As The US Freaks Out About TikTok, It’s Revealed That The CIA Was Using Chinese Social Media To Try To Undermine The Gov’t There
from the gee,-maybe-we-should-clean-up-our-own-house dept
You know that line, “every accusation is a confession?” For no reason at all, that’s coming to mind all of a sudden. No reason.
Anyway, a decade ago, Henry Farrell and Martha Finnemore wrote a fantastic piece for Foreign Affairs on “The End of Hypocrisy” (which we also wrote about here at Techdirt). They argued that, even as many people mock American hypocrisy around the world, at least the plausible deniability of Americans taking the moral high ground was an incredibly powerful and effective tool of soft pressure. And how it was squandered with each revelation of just how little Americans respected the sovereignty of other nations, and regularly abused our access to internet backbones to spy on others.
The deeper threat that leakers such as Manning and Snowden pose is more subtle than a direct assault on U.S. national security: they undermine Washington’s ability to act hypocritically and get away with it. Their danger lies not in the new information that they reveal but in the documented confirmation they provide of what the United States is actually doing and why. When these deeds turn out to clash with the government’s public rhetoric, as they so often do, it becomes harder for U.S. allies to overlook Washington’s covert behavior and easier for U.S. adversaries to justify their own.
Speaking of all that: what interesting timing to have Reuters break the news that the Trump administration gave the go ahead on a covert program by the CIA to try to use social media inside China to turn the public against the government and cause chaos.
Two years into office, President Donald Trump authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to launch a clandestine campaign on Chinese social media aimed at turning public opinion in China against its government, according to former U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the highly classified operation.
Three former officials told Reuters that the CIA created a small team of operatives who used bogus internet identities to spread negative narratives about Xi Jinping’s government while leaking disparaging intelligence to overseas news outlets. The effort, which began in 2019, has not been previously reported.
I am also suddenly reminded of how the US government ran this big campaign for a few years about how no one should use Chinese networking equipment from companies like Huawei. This is despite the fact that a comprehensive White House report could find no evidence of nefarious behavior. Oh, but also, how some of the Ed Snowden docs revealed that the US government was actually installing secret backdoors in Cisco networking equipment to spy on people elsewhere?
Of course, there are a few different ways to look at this. One argument is that “well, we’re doing this, so we know that they must be too, and that justifies the US’s actions to try to cut them off.” And that would be maybe more compelling if there were more serious evidence that any of this actually works and that it doesn’t look absolutely ridiculous when it inevitably leaks out later.
The other way of looking at it is that the US comes off as a bunch of hypocrites who repeatedly squander whatever moral high ground they have on these arguments. As Farrell and Finnemore highlighted in that piece a decade ago, US foreign policy and the soft power it traditionally wielded relied heavily on (1) US politicians believing in the principles of freedom and openness we espoused, (2) our allies being able to back us up on those claims, and (3) our adversaries looking weak and pathetic in trying to go up against those principles.
But with each revelation of the US doing exactly what they accuse others of doing, all of that falls apart. US politicians making such claims look ever less sincere. Our allies can no longer continue to claim the moral high ground with a straight face. And our adversaries use our own stupid policies to justify their even worse ones.
I know (because I heard it all the time) that some people will say “but our adversaries don’t need any justification to do bad stuff.” That’s only true to some extent. Global pressure can be effective, but it’s harder to use that pressure legitimately when the US is doing something just as bad. In making it easier for our adversaries to justify their bad actions by pointing to similar activities by the US, it makes it even easier for them to go further, and to convince others to join them.
As that article noted towards the end, the solution should be that the US should act in a way that lives up to its rhetoric, rather than just being pathetically hypocritical.
A better alternative would be for Washington to pivot in the opposite direction, acting in ways more compatible with its rhetoric. This approach would also be costly and imperfect, for in international politics, ideals and interests will often clash. But the U.S. government can certainly afford to roll back some of its hypocritical behavior without compromising national security. A double standard on torture, a near indifference to casualties among non-American civilians, the gross expansion of the surveillance state — none of these is crucial to the country’s well-being, and in some cases, they undermine it.
The US’s attempts to use social media in China as a propaganda tool does not appear to have been very effective. The end result looks pretty silly and helps justify China doing very dangerous shit:
The covert propaganda campaign against Beijing could backfire, said Heer, the former CIA analyst. China could use evidence of a CIA influence program to bolster its decades-old accusations of shadowy Western subversion, helping Beijing “proselytize” in a developing world already deeply suspicious of Washington.
The message would be: “‘Look at the United States intervening in the internal affairs of other countries and rejecting the principles of peaceful coexistence,’” Heer said. “And there are places in the world where that is going to be a resonant message.”
But, coming at the same time that we’re looking to ban TikTok (or force its divestiture from a company based in China), maybe we should actually consider that suggestion from Farrell and Finnemore again. Maybe we should try to live up to our ideas. Maybe we should believe that if America is about freedom, and freedom is better than the authoritarian tyranny of China, we should be able to resist whatever they wish to pull with any social media propaganda campaign they could cook up.
