According to a new investigative report Reutersthe Pentagon used social media bots to conduct a year-long vaccine disinformation campaign — all part of an anti-China political game built on problematic COVID-19 disinformation.
The campaigns are part of a larger, locally targeted anti-vaccine campaign globally that seeks to discredit the effectiveness of China’s Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine among Filipino internet users where it has been deployed. The message included the phrase #Chinaangvirus, reportedly a Tagalog slang meaning “China is the virus.”
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Reuters The campaign is said to be aimed at “undermining China’s growing influence in the Philippines” now that vaccines and other public health interventions are readily available, the report said. These efforts “are designed to raise doubts about the safety and effectiveness of such assistance.” The strategy, approved by a secret order signed by then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper, elevated China and Russia to “active combat” priority status and allowed for psychological warfare without State Department approval.
Between spring 2020 and mid-2021, just before a period of record deaths in the country, at least 300 fake accounts pretending to be Filipinos were active on X/Twitter — which the platform deleted after being questioned about their existence All accounts. Reuters.
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“We are not looking at this from a public health perspective. We are thinking about how to drag China into the quagmire,” a senior military officer told the publication on condition of anonymity.
A broader network of bots and fake accounts created by the U.S. military reaches local audiences in Central Asia and the Middle East, spreading misinformation, such as that vaccines are not halal under Islamic law. Some accounts have tens of thousands of followers.
There are also accounts on Facebook and Instagram spreading such claims, former military officials in the Trump and Biden administrations told the publication. Meta reportedly warned the Pentagon that the accounts would be removed for violating platform policies, but they remain.
In 2021, the National Security Council ordered a halt to the campaign in favor of full support for the vaccine campaign.
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social media politics
