Hacker News Reader

Comment by bladegash | Hacker News Reader

A straight forward argument that comes to my mind is TikTok being used in the manner Cambridge Analytica used Facebook. Except in this case, it is being done by a State sponsored entity with vast resources (monetarily and people-wise). Further, instead of it being used to help a candidate become elected, it's purpose would be to influence foreign opinions of China/the PRC.

That doesn't sound implausible to me.

View on HN

Other countries shold summarily ban Twitter and Facebook, out of fear of possible local elections influence by US government

I don’t think the point I made disagrees with what you’re suggesting. The US can absolutely use social media for information operations as well.

They should, actually.

If foreign speech is a threat to a free country's national security, then I think that the free speech experiment has ran its course, and its time to pack it up. /snark

Just imagine what would happen if the foreigners say the wrong things at us. How is our freedom so brittle that it cannot handle speech?

This whole avenue of argument sounds an awful lot like one that authoritarian regimes use to block Google, Facebook, the NYT, etc.

I think you are missing the point. There are many many goals that support the PRC’s strategic goals/interests other than persuading people to be pro-China. If you ever get a chance, look up some of the publicly available US military doctrine on information operations and what the possible uses of it are.

Here’s one to start with: https://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/Doctrine/pubs/jp3_1...

My wife is on TikTok for at least an hour a night if not more - I've never once seen or heard anything pro-china or anything that would otherwise influence her opinion about China. Not once. It's all content from US social media whores.

You are focused on outputs what about inputs?

What inputs? You mean the fact that she follows cute dog videos? I'm sure China is going to use that against her somehow /s

Yes her data, meta data about your network, devices etc. Just because you arent a target based on that data, doesnt mean someone isnt.

Her "data" is mostly liking cute dog videos. China can have that data for all I care. Meta data about my network, devices? If China really wants to know that I'm on Spectrum internet, and have a few other devices connected, sure, go ahead. I monitor my network and haven't seen any suspicious traffic that would worry me.

They dont want your data, but your data being worthless isnt an argument. You arent the target.

Content doesn’t need to be overtly “pro China” to influence individuals towards goals ultimately desirable by the PRC. Information operations can have a variety of goals are a designed to be unnoticeable, unless otherwise intended to be visible (e.g., making it apparent to GRU cyber actors that we had access to their systems during the mid-term elections).

Edit: Here’s a link to the mid-terms operation by US Cyber Com: https://sofrep.com/news/cyber-warfare-us-cyber-command-strik...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com