China Amplifies Covert AI Campaigns to Deeply Infiltrate Democracies: Analysts
Udumbara
.
As Beijing expands its artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, it’s deploying the technology to erase domestic dissent entirely and wage large-scale covert influence operations against Western societies, experts warn.
OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, revealed in its Feb. 25 report that it banned an individual associated with Chinese law enforcement who exploited the flagship chatbot to support a series of clandestine campaigns targeting adversaries inside China and beyond.
Detailed in a case study titled “Covert IO: China’s ‘Cyber Special Operations,’” the report noted that the user leveraged the model to draft and refine periodic status updates on the campaign’s progress.
“The broad range of activities they described illustrates the scope and the scale of these operations, including the range of countries, issues and people they target,” it said.
Mixed Results
The report noted the impact of these tactics has been mixed, with some dissidents losing followers, reducing their activity or quitting entirely, while others targeted by the campaign remain active.Feng Chongyi, an associate professor in China studies at the University of Technology Sydney, is no stranger to such attacks.
“On X, we often encounter situations where a bunch of people suddenly launch personal attacks against you—people I don’t know at all, with no grievances between us,” Feng, who has been critical of Beijing and was detained for a week in China in 2017, told The Epoch Times.
.
Associate Professor Feng Chongyi at the University of Technology Sydney attending a protest against CCP Premier Li Qiang's official visit to Canberra, Australia, on June 17, 2024. The Epoch Times
.
“You can almost certainly conclude these are ‘internet navy,’ spreading fabricated content to discredit you. It’s one of their most common tricks.”
Feng warned that the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) information warfare abroad is a sweeping operation involving dedicated units and military forces, “an enormous system with vast numbers of personnel engaged in this war” that should not be underestimated.
“The CCP combines its surveillance technology with the full exploitation of AI against overseas Chinese communities and the Western world. That is the fundamental posture,” Feng said.
Chen Yonglin, a former Chinese diplomat, said China’s latest AI technology has one primary mission of bolstering the CCP’s political control, with a particular preference for fabricated sex scandals to attack and divide overseas dissidents.
“Against people like Sheng Xue, or Chinese dissidents active on Western social media platforms, they use AI to generate deepfake posts and disinformation campaigns,” Chen said.
“But because China’s AI databases are quite chaotic, people overseas are far better at detecting fakes than those inside China, so it only causes temporary confusion.”
Total Silence Within
The report also detailed how the Chinese regime combines physical and digital tactics to target dissidents on its own soil.In one case, the user described plainclothes officers placing hostile posters near the homes of a critic’s family members before photographing and circulating them online as if authentic.
Chen cautioned that dissidents inside China face far graver consequences than those abroad, with virtually no avenue of escape.
“Beijing is applying ‘unrestricted warfare’ against domestic dissidents. Combined with physical control, it silences dissent entirely,” Chen said.
“Because of China’s AI, brainwashed citizens inside the country cannot distinguish truth from fiction, leaving them sealed inside a world of state-manufactured lies.”
Covert AI Infiltration
Beijing’s AI-driven influence operations targeted foreign politicians as well, with the report revealing the user sought ChatGPT’s assistance in planning a coordinated influence campaign against Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.
However, the report said ChatGPT refused to assist in such planning, and while the activity illustrates apparent operational planning and implementation across the internet, it nevertheless does not “appear to have achieved much impact.”
Feng said anti-American and anti-Japanese sentiment gives Beijing a ready foundation for cyber operations targeting Japanese politics, with AI likely to make such influence campaigns far more covert and harder to detect.
“China’s cyber operations still look unsophisticated, but they will keep pushing with more indirect, plausible-seeming attacks targeting Western democracies, hoping to mislead more people,” Feng said.
Chen said while China’s overseas propaganda and democratic infiltration are nothing new, Beijing is now deploying AI to conduct large-scale digital transnational repression.
“The Chinese regime has studied Western democratic systems extensively, and they know where the vulnerabilities lie,” Chen said.
Stay Vigilant
Feng said while the CCP is waging a cold war against Western governments, members of the public should sharpen their critical thinking when consuming China-related information.“Beijing is weaponizing freedom of speech to undermine democratic values and drive a wedge between the U.S. and Europe, so citizens must stay vigilant,” Feng said.
.
An AI chip made by Tongfu Microelectronics is displayed at the World Semiconductor Congress in Nanjing, China, on July 19, 2023. AFP via Getty Images
.
Chen said people must avoid Chinese technology and AI tools, calling on Western democracies to accelerate development of their own AI to fully replace Chinese alternatives.
“China’s AI may lag far behind the West in quality, but its tainted databases allow the CCP to instantly generate mass volumes of fabricated posts to smear dissidents. The world must recognize the CCP for what it is: an enemy of civilized society,” said Chen.
.
