At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States military launched a covert campaign to combat what it saw as China’s growing influence in the Philippines, a nation hit especially hard by the deadly virus, an investigation by the Reuters news agency found. .
Through fake Internet accounts intended to pose as Filipinos, the military’s propaganda efforts turned into an anti-vaccination campaign, Reuters reported in a story released Friday. Social media posts criticized the quality of face masks, testing kits and the first vaccine that would be available in the Philippines – the inoculation from China’s Sinovac.
The clandestine operation was not previously reported. The aim was to sow doubt about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines and other vital aid provided by China, the Reuters investigation found.
It identified at least 300 accounts on X, formerly Twitter, that matched descriptions shared by former US military officers familiar with the operation. Almost all were created in mid-2020 and centered on the slogan #Chinaangvirus – Tagalog for “China is the virus”.
“COVID came from China and the VACCINE also came from China, don’t trust China!” read a typical tweet from July 2020. The words were posted alongside a photo of a syringe next to a Chinese flag and a rising graph of infections. Another post said: “From China – PPE, face mask, vaccine: FALSE. But the Coronavirus is real.”
After Reuters asked X about the accounts, the social media company removed the profiles, determining they were part of a coordinated bot campaign based on activity patterns and internal data.
The US military’s anti-vaccine effort began in spring 2020 and expanded beyond Southeast Asia before ending in mid-2021.
The Pentagon tailored the campaign to local audiences across Central Asia and the Middle East, using a combination of fake social media accounts on multiple platforms to spread fear of China’s vaccines among Muslims at a time when the virus was killing dozens of thousands of people every day.
A key part of the strategy: expanding the disputed claim that because vaccines sometimes contain pork gelatin, injections in China could be considered prohibited under Islamic law.
The military program began under former President Donald Trump and continued for months into Joe Biden’s presidency — even after alarmed social media executives warned the new administration that the Pentagon was trafficking misinformation about COVID, Reuters said.
The Biden White House issued an executive order in spring 2021 banning the anti-vax effort, which also disparaged vaccines produced by other rivals, and the Pentagon began an internal review.
Spokespeople for Trump and Biden did not respond to requests for comment on the clandestine program, Reuters reported.
A senior Defense Department official acknowledged that the U.S. military was engaging in covert propaganda to disparage China’s vaccine in the developing world, but the unnamed official declined to provide details.
A Pentagon spokeswoman said the US military “uses a variety of platforms, including social media, to combat malign influence attacks targeting the US, allies and partners.” She alleged that China began a “disinformation campaign to falsely blame the United States for the spread of COVID-19.”
‘Dismayed, disappointed, disillusioned’
In an email, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has long stated that the US government manipulates social media and spreads disinformation.
A spokesperson for the Philippines Department of Health said Reuters’ “findings deserve to be investigated and heard by the competent authorities of the countries involved.”
Some American public health experts condemned the Pentagon program, saying it put civilians in danger for potential geopolitical gains.
“I don’t think it’s defensible,” said Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease expert at Dartmouth College’s Geisel School of Medicine. “I am extremely dismayed, disappointed and disillusioned to hear that the US government would do this.”
The effort to stoke fear about Chinese inoculations risks undermining overall public confidence in the government’s health initiatives, including the U.S.-made vaccines that became available later, Lucey and others said.
Although the Chinese vaccines have been found to be less effective than American-led vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, they have all been approved by the World Health Organization. Sinovac did not respond to a request for comment.
“It should have been in our interest to get as many vaccines into people’s arms as possible,” said Greg Treverton, former chairman of the US National Intelligence Council, which coordinates analysis and strategy for many of Washington’s spy agencies.
What the Pentagon did, Treverton said, “crosses the line.”
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
