{"id":1442009,"date":"2023-12-04T05:00:01","date_gmt":"2023-12-04T10:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1442009"},"modified":"2023-12-04T05:00:01","modified_gmt":"2023-12-04T10:00:01","slug":"tiktok-part-of-ccps-cognitive-warfare-strategy-against-us-rep-gallagher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/tiktok-part-of-ccps-cognitive-warfare-strategy-against-us-rep-gallagher\/1442009\/","title":{"rendered":"TikTok Part Of CCP’s ‘Cognitive Warfare’ Strategy Against US: Rep. Gallagher"},"content":{"rendered":"

TikTok Part Of CCP’s ‘Cognitive Warfare’ Strategy Against US: Rep. Gallagher<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Andrew Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times<\/a> (emphasis ours),<\/em><\/p>\n

TikTok is a key tool in communist China\u2019s strategy to manipulate Americans and undermine the United States\u2019s ability to respond to crises, according to experts and lawmakers.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chairman of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), speaks during a press conference unveiling the results of the committee\u2019s investigation into the biolab discovered in Reedley, Calif., in Washington on Nov. 15, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu\/The Epoch Times)<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which rules China as a single-party state, will likely use TikTok in its effort to wage \u201ccognitive warfare\u201d against the United States, said Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.).<\/p>\n

\u201cThe CCP calls it \u2018cognitive domain warfare,\u2019 <\/strong>part of their larger political warfare strategy,\u201d Mr. Gallagher said in prepared comments for a Nov. 30 hearing of the House Select Committee on the CCP.<\/p>\n

Mr. Gallagher, who chairs the committee, said that the United States was struggling to respond to the threat, as the nation had no grand strategy or apparatus for confronting propaganda from authoritarian powers.<\/p>\n

\u201cCognitive warfare is not something we tend to think about here in the West. Sure, we have ideas like soft power, but they\u2019re not a national strategy<\/strong>,\u201d Mr. Gallagher said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the \u2018smokeless battlefield\u2019 of people\u2019s minds, we don\u2019t have a standing military at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

CCP Seeks \u2018Mind Dominance\u2019<\/h2>\n

The Pentagon\u2019s 2022 China Military Power Report (pdf<\/a>), which distills the Defense Department\u2019s most authoritative assessments of China\u2019s strategy and capabilities, highlighted the development of the CCP\u2019s new method of psychological warfare.<\/p>\n

It said that the CCP and its military wing, the People\u2019s Liberation Army (PLA), were developing and deploying methods for conducting cognitive warfare<\/a> to win military advantage.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs the PLA seeks to expand the reach of its influence operations around the world and to seize information dominance on the battlefield, it is researching and developing the next evolution of psychological warfare called cognitive domain operation[s] (CDO) that leverages subliminal messaging, deep fakes, overt propaganda, and public sentiment analysis,\u201d the report stated.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe goal of CDO is to achieve what the PLA refers to as \u2018mind dominance,\u2019 <\/strong>defined as the use of propaganda as a weapon to influence public opinion to effect change in a nation\u2019s social system, likely to create an environment favorable to China and reduce civilian and military resistance to PLA actions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report described CDO as \u201ca more aggressive form of psychological warfare\u201d intended to \u201caffect a target\u2019s cognition, decision making, and behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Gallagher said that CCP leader Xi Jinping considered CDO as a vital weapon in the regime\u2019s arsenal that could be used to manipulate the American people at key moments, such as during an election cycle.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Xi Jinping\u2019s view, the war has already started on the most important battlefield: your mind,\u201d Mr. Gallagher said.<\/p>\n

Data Suggests TikTok Taking Direction From CCP<\/h2>\n

Mr. Gallagher pointed to TikTok as the regime\u2019s most powerful tool for conducting cognitive warfare.<\/p>\n

People walk past the headquarters of ByteDance, the parent company of video sharing app TikTok, in Beijing on Sept. 16, 2020. (Greg Baker\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/a><\/p>\n

Though the company denies that it takes direction from China-based parent company ByteDance, executives have previously acknowledged its censoring and “heating”<\/a> of content at the request of the CCP.<\/p>\n

To that end, Mr. Gallagher shared several slides suggesting that TikTok is still taking orders from Chinese communist authorities.<\/p>\n

The slides demonstrated that posts about \u201cviral topics\u201d in politics and pop culture were proportionately represented on TikTok and Instagram in relation to the number of monthly users that both apps had.<\/p>\n

Thus, there were about twice as many posts about Democrats, former President Donald Trump, Taylor Swift, and the “Barbie” movie on Instagram because Instagram has about twice as many monthly users as TikTok.<\/p>\n

That proportionality changes, however, when one looks at topics heavily criticized or censored by the CCP.<\/p>\n

There were about nine times fewer posts about the Uyghurs on TikTok than on Instagram, for example. And there were 30 times fewer posts about Tibet.<\/p>\n

Moreover, there were 153 times fewer posts on TikTok about the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, a topic heavily censored by Beijing in the mainland.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIn the best-case scenario, TikTok is CCP spyware\u2014that\u2019s why so many state and national governments have banned it on official phones,\u201d Mr. Gallagher said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the worst-case scenario, TikTok is perhaps the largest scale malign influence operation ever conducted.\u201d<\/p>\n

TikTok Could Cause ‘Absolute Chaos’ in 2024 Elections <\/h2>\n

What’s more, Chinese state-owned media outlets have explicitly cited TikTok as a tool for advancing the regime\u2019s goals, testified John Garnaut, a senior fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute think tank.<\/p>\n

Mr. Garnaut noted that the CCP Central Committee\u2019s official paper described TikTok as a key component in its effort to \u201callow short video platforms to become \u2018megaphones\u2019 for telling Chinese stories well and spreading Chinese voices well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another story in the same paper said that the concepts of freedom, democracy, and human rights were invented to \u201ccompete with us [the CCP] for positions, hearts, and masses, and ultimately overthrow the leadership of the Communist Party of China and our country\u2019s socialist system.\u201d<\/p>\n

To that end, Mr. Garnaut said that TikTok was \u201ca project of total ideological control\u201d by the CCP, with \u201cenormous\u201d potential to radically shape the information that Americans receive.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ability of this platform to manipulate public opinion at crucial moments \u2026 I think that\u2019s the issue for deep concern<\/strong>,\u201d Mr. Garnaut said.<\/p>\n

Mr. Gallagher said earlier in the week that the CCP could exploit the app to cause \u201cabsolute chaos<\/a>\u201d in the U.S. 2024 presidential election.<\/p>\n

Mr. Garnaut agreed with that sentiment, saying that the presence of any CCP disinformation could have detrimental effects regardless of whether it was believed. He pointed to the 2016 elections as evidence for such a phenomenon.<\/p>\n

\u201cMueller found no evidence that Russia caused the election of Trump or that Trump had colluded with Russia,\u201d Mr. Garnault said. \u201cNevertheless, Russia\u2019s interference fed perceptions that bitterly divided Americans and wounded the faith of many that the election had been free and fair.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nMon, 12\/04\/2023 – 00:00<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/political\/tiktok-part-ccps-cognitive-warfare-strategy-against-us-rep-gallagher<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TikTok Part Of CCP’s ‘Cognitive Warfare’ Strategy Against US: Rep. Gallagher Authored by Andrew Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), TikTok is a key…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1442009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1442009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1442009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1442009\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1442009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1442009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1442009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}