Reuters has uncovered a rather remarkable story of American disinformation during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. It starts in 2019, when the Trump administration decided to free the Pentagon from its normal tedious restrictions on psyops. In the case of Russia and China, it ruled, the military no longer needed approval from local diplomats before conducting an operation.
So it became the Wild West against China. In early 2020 China suggested the COVID virus might have actually originated in the US, possibly via a lab leak at Fort Detrick, and this apparently annoyed military planners so much that they created a COVID disinformation campaign of their own. In particular, they started a social media campaign against Chinese vaccines, much of it aimed at the Philippines. A typical Twitter post read, "Vaccine from China might be a rat killer. #ChinaIsTheVirus."
In Arab countries the Twitter posts suggested that Chinese vaccines were made with pork gelatin.
The State Department objected violently to these programs for an obvious reason: a campaign to increase suspicion of Chinese vaccines also increased suspicion of all vaccines—in countries we weren't at war with. Filipinos, it turns out, were fertile ground because they were already highly skeptical of vaccines, so who knows how many of them this disinformation campaign killed?
The timing of the operation is a little vague. The Reuters article says it continued from early 2020 through "spring" of 2021, but vaccines didn't even show up in the Philippines until March 2021. I gather that the disinformation campaign started before vaccines were available, but that's unclear.
So what put a stop to it? Two things: Facebook and Joe Biden. Facebook learned about the pig gelatin posts early on:
Facebook executives had first approached the Pentagon in the summer of 2020, warning the military that Facebook workers had easily identified the military’s phony accounts.... The Pentagon pledged to stop spreading COVID-related propaganda.... Nonetheless, the anti-vax campaign continued into 2021 as Biden took office.
Angered that military officials had ignored their warning, Facebook officials arranged a Zoom meeting with Biden’s new National Security Council shortly after the inauguration, Reuters learned. The discussion quickly became tense.
“It was terrible,” said a senior administration official describing the reaction after learning of the campaign’s pig-related posts. “I was shocked. The administration was pro-vaccine and our concern was this could affect vaccine hesitancy, especially in developing countries.”
By spring 2021, the National Security Council ordered the military to stop all anti-vaccine messaging. “We were told we needed to be pro-vaccine, pro all vaccines,” said a former senior military officer who helped oversee the program.
And that's not all. A Pentagon investigation in late 2021 uncovered the Philippines operation and more:
The probe also turned up other social and political messaging that was “many, many leagues away” from any acceptable military objective.
You may let your imagination run wild about what this was. Of course, the military also learned other lessons:
The Pentagon’s audit concluded that the military’s primary contractor handling the campaign, General Dynamics IT, had employed sloppy tradecraft, taking inadequate steps to hide the origin of the fake accounts, said a person with direct knowledge of the review. The review also found that military leaders didn’t maintain enough control over its psyop contractors, the person said.
If it weren't for those idiots, they would have gotten away with it. They'll do better next time.
I'm gobsmacked that Facebook took any action. Misinformation, racist, and fascist content is critical to their bottom line.
The people that work in FaceBook know, and if Facebook does nothing there is a good chance that it will leak, and will make Facbook look bad. If they actually do something, it is easier for them to tell their people "we dealt with it" and hopefully to prevent leaks.
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Facebook didn't, they just told the military they didn't hide their tracks.
That's some serious passing the buck.
What else was Facebook supposed to do? What are any of us civilians supposed to do if we discover that the US military is doing shady shit somewhere? You report to someone in charge and hope for the best. Facebook doesn’t have the ability to stop the military from doing whatever it wants, especially if someone like Trump is leading it who might use the entire US govt to exact revenge.
Close or mute accounts using falsified user data? Accounts sending obviously libelous, bigoted, or misleading information?
“many, many leagues away” from any acceptable military objective.
Whatever this was was almost certainly the brainstorm of some wingnut executives at the contractor who thought it would be a great gag to get the Deep State to pay for their insane horseshit.
Has anyone demanded the public's money back for their corruption and incompetence?
These days, it’s perfectly reasonable to think everything online is bullshit.
For example…
“Joe Biden is ready, willing and able to handle a second term as president, his wife insisted Friday — despite the 81-year-old chief executive freezing up during a Juneteenth celebration and wandering away from G7 leaders at a summit in Italy this week.”
