At a glance.
- Defining democracy down.
- Preemptive blame for a prospective invasion.
- The Corpse Bride Diet and other temptations of social media.
Pushing a "positive" message (as opposed to merely sowing confusion).
As we saw last week, China has been working to push an alternative picture of democracy, the "whole-process people's democracy" outlined by the State Council of the People's Republic white paper, "China: Democracy That Works." The overarching goal is to contrast China's mode of social organization with America's process-bound cynicism, all, of course, to the advantage of China and the disadvantage of America.
Beijing's news outlet CGTN has been running a multi-part series, "America: War by another name," which it describes as "a special eight-part series that explores the sinister motivations for [America's] warmongering." Part six came out this week, and it's devoted to "American Cyber Hegemony: Science fiction turned into reality." The upshot of the article is that US institutional paranoia has led the Americans to become the leading proponents of both cyberespionage and cybersabotage. The US strategy, CGTN explains, has these four phases, roughly strategy, organization, operations, and intelligence:
- "First, the U.S. has formulated and promoted an increasingly offensive cyber security strategy, rendering cyberspace in perpetuated instability. With strategic competition as the focal point, the four U.S. governments since the 20th century [those would be the Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden Administrations, and CGTN says elsewhere that Washington's hegemonic ambitions in cyberspace go back to President Clinton] have embarked on a three-phase process of establishing, managing and controlling the cyber network – all in an attempt to write the rules and gain absolute strategic advantages in cyberspace.... From a passive defensive strategy that protected key infrastructure and beefed up the management system, the U.S. has gradually turned to an active defensive strategy that systematically built cyberspace deterrence to fend off threats, and then to a forward defensive strategy that pre-emptively attacks potential targets of threat actors. America's increasingly expansive and aggressive cyber security strategies clearly demonstrate its intention to gain global cyber supremacy."
- "Second, the unbridled expansion of America's cyber army has accelerated the militarization of the cyberspace. In 2010, the U.S. set up the Cyber Command as a prelude to its cyber warfare for years to come. In merely five years, over 3,000 officers were hired for the over 60 cyber task forces under the Command. After Donald Trump took office, America's cyber army, driven by the forward defensive strategy, grew rapidly to reach its full operating capacity with 133 task forces filled out by 6,187 cyber warriors in 2018."
- "Third, the U.S. launched massive cyber offensives, opening the Pandora's box of cyber warfare. The American government and military are dedicated to the development and hoarding of cyberweapons, and never hesitant to apply them. Ever since the Stuxnet computer virus was exposed, the U.S. has been using offensive cyber operations as a unilateral deterrent to flex its cyber muscles."
- "Fourth, the U.S. constantly conducts cyber-spying activities in the name of national security, building an espionage empire that threatens the entire world. Historically, stealing other countries' secrets to gain so-called intelligence advantage has been an important instrument for the U.S. to safeguard its global hegemony."
Some of the specific claims are interesting, notably the accusation that the US is to blame for both WannaCry and NotPetya:
"Bent on leveling up its cyber capabilities of attacking key infrastructure, the U.S. has not only turned horrible plots in science-fiction into reality, but also spread the horror across the globe.
"In 2017, ransomware WannaCry and NotPetya wreaked havoc across the world after hacking a huge number of government agencies, companies and research institutions, damaging their crucial data. The malware is widely believed to have been engineered by hackers based on one of the U.S. National Security Agency's (NSA) cyberweapons."
Now, WannaCry has been generally and convincingly attributed to North Korea's Lazarus Group, and NotPetya has been reliably ascribed to Russia's GRU. They did appear to propagate via EternalBlue, an exploit developed by the US National Security Agency and obtained and leaked by the ShadowBrokers. Thus CGTN's claim is one of irresponsible handling of a dangerous cyber contagion, which is fair enough, under the circumstances. (CGTN doesn't make the point that's there's an obvious biological analogy with the Wuhan Institute's handling of the COVID virus, but come on, what can we reasonably expect?)
