Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, December 13th (International Watch) "The biggest disseminator of false information" — — From the bottom of American network public opinion manipulation misdeeds
Xinhua news agency reporter
"Do you know who is the biggest disseminator of false information in the history of the world? It is the US government. "
At a hearing in the US Congress in May this year, Senator rand paul asked himself and gave a series of examples, including the US government’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 under the pretext of "weapons of mass destruction".
The scene of Colin Powell, then US Secretary of State, holding a tube of white powder at the UN Security Council meeting and identifying Iraq as developing "weapons of mass destruction" has gone down in history as a "famous scene" for the US government to openly lie on international occasions.
For a long time, the US government has been spreading false information and weaving a dark network of rumors to manipulate public opinion, demonize other countries and safeguard its hegemony.
False information blitzkrieg — — "It’s as if someone pressed a switch."
According to researchers from the School of Mathematical Sciences, University of Adelaide, Australia, on February 24th this year, when the Ukrainian crisis escalated, "it seemed as if someone had pressed a switch", and the account on social media Twitter promoting anti-Russian stance "suddenly broke out", with as many as 38,000 tweets with the tag "Support Ukraine" appearing every hour. In the following week, a total of about 3.5 million tweets depicting Russian-phobia were constantly spreading, of which as many as 80% came from robot accounts. Such a rapid and large-scale online public opinion offensive can be called a "false information blitzkrieg".
According to the US Monthly Review website, Paul Nakasone, director of the US National Security Agency and commander of Cyber Command, disclosed in May that Cyber Command has been carrying out a number of information actions to support Ukraine.
The picture shows a screenshot of the US Monthly Review website reporting "Australian researchers exposed large-scale anti-Russian" robot network army ".
Fyodor Voitolovski, director of the Institute of World Economics and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said in an interview with Xinhua News Agency that Russia is facing a "typical propaganda trap". The US government used transnational media to launch an anti-Russian propaganda offensive, and some blogs and social media accounts also actively participated in it.
The misdeeds of the United States in spreading false information and manipulating public opinion on a large scale through social media have also been confirmed by other researchers. According to a report released by the Australian Institute in 2020, thousands of Twitter accounts have forwarded a lot of information about Covid-19 within 10 days. "It is China &lsquo to spread Covid-19 in a coordinated and organized manner; Biological and chemical weapons ’ Conspiracy theories, and these "network water forces" are all related to the United States.
"The United States is perfect in using various means to carry out information warfare and propaganda warfare." Voitolovski said that the United States regards Russia and China as "challenges" and "adversaries", and uses "national security" as an excuse to launch an information war and a propaganda war against the two countries, and the offensive has been continuously strengthened.
As a matter of fact, the targets of American network information warfare and propaganda warfare are not only Russian and China. On a global scale, there are countless cases in which the U.S. government used online rumors to trap other countries and incite the "color revolution."
The evidence released by the Cuban government in July 2021 shows that since mid-June of that year, some anti-Cuban forces in the United States, with the support of the American government, deliberately spread the lies of "the collapse of Cuba’s medical system under the COVID-19 epidemic" through social networks, using this as an excuse to incite military intervention in Cuba.
Washington post quoted a report from the network observation room of Stanford University in the United States as saying that in September 2020, social media Facebook and "photo wall" found that hundreds of accounts and homepages were used to spread false information to audiences in Venezuela, Bolivia, Mexico and other countries, fostering opposition forces supported by the United States in these countries and promoting regime change. These accounts and home pages are related to a public relations company headquartered in Washington.
Inaudible voice — — "Deep government" and "Wolf tactics"
The rise of social media provides a new environment and new means for the United States to manipulate public opinion on a large scale. For the purpose of deception, the US government spreads a lot of false information in cyberspace. The specific operation method of this so-called "influence action" and the hidden network behind it were jointly released in August this year by the network observation room of Stanford University and Grafica Research Company, a social network analysis institution. Report "inaudible voice — — In the evaluation of pro-Western covert influence action in the past five years, it was unveiled.
The picture shows "inaudible voice — — The cover of the report on the assessment of the hidden influence of pro-Western countries in the past five years.
