Taiwan Election: Why It Matters, and What It Could Mean for U.S. and China

Taiwan will choose a new president on Saturday, bringing new leadership to volatile relations with an increasingly belligerent Beijing. The outcome could raise or lower the risks of a crisis, giving China a potential transition point to revive engagement, or to increase the military threats that could ultimately draw the United States into a war. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has asserted Beijing’s claim over the self-governed island of 23 million people by sending warplanes and ships to the skies and waters around Taiwan almost daily. Washington, while maintaining “strategic ambiguity”…

How Russian and Chinese Interference Could Affect the 2024 Election

The U.S. government is preparing for its adversaries to intensify efforts to influence American voters next year. Russia has huge stakes in the presidential election. China seems poised to back a more aggressive campaign. Other countries, like Iran, might again try to sow division in the United States. As Washington looks ahead to the 2024 vote, U.S. intelligence agencies last week released a report on the 2022 midterm elections — a document that gives us some hints about what might be to come. Spy agencies concluded Russia favored Trump in…

China Increased U.S. Election Influence in 2022, Intelligence Report Says

The Chinese government stepped up its efforts to influence American politics in the 2022 election, a new report released on Monday said, and intelligence officials are trying to learn if Beijing is preparing to further intensify those activities in next year’s presidential election. American intelligence agencies did not observe a foreign leader directing an interference campaign against the United States in 2022 in the same way Russia did in 2016. But, the report said, the U.S. government found an array of countries engaged in some kind of influence operations. And…

Pro-China YouTube Network Used A.I. to Malign U.S., Report Finds

In a faintly stilted tone and with slightly awkward grammar, the American-accented voice on YouTube last month ridiculed Washington’s handling of the war between Israel and Hamas, claiming that the United States was unable to “play its role as a mediator like China” and “now finds itself in a position of significant isolation.” The 10-minute post was one of more than 4,500 videos in an unusually large network of YouTube channels spreading pro-China and anti-U.S. narratives, according to a report this week from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a security-focused…

Can Taiwan Continue to Fight Off Chinese Disinformation?

Suspicious videos that began circulating in Taiwan this month seemed to show the country’s leader advertising cryptocurrency investments. President Tsai Ing-wen, who has repeatedly risked Beijing’s ire by asserting her island’s autonomy, appeared to claim in the clips that the government helped develop investment software for digital currencies, using a term that is common in China but rarely used in Taiwan. Her mouth appeared blurry and her voice unfamiliar, leading Taiwan’s Criminal Investigation Bureau to deem the video to be almost certainly a deepfake — an artificially generated spoof —…

In a Worldwide War of Words, Russia, China and Iran Back Hamas

The conflict between Israel and Hamas is fast becoming a world war online. Iran, Russia and, to a lesser degree, China have used state media and the world’s major social networking platforms to support Hamas and undercut Israel, while denigrating Israel’s principal ally, the United States. Iran’s proxies in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq have also joined the fight online, along with extremist groups, like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, that were previously at odds with Hamas. The deluge of online propaganda and disinformation is larger than anything seen before,…

China Uses ‘Deceptive’ Methods to Sow Disinformation, U.S. Says

The State Department accused China on Thursday of using “deceptive and coercive methods” to shape the global information environment, by acquiring stakes in foreign newspapers and television networks, using major social media platforms to promote its views and exerting pressure on international organizations and media outlets to silence critics of Beijing. The accusations, detailed in a report by the department’s Global Engagement Center, reflect worry in Washington that China’s information operations pose a growing security challenge to the United States and to democratic principles around the world by promoting “digital…

China Sows Disinformation About Hawaii Fires Using New Techniques

When wildfires swept across Maui last month with destructive fury, China’s increasingly resourceful information warriors pounced. The disaster was not natural, they said in a flurry of false posts that spread across the internet, but was the result of a secret “weather weapon” being tested by the United States. To bolster the plausibility, the posts carried photographs that appeared to have been generated by artificial intelligence programs, making them among the first to use these new tools to bolster the aura of authenticity of a disinformation campaign. For China —…

China’s Misinformation Fuels Anger Over Fukushima Water Release

In Guangdong Province, on China’s southern coast, a woman posted a photo of a boxed-up Japanese-brand air-conditioner that she planned to return in protest. In southwest China, the owner of a Japanese pub posted a video of himself ripping down anime posters and smashing bottles, saying he planned to reopen the business as a Chinese bistro. In many social media posts like these, the phrase “nuclear-contaminated wastewater” has appeared — the same wording used by the Chinese government and state media to refer to Japan’s release into the ocean of…

Meta’s ‘Biggest Single Takedown’ Removes Chinese Influence Campaign

On Feb. 27, an article claiming that the United States was behind the bombing of the Nord Stream underwater pipelines in the Baltic Sea was published on the Substack and Blogspot blogging platforms. Within 24 hours, the article — and other versions of it — had been posted to more websites, including Reddit, Medium, Tumblr, Facebook and YouTube. Translations of the article in Greek, German, Russian, Italian and Turkish also began appearing online. The posts were part of a Chinese influence campaign that stands out as the largest such operation…