CIA launched covert influence operation against China | Hacker News Reader

CIA launched covert influence operation against China

reuters.com

24 pointsokasaki17 comments

I'm vaguely mad at the hypocrisy here. We (Americans) complain that other nations try to influence our elections: [0]. But simultaneously, we're trying to influence their elections / political process!

[0]: https://www.semafor.com/article/03/06/2024/us-braces-for-for...

Yes, very much so.

Basically, it's not Americans, even, but a vanishingly small subset of Americans who want things _their_ way. People in the "beltway" as they say.

Even in other countries. We complain about Russia, Iran or China interfering not only in US elections but we complain when they interfere with our interference in other countries, like Ukraine, Burma or Lebanon, etc. It's not like they are good, but we could be honest about it.

As if we have more of a right to interfere than they do.

We fund opposition groups and overthrow entire governments for our benefit. It's no secret.

Kind of like how we lament China banning Facebook and X (fka Twitter) and talk about how shameful it is to suppress free speech in the PRC but then simultaneously want to ban TikTok in the US.

There are various US newspapers that don't show any content in the EU because they don't want to comply with EU privacy laws. These companies are free to comply with the laws and can then show their content. Same with Facebook in China.

Imagine a German bar franchise trying to open bars in the US. They cannot sell beer to 16 year olds even though that's how they operate in Germany and that's what they firmly believe in. They'll have to follow US laws and not sell to anyone younger than 21. Now the German bar franchise can say "That's against what we believe freedom to be" and not open shop there but the US is not specifically banning that company from operating in the US.

> Imagine a German bar franchise trying to open bars in the US. They cannot sell beer to 16 year olds even though that's how they operate in Germany and that's what they firmly believe in. They'll have to follow US laws and not sell to anyone younger than 21. Now the German bar franchise can say "That's against what we believe freedom to be" and not open shop there but the US is not specifically banning that company from operating in the US.

I don't think that your analogy is comparable to the prospective US TikTok ban (ban with the alternative option of a forced sale). In the case of TikTok, the US law will be "if you want to do business with people in the US, don't let a major stakeholder of your company be in a foreign adversary country". That might sound reasonable in some contexts (e.g. computer hardware), but a one-size-fits-all rule that makes a broad assumption of "controlled by foreign adversary = national security threat" (resembles a Great Firewall of China and) overlooks rights that US citizens have to voluntarily use certain services from other countries (especially social media services because of the First Amendment).

That's just realpolitik. The fact of the matter is that we have recognized that a substantial part of a nations war capability comes from their unity and willingness to prosecute a war. Naturally with the Advent of the Internet and mass communication the weapons to begin to wage war on a populations resolve and unity without kinetic action came into being and are now a battlefront.

The TL;DR is that hearts and minds are the new battlefield and technology is the weapons.

Sure. And one thing we could say is, "realistically, nations are going to do this. It's cheap and easy and has a lot of upside if they succeed. So we tolerate it."

It's like how the international community accepts that the CIA, FSB, MI6, etc, exist -- nobody serious is really objecting to foreign spying in principle.

But in that case -- if we were being consistent -- we might find (for example) Russian agents trying to swing the US election, and we would have to shrug: "ah well, everybody does it." And I doubt that's the attitude that our leaders would take!

IMO it doesn't make sense to be angry at the other country that's trying to influence your country's politics, since everyone does that, but it makes sense to be angry at (and electorally punish) the politicians who become the tools which the other country uses to influence politics.

I think there are a lot of grey areas there. Like, suppose Candidate X is running for president. They have a lot of real voter support, but some of their advertising was allegedly funded by Russian money. How discredited are they, on a scale from 1 to 10? What if the other candidate was allegedly funded by Chinese money? There's no rule that says only one foreign government at a time can interfere...

"Covert propaganda campaigns were common during the Cold War, when the CIA planted 80 to 90 articles a day in an effort to undermine the Soviet Union, Johnson said."

So like today's main stream media trying to divide the US? :)

The difference is no one needs to be covert about it. Just take a monolithic corporation and let them blast it 24/7.

Original title:

>Exclusive: Trump launched CIA covert influence operation against China

Putting my conspiratorial hat on, this leak seems to be designed to bolster Trump’s tough-on-China image. They know that the current administration can’t comment so nobody knows how it is going and if this is a bi-partisan activity.

At this point, it's almost impossible to tell propaganda from news. Maybe this is related to forcing the divestiture of tiktok, maybe it's something else.

News is something someone doesn't want you to know.

Everything else is propaganda or advertising.

almost certainly an attempt to get clicks since China and foreign influence is trending in the news

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