April fools
The global information war
THE CHICOMS and Russians don’t want to let a good crisis go to waste, either. Both Moscow and Beijing are using the coronavirus crisis to sow division and discomfort in the United States. The East Coast papers say the two frenemies hope to make America look incompetent, even guilty, during the covid-19 pandemic. That, according to the various intelligence corps and several diplomats.
Not only Facebook users can spread misinformation with a click. Apparently mainland China has learned a few tricks from the Russians. China’s communist government, and the (only officially) former communist running Russia, would deny it. But the spooks in our government aren’t easily fooled.
According to The New York Times: “Kremlin-aligned websites aimed at Western audiences have trafficked in conspiracy theories to spread fear in Europe and political division in the United States, the officials said, noting that Russia’s diplomats and state-run news media have arguably been more restrained.
“China has been more overtly aggressive. It has used a network of government-linked social media accounts to spread discredited, and sometimes contradictory, theories. And China has adopted Russia’s playbook for more covert operations, mimicking Kremlin disinformation campaigns and even using and amplifying some of the same conspiracy sites.”
The best defense is a good offense. So as criticism rises in both countries about the authoritarian governments’ response to the virus—the ChiComs suppressed information, the Russians say they don’t have much of a problem—both have gone on the attack. Fill the state-run media with discredited theories and only approved stories, and any criticism can be squeezed out.
So is this more than just mischief? Darn tootin’, it is. There might be a little what’s-bad-for-my-enemy-is-good-forme. With a little schadenfreude mixed in. But the Russian and Chinese governments both suffer from inferiority complexes. And for good reason. They are inferior. And if the public turns on those governments, well, not just Vladimir Putin learned lessons from 1991.
Both governments like to find Western sources behind all their problems, and both have state-run media to make that case. In every situation. Beijing still blames America for the Korean War. The KGB blamed the U.S. Army for HIV/AIDS.
The Chinese came up with the conspiracy that the U.S. Army dropped covid-19 into Wuhan province. But the Russians have taken that theory to another level. Apparently the United States and NATO have biological labs all around China (surprise!) and the bug escaped. A recent headline in Russia: “Everyone to struggle with American bacteriological aggression.”
Why the United States would unleash this on the world, without having some protections for its own people, isn’t discussed.
The disinformation campaign is important to both Russia and Red China. Both hope to weaken Western countries, and especially their alliances with each other. Word in Russia is that the covid-19 virus will be to the European Union what Chernobyl was to the old and unlamented U.S.S.R. And that would splinter a strong EU, and check on Russia, into more manageable countries. More manageable for the Kremlin.
As for China, all this, at the very least, can help sow doubt about where the virus originated, and why The Party was secretive about the thing in the beginning.
In this wired, wired world, not even authoritarian regimes (outside North Korea) have much success cutting off information. Which may be why Tsar Vlad and Big Brother Xi wish to flood the news with misinformation.
And even though they might not be getting good at it, necessarily, they do know practice makes perfect.