The Chinese took advantage of me to engage in a cognitive war before my election! The National Security Bureau exposed 2.5 million disputes, and Facebook and Threads increased their share

The National Security Bureau warned that from January to September this year, the National Security Intelligence Team tracked abnormal accounts and searched for more than 2.5 million controversial messages, an increase of about 48% from more than 1.69 million in the same period last year. The picture shows Chinese people holding five-star flags. (European News Agency file photo)

On the 22nd, the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the Legislative Yuan invited National Security Director Tsai Ming-yan and the heads of the intelligence agencies to submit the "National Intelligence Work and National Security Bureau Operations Report" and prepare for questions. The National Security Bureau's written report stated the Chinese Communist Party's transnational suppression and cognitive warfare methods. The report states that this year, the CCP has spread controversial messages on my country’s energy, food security and national defense policies with the intention of interfering with the government’s governance. It has also hyped up issues such as the political views and images of specific candidates, and the quality of local construction, in an attempt to influence the “nine-in-one” election at the end of the year.

The report mentioned that the CCP has also expanded its use of artificial intelligence (AI) technology for information manipulation in an attempt to influence the support tendencies of Chinese voters and election results.

According to statistics from the National Security Bureau, if we look at the platforms on which controversial messages are disseminated, they are mainly distributed on platforms such as Facebook, online forums, Threads, and YouTube. Among them, Facebook's share increased from 43.6% in the same period last year to 68.9% this year, an increase of 25.3 percentage points; Threads' share doubled from 4.5% to 9%. Analysis by the National Security Bureau shows that the above two social platforms have become the main channels for the CCP to operate cognitive warfare.

As for the CCP’s methods of cognitive warfare, the National Security Bureau report pointed out that the CCP mostly sets the narrative framework by the government or official media, and then uses agent accounts, Internet trolls and public relations companies to use content farms, fake websites, AI-generated videos, fake accounts to post, message washing and other methods to spread false information on social platforms and confuse the Chinese people.

The National Security Bureau further pointed out that comprehensive intelligence showed that in response to my country's "nine-in-one" elections at the end of the year, the CCP used multiple channels such as technological means and personnel intelligence to collect information on my country's major current affairs issues, candidates' political opinions, election trends, and polling data, and used it to formulate cognitive warfare strategies against Taiwan. It also expanded the use of AI technology for information manipulation in an attempt to influence the support tendencies of Chinese voters and the election results.