China's Advancing Efforts to Influence the U.S. Election Raise Alarms | Hacker News Reader

China's Advancing Efforts to Influence the U.S. Election Raise Alarms

nytimes.com

30 points2OEH8eoCRo074 comments

The efforts of foreign governments to misinform and deceive the American public are tiny compared to the domestic efforts.

You understand foreign interests moulding American policy are inherently worse than domestic ones, yes? There's a reason why we ban foreign donations to political candidates and why we require lobbyists of foreign interests to register.

I think foreign and domestic are fuzzier than people imagine. Lots of companies are nominally American, but when it comes time to pay taxes, all of a sudden a lot of their revenue is really happening in another country.

I also don't think candidates should accept money from Apple's corporate PAC either if that's your question.

That's why Halliburton is based in Dubai, to escape the claws of the taxman. VP (and former Halliburton CEO) Dick Cheney awarded them those Iraq contracts fair and square!

Trans-national corporations like Facebook are not meaningfully domestic.

Don't forget the old generation: Halliburton, Bechtel, Raytheon etc.

This is a point that cannot possibly be emphasized enough.

You'll say that even after the USG breaks one up.

> You understand foreign interests moulding American policy are inherently worse than domestic ones, yes?

Inherently worse? Domestic voices are what shattered American unions (and thereby the middle class), funding for schools and the export of millions of American jobs offshore for the benefit of the shareholder.

What could a foreign interest even say to screw up American politics further? Push more AI image memes of Jesus guiding Trump's hand? Show Biden with snake eyes and a Pride flag?

Once again, a pro-Chinese interest comment tops the China-related Hacker News thread. You guys are really good at your jobs. (Note: I'm not implying that the above post or poster is suspicious, only that is the fact that these pro-China hot takes regularly get up voted to the top (e.g. the recent TikTok threads.)

That particular poster frequently gets first post. They just have a lot of time on their hands.

What was pro-China about the comment you responded to exactly? It was anti-multinational-corporation, for sure. But it literally put China in the same category as those corporations.

I’m not that your post is suspicious; I’m saying outright that you are either a CIA/corporate spook or being manipulated by them. Any criticism of the companies that have dismantled American unions, healthcare, education, childcare, elder care, and more, for the sake of shareholder profits, seems to be unjustifiably labeled “pro-China” or “terrorist” or some other label by some anonymous person who hasn’t really contributed anything to the community otherwise.

You need to pretend you are playing Civ III.

The implied reason is that it is bad for "player A" to not be able to fool their subjects, while it is good for "player B" that "player A" can't.

Thus pro- or anti- A or B.

No universiality or like philosophic morality reasoning at all involved. Just silly reductionism.

> The implied reason is that it is bad for "player A" to not be able to fool their subjects, while it is good for "player B" that "player A" can't.

That was essentially the response after the most impactful example of Russian interference: when Russian hackers leaked DNC emails proving collusion against Sanders by the DNC and the Clinton campaign. The Democrats deflected by blaming Russia for exposing the truth. Many people argued that it was unfair that only DNC emails were leaked.

We could fairly reduce the DNC's defense to: it is bad for "player A" (the DNC) to not be able to fool their subjects, while it is good for "player B" (Trump and Russia) that "player A" can't.

The DNC even doubled down by suing Trump and others, as well as Russia, over the leaks. The lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice because

> The judge said the other defendants [Trump, Wikileaks, and others] "did not participate in any wrongdoing in obtaining the materials in the first place" and were therefore within the law in publishing the information. He also said that the DNC's argument was "entirely divorced from the facts"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_National_Commi...

> What was pro-China about the comment you responded to exactly?

The subject article advances the view that China is attempting to influence the US election. The comment I responded to downplays and undermines this sentiment (i.e. "don't worry about China. Look at this other issue.") If I were a state actor, this would be a prime signal to amplify. It's a real opinion, it's not easy to refute, it could legitimately be seen as an up voted comment, and it conveniently serves the state's interests. Hacker News has no shortage of contrarian views, which I like. This particular type of contrarian hot take is just one that I've noticed to fit a pattern that I've seen in other threads with topics critical to China.

