{"id":1460584,"date":"2024-03-04T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-04T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1460584"},"modified":"2024-03-04T07:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-03-04T12:00:00","slug":"world-unprepared-for-fight-against-chinese-disinformation-around-elections-warns-analyst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/world-unprepared-for-fight-against-chinese-disinformation-around-elections-warns-analyst\/1460584\/","title":{"rendered":"World Unprepared For Fight Against Chinese Disinformation Around Elections, Warns Analyst"},"content":{"rendered":"

World Unprepared For Fight Against Chinese Disinformation Around Elections, Warns Analyst<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

The world at large isn\u2019t prepared for the pervasive disinformation operations coming from adversaries such as China that aim at swinging votes, warned a research analyst.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wu Min-hsuan, CEO of Taiwan-based Doublethink Lab, at a press conference about Chinese election interference in Taiwan elections, in Taipei, Taiwan, on Jan. 19. 2024. (Sung Pi-lung\/The Epoch Times)<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

If countries \u201ccalculate how much those people\u2014[Russian President Vladimir] Putin, Xi Jinping\u2014how much money and effort they are investing in those information operations, do the math, and then calculate how much money you\u2019re putting into defense in a society,\u201d the conclusion is \u201cyou are not prepared,\u201d Wu Min-hsuan, CEO of Taiwan-based Doublethink Lab that focuses on digital defense, told The Epoch Times.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody\u2019s prepared for that,<\/strong>\u201d he said, describing the campaign as one of the Chinese regime\u2019s \u201cwar tactics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Wu was one of the panelists at an event on Feb. 28 highlighting the threat of Chinese election meddling in a year when about half of the world\u2019s population are set to cast a vote.<\/p>\n

At the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office where the panel took place, Taipei\u2019s ambassador, James K.J. Lee, said that Beijing has used Taiwan as a \u201ctest ground\u201d for election interference in other democracies.<\/p>\n

Ahead of Taiwan\u2019s presidential election in January, China-linked malicious cyber attacks shot up more than two-fold, targeting government offices, police reports, and financial institutions, a U.S. cybersecurity firm found. Close to Election Day, Beijing-backed actors also spread fake news on social media to create the impression of food shortages to incite societal panic. A high volume of artificial intelligence-generated YouTube hosts also emerged on YouTube, making false claims in Mandarin and Cantonese about Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen\u2019s personal life.<\/p>\n

With its own elections drawing near, the United States should be on alert, the experts said.<\/p>\n

Chinese state actors had tried to shape the outcome of certain races in the 2022 midterm elections, according to a December National Intelligence Council report<\/a>. The same month, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned<\/a> of \u201celevated\u201d risk of outside election interference in the 2024 presidential elections. Microsoft analysts had also raised similar concerns in a report released in November.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kenton Thibaut, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council\u2019s Digital Forensic Research Lab, noted that the Chinese Communist Party considers its rivalry with the United States \u201can existential issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBased on past behavior, they\u2018ll be involved in this in some way,\u201d Ms. Thibaut told The Epoch Times. \u201cThey\u2019ve built out a lot of their digital infrastructure online across a number of social media platforms.<\/strong> I have every expectation that they\u2019ll deploy those to put forward pro-China narratives, to exploit political tensions<\/a> in the United States, and to try and paint the United States as hypocritical.\u201d<\/p>\n

It highlights part of the regime\u2019s strategy\u2014to win a \u201csmokeless war\u201d by \u201cweakening the enemy from within,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Attendees at a panel highlighting Chinese election interference efforts during Taiwan’s presidential elections, in New York, on Feb. 28, 2024. (Courtesy of Taipei Economic and Cultural Office)<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

AI represents a key new tool of Beijing\u2019s disinformation warfare strategy to cover its tracks.<\/p>\n

At the panel, Ms. Thibaut cited the Chinese regime\u2019s efforts to shift the blame for the COVID-19 pandemic onto the United States by first generating a fake think tank report purporting to show the virus originating in Fort Detrick, a U.S. military base, then promoting the misinformation through its other channels.<\/p>\n

In summer of 2022, a Chinese state-linked entity hired a Baltimore musician to stage a Black Lives Matter protest in front of the International Religious Freedom Summit and later, a mock protest against the U.S. ban on goods from Xinjiang. Both were recorded and circulated on social media to inflame domestic social tensions in the United States.<\/p>\n

The regime\u2019s bet is for pro-Beijing narratives to take on a life of their own, said Jacques deLisle, the Asia program chair at Foreign Policy Research Institute.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce the idea gets in and starts circulating, in democratic societies, it\u2019s very hard to contain it\u2014it is now a view held, for whatever good or bad reasons, <\/strong>by people who have a right in the system to have expressed opinions and vote on it,\u201d he told The Epoch Times.<\/p>\n

For the United States, the stakes are \u201cvery, very high\u201d to mitigate any foreign election interference attempts, he said.<\/p>\n

Even though effects of such efforts are hard to quantify, he said, \u201cour elections are so close in this country now\u201d that \u201ceven a modest impact\u2014well under 1 percent in a few constituencies\u2014can have significant outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nMon, 03\/04\/2024 – 02:00<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/political\/world-unprepared-fight-against-chinese-disinformation-around-elections-warns-analyst<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

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

World Unprepared For Fight Against Chinese Disinformation Around Elections, Warns Analyst Authored by Eva Fu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), The world at large…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1460584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbimBl-67XO","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460584","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=1460584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460584\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1460584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1460584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1460584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}