The New York Times reports that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), in the early days of their globally shaking Wuhan coronavirus, deliberately spread fake news to our shores to cause a panic before the American government had a chance to gain a new footing in the 2020 pandemic economic landscape.
Fighting phony impeachment charges, the Trump administration barely had enough time to fight off the Red Chinese attacks before it could appropriately address the unprecedented threat; and the Democrat opposition in D.C. was of no help either. Floods of calls for Mr. Trump's impeachment came from several House Dems, while he tried proactively to stop the travel of individuals from China to the US and stem the flow of the novel coronavirus to our land.
Now, it comes out, that the Chinese government did indeed spread false information of what Mr. Trump was trying to do and trying to induce a panic. As the Times indicates,
United States intelligence agencies have assessed that Chinese operatives helped push the messages across platforms, according to six American officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to publicly discuss intelligence matters. The amplification techniques are alarming to officials because the disinformation showed up as texts on many Americans’ cellphones, a tactic that several of the officials said they had not seen before.
This is particularly disturbing being that as Americanists and Americans just minding their own business were trying to fight off the constant onslaught of untrustworthy and exaggerated news information from the Democrats and Democrat-friendly news media, as well as fact-checkers who only go one way, but they also had to fight with unseen foreign actors who somehow breached our technological security systems to inflame the moods and the sentiments of this country further.
The messages were as such: The entire nation was anticipating imminent martial law per Donald Trump's orders, troops were being put in place, and there was nothing that anyone could do about it. Messages like, “They will announce this [immediate martial law] as soon as they have troops in place to help prevent looters and rioters,” and “He said he got the call last night and was told to pack and be prepared for the call today with his dispatch orders," were virally sent out from one carrier of false information to another.
Officials sounding the alarm to the Times made a point to clarify that although the Chinese Communists are not believed to have been the ones who originally wrote the messages, they are most certainly the ones who digitally pushed them in organized fashion.
Sources also confirmed that while the Chinese operatives conducted the disinformation campaign up to the point of critical mass, it was after that mass was reached (when a high enough number of shares and posts was achieved) that the virality of the campaign took on a life of it's own, and people started sharing the panic-intending stories themselves.
Although the White House's National Security Council rebutted the attacks via a counter-message on social media; the damage to the coronavirus mediation efforts and the market's stability arguably was already initiated and spreading unabated.
The CCP is coming under renewed scrutiny in the potentially intentional release and spread of COVID-19 into the world as Democrats are now revisiting the notion, admitting to its strong possibility and ramifications for Western markets in the past year a half.