Reports from an American private cyber intelligence company and the government of New Zealand painted very similar pictures of the Chinese Communist government using malicious online activity to influence politics in other countries.
U.S. analytics company Graphika detailed a campaign by online actors linked to the Chinese state that bombards American users with unsolicited “spam” messages and social media propaganda.
The Chinese group responsible for the propaganda campaign has been dubbed “Spamouflage” by some cybersecurity experts and “Dragonbridge” by others. Google’s threat analysis team and major security firms, like Mandiant, prefer the Dragonbridge moniker, but the Spamouflage identity is a bit older, dating back to waves of automated propaganda unleashed in 2017.
Spamouflage specializes in creating accounts on platforms like X and TikTok that masquerade as politically active U.S. citizens or special interest groups.
The sock puppets for these Chinese hackers present themselves as “frustrated by American politics and the West.” They churn out “divisive narratives about sensitive social issues, including gun control, homelessness, drug abuse, racial inequality, and the Israel-Hamas conflict.” Much of this content appears to be AI-generated.
Spamouflage has grown increasingly active as the U.S. presidential campaign moves along, producing content critical of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump at first, then looping in Vice President Kamala Harris once President Joe Biden was deposed as the Democrat Party’s presidential candidate for 2024.
The most active of the group’s accounts seem to be imitating “supporters of Trump and the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement,” but they have created divisive propaganda targeting both Republicans and Democrats.
Interestingly, Spamouflage’s propaganda efforts do not usually seem to generate a great deal of engagement, an observation made by earlier observers of China’s attempts to create huge volumes of political propaganda with artificial intelligence (AI).
In short, the tactic does not seem to work very well, but China’s online gremlins keep trying, investing ever-greater amounts of time and money to refine their seemingly ineffective techniques.
Graphika suggested this might be happening because American voters are not the primary audience for Spamouflage’s influence campaigns. Instead, the goal is “leveraging social divisions in a polarized information environment to portray the U.S. as a declining global power with weak leaders and a failing system of governance.”
The 2024 edition of the annual threat report from the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (NZSIS) charted similar activity by the Chinese government, which is waging a “complex and deceptive” effort to influence New Zealand’s politics.
A key difference in New Zealand is that China’s “malicious activity” is more carefully targeted at Chinese-speaking residents. Operatives from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) create false identities to spread online propaganda, much like the Spamouflage operators pretending to be MAGA movement activists in the United States, but, in New Zealand, they masquerade as phony Chinese-language news services and community groups.
“The NZSIS has seen attempts to use complex and deceptive front organizations to connect with groups in New Zealand and replace authentic and diverse community views with those approved by the PRC,” the report said.
“Community members may join these front organizations for legitimate personal reasons or to meet community expectations and may not know they are taking part in activities considered foreign interference,” the report continued, suggesting that China’s propaganda campaign might be generating a bit more engagement in New Zealand than it has in the United States.