Based on the analysis of more than 200 fake accounts on social media such as Twitter, Facebook and "photo wall", the researchers found a "network of accounts that are interrelated among multiple social media platforms and use deceptive strategies to promote pro-Western narratives in the Middle East and Central Asia". These accounts participated in "a series of secret propaganda offensives that lasted for nearly five years" and "continued to advance the narrative that is beneficial to the interests of the United States and its allies and opposed to Russia, China and Iran".
By analyzing the data provided by various social media platforms, the researchers concluded that some of these accounts were obviously related to the "Cross-regional Network Initiative" of the US Department of Defense. The "Cross-regional Network Initiative" was initiated by the US Special Operations Command in 2008. It used a series of websites to influence public opinion and provide "information support" for US military operations.
These accounts are divided into different groups according to the countries and regions where the target audience is located. In order to expand the effect of public opinion manipulation, each group account often "acts in concert" and even posts automatically at certain intervals. Some accounts also try to cover up this kind of collaborative action, for example, when using the same picture, they make a few changes to the picture description and title, and "insert" some content about culture and natural beauty between the collaborative posts to "cover up politically motivated activities".
The customary rumors of these accounts include: using photos generated by theft, tampering or artificial intelligence as avatars; Issue highly consistent content at the same time with false identities such as "independent media" and "local residents"; Stir up rumors by adding labels and forwarding petitions. In order to concoct "hot topics", these accounts are highly active and concentrated in posting in some cases. The most typical case is that before and after the escalation of the Ukrainian crisis, Central Asian groups posted nearly 200 posts a day, exaggerating Russia’s so-called "threat" to Central Asian countries.
According to the report, some false accounts on social media are associated with the US military. The picture shows a screenshot of the report.
These accounts often forward news from pro-Western media, American embassies and consulates abroad, the US military, etc., and sometimes deliberately package the forwarded fake news as original, or link with other related accounts and websites.
This reminds people of the previous revelations of julian assange, the founder of Wikileaks, and edward snowden, the revealer of Prism Gate. According to the documents they disclosed, a "deep government" composed of the US Central Intelligence Agency and the State Council plays a "command center" role in the manipulation of public opinion, which is responsible for setting the target of public opinion attack and setting the topic, and then the US government, western media, politicians, think tanks and so on quickly follow up the hype and stage "wolf tactics". Obviously, fake social media accounts are also part of this "wolf pack".
"Weapons of the New Cold War" — — Demonize countries that oppose American hegemonism
As the article on the website of Monthly Review said, there is increasing evidence that the United States and other western countries have turned social media platforms into "weapons of the new cold war".
Pentagon, USA. Xinhua News Agency reporter Liu Jie photo
In order to control these platforms, the United States will do whatever it takes.
Western scholars have found that the American government has long used personnel infiltration to control the network public opinion field. Major social media companies in the United States employ people with intelligence or military backgrounds all the year round. These people are often placed in important positions such as data analysis, network security, content review, etc., which directly affects the way of social media thinking and problem solving, and then affects the information flow for billions of netizens around the world.
Allen mcleod, a member of the Media Research Group of the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom, wrote that there are "ex-CIA agents everywhere" in the Trust and Security Department of Google, and people who have worked in the CIA for more than 10 years are everywhere. Similar phenomena exist in Facebook’s parent company "Yuan" Company, Twitter and Youtu.
Mcleod pointed out that one of the important tasks of the CIA is to spread lies to the public under the pretext of "American national security". Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a former director of the CIA, "disclosed" in a speech in 2019: "We lie, we cheat and we steal. We have a whole set of training courses on these! " Nowadays, people who have worked in the CIA for a long time decide the information disseminated by social media. This is the "problem".
MintPress, a left-wing news website in the United States, quoted Elizabeth Murray, who had worked in American intelligence agencies for 27 years, as saying that there is a "revolving door" phenomenon between American intelligence agencies and social media companies, that is, intelligence agency personnel go to social media platforms for a period of time and then return to work in intelligence agencies. Mcleod believes that this means a national security risk for other countries, especially "countries that pursue a foreign policy independent of the United States". (Participating in reporters: Gao Jie, Bao Xuelin, Chen Dan, Han Bing, Gao Wencheng, Meng Jing, Huang He)
关于作者