Pro CCP 'spamouflage' network pivoting to focus on US election

https://www.isdglobal.org/digital_dispatches/pro-ccp-spamouflage-net-work-focuses-on-us-election/

by anigbrowl • 2 years ago

133 128 2 years ago

isdglobal.org

whatshisface3• 2 years ago

These memes portray our elections as thousands of times more dynamic and interesting than they actually are...

bigcat12345678• 2 years ago

Those are AI generated as well

kurthr5• 2 years ago

The letters form words, and the words form statements, but the statements express gibberish... however, that is com-meme-place online.

haswell• 2 years ago

Perception is reality in many cases.

I have family who got sucked into Q-related stuff, and this kind of over-the-top ominous imagery is all over the telegram channels they are addicted to.

Many people in these circles take it very seriously, and Jan 6 is a bit of a counterpoint to the lack of interesting-ness, IMO. It shows what can happen when people buy in fully, and I think it’s best to see these memes not as a representation of what is, but a representation of what some people are trying to bring about.

redwood• 2 years ago

I'm so sorry to hear it, it's honestly so hard to imagine what that's like

Angostura• 2 years ago

I clicked on the hyperlinked word 'spamoflage', repeatedly. I never found a satisfactory description of what the term was meant to mean, renderinhg the article pretty incomprehensible

mediumdeviation• 2 years ago

It's the name of the network/group, the links are to articles about their previous activities. The article reads fine to me.

kurthr5• 2 years ago

Here are the definitions offered by clicking on 'spamouflage':

   "Cross-Platform Spam Network Targeted Hong Kong Protests"
   "used hijacked and fake accounts to amplify video content"

tyleo• 2 years ago

This seems self-explanatory. “Camouflage Spam Network”

geor9e• 2 years ago

It's not a word, it's a proper noun. It's like "Panda Banker". Cybercrime groups often don't choose the name, so security researchers coin one to talk about them in articles. Here's an explainer I found "Spamouflage, also known as Spamouflage Dragon, or DragonBridge, is a Chinese propaganda network that has been fully active on social media platforms since 2017-18. Spamouflage refers to deceptive practices that attempt to hide or blend spammy content within legitimate or inconspicuous contexts. It’s like spam wearing a disguise, trying to sneak past filters or appear less suspicious."

dylan6048• 2 years ago

It is somewhat of an humorous thing. For decades the US has interfered with other countries' election trying to have the person the US felt was better for them to be in charge. Now, other countries are saavy enough to do it back, but the effort is much more effective because of the 24/7 firehose of information that is the internet. The lock-in echo chamber effect of social platforms took that effectiveness knob and turned it to 11.

The US used to fly planes to drop leaflets over population centers, so there was the expense of creating/printing the leaflets, the expense of flying them into place, the risk of invading foreign airspace, blah blah. Now, it's some keyboard warriors sitting in an office using a exponentially more efficient delivery system.

What goes around, comes around

whatshisface3• 2 years ago

I doubt there's any evidence it's effective, only evidence that a lot of people with "analytics platforms" found a way to get paid to browse Twitter. (Oh no! China's posting memes on the internet!)

dylan6048• 2 years ago

The fact that there are so many people re-posting/sharing and joining telegram groups pretty much shows how it's effective. The fact that some of the "proof" from some of these hard core believers is directly the content from these spammers also shows its effectiveness.

I think there's plenty of evidence that counters your claim.

ben_w• 2 years ago

Indeed. Based on the adverts I am shown, Facebook thinks I'm a meat loving American from Florida who moved to the town of Waterlooville in the UK, who enjoys gambling on horse races, owns a dog, and works in graphic design; when I am actually a vegetarian Brit who moved to Berlin, is bored by spectator sports, who has never owned any pet, and who works as a software developer.

Whoever paid money to show me those ads, wasted it.

2Gkashmiri2• 2 years ago

https://www.voanews.com/a/purported-text-of-secret-cable-sho...

