CIA allegedly made fake social media accounts to troll the Chinese government

3 months ago 8
An illustration of a pistillate   typing connected  a keyboard, her look   replaced with lines of code. Image: The Verge

The CIA allegedly launched a concealed cognition to troll Chinese officials and crook nationalist sentiment against them done leaked quality and antagonistic quality connected societal media.

Reuters reports the operation began successful 2019 and was besides aimed astatine causing paranoia wrong Xi Jinping’s government. CIA agents reportedly made fake societal media accounts to dispersed rumors, specified arsenic allegations that Communist Party members hid ill-gotten wealthiness extracurricular the country, and knock Chinese authorities initiatives, similar saying a programme financing infrastructure projects successful different countries was corrupt.

The CIA declined to remark to Reuters, which could not corroborate whether the programme is inactive successful place. Reuters said the operation, authorized by then-President Donald Trump, operated beyond China and utilized societal media to power nationalist sentiment successful Southeast Asia, Africa, and the South Pacific. China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which gave grants and loans for infrastructure projects, operates successful processing countries successful those regions. This inaugural was 1 of the CIA program’s targets.

Social media-fueled propaganda from authorities actors is thing new, but quality has much often been astir different countries targeting the US. Russia has been accused galore times of creating fake accounts and troll farms to power nationalist sentiment successful the US, with a erstwhile state of Russian president Vladimir Putin admitting past twelvemonth to founding a troll farm to meddle successful US elections. The aforesaid year, Rolling Stone wrote that a web based successful China created a fake far-right work that pushed fake stories to European societal media users. Meanwhile, American politicians, in their quest to ban TikTok, assertion the Chinese authorities could usage the societal media level to spy connected oregon power users.

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