Sources: in 2019, Donald Trump authorized the CIA to launch a clandestine social media campaign to turn China's public against the government and Xi Jinping
Two years into office, President Donald Trump authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to launch a clandestine campaign … Mastodon: @kevincollier@mastodon.social . X: @shashj , @shashj , @ericgeller , and @nkulw . Forums: r/worldnews Mastodon: Kevin Collier / @kevincollier@mastodon.social : Props to Reuters here: it's significantly harder to report on cyber or influence campaigns that the US uses against China or Russia than the other way around — https://www.reuters.com/... X: Shashank Joshi / @shashj : '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”...' https://www.reuters.com/... Shashank Joshi / @shashj : Rollback in the digital age. “Two years into office, President Donald Trump authorized 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 U.S. officials” Eric Geller / @ericgeller : “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...” Great scoop. Noah Kulwin / @nkulw : “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.” https://www.reuters.com/... Forums: r/worldnews : Trump launched CIA covert influence operation against China
Context & Ripple Effects
The disclosure places U.S. covert influence activity alongside a documented pattern of China-linked social-media operations: an investigation described China's contractor-supported propaganda apparatus, while platforms later disrupted a China-based network operating ahead of U.S. elections. It complicates a coverage arc that has often focused on Chinese operations aimed outward.
The reported campaign also arrives against the backdrop of assessments that China's Spamouflage campaign struggled to gain traction in the U.S., underscoring that cross-border influence efforts can be persistent even when their measurable persuasion is limited.
First-order effects
- The report gives Beijing a concrete allegation of a U.S.-run campaign targeting Chinese public opinion and senior leadership, likely strengthening its case for treating foreign online narratives as a security threat.
- It puts the CIA and the Trump administration's past authorization under renewed scrutiny, while making attribution disputes around China-focused social activity more politically charged.
Second-order effects
- Chinese authorities and state-aligned communicators have greater incentive to frame online criticism as foreign manipulation, which can raise the cost for platforms, researchers, and users seeking to distinguish authentic speech from coordinated activity.
- The disclosure reinforces reciprocal pressure on social platforms to identify state-linked networks consistently; Twitter's disruption of China-based influence networks illustrates the operational burden already placed on platform trust-and-safety teams.
Third-order effects
- If reciprocal covert influence campaigns remain a feature of U.S.-China competition, information integrity will increasingly be treated as a national-security domain rather than solely a platform-moderation problem.
- The durable challenge is not simply removing coordinated accounts, but preserving credible attribution and independent research when both states can characterize online activity as foreign interference.
The trend: This is one data point in the securitization of online influence, where major powers use and counter social-media operations alongside traditional intelligence tools.