Trump launched CIA covert influence operation against China

WASHINGTON: Two years into office, President Donald Trump authorised the Central Intelligence Agency to launch a clandestine campaign on Chinese social media aimed at turning public opinion in China against its government, according to former US officials with direct knowledge of the highly classified operation.

Three former officials told Reuters that the CIA created a small team of operatives who used bogus internet identities to spread negative narratives about Xi Jinping’s government while leaking disparaging intelligence to overseas news outlets. The effort, which began in 2019, has not been previously reported.

During the past decade, China has rapidly expanded its global footprint, forging military pacts, trade deals, and business partnerships with developing nations.

The CIA team promoted allegations that members of the ruling Communist Party were hiding ill-gotten money overseas and slammed as corrupt and wasteful China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which provides financing for infrastructure projects in the developing world, the sources told Reuters.

Although the US officials declined to provide specific details of these operations, they said the disparaging narratives were based in fact despite being secretly released by intelligence operatives under false cover.

The efforts within China were intended to foment paranoia among top leaders there, forcing its government to expend resources chasing intrusions into Beijing’s tightly controlled internet, two former officials said. “We wanted them chasing ghosts,” one of these former officials said.

Chelsea Robinson, a CIA spokesperson, declined to comment on the existence of the influence programme, its goals or impacts.

A spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said news of the CIA initiative shows the US government uses the “public opinion space and media platforms as weapons to spread false information and manipulate international public opinion.”

The CIA operation came in response to years of aggressive covert efforts by China aimed at increasing its global influence, the sources said. During his presidency, Trump pushed a tougher response to China than had his predecessors. The CIA’s campaign signaled a return to methods that marked Washington’s struggle with the former Soviet Union. “The Cold War is back,” said Tim Weiner, author of a book on the history of political warfare.

Trump, now the Republican frontrunner for president, has suggested he will take an even tougher approach toward China if re-elected president in November. Spokespeople for Trump and his former national security advisers, John Bolton and Robert O’Brien, who both served the year the covert action order was signed, declined to comment.