"Everyone who disagrees with me is a Russian Bot"

Freedom of Speech means foreign propaganda should be as welcome as domestic propaganda. Tolerated by government, and taken no more seriously by the public than any other advertising (Red bull will not give you wings, for example).

I'm consistently contrarian and ornery about how much of the media is propaganda from whichever source. "They're bad because they're propaganda" from an outlet that assured us vaccines and lock-downs would work; Hunter's laptop was "Russian disinformation", That Snowden is a traitor and the Russians also stole an election from Hillary ... its the pot calling the kettle black.

I neither said I agreed or disagreed with your post, and I absolutely agree that you ought to be able to post it. Normally I wouldn't bother calling out how I think the signal's being exploited, but it's actually the exact on-topic conversation for this thread. Maybe you're fine with it, but even if you ignore the political incentives, it still degrades the quality of discussion for sites subject to it. I think many people put it into a similar class as spam. Very few defend its protection. Sites like FB, X, and HN have that reason alone to address it when they're being exploited this way.

> Once again, a pro-Chinese interest comment tops the China-related Hacker News thread.

I'm not so sure about that. The comment is (probably deliberately) vague, and and I could totally see it as an example of the tendency to bend everything into a discussion about domestic politics.

It could be read as a left-wing anti-media statement (e.g. the Fox News "misinform[s] and deceive[s]" to support Republicans), a right-wing anti-media statement (e.g. the MSM "misinform[s] and deceive[s]" to support liberals), or a more exhausted centrist one about all the political ads.

How are you able to make such a claim when foreign influence is rarely reported and takes the form of social media campaigns?

Cite a source please.

Targeting a particular govt or organization won't be fruitful. Simply because publishing fake news is profitable. Even if no state is sponsoring it, people will still publish it because publishing crazy wild theories attract eyeballs and make money.

I'm more surprised that countries don't try to meddle in the US election. Despite the rise of challengers, the USA remains the world's pre-eminent power and continues to have an outsized voice in international institutions. As such it is the closest thing to a world government.

Why wouldn't other countries try to influence the course of the world government?

Election meddling is not needed considering the extent of legalized bribery in Congress which for PC reasons is called "lobbying".

You don't need the President if you have Senators and Congresspersons that have mastered the art of not passing any bills and falling asleep on CSPAN.

Influencing a presidential pick rarely pays off unless they are a "disruptor" who promises to restructure the civil service and diplomatic offices. Those are the groups that foreign nations deal with. They want influence over those because they are the intermediaries that can change a President's mind on an issue.

They do. All the time. It seems to only be news when they support Trump or are against the Democratic presidential candidate, though.

https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2024/01/foreign-interferenc...

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/trecms/pdf/AD1213704.pdf looks to be an excellent review of the subject, though I've only now discovered it and therefore haven't read it in detail yet.

E.g. "Russia has been trying to influence elections worldwide since the 17th century (Shimer, 2020). Election interference is also a goal of many Russian military operations. Many of these disinformation campaigns aim to sow discord among the population and attempt to get elected the candidate that best suits Russia’s interests."

It seems quite clear to me that every nation participates in misinformation campaigns to affect other nations' elections in was beneficial to the actor.

They do this because there’s no way to ever compete in an actual battlefield with our military, we’re too far ahead. But in the arena of elections and social media, a free society like ours where we can’t just stop the flow of information (like China), is terribly vulnerable.

So they’re exploiting it.

Don’t know what the solution is. Apart from kneecapping social media companies.

> They do this because there’s no way to ever compete in an actual battlefield with our military, we’re too far ahead.

Don't get cocky. As an American, I think there's reasonably large chance that the US military is a paper tiger (at least in relation to China), because we lack the industrial base and production capacity to sustain a fight. China is the workshop of the world now, not the US, and that means that things could be really bleak once the stockpiles of missiles, etc. are exhausted.

