A China-linked influence operation may have contributed to real-world protests in Washington, according to the findings of a new report.
The ongoing influence campaign has largely focused on disseminating pro-China stories on Western social media but may also have organized and funded two in-person protests in 2022, according to a new report (pdf) published this week by cybersecurity firm Mandiant.
Both protests, which weren’t covered by other media outlets, were made the subject of multiple stories created and distributed as part of an influence operation known in the national security community as “HaiEnergy.”
“Both protests, which occurred around June and September [of] 2022, were documented via video and subsequently used as source material to support campaign-promoted narratives published by assets and infrastructure leveraged by HaiEnergy,” the report states.
The fact that the apparent protests weren’t covered by any other media suggests that they may have been a part of the HaiEnergy operation, which has links to China’s communist regime.
“Notably, we were unable to identify any outside sources referencing these protests other than those we either attribute directly to HaiEnergy or have identified as being tangential to the campaign by virtue of paid promotion services,” the report states
Campaign Linked to Chinese PR Firm
HaiEnergy was first identified as a pro-China influence operation in another report (pdf) published by Mandiant in 2022.
That report found that the campaign “leveraged a network of at least 72 inauthentic news sites,” all of which presented themselves as independent news outlets based across various parts of the world, including in the United States.
These “news” sites and associated wire services were then used to launder the pro-China stories into mainstream U.S. media outlets and give them an air of legitimacy.
Following this, a number of suspected inauthentic social media accounts would be used to amplify the content, along with other assets strategically aligned to promote the political interests of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which rules China as a single-party state.
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