Or do we think so little of Americans in general, that we think they won’t be able to resist the allure of this one social media app and its algorithm? If American freedom can’t resist an app of short videos, mostly used by kids, what kind of freedom is it really?
Filed Under: china, cia, covert programs, donald trump, propaganda, social media, surveillance, us
Companies: tiktok
Comments on “As The US Freaks Out About TikTok, It’s Revealed That The CIA Was Using Chinese Social Media To Try To Undermine The Gov’t There”
A report of American hypocrisy in how it deals with the world?
How.. fucking expected.
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All the more reason to eliminate CCP psyop app TikTok from these shores.
Why does the site owner want the CCP to control America?
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Its amazing how it’s all “FREE MARKET”, and “LET THE MARKETS DECIDE” until you disagree, then suddenly, you’re against this mythical free market that can do no wrong, while still being against regulations of any sort that might address these issues across the entire fucking country, because that’s “Big Government”.
You want very specific rules, put in place, for very specific issues that you feel are important, but otherwise, the gub’ment needs to stay out of your life.
You people are fucking house cats.
Fiercely independent, while hopelessly reliant on the very system you hate.
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The federal government plays a very important and welcome role in defending U.S. national security and vital strategic interests.
The American Youth are too PRECIOUS a commodity to allow them to be further corrupted by CCP-facilitated online degeneracy!
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Yeah! Kids matter! From the same fuckers who defend pedophiles and won’t feed kids.
Go fuck off you lying racist pos
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ok troll
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You sound like the kind of person that can’t live within 300 yards of a school or park.
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Yes, as factory workers or child soldiers, you fascist shit.
Or as breeding mares if they’re female.
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I am not convinced that TikTok is a threat to America’s national security or “vital strategic interests”, nor that it is any sort of “degeneracy”. I am also not convinced that TikTok is corrupting any American youths as the CCP would want them to be, namely pro-CCP or anti-America.
You’re basically saying that we need to prevent the spread of this massive fire by building a brick wall on one side the allegedly burning house (one that is facing the house we reside in) using bricks from our house. I’m looking, but all I see is an ordinary campfire in the backyard that shows no signs of spreading anywhere at all, at least no more so than any of the many other campfires in other backyards, including several in the massive backyard of the house that would be blocked by the brick wall we’d be building. I‘m asking for evidence that this campfire is more of a danger than the other campfires, that there even is the specific danger you’re claiming, that a brick wall would even help, and the legality and proportionality of us building the wall as you want it to be built. You point out that the landlord of the house with the campfire you’re concerned with is a creep who wants other houses to burn down and who spies on both the tenants of his house and the residents of other houses, including us. I point out that that isn’t enough evidence and is largely irrelevant, and that the landlord of the other house also spies on them. I also point out that campfires of the sort we’re looking at are not likely to produce embers that would cause it to spread to other houses, that the house we’re protecting is fire-resistant, that the landlord has shown no signs of tampering with this campfire such that it is more likely to spread fire elsewhere than ours are, and that the landlord could easily just use campfires in others’ backyards to cause a fire. You then complain and demand me to explain why I want that creep of a landlord to burn our house down, and you ignore me whenever I point out that I want no such thing.
Also, the American youth are not a commodity, precious or otherwise (though they are certainly precious). They’re people, human beings, and American citizens with rights. They don’t need the government deciding what ideas they should or should not be allowed to be exposed to.
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No, I’m saying we [America/U.S. Gov’t] should fight with growing confidence and growing strength against evil China & the CCP and we should defend our nation and its Youth, whatever the cost may be, and we should never surrender to Chinese-encouraged, TikTok-distributed degeneracy!
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ok troll loser
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Let me know when you have more evidence that TikTok is actually a “CCP psyop app” than simply “the company that runs it is owned by a company that is based in China”. You know, like evidence of pro-China propaganda on the app or something. Also, let me know when you have evidence that it is actually influencing American users’ opinions and such in a pro-China or anti-America direction. Propaganda that fails to work isn’t worth banning.
If you have neither of those things, then I fail to see how this is a real problem that needs to be solved rather than simply wild speculation from your imagination.
Also, what the FBI did was to use China-controlled apps to influence Chinese citizens. That shows that China doesn’t need to use a China-controlled app to spread its propaganda here; it can use American apps to do so. Banning TikTok—and only TikTok—would accomplish nothing there, at least not if you’re working from what the FBI has done here.
Finally, the 1A means that our government cannot constitutionally ban foreign propaganda; what we want is entirely irrelevant to that since wanting something and being able to lawfully do that something are entirely different things.
(Note: This means that your question is based on several false or flawed premises, making it an invalid question. The site owner does not want the CCP to control America, so there is no reason he does want them to.)
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Unsafe At Any Dosage
It is the digital equivalent of crack. It’s not just Americans, but anyone anywhere in the world can become addicted. China has been trying to forcibly reduce its citizens’ exposure.
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So then ban it completely.
If you want to control how Americans are allowed to spend their time and money then do that you fascist fuck.