So this is funny. USA wanted Pakistani prime minister out so when he leaked the cable showing American meddling, Pakistani courts found him guilty of leaking state secrets and had him removed from office?

Recently he was awarded 5 year jail sentence for among other things, for having "improper marriage" with his wife. As in her waiting period apparently from divorce - remarriage wasn't enough but that being a mere irregularity, courts had to find him guilty because they want to crucify him. Why?

sigmoid10• 2 years ago

You should look up how the Cambridge Analytica scandal influenced the 2016 presidential election and all the stuff that came up during the congressional hearings. It is highly likely that Trump won because of it. They not only used the leaked facebook data from 70 million americans to build models of who was voting for who, they also used it for targeted ads. For example, they knew that people from certain groups were highly unlikely to ever vote for Trump, no matter how many propaganda ads they were fed. But they didn't let all the personal data they had go to waste. They instead showed these people "news" articles via ads about Clinton and her alleged weakness, or her husband's infidelity. This way they made people who would have otherwise opposed Trump simply not vote at all. The rest is history.

dgfitz• 2 years ago

The US used to fly planes to drop leaflets over population centers, so there was the expense of creating/printing the leaflets, the expense of flying them into place, the risk of invading foreign airspace, blah blah.

Is your point that this is so inexpensive that it’s hardly a line item on a budget? Printing leaflets and flying a plane.

Seems a lot cheaper than defending Ukraine from a madman terrorist. A madman terrorist in cahoots with PRC.

dylan6048• 2 years ago

No. For the US, the DoD spends exponentially more on Post-Its than one of these "missions". But if you're China/Iran/North Korea/Russia, you don't even have to spend that money at all. But again, the money isn't really the thing. It's just a comment.

The effectiveness of the leaflets greatly depended on the number of people that actually found them. Social platforms allow you to have your post placed directly in front of the eyeballs of your target. You even get analytics on the campaign.

I was just using old vs new techniques to show how much more modern day shenanigans are

ericmcer• 2 years ago

This attitude is so nuts to me… like our parents/grandparents did bad things so we should just let the country burn because we deserve it.

jvanderbot3• 2 years ago

Agree - also, to believe that "only" our grandparents did this and so "only" we deserve it is crazy. This had to have happened on all scales by all major powers since the dawn of time.

dylan6048• 2 years ago

Where is that coming from? I just stated that I think it's humorous that the karma slap is happening. Obviously, there are "attempts" to prevent it which is the same thing that the countries the US targeted do.

creato• 2 years ago

Characterizing influence as "bad" no matter what is also questionable. Yes, the US attempted influenced other countries especially during the cold war. So did Russia. Would you rather live in a country influenced by the US, or Russia?

jvanderbot3• 2 years ago

Is this a fair characterization? It's factually correct that USA interfered before and also that others are interfering now in USA's elections. But the allusion to a "only USA then" and "lol, anti-usa now" seems wrong.

Surely all major powers tried to influence all elections of interest wherever and whenever they could? Both then and now?

dylan6048• 2 years ago

Where did you get that from my comment? I don't recall hearing Russia overflying US cities dropping leaflets, but there's plenty of stories of the US doing the very thing. I wasn't impling the US was the only ones doing it nor that they are not doing it now. However, it IS happening to the US now, and it is effective.

It's also much more difficult to deny a leaflet drop, but we have people here on a very technically oriented forum denying the effectiveness of these campaigns. I guess it's a positive that they are not being denied that they are happening.??

fnordpiglet• 2 years ago

Generally these efforts against the US were channeled through political parties like the US communist party (not to say it wasn’t a legitimate movement, but it was also an inflection point into the US political system). However I think what you’re referring to is the Cold War, where the US and its allies and the Soviet Union and its allies did shenanigans all over the world to third party states to try to bend the global balance in their favor through many nefarious means, and election interference was the smallest of those in terms of egregious behavior. It’s important to note this wasn’t a US against the world thing, it was a Cold War between two allied blocs. Generally the two primary parties didn’t directly and overtly do these things within each others borders as the name of the game was avoiding direct confrontation.

