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Fake news. I haven't seen any uptick in bots or coordinated activity. You might be following the wrong sort of accounts.
There are countless articles like this: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/09/x-twitter...
The expression "flooding with disinformation" is the hallmark of biased reporting. Why is only one side considered as "disinformation" while the other side is assumed to be only talking the truth? The only conclusion I can reach is that the economist is doing here the very same thing they're accusing the other side.
'Both sides' is a core part of the authoritarian propaganda playbook. Pretending that occasional manipulation in the information produced by Liberal democracies is somehow equivalent to the constant stream of lies autocracies produce, is part of how they stop their people wanting change.
The expression "flooding with disinformation" is the hallmark of biased reporting. Why is only one side considered as "disinformation" while the other side is assumed to be only talking the truth? The only conclusion I can reach is that the economist is doing here the very same thing they're accusing the other side.
A better term would be “propaganda” or psychological warfare, something CCP and PLA each have dedicated units for.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-op...
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Sure, you raise a good point. It's also useful to consider how the idea that the leader for life of the country is going insane could be felt to be denigrating to the country and could be considered to be part of the general China-crash tropes. For the sake of good analysis, it's important to focus on real alternatives to that hypothesis, and avoid getting bogged down in semantics.
Twisting yourself in knots to avoid an unpleasent conclusion, serves nothing either. Liberal democracies arose out of the realisation that autocracies have bad endings like this.
Pretending Xi is insane is twisting yourself in knots to avoid the unpleasant conclusion that China is a challenge to the West that won’t conveniently fail.
So often people are first to accuse others of what they are themselves…
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That’s a bizarre idea. China wants Taiwan because they consider it a renegade province. I doubt they care about one fab.
Everyone can dig out ancient maps and declare something renegade. Defacto Taiwan is a independent nation, with a very different (not purged aka original) Chinese culture. Russia claims Ukraine, Poland and GDr to be renegade provinces. Should we just accept that.
Every few years they pull out their maps and we pull out our maps.
He suggests many Taiwanese have an “orphan mentality”: they fear abandonment by outsiders because of Taiwan’s experience of losing American diplomatic recognition in the 1970s. This was insightful for me, actually. I never thought of this before. It explains a lot! All journalists in Taiwan serve the bias of their newspapers’ bosses, says Mr Wang, who has worked for both pro-independence and pro-unification newspaper…
Rumor has it that many Taiwanese named ugly street dogs “Carter” for years because of what Jimmy Carter’s admin did with their recognition.
Project 596 was named after the month of June 1959 in which it was initiated as an independent nuclear project, immediately after Nikita Khrushchev decided to stop helping the Chinese with their nuclear program on 20 June 1959, and Mao shifted toward an overall policy of self-reliance.
> 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…
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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…
> And of course, the Taiwanese really don’t like this idea. Reminds me of when Biden was standing next to the German chancellor and said he'd make sure Nord Stream would be stopped if Russia ever invaded Ukraine and then when Russia invaded Ukraine and Nord Stream was blown up, everyone just ignored it.
Look at the incentives and consequences of blowing up TSMC if China uses the military. China would not have access to the high end chips; Taiwan loses a bargaining chip of its own, and would suffer a huge economic cost (a lot of electricity is used up by TSMC alone); and US is the one who gets to point at the big bad PRC throwing weapons at ROC, and know that PRC gets a road block on the semiconductor front.
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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…