US policy vis-a-vis Ukraine has pushed Russia into a closer relationship with China, and that could also mitigate some of China's weaknesses (e.g. Russia going to sell them oil, not embargo them, if there's a hot war with the US).

It's not about being cocky. I'm not trying to play some silly "My superhero is stronger than your superhero" debate. It's about aligned incentives and raw experience.

While it is correct that when it comes to an actual Navy, we have numbers to prove that China is building ships way way faster, etc, to say that the US military is a paper tiger is simply not true, not in the way Russia's military was.

That's simply because (at the most cynical level) our defense industrial complex being intertwined with the economy has kept cycles of reinventing things (even if for profit-motive reasons, I said cynical). Don't get me wrong, there ARE countless stories about old equipment and such (and bloat like with the F-35), but also remember that the US has been fighting various wars pretty much continuously. That means getting to test out weapons and having troops that have real battle experience. Plus a modern war would involve whole virtual theaters (cyber targeting of infrastructure, etc) than "I have more ships than you" or "I have more tanks than you" – those all have the potential to level parts of the playing field.

Also the US has decades of experience building technologies like Stealth weapons (and using them in the battlefield in various wars and skirmishes) whereas China has been building these weapons largely by stealing US IP but hasn't really tested them out in real battle.

Ultimately we all have to hope that our shared economic co-dependence keeps things generally in check like they have for the past few decades.

> That's simply because (at the most cynical level) our defense industrial complex being intertwined with the economy has kept cycles of reinventing things (even if for profit-motive reasons, I said cynical).

It's not like China is standing still, either. Their military technology is getting more advanced, and not being at the cutting edge means it's much easier for them to catch up.

> but also remember that the US has been fighting various wars pretty much continuously. That means getting to test out weapons and having troops that have real battle experience....

> Also the US has decades of experience building technologies like Stealth weapons (and using them in the battlefield in various wars and skirmishes) whereas China has been building these weapons largely by stealing US IP but hasn't really tested them out in real battle.

The US hasn't really been testing those technologies in battle either, despite all its wars. Those were fought against weak, unsophisticated adversaries like Iraq and the Taliban. Ukraine is, just now, giving it a little taste against a peer/near-peer adversary (Russia), but it's not like those lessons will be all one-way.

> Plus a modern war would involve whole virtual theaters (cyber targeting of infrastructure, etc) than "I have more ships than you" or "I have more tanks than you" – those all have the potential to level parts of the playing field.

My understanding is China might have better capabilities in the "virtual theaters" area in both skill and quantity. I vaguely recall hearing that Chinese hackers were dominating a lot of hacking competitions until their government withdrew them several years ago for security reasons. I think it's also quite possible that Chinese hackers maybe more willing to fight for the government than US hackers (given stereotypes). I recall reading years ago the US weapons development suffers because US scientists tend to boycott for moral reasons, forcing it to lean too heavily on engineers, while Chinese scientists have no such qualms.

This is an underestimated point. The US navy grew from 350 ships in the 1930s to almost 7,000 by 1945. The army was down to 200,000 troops right before the war.

It’s not clear whether China’s industrial capacity is as great as the US was then. But the relatively small size of the Chinese military now isn’t necessarily indicative of much.

>It’s not clear whether China’s industrial capacity is as great as the US was then

PRC shipbuilding passed 40 million deadweight tons a couple years ago, that's comparable to peak 1944 US production during WW2, but sustained during peacetime and still growing.

But IMO, industrial capacity worth tracking is the harder count highend ordnances that can be stockpiled enmass. CCTV7 showed off automated factories that produce 1000 cruise missle components a day. A few weeks of production = enough theatre cruise missiles to satuate entire US+co hardware in region. Ultimately, peer war boils down to making things go boom and and magazine depth at scale.

> CCTV7 showed off automated factories that produce 1000 cruise missle components a day.

Do you have a link for that which is not this terrible Youtube video with a text-to-speech narration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoObgUTsZ0M.

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1634y1g7KR/?from=search

Not better quality, but full documentary "forging flying swords" in mandarin about history of PLA missile development. Factory is the the final segment.