I absolutely think the US currently does culturally destabilizing stuff against what it considers its geopolitical adversaries. They are also. I don’t think it’s a causal effect in either direction - I.e., the US did X so everyone turned around and did it back. It it’s more like a well understood concept that’s been going on for decades if not longer.

The key I think is the US political system other than in the early 1900’s, essentially since FDR, has been extremely stable. There was an enormous amount of cultural effort put into homogenizing the social and political dialogue during WW2, and even more in the 1950’s. In the 1960s the Soviet Union absolutely manipulated political unrest to their advantage and it weakened the will of the people to stand for the Vietnam war and helped nudge us into retreat gaining a Cold War victory. 70’s and 80’s saw a retrenchment of homogenization, but the 90’s individualism weakened the walls so to speak in favor of globalization, multiculturalism, etc (which fwiw are all great things in my mind).

I think the change is the advent of algorithmic social networks, memes, broad homogenized cultural enclaves that span spacial and social constraints, etc. This coupled with the broad access to interaction with the cultural “others” (I.e., while generally q-anon wackos isolate together, they’re constantly exposed to information and cultural influence by more liberal culture due to the internet, creating an opportunity to polarize).

This is specifically being exploited by nation states against each other. China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and the “bad guys” dominated by authoritarian dictators and oppressive regimes, are extremely well aware these technologies can be used to foment cultural discord that would destabilize their nations, not just internally but by external agents, and have cracked down on it aggressively. Knowing democratic and individualist cultures won’t and can’t, they have ramped up learning how to exploit the dynamics of algorithms, cultural polarization, etc. So it feels very one sided - because it is. It’s that way though because “they” have defended themselves against this vector of disruption, while “we” have explicitly invested in exposing everyone as much as possible to the vector for profit.

But the history isn’t one sided then and somehow swung around against the US. It’s more that this specific vector of cultural attack is a key weakness in the west because we believe it’s more valuable than dangerous, while “they” believe it’s more dangerous than valuable.

My belief is like a virus analogy, society will build meme antibodies and be able to more clearly distinguish mandating information. Most of the victims of this stuff tend to be poorly educated with minimal sophistication in online interactions. They are also not generally accepted in broader society, and over time the broader society will replace these vulnerable pockets of more susceptible minds and the effectiveness of cultural psyops via algorithmic and meme attacks will weaken quickly and social stability will emerge naturally. But it’ll take time.

Interestingly this means the authoritarian regimes populace are still highly vulnerable to highly sophisticated attacks. All it would take is a weakening of the walls against social media and algorithmic manipulation. I actually think you see this under the radar on platforms like signal and telegram, but they’re not well understood as there’s explicitly no national dialog allowed.

msla• 2 years ago

We can't talk about any other country here without someone bringing it back around to America, as if America were the Main Character of the whole world. Other countries exist, other countries don't need America to define themselves, other countries can be without needing to be in relation to America.

neom• 2 years ago

I wonder if other governments could even execute these types of campaigns on the Chinese internet. My sense is if I went on Sina Weibo and started posting weird stuff about politics the account would get shut down quite quickly.

nomel• 2 years ago

It's hard to maintain authoritarian rule without effective control.

lnxg33k12• 2 years ago

I suspect that in order to mangle with election one should have elections in the first place, so I guess that its not possible for other governments to do the same on the Chinese internet

echelon2• 2 years ago

America used to win in such circumstances based on the power of its media exports. Hollywood. The music industry. American ideals advertised though the lens of culture.

Now we're beginning to approach fungible with domestic content production in every market.

And the US domestic market is now often funded by international interests. China-backed films highlight the intelligence and cunning of Chinese citizens, which often provide critical advice or technology to the dumb action-oriented Americans [1].

When's the last time China was an adversary in a film? Or that the henchmen or Bond villain was Chinese? It's always gotta be an Arabic, Persian, North Korean, or Russian villain.

