Taiwan in the event of an invasion from China has sparked a new wave of anger and concern on social media.
Trump, who is the leading favorite to secure the GOP nomination for president after winning the Iowa caucus on Monday, sat for an interview on Fox News' Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo where he was asked if, under a hypothetical second Trump presidency, the U.S. would protect Taiwan from Chinese aggression even if it meant going to war with China. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory, but the Communist Party leadership has never controlled the self-ruled island in its seven decades in power in Beijing. The former president declined to give a firm answer, but did suggest discontent with Taiwan for allegedly taking semiconductor business away from the U.S.
"Taiwan did take all of our chip business," Trump said. "We used to make all of our own chips, now they're made in Taiwan, 90 percent of [them]...Remember this, Taiwan took, smart, brilliant, they took our business away."
That is probably something that Beijing would like to hear. And they might be upset with Biden because he signed the CHIPS bill into law.
President Joe Biden on Tuesday signed a bipartisan bill that aims to strengthen U.S. competitiveness with China by investing billions of dollars in domestic semiconductor manufacturing and science research.
“Today is a day for builders. Today America is delivering,” Biden said at the signing ceremony outside the White House. He was joined by a crowd of hundreds, including tech executives, union presidents and political leaders from both parties.
The bill, dubbed the Chips and Science Act, includes more than $52 billion for U.S. companies producing computer chips, as well as billions more in tax credits to encourage investment in semiconductor manufacturing. It also provides tens of billions of dollars to fund scientific research and development and to spur the innovation and development of other U.S. tech.
You think Trump would continue to support this kind of bill or would he whine that it was “too much spending?” Then I would bet he’d try his failed tariff strategy again, and lose more American jobs.
Yeah, I can’t think of any real reason why China wouldn’t like to dump disinformation onto social media in favor of Trump?
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