The headlines sounded dire. “China will use AI to disrupt elections in US, South Korea and India, Microsoft warns,” one said. “China is using AI to sow disinformation and foment discord in Asia and the US,” claimed another.
The headlines were based on a report released earlier this month by Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center that outlined how a Chinese disinformation campaign was now using artificial technology to inflame divisions and disrupt elections in the US and around the world. The campaign, already focused on the Taiwan election, uses AI-generated audio and memes to grab users’ attention and increase engagement.
But what these headlines and Microsoft itself have failed to adequately convey is that the Chinese government-linked disinformation campaign, known as Spamouflage Dragon or Dragonbridge, has so far been virtually ineffective.
“I would describe China’s disinformation campaigns as Russia 2014. So they were ten years ago,” said Clint Watts, the general manager of Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center. “They try a lot of different things, but their sophistication is still very weak.”
Over the past 24 months, the campaign has evolved from predominantly pro-China content to a more aggressive focus on US politics. Although these efforts were large-scale and spanned dozens of platforms, they largely had no real-world impact. But experts warn that just one post, boosted by an influential account, can change all that.
“Spamouflage is like throwing spaghetti at the wall, and they throw a lot of spaghetti,” said Jack Stubbs, chief information officer at Graphika, a social media analytics firm that was among the first to identify the Spamouflage campaign . “The volume and scope of this thing is huge. They publish numerous videos and cartoons every day, which are distributed on various platforms worldwide. The vast majority of it seems to be something that won’t last for now, but that doesn’t mean it won’t last in the future.”
Since at least 2017, Spamouflage has been steadily disseminating content designed to disrupt important global events, including topics as diverse as the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, the US presidential election, and the war between Israel and Hamas. As part of a broader, multi-billion dollar influence campaign by the Chinese government, the campaign has leveraged millions of accounts on dozens of internet platforms, from X and YouTube to fringe platforms like Gab, where the campaign has sought to push pro-China content. It was also one of the first companies to introduce cutting-edge techniques such as AI-generated profile pictures.
Despite all this investment, experts say the campaign has largely failed due to a number of factors, including issues of cultural context, China’s online isolation from the outside world through the Great Firewall, a lack of joined-up thinking between state media and the disinformation campaign and deployment of tactics designed specifically for China’s highly controlled online environment.
“That’s been the story of Spamouflage since 2017: They’re huge, they’re everywhere, and no one but researchers is looking at them,” says Elise Thomas, a senior open source analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, who has followed Spamouflage’s campaign for years .