NEW: Remember the fake messages saying Trump was locking down U.S. because of the coronavirus? Our @nytimes investigation showed Chinese agents helped spread them to millions. US officials were alarmed. Trump dismissed concerns over China’s disinformation. nytimes.com/2020/04/22/us/…
@nytimes 2. The investigation was a team effort w/ @AllMattNYT & @julianbarnes. We tracked sets of fake messages across platforms. Sources included officials from 6 US agencies. And 2 outside bipartisan research groups have findings on China’s disinfo: @SecureDemocracy & @CNASdc.
3. US officials were shocked by the fake messages appearing on the cellphones of Americans, which several said they had never seen before. They said the aim of the messages spread by Chinese agents overlaps w/ Russian disinformation: sow chaos & undermine confidence in the US.
4. Two American officials stressed they didn't believe Chinese operatives created the fake messages, but rather amplified existing ones. The messages appeared to gain significant traction on Facebook as they were also proliferating through texts, according to @nytimes analysis.
5. Trump himself has dismissed concerns over disinformation from China. “They do it and we do it and we call them different things,” he told Fox on March 30. “Every country does it.” On March 27, he praised Chinese leaders' handling of the pandemic. "Much respect!" he tweeted.
6. Given the info war between US & China, journalists & foreign policy analysts worry the Trump administration may politicize intelligence work or make selective leaks to promote an anti-China narrative. Some Republican strategists advocate bashing China to win votes in Nov.
7. The extent to which the U.S. might be engaging in its own covert information warfare in China isn't clear. Chinese counterintelligence officers eviscerated the agency’s network of informants in China about a decade ago, hurting its ability to conduct operations there.
8. Asked about the new accusations, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said: “The relevant statements are complete nonsense and not worth refuting.” The ministry has rebutted persistent accusations by the US that China has supplied bad info & been non-transparent during the pandemic.
9. Another point worth noting in this story is that US intelligence agencies have ruled out the theory that the new coronavirus was a bioweapon created in China. Some Republican figures and Trump allies had insinuated or promoted that conspiracy theory. 
