From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   China Sows Disinformation About Hawaii Fires Using New Techniques   
   By David E. Sanger and Steven Lee Myers, Sept. 11, 2023, NY Times   
      
   When wildfires swept across Maui last month with destructive fury, China’s   
   increasingly resourceful information warriors pounced.   
      
   The disaster was not natural, they said in a flurry of false posts that spread   
   across the internet, but was the result of a secret “weather weapon” being   
   tested by the United States. To bolster the plausibility, the posts carried   
   photographs that    
   appeared to have been generated by artificial intelligence programs, making   
   them among the first to use these new tools to bolster the aura of   
   authenticity of a disinformation campaign.   
      
   For China — which largely stood on the sidelines of the 2016 and 2020 U.S.   
   presidential elections while Russia ran hacking operations and disinformation   
   campaigns — the effort to cast the wildfires as a deliberate act by American   
   intelligence    
   agencies and the military was a rapid change of tactics.   
      
   Until now, China’s influence campaigns have been focused on amplifying   
   propaganda defending its policies on Taiwan and other subjects. The most   
   recent effort, revealed by researchers from Microsoft and a range of other   
   organizations, suggests that    
   Beijing is making more direct attempts to sow discord in the United States.   
      
   The move also comes as the Biden administration and Congress are grappling   
   with how to push back on China without tipping the two countries into open   
   conflict, and with how to reduce the risk that A.I. is used to magnify   
   disinformation.   
      
   The impact of the Chinese campaign — identified by researchers from   
   Microsoft, Recorded Future, the RAND Corporation, NewsGuard and the University   
   of Maryland — is difficult to measure, though early indications suggest that   
   few social media users    
   engaged with the most outlandish of the conspiracy theories.   
      
   Brad Smith, the vice chairman and president of Microsoft, whose researchers   
   analyzed the covert campaign, sharply criticized China for exploiting a   
   natural disaster for political gain.   
      
   “I just don’t think that’s worthy of any country, much less any country   
   that aspires to be a great country,” Mr. Smith said in an interview on   
   Monday.   
      
   China was not the only country to make political use of the Maui fires. Russia   
   did as well, spreading posts that emphasized how much money the United States   
   was spending on the war in Ukraine and that suggested the cash would be better   
   spent at home for    
   disaster relief.   
      
   The researchers suggested that China was building a network of accounts that   
   could be put to use in future information operations, including the next U.S.   
   presidential election. That is the pattern that Russia set in the year or so   
   leading up to the 2016    
   election.   
      
   “This is going into a new direction, which is sort of amplifying conspiracy   
   theories that are not directly related to some of their interests, like   
   Taiwan,” said Brian Liston, a researcher at Recorded Future, a cybersecurity   
   company based in    
   Massachusetts.   
      
   If China does engage in influence operations for the election next year, U.S.   
   intelligence officials have assessed in recent months, it is likely to try to   
   diminish President Biden and raise the profile of former President Donald J.   
   Trump. While that may    
   seem counterintuitive to Americans who remember Mr. Trump’s effort to blame   
   Beijing for what he called the “China virus,” the intelligence officials   
   have concluded that Chinese leaders prefer Mr. Trump. He has called for   
   pulling Americans out of    
   Japan, South Korea and other parts of Asia, while Mr. Biden has cut off   
   China’s access to the most advanced chips and the equipment made to produce   
   them.   
      
   China’s promotion of a conspiracy theory about the fires comes after Mr.   
   Biden vented in Bali last fall to Xi Jinping, China’s president, about   
   Beijing’s role in the spread of such disinformation. According to   
   administration officials, Mr. Biden    
   angrily criticized Mr. Xi for the spread of false accusations that the United   
   States operated biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine.   
      
   There is no indication that Russia and China are working together on   
   information operations, according to the researchers and administration   
   officials, but they often echo each other’s messages, particularly when it   
   comes to criticizing U.S. policies.    
   Their combined efforts suggest a new phase of the disinformation wars is about   
   to begin, one bolstered by the use of A.I. tools.   
      
   “We don’t have direct evidence of coordination between China and Russia in   
   these campaigns, but we’re certainly finding alignment and a sort of   
   synchronization,” said William Marcellino, a researcher at RAND and an   
   author of a new report warning    
   that artificial intelligence will enable a “critical jump forward” in   
   global influence operations.   
      
   The wildfires in Hawaii — like many natural disasters these days — spawned   
   numerous rumors, false reports and conspiracy theories almost from the start.   
      
   Caroline Amy Orr Bueno, a researcher at the University of Maryland’s Applied   
   Research Lab for Intelligence and Security, reported that a coordinated   
   Russian campaign began on Twitter, the social media platform now known as X,   
   on Aug. 9, a day after the    
   fires started.   
      
   It spread the phrase, “Hawaii, not Ukraine,” from one obscure account with   
   few followers through a series of conservative or right-wing accounts like   
   Breitbart and ultimately Russian state media, reaching thousands of users with   
   a message intended to    
   undercut U.S. military assistance to Ukraine.   
      
   China’s state media apparatus often echoes Russian themes, especially   
   animosity toward the United States. But in this case, it also pursued a   
   distinct disinformation campaign.   
      
   Recorded Future first reported that the Chinese government mounted a covert   
   campaign to blame a “weather weapon” for the fires, identifying numerous   
   posts in mid-August falsely claiming that MI6, the British foreign   
   intelligence service, had revealed    
   “the amazing truth behind the wildfire.” Posts with the exact language   
   appeared on social media sites across the internet, including Pinterest,   
   Tumblr, Medium and Pixiv, a Japanese site used by artists.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)