Chinese social media accounts are stoking political chaos ahead of 2024 election | Hacker News Reader

Chinese social media accounts are stoking political chaos ahead of 2024 election

businessinsider.com

42 pointseverybodyknows31 comments

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If China blocks western sites, why do western sites allow connections from Chinese IP addresses?

Might be nice for an international audience to hear our takes on any given topic?

Or to head off any "Americans all hate you" type xenophobia that leaders may want

Or to help bring about a global democracy that I want

Just for the good of all mankind?

Because we are less despotic than China?

And unfortunately I see nothing to suggest it’ll fail at that objective.

US politics look like an unmitigated shitshow even before the stirring from outsiders

Good for them. We need a counterbalance to the political chaos being stoked by white supremacists and the CIA. We live in a post-truth democracy, let the people decide whose lies to believe!

Now's the time when the best minds of HN need to get busy making bots that fill social media with RATIONAL DEBATE, moderate views, and links to valid news sources. Fight fire with fire!

GPT-4 is actually excellent at depolarizing the user, when asking normally polarizing questions.

If only there was money to be made on that, it would be a killer app.

> The report described several Chinese government-linked accounts — sometimes referred to as "Spamoflage" — pretending to be avid Republicans and fans of former President Donald Trump's reelection campaign, with some accusing Democratic President Joe Biden of being a "Satanist pedophile."

Huh? Seems absurd that China would want another term of the president that implemented a raft of import tariffs and has been expressly anti-China

After implementing import tariffs, a country should be using that advantage in order to build up its own manufacturing capabilities. The United States does not seem to be doing that particularly well. Maybe China believes that the US is so dysfunctional and so dependent on Chinese imports that tariffs would not make any difference.

The US and its western allies are actively vying to keep advanced chip fab technology out of China, and restricting GPUs that can be sold to them. At the same time there's heavy domestic investment in new US fabs of a scale not seen for decades.

US and western alies cant even get control over gas and oil refinery tech exports to Russia after 2 years of full scale war and 12 years of sanctions. And all kind of dual-use nearly military tech being imported to Russia through other contries such as UAE, Turkey, etc.

And China is much more resourceful and GPUs are not 100-ton refinery equipment or heavy machinery.

The ASML lithography machines are only built by ASML. They are insanely complex and would be damn hard to replicate. Especially when they can't just obtain one and pull it apart. Fab equipment is different in nature to drones and natural resources which are in abundant supply.

China's spun up their own GPU research and manufacturing to compete against NVIDIA. Not just in response to recent tariffs, but part of a long term strategy of having no dependencies on foreign nations.

It was a big deal when Huawei reentered the phone market in 2019 using Chinese chips after international sanctions.

Advanced fabs take at least a decade to spin up, and maturing a domestic fabrication capability takes decades. There's hardly a threat here.

China has been working on it for decades. China already has plenty of lower technology Fab operations, and have invested into ramping up the quality.

Just because China has not been competitive at the highest end of that chip fabrication does not mean that they have not been competitive at chip fabrication as a whole. Tons of semiconductors are manufactured in China. Not advanced gpus, no, but there is a decent chance that your microwave contains semiconductor chips built in China.

The GGP was specifically talking about GPUs and the advanced nodes

It seems China isn't worried about this anti-chinese policy. Quite scary.

perhaps the goal is to cause general distrust and chaos rather than back a particular candidate. Biden hasn't pulled back from the trade war either.

Reading a supporter describe Biden as a "Satanist pedophile" would much more likely (I think and hope) go against Trump as being unhinged.

> Biden hasn't pulled back from the trade war either.

Biden has been maintaining Trump's policies, but hasn't really continued his escalation, even reopening diplomatic channels and dialogue with China.

Trump's tariffs hurt the US more than they did China, and his belligerence and instability made China look stable and reasonable in comparison. Why wouldn't they want more of that?

> Trump's tariffs hurt the US more than they did China, and his belligerence and instability made China look stable and reasonable in comparison. Why wouldn't they want more of that?

Evidence, and not an opinion piece that only looks at US data but also includes effects on Chinese economy.

You certainly cannot make this claim from the data I've seen available to the public. So I think you're lying. Why lie?

Everything bad that happens in America is a plot by foreign enemies. It exonerates Americans from introspection I suppose.

The old "ostrich" / passive approach you advocate also prevents the recognition source of disruption. Indecisiveness and inaction to non-kintetic warfare by nation state actors and sponsors of internal "firebrands" isn't something to take lightly, "I suppose".

I put this article squarely in the "no way to know what's real" category. It would be naive in 2024 to assume that foreign powers do not attempt to influence outcomes and particularly that they would not attempt to do so through various online outlets. On the other hand, labeling one's political enemies as foreign disinformation seems like a cheap way to delegitimize the other side.

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