This text appeared in the ‘Top Story’ email newsletter sent on Oct. 19, 2024.
Entities backed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are creating thousands of social media profiles impersonating Americans in an attempt to sway the 2024 presidential election.What separates these newer profiles from other China-based efforts to sow discord online is that they appear to be tailor-made to appeal to target demographics, and a few have found viral success, according to the findings of a report by Graphika, a social network analysis company.
One such profile was the Harlan Report, a channel dedicated to promoting newsworthy topics with a conservative slant.
The account claimed to be operated by a U.S. military veteran who had lost faith in President Biden. Like many insurgent news channels, it promised to deliver “no opinions, just facts.”
One of Harlan’s videos, purporting to show Biden making a sexual remark at the annual NATO Summit in Washington, garnered 1.5 million views on TikTok alone.
The transcript overdubbed in the video was wrong, however, and Biden never said what was claimed.
Soon after, Harlan’s profile began to change, first claiming to be a 29-year-old Trump supporter in New York and then a 31-year-old Republican social media influencer from Florida.
But Harlan was neither a legitimate news source nor run by an American citizen, according to Graphika’s report. It was one of thousands of accounts linked to the world’s largest online influence operation.
That operation, dubbed “Spamouflage,” is a state-backed campaign from communist China with links to Chinese law enforcement.
What’s more, the campaign is going to great lengths to create Harlan-esque accounts for numerous demographics throughout the United States.
There are other accounts that create similar content, but tailored for Democrats, and others that aim to anger and polarize independents, further disenfranchising them from the political process altogether.
Some have impersonated American anti-war activists, sharing memes calling former President Donald Trump a “fraud” and showing him in an orange prison uniform. Others question the legitimacy of Biden’s presidency.
While foreign attempts to influence U.S. elections are nothing new, their increasing stridency and varying levels of success are.
What makes the Harlan Report persona unique, in other words, is its success in finding a following and its pioneering role in targeting a niche audience the same way any advertiser would.
Those breakthroughs, in large part, are due to the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) and deepfakes, which the operators behind Spamouflage use to play on the likes and dislikes of a target audience.
John Mills, who previously served as the director of cybersecurity policy at the U.S. Defense Department, told The Epoch Times that the CCP is using AI to sort and interpret user data to better exploit users’ fears and desires.
“People don’t understand the immense power of big data, big data analytics, and the AI component that China has mastered and is using on an unbelievable scale,” Mills said.
“They [the CCP] are delivering a data stream tailored and customized to that individual, knowing their likes, their dislikes, their trigger points.”
Likewise, an unclassified memo published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in July found that the Chinese regime “is seeking to expand its ability to collect and monitor data on U.S. social media platforms, probably to better understand—and eventually manipulate—public opinion.”
That much is evident in Spamouflage’s tactics.
According to a report released by social media giant Meta, most of the Spamouflage accounts impersonating Americans did not start out by spreading fake content.
Instead, they reshared posts created by real politicians and news outlets from either liberal or conservative sources to build followings and amplify divisive content.
As those followings grew, and their operators learned more about their followings, the profiles changed, both in who they claimed to be and in the type of content they delivered.
Mills said the technique used to identify and exploit Americans was essentially a new iteration of the same type of profiling that big tech corporations have used for years to track consumer preferences.
“When I’m looking for a trailer hitch [online], that commercial for a trailer hitch follows me wherever I go,” he said.
“Now, China has taken what our big tech was doing, but they’re doing it on a much grander scale, with a much more sinister agenda, and without any semblance of bumper cushions or guardrails.”
Despite this increasing success in stoking tensions in the United States, however, the U.S. government had provided virtually no guidance on how everyday Americans can identify, report, or counter foreign influence operations online.
The Epoch Times requested comment on the matter from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). CISA declined to comment and instead referred The Epoch Times to the ODNI.
The ODNI did not return multiple requests for comment on the matter.
When asked what actions the State Department was taking to address foreign influence in U.S. elections, a department spokesperson told The Epoch Times that it was “focused on the information environment overseas,” and directed the paper to the Department of Homeland Security.
The Department of Homeland Security did not return a request for comment.
Likewise, Graphika, whose report does not offer any suggestions on identifying or countering the content examined, declined to comment on the matter.
