Two years into office, President Donald Trump authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to launch a clandestine campaign on Chinese social media aimed at turning public opinion in China against its government, according to former U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the highly classified operation.
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.
Although the U.S. officials declined to provide specific details of these operations, they said the disparaging narratives were based in fact despite being secretly released by intelligence operatives under false cover. 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.
Broken clock is right twice a day. It’s silly to expect the US to not do something like that, especially with so many other countries doing the same. Plus the rumors that were released were (apparently) true, so there’s not much to complain about there.
The only issue is that Trump has the political subtlety of a clown horn, so I don’t expect the plan to have worked at all
Yeah, it’s okay to do bad things if other people are doing them.
That’s how we make the world a shittier place.
Lmfao
While it’s not being as effective on younger people, anglosphere countries have had their populations grow very anti-China with the sinophobic rhetoric in news outlets and politicians in the last 5 years.
It’s clearly worked, and, like alot of other republican projects (like the border wall), dems have continued this racist shit.