[1] Independence Day, The Trench, etc. etc.

wongarsu2• 2 years ago

It's not like China has no political system. I don't see why concerted media efforts couldn't have an effect on who gets ahead in the CCP and who doesn't

csa• 2 years ago

I suspect that in order to mangle with election one should have elections in the first place

There are elections in China, and there have been for many decades.

There are other aspects of these elections that make them less likely to succumb to soft influence from the outside.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_China

duxup• 2 years ago

I don’t think China has elections with the same stakes / consequences.

Barrin92• 2 years ago

there's no real consistency on this in China. There's quite a lot of political content or "shitposting" happening on Weibo and whether something's taken down or not depends entirely on the particular issue and is pretty arbitrary. At times it's been used like a sort of anti-corruption tool where criticism of local officials in particular or issues isn't being suppressed at all, there is an awareness that letting complaints through is an important signal.

In many ways it's even necessary because the political system is so byzantine that online venting is really the best feedback loop there is.

canjobear• 2 years ago

Unlikely. The Chinese government has much more experience with top-down memetic control.

maxglute• 2 years ago

IMO there aren't enough people with Chinese fluency/competency from other govs to try at scale on PRC net. Same vice versa - PRC 50C operates domestically, and even then spams platitudes, not substantive engagement - all the spamouflage networks in the last few years on western networks have been incompetently small scale operations. PRC was not wasting valuable language fluency on good/bulk propaganda. I think LLM is going to change this. Maybe TW with Chinese LLM can break into PRC net, but phone number / id linked accounts and lingo, probably limited scale. I think we'll start to see PRC propaganda networks slowly rival Indian presence on Anglo internet in the coming years. Dissenting opinions ares going to be absolutely innundated by automated PRC IT Cells. It doesn't even have to be good, but adundant and annoying.

anigbrowl2• 2 years ago

Likely, but America likes lowest common denominator weird stuff anyway. I imagine there are nuanced ways of communicating to Chinese audiences that don't run afoul of the censors, eg fulsomely praising CCP leadership for relatively inconsequential results (implying that inconsequential results are all they can deliver).

nextworddev• 2 years ago

We are letting TikTok operate and we are complaining about this?

dc_ist• 2 years ago

Are Facebook and Twitter any less culpable?

tjpnz• 2 years ago

When compared to the CCP, no?

nonethewiser• 2 years ago

Well yeah obviously

armchairhacker• 2 years ago

However, the bulk of the content appears aimed at creating a sense of dismay over the state of America without any clear partisan bent ... this content clearly also feeds into the attempt to create a sense of dissatisfaction with the state of the country among voters, as well as potentially engendering a sense of chaos in the US amongst international audiences.

It's sad to see so much provocation and doomerism on the news and social media, ironically among people who want the US to improve. I'm not saying it's as blatant or harmful as CCP propaganda, but I'm certain it's very bad for the country.

infotainment• 2 years ago

It’s depressing how effective this rhetoric is across the political spectrum.

dr_kiszonka2• 2 years ago

I think it might be so effective because the whole political spectrum in the US is ultimately projected onto two parties (and their presidential candidates). I am not a political scientist but if the US democracy were more pluralist in terms of the number of political parties, then it would perhaps be harder to manipulate voters using the "civil war" messaging.

orhmeh09• 2 years ago

You left something out in the ellipses:

However, the bulk of the content appears aimed at creating a sense of dismay over the state of America without any clear partisan bent. It focuses on issues like urban decay, the fentanyl crisis, dirty drinking water, police brutality, gun violence and crumbling infrastructure.

Maybe it's not so bad for people to be dismayed.

macintux• 2 years ago

If people think the country is in worse shape than it is, they’re more likely to turn to strongman figures who claim that they alone can solve the problem, if only we’d allow them to disregard law, the constitution, basic human decency, allies, etc.

lwansbrough• 2 years ago

Almost time for us to spin up our SOTA LLMs and text-to-video models and show these goobers how it's really done. :)

synergy20• 2 years ago

US could plot similar things back, yes it's harder but it is not impossible.

only then a peace deal can be made, politics should never be a one sided effort.