Before the social media mega companies we had all sorts of weird conspiracy theory nuts, but it was a lot easier to be skeptical when you only hear about it from the one guy who always has those nutty ideas (we all have that one uncle). But his ramblings can masquerade as credible when they are backed by larger groups people regurgitating the same talking points in unison on social media, filled with ai images and any other tool they can use to appear more credible.

IMO we need to go back to email lists. No more algorithmic feeds controlled by mega companies… for the same reason that our government in the USA suffered as a result of senators no longer moving their whole families to Washington during their term - those of us that are consuming content from feed algorithms are only seeing what triggers them to want to scroll more, not a balanced assortment of info from everyone.

The train has left the station. There's no going back to email lists. What would be better is to build a product that's better than the current ones or force change.

I'm honestly suprised Youtube doesn't get dragged in the media with what they put in that sidebar. They are setting up a generation of adolescents with a bunch of extreme, and rather adult, content that is real-life or masquerades as real.

> The train has left the station. There's no going back to email lists.

Not if it's left up to market forces, but regulation could do it.

> What would be better is to build a product that's better than the current ones or force change.

IMHO, that's a fantasy.

China supports your preferred candidate!

No! China supports your preferred candidate!

Repeat forever and ever.

The net effect of this will be small, but the money quote is literally in the first line (emphasis mine)

> Covert Chinese accounts are masquerading online as American supporters of former President Donald J. Trump, promoting conspiracy theories, stoking domestic divisions and *attacking President Biden* ahead of the election in November, according to researchers and government officials.

One must wonder why almost all foreign interests opposed to the United States maintaining our superpower status - the Russians, the PRC - are opposed to a particular candidate (President Joe Biden). The same thing happened in 2016 too, against a particular candidate (Hillary Clinton) by the Russians.

As a former President said, "I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made."

They're not. Your perception is based on selection bias.

https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ICA-dec...

It may be more informative to wonder why misinformation in support of one candidate is so over-represented in the discourse.

It may be related to why the same outlets that share this perspective were participating in disinformation with the Democrat-led federal government to suppress negative news about the Democratic candidate in the 2020 election. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controvers...

As the wikipedia article says, the Hunter Biden laptop story was an obvious October surprise that ended up proving nothing about Joe Biden. There sure was disinfo being peddled during that saga, but not from the Democrats.

"There sure was disinfo being peddled during that saga, but not from the Democrats."

Good one. Please pull my other leg.

Update: if it's sincerely not clear why the precious comment about "not from the Democrats" was a farce, read the "Reactions" section. The efforts to quash the Post story and characterize it as misinformation are what I'm talking about.

Given the extremely sketchy provenance of the story’s data, the timing of the story’s publishing, the fact it was published by a tabloid and that even the reporters who wrote it questioned its validity, and that two subsequent investigations found no evidence of corruption by Joe Biden, I would say the media was right to treat the Post story as misinformation.

Looking at new stories with skepticism is always warranted. As you point out, the original sources provided just that.

Immediately quashing them as "misinformation" is not legitimate in a free society.

That the report was true makes calling it "misinformation" exceedingly naive, at best.

> That the report was true …

And now you’re pulling my leg

> One must wonder why almost all foreign interests opposed to the United States maintaining our superpower status - the Russians, the PRC - are opposed to a particular candidate (President Joe Biden). The same thing happened in 2016 too, against a particular candidate (Hillary Clinton) by the Russians

Because 95% of journalists oppose that candidate, and “our enemies want $CANDIDATE to win” is a comforting and easy to promote notion.

> Because 95% of journalists oppose that candidate

Well, as do like, 100% of the high-level bureaucrats that served said candidate in their previous presidency.

So, given that little tidbit, are those journalists actually unreasonable? And as a followup: if their position is mostly supported by facts, isn't "comforting and easy to promote" a secondary concern?

Or maybe it's journalists quoting the candidate: https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1GG03P/

> "He's now president for life, president for life. And he's great," Trump said, according to audio of excerpts of Trump's remarks at a closed-door fundraiser in Florida aired by CNN. "And look, he was able to do that. I think it's great. Maybe we'll have to give that a shot someday," Trump said to cheers and applause from supporters.