Who knows? I’ll take my chances.
You're quoting the NY Post here? And expect credibility? Mwah-ha-ha!
Exactly. All propaganda nonsense all the time.
LOL! Certainly describes your posts here.
It’s a good thing no one reads my comments!
Biden staring off into space, walking aimlessly and mumbling at a barely detectable level is just *proof* how sharp he is for those of us playing 4-D chess.
There is a 50% Biden won't be the nominee in November and a 5% chance he will be President by November 2026.
I keep hoping they both stoke out. Though… Trump first.
President Harris is fine with me.
He only looks like he's "walking aimlessly" because the video is cropped dishonestly, hiding the paratrooper that he's walking toward. Good grief, the tweet with that video got a community note showing that very thing!
For example, one of the guys who continually touts misinformation here, quotes a misleading and biased news report.
Well now you’re being silly. I don’t spread lies. I just have a different opinion. You’re sadly in thrall to a religious fantasy which, I’ve got to say, is odd. Islamic believers want to throw you off a cliff and yet you seem oddly drawn to them. I don’t even…
Crissa: You only post misinformation.
Justin: You are wrong, here is more information! CHECKMATE!
lol, I for one appreciate stupid people. Well done.
Like yeah, prove me right?
Justin, what does your bigotry have to do with your lack of honesty?
Yep, including your sweeping statement.
To be fair, the initial Sinovac vaccine had an efficacy rate, 50.3%, barely over the WHO threshold of 50% [1]. And gelatin from pigs is used as a stabilizer in some vaccines [2].
The central problem here, though, is that the Pentagon ran amok and none of the controls meant to prevent a part of the gov't from doing stupid stuff, worked, or were otherwise broken. And Trump would do it again, but 100x worse, according to his own statements. After all, he keeps insisting that he'll pardon and protect any of his minions who commit violence against his foes.
1 - https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/13/asia/sinovac-covid-vaccine-efficacy-intl-hnk/index.html
2 - https://vaccineknowledge.ox.ac.uk/gelatine
Why is this not incitement?
And for every Republican championing these statements, why is that not conspiracy?
Incitement of who, to commit what crime?
Incitement of Trumpists to commit violence against his opponents.
Legally, there are three things that must be true for a statement to be considered incitement:
1) It must contain an explicit call to engage in a specific, illegal act;
2) That act must be imminent. There is a very short time frame involved for it to be imminent;
3) It must be reasonably foreseen that the statement will produce the illegal act.
Trump knows very well how to stay just on the legal side of this definition.
Once or twice, or now and then, it might have a veneer of legality, but his entire life exhibits this pattern of skirting just close enough to the edge of a law to, in that one moment, claim a presumption of innocence while still achieving the corrupt end the law would ban.
The whole history of this counts for nothing?
Apparently in America if you’re white, male and rich, yes.
Now if he were, say, poor, female and black, there would be a presumption of guilt. For example, lots of poor black mothers are assumed to be on welfare and abusing the system, even if they aren’t receiving any benefits whatsoever.
Welcome to America’s class system that permeates everything.
The whole history of this counts for nothing?
Legally, no, it does not. The specific act of incitement must include all three elements of the crime.
So his speech on Jan 6 was definitely incitement, then?
One more step to making folks throw up their arms and stop believing everything. Then life becomes nice and simple- Disregard everything the gov says and let Uncle Rupert tell you what you need to believe in, and of course - everyone you need to blame
GOP's Utopia
Beijing legalizes kidnapping of foreigners,
https://www.yahoo.com/news/china-rules-allow-detention-foreigners-051434352.html
but only when they do it.
But how is that different than our rules?
Which rules? The US doesn't presume sovereignty over someone else's territory, or international waters.
22 years without charge in Guantanmo prison. Does that count?
Not in this context.
But we arrest refugees in boats all the time.
"If it weren't for these idiots they'd have gotten away with it."
That kinda seems like a theme for Trump, doesn't it? You know, the guy who can't give a prostitute hush money without taking notes.
Well, the convicted felon just HAD to cheap out, as always. He couldn't pay the hush money out of his own pocket; had to take it out of his business. For that matter, old cheapskate invited the lady to dinner, and they never even got dinner, according to her.
Cheap and tacky, from beginning to end. Except when he's spending other people's money.