Che Pan

• Google’s Threat Analysis Group says a China-linked influence network spread tens of thousands of spam and political messages on its platforms in 2022

• While most of the content failed to draw viewers, the network has been persistently experimenting with new tactics, posing a continuous threat

Google said it foiled more than 50,000 attempts last year by a propaganda network to target mostly Chinese speakers with pro-China and anti-US content on YouTube and other platforms, although most of those messages failed to draw viewers.

The China-linked group, dubbed Dragonbridge or Spamouflage Dragon, posted mostly spam – such as clips of animals, food and sports – but occasionally spread political narratives that praised China’s pandemic response, criticised anti-government protests in Hong Kong, and supported an “armed unification” with Taiwan, according to a blog post on Thursday by the Threat Analysis Group – a Google in-house team that tracks and thwarts state-backed hacking attempts.

Researchers found that Dragonbridge is sharply attuned to geopolitical developments in China’s neighbouring regions. For instance, the network escalated its rhetoric about Taiwan after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the self-ruled island last August.

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Unlike Dragonbridge’s usual content, which Google described as “hastily produced and error-prone”, the group’s new Taiwan content had “high production value” and was uploaded on various channels using uniform hashtags and titles. Some of these videos showed footage of the People’s Liberation Army and called on Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen to “surrender”, researchers said.

After US President Joe Biden signed the bipartisan Chips and Science Act into law in August, aimed at shoring up domestic semiconductor manufacturing and deterring similar investment in China, Dragonbridge published content mirroring rhetoric from Chinese state media and trade institutions, portraying the US law as anticompetitive and unfair to China, Google said.

Dragonbridge also spread narratives criticising the US for supplying Ukraine with military equipment, as well as claiming that the US government was behind the monkeypox outbreak and protests in China against Covid-19 lockdown measures.

Google says some Dragonbridge content accused the US government of being responsible for protests in China against zero-Covid measures. Photo: AP Photo

Still, Google said most of the Dragonbridge content that it disrupted never reached a real audience. Among the 53,177 channels that YouTube disabled in 2022, 58 per cent had no subscribers. Around 42 per cent of the videos had zero views and 83 per cent had fewer than 100 views.

Blog engagement for Dragonbridge was also low, with nearly 95 per cent of its content on Blogger that were disabled in December receiving 10 or fewer views, Google said. In rare instances when such content attracted comments, they were mostly from other Dragonbridge accounts.

Despite Dragonbridge’s failure to attract major viewership, the group has persistently tried new tactics, formats and content since the Threat Analysis Group and Google-owned cybersecurity firm Mandiant started tracking it closely in 2019, researchers said.

These tactics include using humans instead of robots to narrate content, having a real person discuss events on-camera in a talk-show format, and mixing political messages with high-quality lifestyle content such as beauty advice and cooking tips.

“As they evolve over time, Dragonbridge’s coordinated inauthentic activities may eventually attract the attention of real users,” the blog post said.