NEWS

Authored by Megan Redshaw via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

(luchschenF/Shutterstock)

Pharmaceutical giant Moderna is policing what it calls “vaccine misinformation” online through its disinformation department aimed at shutting down dissenting voices and anything that might undermine COVID-19-related policies, such as lockdowns, vaccine passports, and mass vaccination.

According to an exclusive report by investigative journalists Lee Fang and Jack Poulson published on (more…)

Authored by Mike Fredenburg via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

On Nov. 25, Russia launched some 75 drones at key military and infrastructure targets in Kyiv. As per usual, the Ukrainian military reported that its air defense systems had been incredibly successful—shooting down all but one of the drones (74 out of 75)—about a 98 percent kill rate.

An explosion is seen in the sky over the city during a Russian drone and missile strike in Kyiv, Ukraine, on May 29, 2023. (Gleb (more…)

Authored by Andrew Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

TikTok is a key tool in communist China’s strategy to manipulate Americans and undermine the United States’s ability to respond to crises, according to experts and lawmakers.

Chairman of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), speaks during a press conference unveiling the results of the committee’s investigation into the biolab discovered in Reedley, Calif., in Washington on Nov. 15, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which rules China as a single-party state, will likely use TikTok in its effort to wage “cognitive warfare” against the United States, said Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.).

“The CCP calls it ‘cognitive domain warfare,’ part of their larger political warfare strategy,” Mr. Gallagher said in prepared comments for a Nov. 30 hearing of the House Select Committee on the CCP.

Mr. Gallagher, who chairs the committee, said that the United States was struggling to respond to the threat, as the nation had no grand strategy or apparatus for confronting propaganda from authoritarian powers.

“Cognitive warfare is not something we tend to think about here in the West. Sure, we have ideas like soft power, but they’re not a national strategy,” Mr. Gallagher said.

“On the ‘smokeless battlefield’ of people’s minds, we don’t have a standing military at all.”

CCP Seeks ‘Mind Dominance’

The Pentagon’s 2022 China Military Power Report (pdf), which distills the Defense Department’s most authoritative assessments of China’s strategy and capabilities, highlighted the development of the CCP’s new method of psychological warfare.

It said that the CCP and its military wing, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), were developing and deploying methods for conducting cognitive warfare to win military advantage.

“As the PLA seeks to expand the reach of its influence operations around the world and to seize information dominance on the battlefield, it is researching and developing the next evolution of psychological warfare called cognitive domain operation[s] (CDO) that leverages subliminal messaging, deep fakes, overt propaganda, and public sentiment analysis,” the report stated.

“The goal of CDO is to achieve what the PLA refers to as ‘mind dominance,’ defined as the use of propaganda as a weapon to influence public opinion to effect change in a nation’s social system, likely to create an environment favorable to China and reduce civilian and military resistance to PLA actions.”

The report described CDO as “a more aggressive form of psychological warfare” intended to “affect a target’s cognition, decision making, and behavior.”

Mr. Gallagher said that CCP leader Xi Jinping considered CDO as a vital weapon in the regime’s arsenal that could be used to manipulate the American people at key moments, such as during an election cycle.

“In Xi Jinping’s view, the war has already started on the most important battlefield: your mind,” Mr. Gallagher said.

Data Suggests TikTok Taking Direction From CCP

Mr. Gallagher pointed to TikTok as the regime’s most powerful tool for conducting cognitive warfare.

People walk past the headquarters of ByteDance, the parent company of video sharing app TikTok, in Beijing on Sept. 16, 2020. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)

Though the company denies that it takes direction from China-based parent (more…)