Chinese influence campaign is causing division ahead of US election, study says

A Chinese influence campaign that has sought for years to advance Beijing's interests is now using artificial intelligence and a network of social media accounts to deepen American discontent and division ahead of the U.S. presidential election, a new report says.

The campaign, known as Spamouflage, hopes to stoke disenchantment among voters by vilifying the United States as a country rife with urban decay, homelessness, fentanyl abuse, gun violence and crumbling infrastructure, according to the report published Thursday by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a non-profit research organization in London.

An additional goal, the report said, is to convince the international public that the United States is in a state of chaos.

Artificially generated images, some of which have also been edited with tools such as Photoshop, have given rise to the idea that the November elections will damage and possibly even destroy the country.

A post on Other images showed the two men facing each other, cracks in the White House or Statue of Liberty, and terminology such as “CIVIL WAR,” “INTERNAL STRIFE” and “THE COLLAPSE OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY.”

The stories did not appear to have an overtly partisan slant, although Mr. Biden was the target of multiple negative portrayals, including references to his son Hunter Biden's legal troubles and claims that the president is a drug user. Spamouflage's attitude toward Mr. Trump was more ambiguous; posts claiming that his “anti-hero status makes him unstoppable” could be interpreted as flattering. Both men were portrayed as too old to rule.

In America's “hyper-polarized division,” China sensed an opportunity, said Elise Thomas, a senior analyst at the institute that wrote the report. Spamouflage's focus on social conflict and antagonism in the US presidential race could also indicate how Beijing hopes to shape the many other major elections taking place around the world this year.

“In this narrative universe, American democracy is portrayed as a source of disunity and weakness,” Thomas said in a statement. “They are trying to create a sense of a hardened superpower in disarray, unable to solve its internal problems and unfit to act as a leader on the international stage.”

Spamouflage has been active since 2017, Ms. Thomas wrote in the report, adding that the campaign is “notorious among researchers both for its sheer size and for its inability to generate any significant engagement from real social media users.” Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said last summer it had removed thousands of social media accounts and hundreds of pages linked to the campaign. Meta researchers linked the campaign to Chinese law enforcement.

Thursday's report focused on spammy posts on on X.

Researchers at the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights warned in their report on digital risks to this year's elections that the main threat in the 2024 election came less from AI-generated content and more to do with the dissemination of false, hateful and violent material. The reportpublished Wednesday, said such content has become more common because numerous social media platforms, including Facebook and YouTube, had backed away from some of their previous commitments regarding election integrity.

The researchers picked to be reduced.

The researchers also noted that political polarization in the United States was likely to entice China and others to sow confusion among voters.