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Jessica Brandt Profile picture
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20 Jul, 4 tweets, 2 min read
At it again.

Over the past 8 weeks or so, Chinese government officials have peddled this conspiracy with alarming frequency.

According to recent data from @SecureDemocracy:

👉 >35 officials, state media outlets have mentioned Fort Detrick in
👉 >115 tweets in
👉 9 languages
As others have documented, there's lots of chatter across Chinese social media sites, posts to comment sections, etc., advancing these ideas.
Unclear whether its centrally orchestrated or organic, but there are several examples of Chinese officials retweeting suspicious accounts, as Bret Schafer notes here:
foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/09/chi…
He and I wrote about Beijing's efforts manufacture the appearance of consensus, among other tactics, for @BrookingsInst's TechStream last year 👇

brookings.edu/techstream/how…

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More from @jessbrandt

Jessica Brandt Profile picture
8 Mar
.@SecureDemocracy looked at more than 35K vaccine-related messages from Russian, Chinese, and Iranian diplomats, government officials, and state media outlets on Twitter, YouTube, and state-sponsored news websites get a handle on their narratives.

What did we find? THREAD
FIRST: While there were few instances of any studied country promoting verifiably false info about vaccines, reports of safety concerns related to certain Western vaccines were often sensationalized while key contextual info was omitted or downplayed.
For EX: Iran’s Fars News Agency tweeted that the Pfizer vaccine “kill[ed] six people in America,” omitting (and never correcting) that:

- 4 of the 6 ppl who died had received a placebo
- authorities determined no causal connection b/w vaccines and the deaths of the other 2
Read 23 tweets
Jessica Brandt Profile picture
6 Oct 20
My colleagues at @SecureDemocracy took a look at how Russia's state media is responding to news of President Trump's #COVID diagnosis, using data from the Hamilton 2.0 dashboard. securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/hamilton-dashb…

What did they see?
Efforts to stoke partisan division in the United States by amplifying “he deserves it” tweets and commentary.
And by promoting speculation (from Americans) that the diagnosis is a political ploy.
Read 5 tweets
Jessica Brandt Profile picture
19 Mar 20
The team at @SecureDemocracy took a look at 2,900 tweets from China's diplomatic and state media accounts over the past three days to get a sense of Beijing's messaging on #coronavirus. Here's what we found.
First, China is using the #coronavirus crisis to position itself as a provider of public goods (an implicit contrast to the United States) -- in other words, as the new partner of first resort for our allies in Europe.
Among the top tweets by engagement are posts from China's embassies in France, Italy, and Spain. All of them highlight assistance from China.
Read 12 tweets
Jessica Brandt Profile picture
16 Mar 20
Some very important points in @RidT @nytimes essay out today, which sparked a flurry of my own thinking. THREAD.
nytimes.com/2020/03/16/opi…
As he so aptly puts it: Putin's ultimate goal is not to strengthen a particular candidate or party, but to weaken the United States.
We at @SecureDemocracy have been tracking Russian overt messaging on the 2020 contest. Its all about raising doubts about the legitimacy of the process and amplifying fissures. It mentions particular candidates, but the candidates are not the point.
Read 23 tweets
Jessica Brandt Profile picture
22 Feb 20
A few thoughts I hope don't get lost in the crush of news around Russian efforts to interfere in 2020 (a thread).
1) In this broadest sense, this isn't really news. Over months, multiple senior administration officials have warned of Russian activity targeting 2020. That it aims to undermine confidence in the vote and puts the primary in its crosshairs isn't surprising.
2) That's in large part because Russian interference never stopped! It didn't end after 2016, or 2018. Elections are but flashpoints in what we must understand is a long term, ongoing effort to weaken our democracy.
Read 11 tweets
Jessica Brandt Profile picture
25 Nov 19
These comments are totally irresponsible. Not just because they disregard objective truth, but because they fuel the perception that there is no objective truth to begin with.
Democracy depends on the notion that there are knowable facts, and that the public can understand them and put them to use in making decisions of self-government. That's what information operations put in their cross-hairs.
In other words, info ops -- like the one our intelligence community tells us Russia is perpetuating AT THIS MOMENT -- are not just about spreading un-truths, but devaluing the notion of truth itself.
Read 5 tweets

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