THE NEW CHINA SYNDROME
OVER THE SUMMER, AS BOTH THE TRUMP AND Biden campaigns ramped up efforts to win the most controversial presidential election in decades, Laura Daniels, Jessi Young and Erin Brown also got busy, posting critical comments about American politics and society on Twitter and other social media platforms. They tweeted about mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. They posted about racial injustice. And they shared their views (not good) of the personal and political scandals dogging President Donald Trump.
The three women appeared to be just like millions of other Americans who take to social media every day to express their displeasure at the state of the U.S. Yet there were anomalies. The women’s messages were sometimes identical to others on Twitter and Facebook. Their handles were similar and they tended to make sweeping statements putting down America and its democratic system, rather than referencing specific events. Their use of language was off too, stilted or mixing up familiar expressions—“Black people are never slaves! Stand up your high head!” read one of Jessi’s more garbled tweets. And one more thing: Occasionally, a stray Chinese-language character would slip into one of their posts.
That last part was especially odd—until you consider that the women weren’t actually women at all but rather bots and trolls used in a systematic campaign by groups affiliated with China to sow division and unrest in the U.S. ahead of the 2020 election. An analysis this summer of thousands of such Twitter and Facebook posts by the International Cyber Policy Center of the Australian Security Policy Institute described them as part of a program of “cross-platform inauthentic activity, conducted by Chinese-speaking actors and broadly in alignment with the political goal of the People’s Republic of China to denigrate the standing of the U.S.”
The fake accounts are just one example of what appears to be stepped-up activity by groups associated with China as Election Day gets closer. Over the past six weeks, for example, both Google and Microsoft have reported attempted cyber attacks linked to Beijing that targeted individuals who worked with the Biden and Trump campaigns. However, unlike Russian interference in 2016, which worked to bolster Trump’s chances of election, most of the activity stemming from China does not clearly favor one candidate over the other. Instead, it seems designed, as William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, puts it, “to shape the policy environment in the United States, pressure political figures it views as opposed to China’s interest and
