Two years into office, President Donald Trump authorized the CIA to launch a clandestine campaign on Chinese social media to try to turn public opinion in China against the government, according to former US officials.
Three former officials told Reuters that the CIA created a small team of operatives who used bogus internet identities to spread negative narratives about Xi Jinping’s government while leaking disparaging intelligence to overseas news outlets. The effort, which began in 2019, has not been previously reported.
During the past decade, China has rapidly expanded its global footprint, forging military pacts, trade deals, and business partnerships with developing nations.
The CIA team promoted allegations that members of the ruling Communist Party were hiding ill-gotten money overseas and slammed as corrupt and wasteful China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which provides financing for infrastructure projects in the developing world, the sources told Reuters.
The efforts within China were intended to foment paranoia among top leaders there, forcing its government to expend resources chasing intrusions into Beijing’s tightly controlled internet, two former officials said. “We wanted them chasing ghosts,” one of these former officials said.
@FerventTomatoeDemocrat3mos3MO
Seems to me that there's an important difference between encouraging regime instability, which could be pretty destabilising, and the narrower aim of encouraging spurious corruption/mole hunts to tie up Chinese CI energy & resources.
@P0pul1stJonnyMountain3mos3MO
I loathe Trump, but China isn't some "victim" here.
@FluentEqu4lityConstitution3mos3MO
Trump is a cunning man, a true imperialist
@MantisEvaDemocrat3mos3MO
Ironically, he's now turned pro-Chinese.
@ISIDEWITH3mos3MO
Would you consider the invisible influence of social media campaigns an acceptable tool in international relations, especially if it targets the internal stability of another nation?
@9KVVXWWConstitution3mos3MO
I mean, its inevitable but I wish it wasn't a thing, except if the US does it then its acceptable.
@ISIDEWITH3mos3MO
Do you think a government has the right to conduct covert operations designed to turn a foreign population against its leaders, and what ethical lines, if any, should it not cross?
@9KVVXWWConstitution3mos3MO
No, they are the enemy ethics don't really matter in war.
@PacifiedCaviarRepublican3mos3MO
Because Dominion is owned by a Chinese corporate group, Xi Jinping already known the obvious fact that the 46th president of the United States was Donald J. Trump.
@ISIDEWITH3mos3MO
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