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Elise Thomas Profile picture
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25 Oct, 12 tweets, 6 min read
I have been looking into the timeline of the "Typhoon Investigations" report which makes a number of allegations about links between the Bidens and the Chinese Communist Party. I've found a few interesting things.

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The earliest version of the report which I have found so far appears to have been posted on Sept 3 on a blog called 'Intelligence Quarterly.' The document shared is dated Aug 31st. PDF properties show that the file was authored by a user 'M A' on Sep 1st. archive.is/FTs2A ImageImage
Intelligence Quarterly is a blog 'dedicated to collecting important daily news on various topics into a clean, easy format.' It appears to have been running since 2010. It is currently using privacy protections, but was previously registered in 2016 to an Albert Marko (so, A M) ImageImage
Albert Marko's email address is gopmarko@gmail.com. Common domains help to confirm his personal website. There is an Albert Marko who was interviewed in June 2020 as a 'US Congress Political Expert' who appears to be the same individual. ImageImage
On Oct 17th, someone tweeted the link to this report to @BaldingsWorld. Oct 22nd, @BaldingsWorld published a lightly modified version of the same report on his site, saying that he was personally approached by the author to help publish it months ago. Make of that what you will. ImageImage
These are clearly versions of the same report with some differences. For example, bits of French appear to have been added to the Oct 22nd version, where the Aug 31st version had English. Other content has been added and rearranged. ImageImage
Archived versions of both reports are available here for comparison:

web.archive.org/web/2020102423…

web.archive.org/web/2020102218…
A recently created Twitter and Wordpress blog are claiming to be the 'Typhoon Investigations' which authored the report. These claims have not been verified. They have already changed the address on their site once.
This is a peculiar story, no doubt with miles left to run. I'm definitely going to be keeping an eye on it!
Important to note that this is also now part of the bigger picture of efforts to shape a narrative around the Bidens and China, notably linked to Bannon and Guo Wengui, which has since incorporated this report into the fold
Actually, turns out Balding and Marko were on a podcast about US-China relations together on Oct 16th. @BaldingsWorld, could you clarify how the report turned up first on Marko's blog and then weeks later on yours? completeintel.com/2020/10/16/qui…
Albert Marko was tweeting about the Bidens and China as early as 2018

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More from @elisethoma5

Elise Thomas Profile picture
27 Oct
I have been continuing to piece together the timeline behind this 'Typhoon Investigations' Biden-China report.

TLDR; a persona posing as a North Asia specialist which promoted the report before it was published by @BaldingsWorld appears to be fabricated.

There are now a number of Twitter accounts posing as 'Typhoon Investigations'. I was able to eliminate most of these as imposters or unlikely to be connected to the original source. One, however, stood out. Image
It does seem plausible that TyphoonInvesti1 AKA 'Martin Aspen' could be connected to the original source of the report (which you may recall gave its author as 'M A'). This account pre-dates the earliest known published version of the report on Sep 3.
Read 25 tweets
Elise Thomas Profile picture
8 Oct
Since hostilities between #Azerbaijan and #Armenia flared up on Sep 27th, @AlbertYZhang and I have been documenting some of the shadow battle taking place on Twitter for control of the narrative aspi.org.au/report/snapsho…
It's important to caveat that this is not meant to be comprehensive; includes primarily English-language activity; that we have not attempted to verify content; and that we are not seeking to undermine legitimate social media debate. Nonetheless, we made some interesting findings
This included significant spikes in account creation on key days in the conflict, for example Sept 27 and, as well as spikes dating back to earlier clashes in July.
Read 12 tweets
Elise Thomas Profile picture
6 Oct
I wrote for @GNET_research and @CSCRCoz about how we really don't understand digital-first conspiracy extremism yet. It's different from pre-digital conspiracies, and also different from digitISED extremism which begin offline and move online as a recruiting and comms strategy.
Much more research, and also simply more time, is needed to understand the dynamics of extremist conspiracy movements. In the meantime, however, we can prioritise what we do know:
Based on evidence so far, conspiracy extremists are likely to be lone actors, who have either self-radicalised or been a part of a social media community which has radicalised over time (although this could change in the future).
Read 5 tweets
Elise Thomas Profile picture
4 Aug
.@AlbertYZhang and I spent the last couple of weeks looking into some coordinated inauthentic activity linked to Chinese-speaking actors. Although small and unsophisticated, it has persistently targeted US and Western audiences on US political and racial issues.

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The coordinated activity relies heavily on automation (aka bots in the true sense) across both FB and Twitter. We estimate that a couple hundred Twitter accounts (many of which have been taken down) and unknown but likely small number of FB bots have been involved.
The small size of the activity is itself interesting, because it demonstrates how even small-scale actors can engage in attempted foreign political influence. Even if each little campaign has little impact, many small inauthentic efforts like this can blur the information space.
Read 10 tweets
Elise Thomas Profile picture
11 Jun
My @ASPI_ICPC colleagues and I analysed a Chinese state-linked influence operation involving 23,000+ accounts on Twitter and related activity on Facebook. Instead of a thread on the report (which you should read!)....
aspi.org.au/report/retweet…
I'm going to do a thread on the continuing activity targeting the #GeorgeFloyd #US protests.Some of this is in the report, most of it is newer.
Two caveats up front: first, organic engagement with this campaign was super low. It’s interesting for what it tells us about the priorities and capabilities (or lack thereof) of those behind it, not because it was effective.
Read 20 tweets
Elise Thomas Profile picture
23 Apr
When I decided to go down the rabbit hole of digging into one of the websites spreading the supposedly hacked WHO/Gates Foundation/Wuhan lab data, I'm not sure where I thought it would go, but Danish Satanist biohackers was not it.

You guys. This was A TRIP.

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First, it's worth being clear that it seems very likely there was no recent hack. The data dump is made up of creds scraped from past leaks, and carelessly done at that. vice.com/en_au/article/…
That's why, for example, the WHO file contains creds which have nothing to do with the World Health Organisation, other than containing "who" and "int". Someone just did a "find all" or similar and grabbed everything w/out even checking.
Read 24 tweets

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