(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
 . . . . . . . . . .



Under TFG, Our Military Ran a Worldwide Anti-Vaccine Psyops. They'll Do it Again Given the Chance [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2024-06-16  

Carmeninvermont on Friday wrote about this story. Link.

In brief:

The Pentagon conduced a clandestine disinformation campaign in 2020 that tried to sow doubt about China's COVID-19 vaccine during the start of the pandemic -- according to a report by Reuters.

The Pentagon started a social media campaign against Chinese vaccines, much of it — but not all — aimed at the Philippines. A typical Twitter post read, "Vaccine from China might be a rat killer.” A typical post aimed at Muslims and Arabs claimed that Chinese vaccines were made with pork gelatin.

The Reuters article says this disinformation lasted from early 2020 through "spring" of 2021. Vaccines were not available in the Philippines until March 2021, or eg Egypt until January 2021. It seems the disinformation campaign started before vaccines were available, but that remains unclear.

This is all kinds of messed up. As Kevin Drum writes:

The State Department objected violently to these programs for an obvious reason: a campaign to increase suspicion of Chinese vaccines also increased suspicion of all vaccines—in countries we weren't at war with. Filipinos, it turns out, were fertile ground because they were already highly skeptical of vaccines, so who knows how many of them this disinformation campaign killed

Two things that ended this stupid and destructive disinformation campaign: Joe Biden winning the 2020 election and the Pentagon’s stupidity:

Facebook executives had first approached the Pentagon in the summer of 2020, warning the military that Facebook workers had easily identified the military’s phony accounts.... The Pentagon pledged to stop spreading COVID-related propaganda.... Nonetheless, the anti-vax campaign continued into 2021 as Biden took office. Angered that military officials had ignored their warning,Facebook officials arranged a Zoom meeting with Biden’s new National Security Council shortly after the inauguration, Reuters learned. The discussion quickly became tense. “It was terrible,” said a senior administration official describing the reaction after learning of the campaign’s pig-related posts. “I was shocked. The administration was pro-vaccine and our concern was this could affect vaccine hesitancy, especially in developing countries.” — Reuters

Of course, the military learned its lesson:

The Pentagon’s audit concluded that the military’s primary contractor handling the campaign, General Dynamics IT, had employed sloppy tradecraft, taking inadequate steps to hide the origin of the fake accounts, said a person with direct knowledge of the review. The review also found that military leaders didn’t maintain enough control over its psyop contractors, the person said. -— Reuters

They will try again, given the chance. How do we know this? They told us yesterday:

Pentagon Stands by Secret Anti-Vaccination Disinformation Campaign in Philippines After Reuters Report.

Yet another reason to VOTE BIDEN AND VOTE DEM.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/16/2246962/-Under-TFG-Our-Military-Ran-a-Worldwide-Anti-Vaccine-Psyops-They-ll-Do-it-Again-Given-the-Chance?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/