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Funny, Koby, since China hasn’t tried to “regulate” social media usage outside of the mass surveillance they already do.
Some of us DO read outside of the approved sources, you know, and the media here in SOutheast Asia is pro-China…
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I don’t think it is addictive, at least no more than anything can be addictive for the right person (or wrong person, depending on how you look at it). I’d need more evidence first. I certainly wouldn’t say it’s dangerously addictive like gambling or hard drugs.
I hate it when people misuse “addiction” like this. It devalues an actual, serious problem by conflating it with a bunch of lesser cases, some of which aren’t even problems.
Also, if you’re comparing social media—which isn’t inherently harmful in itself—with crack—which would be harmful even if it wasn’t addictive—you have a bad argument.
No, TikTok is not “unsafe at any dosage”. I don’t use it myself (not enough space on my phone for another app, and I’m to lazy to view it in a browser), but I don’t see how it could be any worse than YouTube Shorts, which I do use sometimes. I’m not addicted to it or anything; it’s just something I watch sometimes in between watching longer-form content, watching VTuber clips, gaming, reading, etc. It in no way interferes with my ability to function as a person, and I have gone for extended periods without it without even trying (just something I realize after the fact).
I did use TikTok a couple of times a year or so ago, but my laziness and lack of space meant that I dropped it pretty quickly. Same thing happened with Facebook and some other sites.
If TikTok was truly as addictive and “unsafe at any dose” as crack, like you assert, none of that would be the case.
As for China trying to forcibly reduce its citizens’ exposure, a couple of things.
First, China tries to forcibly control a lot of aspects of its citizens’ lives and exposure to ideas; so what? None of that proves anything about any actual dangers or risks from anything that they try to ban or restrict. The CCP is well-known for being incredibly controlling and incredibly paranoid about anything on the internet.
Second, how is that working out for them? Has it worked? If so, did it actually fix the underlying issues or anything like that? Or is this just another case of “We must do something; this is something; therefore, we must do this”?
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When goalpost-moving addiction drives you to move the goalposts so often and so far that they’re worn into something that are no longer even goalposts.
i’m not even sure China is actually relevant, the dude just says things.
Sadly, the masses won’t hear a word of this, the MSM will ignore it and US citizens will still think they’re so filled with exceptionalism rather than abject hypocrisy.
A very human one.
'Look, WE'RE doing it so clearly they must be too!'
The timing is just the icing on the cake, the same president that was losing the tattered remains of his mind over the idea that china might be using social media to turn the US public against itself was himself responsible for attempting to do that very thing to/in the same country he was flipping out about.
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Oh, you mean like the FBI was doing here?
Guess what, they’re a hostile country. Some of the things we do to them we don’t want us doing to us. We do not great things to hostile countries and try to stop them from doing ourselves.
Meanwhile, our own government did it to us.
This isn’t hard.
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Do you have any evidence that the FBI was using social media to undermine the US gov’t?
Maybe we should try to live up to our ideals
Maybe we should, except that Orange-man has decided that ideals are for suckers, and the rest of the MAGA-nuts have decided to agree with him.
And while they are not in charge, and not in the majority; there are enough of them to act as spoilers.
So, it would be nice, but, I don’t see it happening any time soon.
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The panic on TechDirt over TikTok is some Orwellian grade nonsense.
God forbid the CIA does its job and try to subvert a government that is committing genocide! Did you ever think that this massive, evil CIA conspiracy could be as simple as providing the Chinese people with the truth. Probably not because then you couldn’t use it as an argument to keep giving China personal data in exchange for dance videos and Bin Laden praise.
I guess I should just let 2+2=5, love TikTok, and ignore previous TechDirt articles on data privacy.
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or your a troll and cant read
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You mean the complete lack of panic over TikTok?
Why!?!
“a small team of operatives who used bogus internet identities to spread negative narratives about Xi Jinping’s government”
For what purpose? What’s the measurable payoff for something like that? I mean, sure, it’d be fun … for a while. It just doesn’t seem very useful. Using operatives to try to collect accurate information about public sentiment seems like a better use of money.
Just imagine – suppose that they accidentally foment a revolution (unlikely). Do you think they could ever TELL anyone?
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At the point of a successfully incited revolution any quarterway-intelligent agency would probably burn all of your records because there isn’t anything that to be gained by admitting it after the fact. If it goes horribly wrong and the new revolution hates you and/or is an utter basket case, it is your fault. If by some miracle they like you they probably won’t if the subterfuge comes up.
In a somewhat related issue, one of the most heinous examples of US spying occurred when it chose to use a polio vaccination program in its efforts to find Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. This was monumentally stupid and exhibited the kind of utter contempt these mfers have towards the health and wellbeing of the rest of the world and even most US citizens.
Re: 'Do not pass GO. Do not collect $200. Go straight to jail' for the lot of 'em
‘I know, let’s give the anti-vax nutjobs an actual example to point to about how the government is using vaccination efforts for nefarious ends, what could possible go wrong?’
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It was a hepatitis vaccine, actually, attempting to gain DNA from Bin Laden’s kids.