Recorded Future's Insikt Group describes the campaign's goals as "simple: isolate the United States and reshape governance to a global audience, with China’s model being the global standard." Its method is "consistent messaging and high volume," which have long been a staple of advertising practice. The campaign has its own hashtags: #democracy, #whodefinesdemocracy, and #whatisdemocracy.
Those who like us enjoy the inside-baseball of organization charts displayed with all their implications will have a good time with the Insikt Group's account of how Beijing goes about its work. The report is profusely illustrated and nicely explained.
Much of the execution of Chinese influence campaigns depends on social media. The New York Times has an account of how Beijing mobilizes businesses and influencers to extend its line through Facebook and Twitter. The Times has obtained requests for bids issued for the most part through the Shanghai police in which the government solicits suppliers able to amplify its messaging. One such RFP reads, in part, "the supplier should publish designated content on overseas forums. They should increase the number of views of the post and ensure that the post appears at the top of the forum. The service should be provided at least 10 times per month." The winner of that particular contract was a firm called Shanghai Cloud. "In this case, Shanghai Cloud Link’s proposal hinted at a new service-based model," the Times writes, "one in which officials pay on a month-by-month basis — a sort of subscription for social media manipulation."
The Chinese style of influence operation continues to concentrate on positive persuasion. That is, it seeks to convince the listener to adopt certain well-defined attitudes and beliefs.
Darkening counsel with implausible insistence.
Russian disinformation, by way of contrast, tends to be negative. That is, it seeks to disrupt and confuse, not necessarily to persuade. One such campaign is running now, as tension between Russia and its smaller (but still by world standards pretty big) neighbor Ukraine rises. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoygu is quoted by POLITICO as offering the following assessment of who's to blame for Ukraine:
“The desire of the North Atlantic Alliance to involve the Ukrainian armed forces in its military activities poses a threat to security, taking into account the attempts of Kyiv to solve the problem of Donbas by force. The military development of the territory of Ukraine by NATO countries continues,” he said. “The situation is aggravated by the supply of helicopters, attack unmanned aerial vehicles, ATGMs [anti-tank guided missiles] by the United States of America and its allies. The presence of more than 120 employees of American private military companies in the settlements of Avdiivka and Pryazovske in Donetsk region has been reliably established. They equip firing positions in residential buildings and at socially significant facilities, prepare Ukrainian special operations forces and radical armed groups for active hostilities. To commit provocations, reserves of an unidentified chemical component were delivered to the cities of Avdiivka and Krasny Liman.”
No thinking person will believe that the US has staged chemical weapons into Ukraine, but that's not the point. The point is to instill scattershot doubt and confusion. One phrase deserves clarification: "the problem of Donbas" is the occupation of Ukraine's Donbas region by deniable Russian forces, nominally ethnic Russian "separatists" overtly supported by regular Russian military forces. The historically minded will recall Germany's position with respect to the Czech Sudeten region in 1938, except the Russian position with respect to the Donbas in 2021 is notably less plausible.
Misinformation driven by the media, not the message?
TikTok has been recently criticized for the deleterious effects many have come to see in the platform's interaction with minors in particular. There have been other issues with the medium as well, notably last week's fear that threats of widespread attacks on schools in the US were being planned by unknown violent malcontents. TikTok said Friday, the Verge reports, that it had found no signs of videos threatening attacks on schools, and that it was working to purge itself of "alarmist content" that might prove harmful, or at least, well, alarming.
The issues TikTok faces, however, seem to be deeply entangled with the ways social media promote engagement. The Wall Street Journal argued this week that "The app’s algorithm can send users down rabbit holes of narrow interest, resulting in potentially dangerous content such as emaciated images, purging techniques, hazardous diets and body shaming." The Journal's case in point is the apparent attraction radical weight-loss advice (the "Corpse Bride Diet" being exhibit A) hold for consumers of TikTok whom youth and lack of critical experience and perspective have rendered susceptible to damaging influence. The phenomenon is both seasonal in terms of specific content ("get skinny for the holidays" will be reliably succeeded, it seems to us, by "lose that holiday weight," "look good for Valentine's Day," "are you ready for prom night?" "get started on that beach body now," etc.) and perennial in general tendency.
