How China used TikTok, AI, and big data to target Taiwan’s elections

DEFENSE ONE

While lawmakers and free-speech advocates debate threats posed by TikTok, Taiwanese researchers on Monday told reporters that China successfully cultivated a number of influencers in Taiwan and elsewhere on the social media platform to spread specific disinformation. 

China has used generative AI to push fake videos via Chinese government-related accounts, and used third-party and other data to micro-target messages and influence campaigns to specific individuals. The researchers said China’s efforts in Taiwan provide a glimpse into the tactics and techniques they are refining and could use on a global scale to undermine support for the U.S. government and military inside and outside the country. 

Leading up to Taiwan’s election in January, China would “use Taiwanese voices to discredit Taiwan, cultivate official brands or personalities or influencers,” to push disinformation streams, Chihhao Yu, a software designer and co-director of the Taiwanese Information Environment Research Center, or IORG, told reporters. 

Because many TikTok influencers traffic in disinformation as a simple business practice, IORG wanted to find a stronger link. They looked at influencer-shared content frame by frame and even pixel by pixel to show that the source was likely the Chinese government. Often, groups of influencers across multiple countries might release similar content all at the same time, related to an issue the Chinese Communist Party was trying to influence. 

“That’s an even stronger signal indicating that these influencers on the site are having at least some kind of coordination with PRC actors,” he said.

China relies on a variety of conspiratorial themes in their messaging, such as that the United States is attempting to build bioweapons labs on Taiwan, that it is seeking to draw China into conflict, and that the United States is a poor ally because it’s on the verge of a civil war. 

Eve Chiu, editor-in-chief of the Taiwan Factcheck Center, pointed out efforts to use generative AI to create fake videos showing Taiwenese election authorities stuffing ballot boxes and even destroying ballots. She also highlighted a deepfake video of U.S. Congressman Rob Wittman, R-Va., saying the U.S. military was endorsing particular Taiwanese candidates in the election. 

Billion Lee, co-founder of the public disinformation monitoring group Cofacts, said China is able to use big data, third party data, and more to target specific individuals with posts and disinformation threads, but right now that’s only about 10 percent of Chinese disinformation posts, she said. 

We-Ping Liu, part of Taiwan’s Ministry of Justice investigation Bureau, said China is forced to rely on local human “collaborators” across China and elsewhere to make specific posts on social media convincing, rather than sounding like bots.  

That suggests that wider adoption of AI, and particularly large language models, could greatly improve the effectiveness of China’s disinformation campaigns, particularly when it comes to English-speaking countries.

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