'Spamouflage': China's online operation to control the presidential election
The country creates fake accounts imitating U.S. citizens on different social networks with the aim of misinforming and creating a political debate in the nation.
Image of a smartphone with the logos of different social networks
China is running a new operation to promote disinformation in the United States: "Spamouflage."
This operation consists of creating users on various social networks who pass themselves off as U.S. citizens and opine on various day-to-day issues, including presidential candidates.
Harlan is one of them. As HuffPost detailed, he claimed to be a 29-year-old, handsome-looking, smiling, Army veteran and Donald Trump supporter.
His persona was short-lived. A few months later, Harlan morphed into a 21-year-old from Florida. That raised the suspicion of Graphika, a New York-based company dedicated to tracking social networks, which ultimately discovered that everything was fake, including his profile picture, which had been generated by artificial intelligence.
This wasn't the only case. Along with Harlan, Graphika did some tracking and discovered that there were as many as 15 spam accounts on X and one on TikTok linked to "Spamouflage," the Chinese disinformation group. All of them, claims WMAR2 Baltimore, claimed to be American voters or advocates for Americans frustrated with American politics and the West.
It all turned out to be a Chinese hoax, Graphika's director of intelligence, Jack Stubbs explained to the AP in remarks reported by HuffPost:
"One of the world’s largest covert online influence operations — an operation run by Chinese state actors — has become more aggressive in its efforts to infiltrate and to sway US political conversations ahead of the election."
China isn't the only country trying to spread disinformation during the months leading up to the presidential election. Both Iran and Russia also participated in this effort against the West, and both nations are also conducting cyberattacks intended to create chaos in the United States and influence the presidential election.
What's worse is that all indications are that these attacks will be on the rise, said senior emerging threats analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Max Lesser.
"We’re going to see a widening of the playing field when it comes to influence operations, where it’s not just Russia, China and Iran but you also see smaller actors getting involved," the expert said, while calling on citizens to be alert to any signs of operations such as "Spamouflage."
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