Animats2• 2 years ago

"However, the bulk of the content appears aimed at creating a sense of dismay over the state of America without any clear partisan bent." This is a key point. The objective of modern Russian propaganda is to sow confusion and reap inaction. See McMaster's "Battlegrounds" book.[1] The winning strategy for Russia in eastern Europe is a non-united United States, and if possible a non-united European Union.

Classical propaganda is heavy drum-beating for how great your side is. That goes back to at least Cicero, increased when newspapers came along, and really got going during WWII. That stuff rapidly gets boring, and is usually aimed, at least in part, at stroking the backs of your own political leaders.

Increasing the noise level so that no one can believe anything isn't a new idea. British "black" propaganda during WWII used it quite a bit. "Rumor-mongering" was once a thing.[2] But it didn't scale. It's picked up in recent years partly because it's much more effective when combined with ad targeting. This is a problem.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._R._McMaster

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vaupcu2qqI

walrus01• 2 years ago

See also, the part from 2:22:53 onwards:

Vladislav Surkov and propaganda methods of making people distrust everything and sow strife and confusion.

https://youtu.be/Gr7T07WfIhM?t=8567

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=vladislav...

Razengan3• 2 years ago

The winning strategy for Russia in eastern Europe is a non-united United States, and if possible a non-united European Union.
Classical propaganda is heavy drum-beating for how great your side is.

Isn't that a form of "classical propaganda" in itself? "We are perfect. There is nothing wrong with us. Only our enemies say we have problems."

"All our problems are caused by THEM"

"If you don't like America you MUST be a commie!" (one of the worst slurs in post-WW2 USA)

llamaimperative• 2 years ago

The “quotes” you gave are totally and utterly unrelated to anything GP said.

atoav2• 2 years ago

No you don't get it. Splitting your enemies this way is not the same as saying "us good, them bad". First you would not say anything about your intentions and how you are at all.

Example: The way Putin has dealt with opposition within his own country was not to say how great his party was and how bad the others were. It was to financially support some of the opposition group, arrest others, invite other publically, have others beaten up by thugs and have it change by the day. This way they can't trust what's real anymore, they lose hope not because there is none, but because it isn't clear what even to hope for and whom to hope with.

In the same time his party just is and wins by being in comparison more or less a clear, safe and before all known position to bet on — the devil that you know and all that.

So the confusion, the contradiction is the goal. That's why Tucker gets invited and Navalny murdered shortly after.

naet• 2 years ago

There's plenty of successful "classical" propaganda in the modern era, like Tucker Carlson interviewing Putin, and his subsequently tweeting about how much better the cities/subways/groceries/MacDonalds are in Russia than they are in America.

I like to browse both far left and far right social media to see what different circles are talking about, and a lot of the far right are coming around to be pro Russia (way more than I would have ever expected given US history).

There's also the conservative house representatives majority who are likely to continue blocking any additional military aid to the Ukraine. So on a whole it seems to me that Russian government has been highly effective at advancing their political agenda within the USA recently.

dralley4• 2 years ago

There's plenty of successful "classical" propaganda in the modern era, like Tucker Carlson interviewing Putin, and his subsequently tweeting about how much better the cities/subways/groceries/MacDonalds are in Russia than they are in America.

I'm not sure that's actually successful. Even a lot of conservatives seem put off by Tucker's recent activities, especially with the Navalny news today.

dilawar• 2 years ago

This is some turn of events! Americans loving commies!!

roenxi4• 2 years ago

a lot of the far right are coming around to be pro Russia

Pro-Russia or pro-US? The alt-right stance I've been seeing is that the war accomplishes nothing, introduces a lot of needless risks and wastes resources better spent elsewhere. It looks like all the US is achieving is piles of dead Slavs. That isn't wealth generation or strategically useful.

