China takes a playbook from Russia as it spreads disinformation about Russia, utilizing same conspiracy sites and same strategy: sowing doubt. nytimes.com/2020/03/28/us/…
In the days to come, China is likely to back off the public spread of disinformation and more fully embrace the more subtle Russian-style approach, relying on its intelligence services, senior American intelligence officials assessed.
Diplomats and official accounts from Russia and China as well as Iran have sharply increased their dissemination of disinfo about the coronavirus since January, even repeating and amplifying one another’s propaganda, said Lea Gabrielle, a special envoy at the State Department.
The tactics are “a significant departure from how the Chinese have operated in the past,” said Laura Rosenberger, the director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a project of the nonpartisan German Marshall Fund of the United States.
“Russia has long spread multiple, seemingly contradictory disinformation narratives and then said, ‘How can we know for sure what happened, how can we know the truth?’” said @rosenbergerlm. “But now we see Chinese officials and media trying out those typically Russian tactics.”
On Monday, the Alliance for Securing Democracy will unveil a tool to track the Chinese disinformation and give a sense of the narrative Beijing is pushing. The group’s Hamilton dashboard has long monitored Russian Twitter accounts and broadcast feeds.
