Islamabad: China which as recently as in November this year was termed “clumsy” in its efforts for trying to deploy AI-boosted influence operations in the run-up to the US presidential election, is now reported to be banking on cyber-psychological cocktail to expand its reach and dominance.
China’s drive to develop the world’s finest fighting force extends beyond conventional and nuclear capabilities, with US officials warning that Beijing is pouring resources into a mix of psychological warfare and cyber operations, the VOA reports.
Cognitive domain operations
The goal in employing what are known in Beijing as cognitive domain operations, or CDO, is to influence the way China’s adversaries think and behave, targeting everyone from the average citizen to senior officials.
China “views controlling the information spectrum in the modern battlespace as a critical enabler of information dominance early in a conflict,” according to the Pentagon’s China Military Power report, released Wednesday.
“The PLA [People’s Liberation Army] probably intends to use CDO as an asymmetric capability to deter U.S. or third-party entry into a future conflict or as an offensive capability to shape perceptions or polarize a society,” it said, adding that for Chinese military officers, “subduing the enemy without fighting is the highest realm of warfare.”
The Pentagon’s report does not state how much money Beijing has allocated for these efforts but says that the PLA has spent parts of the past six years looking at how to incorporate cutting-edge technologies, such as artificial intelligence, to produce deepfakes and other material to mislead the US public.
It also says China has tasked some of its leading technology companies, including Baidu, Alibaba and Huawei, with using generative AI to produce better audio and video, in addition to more convincing text and images, the VOA reports.
US intelligence officials repeatedly called out China, along with Russia and Iran, for trying to deploy AI-boosted influence operations in the run-up to the U.S. presidential election in November.
Some of the efforts, though, were described as clumsy.
“The quality is not as believable as you might expect,” said a U.S. intelligence official at the time. Earlier efforts, identified by tech giant Microsoft, described an improvement in Beijing’s ability to produce “eye-catching content,” though questions remained about the content’s reach and impact.
“The quality is not as believable as you might expect.” — a US intelligence official.
US intelligence officials have also said that Beijing’s influence efforts have been hampered by what they describe as a struggle by Chinese intelligence to understand the American psyche with the same sophistication as other US adversaries, such as Russia.
“Pot calling the kettle black”
China has repeatedly denied such allegations, accusing the U.S. of calling out others for its own wrongdoing.
“For quite some time, the US side has patched up all sorts of disinformation about threats of ‘Chinese hackers’ to serve its own geopolitical purposes,” Liu Pengyu, the spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, told VOA in an email earlier this month regarding allegations that a Chinese-linked group known as Salt Typhoon had breached US telecommunications companies.
“For quite some time, the US side has patched up all sorts of disinformation about threats of ‘Chinese hackers’ to serve its own geopolitical purposes.” — Liu Pengyu, the spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington.
“The US needs to stop its own cyberattacks against other countries and refrain from using cybersecurity to smear and slander China,” he added.
The VOA reports US officials warn that aspects of China’s psychological and cyber operations have met with an alarming amount of success, most notably the exploits of the hacking group known as Volt Typhoon.