> It is not clear if Trump, 71, was making the comment about extending presidential service in jest. The White House did not respond to a request for comment late Saturday.

> U.S. Representative Ro Khanna, a Democrat, said on Twitter that "whether this was a joke or not, talking about being President for life like Xi Jinping is the most unAmerican sentiment expressed by an American President. George Washington would roll over in his grave."

That’s a joke. Trump’s superpower is not speaking like a company-wide HR email. And even if taken literally, that doesn’t suggest anything about doing anything favorable for China. Trump was the one who started the recent anti-China trend in American politics, which Biden has run with: https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-36185012

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_tr... (“An economic conflict between China and the United States has been ongoing since January 2018, when U.S. President Donald Trump began setting tariffs and other trade barriers on China with the goal of forcing it to make changes to what the U.S. says are longstanding unfair trade practices and intellectual property theft.[1]”)

Yeah, it's all a joke until it's not (see: the attempted autogolpe in 2021).

It's obvious that the current approach is more threatening to the PRC than the old one...perhaps that's why the PRC wants to bring him back? Seems like his recent flip-flop on TikTok fits into the equation too.

It looks to me that our enemies actually want Trump to win.

I wonder why that is. (I don't actually wonder this).

Didn't Putin explicitly say he preferred Biden in a recent interview?[0][1]

[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/putin-says-biden-better-r...

[1] https://apnews.com/article/russia-putin-biden-trump-fb2fece0...

You actually take this at face value?

Indeed he did.

I care more about actions than words in this respect though (given Biden pushes for massive lethal aid to kill Russian invaders until recent House obstruction).

I expect two dominant themes to develop during this iteration of "The most important election of our lives"

1) The importance of government truth czars and their adjacent fact-checkers

2) Digital ID as a prerequisite to publishing online, to protect the public from "dangerous misinformation"

All that is needed to advance these already in play promotions is a disinformation Pearl Harbor event. Not to say that "disinformation" isn't emerging organically from all sides or that deceptive reporting is something new. Incentives are aligned to promote it as something novel which requires regulatory action.

We already saw the warning shot in the NH primaries...

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4451721-new-hampshire-...

I'm more keen on the Bluesky idea for Stackable Moderation: https://bsky.social/about/blog/03-12-2024-stackable-moderati...

Anyone can run one, users can pick those they follow, let market forces go to work.

I was talking with a friend about putting the equivalent of a yubikey in the photo ids we already get. Mostly out of complaints in dealing with gov't systems and trying to remove pain there, but could also be used as the "blue check" rather than a gatekeeping device. I would say the country of origin ought to be attached to "verified posters"

It's been going on for the past year. See the equivalent "AI POTUS promises free Social Security money" ads targeted to vulnerable and elderly populations:

https://www.newsweek.com/tik-tok-scam-social-security-biden-...

https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/fake-biden-audio-used-vid...

I block ads, disable multimedia playback in the browser, and am probably no one's target demographic, so I would never have known about it if I didn't hear it blasting on two elderly people's smartphones at the doctor recently.

If that wasn't concerning enough, it set off a discussion about them. They couldn't tell it was fake.

A truth czar would be hillarious. The Emperor of Truth and Good Taste.

The whole concept of "disinformation" is toxic.

One can't imply people are lying when they are wrong, becouse you are also wrong, and thus lying.

The whole debate about everything is undermined by this mindset.

Maybe one could create a department to maintain veracity in the public sphere.

Some sort of ministry of truth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation_Governance_Boar...

https://nypost.com/2022/04/29/biden-disinfo-czar-nina-jankow...

I am behind the times...

"All that is needed to advance these already in play promotions is a disinformation Pearl Harbor event."

That was the 2016 US presidential election, pretty clearly.

So the 2024 election will either be stolen one way, or it will be stolen another way?

So last time it was Russia, this time it's China?

Why not both?

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