Climate misinformation is not new, Fox News has been at it for decades.
Now, US enemies like China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia chiming in with AI and social media.
New battlefield for climate deniers/delayers.
When wildfires swept across Maui last month with destructive fury, China’s increasingly resourceful information warriors pounced.
The disaster was not natural, they said in a flurry of false posts that spread across the internet, but was the result of a secret “weather weapon” being tested by the United States. To bolster the plausibility, the posts carried photographs that appeared to have been generated by artificial intelligence programs, making them among the first to use these new tools to bolster the aura of authenticity of a disinformation campaign.
For China — which largely stood on the sidelines of the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential elections while Russia ran hacking operations and disinformation campaigns — the effort to cast the wildfires as a deliberate act by American intelligence agencies and the military was a rapid change of tactics.
Until now, China’s influence campaigns have been focused on amplifying propaganda defending its policies on Taiwan and other subjects. The most recent effort, revealed by researchers from Microsoft and a range of other organizations, suggests that Beijing is making more direct attempts to sow discord in the United States.
The move also comes as the Biden administration and Congress are grappling with how to push back on China without tipping the two countries into open conflict, and with how to reduce the risk that A.I. is used to magnify disinformation.
The impact of the Chinese campaign — identified by researchers from Microsoft, Recorded Future, the RAND Corporation, NewsGuard and the University of Maryland — is difficult to measure, though early indications suggest that few social media users engaged with the most outlandish of the conspiracy theories.
Brad Smith, the vice chairman and president of Microsoft, whose researchers analyzed the covert campaign, sharply criticized China for exploiting a natural disaster for political gain.
“I just don’t think that’s worthy of any country, much less any country that aspires to be a great country,” Mr. Smith said in an interview on Monday.
China was not the only country to make political use of the Maui fires. Russia did as well, spreading posts that emphasized how much money the United States was spending on the war in Ukraine and that suggested the cash would be better spent at home for disaster relief.
The researchers suggested that China was building a network of accounts that could be put to use in future information operations, including the next U.S. presidential election. That is the pattern that Russia set in the year or so leading up to the 2016 election.
“This is going into a new direction, which is sort of amplifying conspiracy theories that are not directly related to some of their interests, like Taiwan,” said Brian Liston, a researcher at Recorded Future, a cybersecurity company based in Massachusetts.
If China does engage in influence operations for the election next year, U.S. intelligence officials have assessed in recent months, it is likely to try to diminish President Biden and raise the profile of former President Donald J. Trump. While that may seem counterintuitive to Americans who remember Mr. Trump’s effort to blame Beijing for what he called the “China virus,” the intelligence officials have concluded that Chinese leaders prefer Mr. Trump. He has called for pulling Americans out of Japan, South Korea and other parts of Asia, while Mr. Biden has cut off China’s access to the most advanced chips and the equipment made to produce them.
China’s promotion of a conspiracy theory about the fires comes after Mr. Biden vented in Bali last fall to Xi Jinping, China’s president, about Beijing’s role in the spread of such disinformation. According to administration officials, Mr. Biden angrily criticized Mr. Xi for the spread of false accusations that the United States operated biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine.
A disinformation campaign that sprung up almost immediately after wildfires ravaged Maui was spread by China and Russia, researchers have concluded.
And, they say, that campaign made the government’s response to the disaster even more difficult.
From weather warfare to floating bodies on another island to thousands of missing children to a Maui land grab, experts say online posts about the wildfires might have started as genuine concern.
But they also said China and Russia are now using artificial intelligence to amplify false messages and spread fear, division and distrust in government.
Caroline Amy Orr Bueno, a University of Maryland postdoctoral research associate and digital deception expert, said the online rumors started the day after the Aug. 8 fire.
One phrase “Hawaii, not Ukraine” was similar in messaging to what was seen online after the Ohio train derailment disaster.
“They link that to the U.S. providing support to Ukraine. The idea is the reason that the aid to Hawaii was inadequate was because our attention and our resources were going to Ukraine,” said Bueno.
“It was the same narrative with this overarching idea pitting the support for Ukraine against support for a local community,” she added.
Following California fires a few years ago, Daniel Swain told me about rampant conspiracies involving everything from lasers to telekinesis:
Wild guess. Denial morons and trumpists ( lot of overlap ) started it and then those horrible foreigners picked it up.