It has been decades since US foreign interventions have done anything useful for the US, the base rate here leans strongly towards pacifism being the most effective strategy. Even in the Russia-Ukraine war, I've been arguing that this gives China opportunities more than anything else. Hopefully the CCP are too inept to seize on them.

celdon253• 2 years ago

However, the bulk of the content appears aimed at creating a sense of dismay over the state of America without any clear partisan bent. It focuses on issues like urban decay, the fentanyl crisis, dirty drinking water, police brutality, gun violence and crumbling infrastructure. These are not election-specific narratives and have been a significant feature of Spamouflage’s content over several years. While not explicitly linked to the election, however, this content clearly also feeds into the attempt to create a sense of dissatisfaction with the state of the country among voters, as well as potentially engendering a sense of chaos in the US amongst international audiences.

This is not exactly news, and there are plenty of American videos exposing these issues for years now. Maybe Congress should be spending that inflation printed money fixing them so that we don’t have to wait for a new president to get to work.

cqqxo4zV46cp• 2 years ago

You aren’t responding to / speaking to this article at all. You are responding to the hypothetical propaganda that it’s talking about. That doesn’t feel on topic at all. The point is that they aren’t election-specific issues.

celdon253• 2 years ago

The point is that they aren’t election-specific issues.

According to you and the mainstream media, yes, but not the voters. The point is that if you don’t want other countries to tell us how much we suck, we can maybe stop sucking. And our own propaganda machine is doing a great job of getting in the way of that, all the way down to the kids on reddit telling you you’re a bad person if you don’t vote a certain way.

I won’t be voting for the incumbent for reasons that are supposedly not “election issues”.

aragonite2• 2 years ago

Don't know why they redacted the Twitter handles in the screenshots if they believe these to be bots/propagandists.

In any case, you can easily find the accounts by searching for the tweeted texts. It's very unlikely that these are regular Twitter accounts. But I see little reason to think this is part of a camouflaged "CCP propaganda operation" to influence the US election. You need to at least make an attempt to masquerade as a "fellow American" to qualify as election interference, but many of these accounts have handles/names that are literally pinyin, or have Chinese profile pics, or regularly retweet/like tweets in Chinese.

It's also not clear to me just what claim the report is making. It says Spamouflage "is already pivoting to focus on [the election]". Then later it says "the bulk of the content appears aimed at creating a sense of dismay over the state of America without any clear partisan bent... These [the issues focused on] are not election-specific narratives and have been a significant feature of Spamouflage's content over several years." So Spamouflage is at once pivoting to focus on the election and mostly talking about issues that aren't election-specific; and it's at once trying to improperly influence the election outcome and doing so in a way 'without any clear partisan bent'...

orev• 2 years ago

Influencing an election can take the form of sowing confusion and apathy, instead of driving people to a specific candidate. This leads to people not voting or otherwise participating, which cedes the political landscape to the extremes, who then go on to destabilize the country. It can be done without broaching election-specific topics.

dralley4• 2 years ago

Here's a less immediately obvious, but still pretty damn obvious Russian troll account

https://twitter.com/blackintheempir

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FtKeFiYWIAgQLfw.jpg

aragonite2• 2 years ago

Hmm, I was inclined to agree with you at first based on the screenshot & the first 20 or so tweets I read, but he does appear to be a real American!

https://youtu.be/MNPiTsaH1ak?t=23

skhunted• 2 years ago

So Spamouflage is at once pivoting to focus on the election and mostly talking about issues that aren't election-specific; and it's at once trying to improperly influence the election outcome and doing so in a way 'without any clear partisan bent'...

People are easily influenced by messaging. Today it is easy to create targeted messaging. A state actor could send messages to Republicans that are different than the ones sent to Democrats. In this way it is correct that the actor has no partisan bent. They just want to sow confusion, doubt, misinformation.

One can imagine that it is possible to influence an election without using election specific issues. If, for instance, welfare reform is not an issue in an election but talking about it in a way to create fear and anger can influence an electorate’s desires. I believe that if the CCP is actively engaged in an information war against Americans that they could do so in ways that, on the surface, would appear to be ineffective.

Pro CCP 'spamouflage' network pivoting to focus on US election

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