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China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

economist.com

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Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#91

Post by macintux »

maverick2007 wrote: post #5

> America had asked Taiwan to manufacture biological weapons at a lab run by the island’s defence ministry, the report claimed. This reminds me a lot of the (presumably Russian disinformation) story that flitted around American conservative spheres early in the Ukraine war saying that the US gov was setting up bio weapon labs at the border with Russia and that's why the Russian invasion was justified. Funny how the e…

It seemed to flow the other way: had Russia believed that Ukraine was preparing bioweapons, or wanted to use that excuse, Putin would have absolutely used that in his speeches justifying the invasion.

Instead, American right-wing conspiracy theorists seized on the idea, and then Russian media started talking about it.

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#92

Post by ipnon »

One phenomenon I don’t think psyop brigades seem to have caught on to, is that by flooding comment sections with controversial statements they invite vigorous debate, which ends up boosting engagement. In the end they bring more attention to the stories they are attempting to squash.

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#93

Post by the_doctah »

threeseed wrote: post #79
jamesaurichs wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's going to be a lot of Russian and Chinese interference in American politics in 2024 for sure

The worst part is that X/Twitter is deliberately not trying to help this cycle. They pulled out of the EU Code of Practice around disinformation back in May and they have been warned as recently as yesterday that the platform was the worst of all of the social networks at allowing Russian disinformation. And I am sure everyone who used it has seen the massive uptick in bots and other coordinated activity.

We must censor this dangerous disinformation at once! Surely we also need to establish federal oversight commissions to determine what is or is not disinformation, we can't let citizens sort this out for themselves!

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#94

Post by the_doctah »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #78
vuln wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can repeat the 2020 election the “most safe and secure” election ever. Funny how Russia and China sat that one out huh? Guess they’d let the other team win one.

The safe and secure claim was largely around the conduct of the election itself, whereas US adversaries largely deployed disinfo and propaganda tactics to interfere in the election. So, not sure they sat it out as much as the U.S. was a little better prepared. For instance, social media platforms did a better job of not being completely owned as fire hoses for propaganda and disinfo. Of course, some then complained t…

>Of course, some then complained that this constituted "censorship" by the platforms.

Literally, by definition, and extending well beyond just election topics.

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#95

Post by the_doctah »

FormerBandmate wrote: post #69
goodbyesf wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there is any foreign interference, it would be from britain, canada, israel, etc. What russian or chinese interference is there when there is 24/7 anti-russian and anti-chinese propaganda?

Lmfao Rishi Sunsk and Justin Trudeau interfering to protect the rights of the oppressed moose minority, make English one of America’s official languages, and reclaim America for the Crown I’m not even going to touch the thinly veiled antisemitic smear

Just mentioning Isreal is antisemetic now? Do you work for the ADL?

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#96

Post by [deleted] »

threeseed wrote: post #88
MissingAFew wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but I really don't see the difference. If they do gain of function to create a virus, that virus can be used as a weapon. You can't separate the two.

It's the difference between making fertiliser for farming or to build a bomb. Intent matters. And so if they are creating viruses to better understand how to cure them or prepare responses for dealing with them then that is a good thing. Creating a virus for use in a bio-weapon is a bad thing. If you don't have bio-labs then you don't have cures so we can't get rid of them entirely.

[deleted]

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#97

Post by baybal2 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #68
WiSaGaN wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is said by "Rep. Seth Moulton (Mass.) — one of the Democratic Party’s leading voices on defense": Speaking at a Milken Institute panel in Los Angeles, Moulton said: “One of the interesting ideas that’s been floated out there for deterrence is just making it very clear to the Chinese that if you invade Taiwan, we’re going to blow up TSMC.” He continued: “I just throw that out not because that’s necessarily the be…

None of Taiwan’s fans can run for very long without parts and replacement machinery from the USA or Europe. The tech is pretty locked down, even if production is currently distributed. China doesn’t have much choice but it re-invent the engineering done in the west to catch up (on economical perf, not just perf or economical). I don’t think the economists get this, but definitely people in the Chinese government are…

[dead]

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#99

Post by prewett »

blackoil wrote: post #37
SanjayMehta wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a bizarre idea. China wants Taiwan because they consider it a renegade province. I doubt they care about one fab.

Yeah. China has its stance consistently since 1940s, it is not that they woke up about Taiwan in 2010. It is more of a scorched earth plan. There isn't much of interest to US beyond TSMC. As long as it doesn't fall in hand of China, rest it will be OK to loose.

The real value of Taiwan is that it keeps China from having easy access to the Pacific. That's why the US has suggested it will defend Taiwan for long before TSMC became valuable.

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#100

Post by jamesaurichs »

Animats wrote: post #32

China is having an internal information crackdown. It's approaching the nutty level, which probably indicates that Xi is losing it. The latest thing is a crackdown on clothing "detrimental to the spirit of the Chinese people."[1] [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-66737272

Xi is losing it everywhere;

- internal purging of military senior officials. 5 out of the 7 senior officials are now missing in action. https://www.newsweek.com/china-defence-minister-li-shangfu-m.... Very similar to Mao Zedong's purging of his generals https://www.hoover.org/research/lin-biao-incident-and-people.... China has had to transfer generals from airforce and army to head up missile force, because so many generals in the missile forces were purged.

- Xi Jing Ping was privately scalded by party elders during the recent party summit Beidaihe. There's an internal unrest and struggle occurring

- china's export drop 4th straight month https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/06/business/china-exports-au...

- the great flooding of northeast farmland this summer wiped out 1/3 of China's grain production. in order to mitigate the flooding of Beijing, they instead flooded provinces next to Beijing, which incidentally housed many military forces. Those forces were destroyed without warning.

- another big real estate developer, sunac, filed for bankruptcy https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/19/economy/china-sunac-ny-bankru....

- the Hangzhou asian games was a massive failure, attended by no major heads from developed countries. Cost $30 billion, while its local governments are so desperate for money, they are raiding temples

- marriages in China in 2022 are down 10% from 2021, lowest record since 1986. https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/12/china/china-marriages-record-...

- Huawei homegrown chips was a nothing burger. iPhones were sold out in seconds online. Full Apple Store crowds. Very empty Huawei stores. People didn't like the overheated mate 60, or the broken software.

In short, political, economic, demographic, and tech collapse in China.

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