China-linked ‘spamouflage’ network imitates Americans online to influence US political debate

When he first appeared on social media, the user known as Harlan claimed to be a New Yorker and Army veteran who supported Donald Trump for president. Harlan said he was 29, and his profile picture showed a smiling, handsome young man. A few months later, Harlan underwent a transformation. He now claimed to be 31 and from Florida.

New research into Chinese disinformation networks targeting American voters shows that Harlan’s claims were as fabricated as his profile picture, which analysts say was created using artificial intelligence.

As voters prepare to cast their ballots this fall, China is making its own plans, building networks of fake social media users designed to impersonate Americans. Whoever or wherever he really is, Harlan is a small part of a larger effort by U.S. adversaries to use social media to influence and distort the political debate in America.

The account was traced to Spamouflage, a Chinese disinformation group, by analysts at Graphika, a New York-based company that tracks online networks. Spamouflage has been known to online researchers for several years and earned its nickname from its habit of spreading large amounts of seemingly unrelated content alongside disinformation.

“One of the world’s largest covert online influence operations – an operation run by Chinese state actors – has become more aggressive in its efforts to infiltrate and influence the U.S. political conversation ahead of the election,” Jack Stubbs, Graphika’s top intelligence official, told the Associated Press.

Intelligence and national security officials have said Russia, China and Iran launched online influence operations targeting U.S. voters ahead of the November election. Russia remains the biggest threat, intelligence officials say, even as Iran has become more aggressive in recent months, secretly supporting U.S. protests against the war in Gaza and attempting to hack into the email systems of the two presidential candidates. China, on the other hand, is taking a more cautious, nuanced approach. Beijing sees little benefit in supporting one presidential candidate over the other, intelligence analysts say. Instead, China’s disinformation efforts focus on campaign issues that are particularly important to Beijing – such as American policy toward Taiwan – in an attempt to undermine confidence in elections, voting and the U.S. in general. Officials have said it is a longer-term effort that will continue well beyond Election Day as China and other authoritarian countries seek to use the internet to undermine support for democracy.

A message left at the Chinese embassy in Washington was not immediately answered.

Compared to armed conflict or economic sanctions, online influence operations can be a low-cost, low-risk means of projecting geopolitical power. Given the increasing reliance on digital communications, the use of online disinformation and fake information networks is only likely to grow, said Max Lesser, senior emerging threat analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a national security think tank in Washington.

“We will see an expansion of the playing field for influence operations involving not only Russia, China and Iran, but also smaller players,” Lesser said.

This list could include not only states, but also criminal organizations, domestic extremist groups and terrorist organizations, Lesser said.

When analysts first discovered Spamouflage five years ago, the network tended to post generally pro-China and anti-American content. In recent years, the tone became more severe as Spamouflage expanded and focused on polarizing political issues such as gun control, crime, race relations and support for Israel during the Gaza war. The network also began creating a large number of fake accounts designed to impersonate American users.

Spamouflage accounts don’t post much original content, but instead use platforms like X or TikTok to recycle and repost content from far-right and far-left users. Some of the accounts seem designed to appeal to Republicans, while others target Democrats.

While Harlan’s accounts were successful – a video mocking President Joe Biden was viewed 1.5 million times – many of the accounts in the spam campaign did not. It’s a reminder that online influence operations are often a numbers game: The more accounts, the more content, the greater the chance that a given post will go viral.

Many of the newly linked accounts to Spamouflage went out of their way to pretend to be American, sometimes in obvious ways. “I’m American,” one account announced. Some accounts gave themselves away with stilted English or odd word choices. Some were more awkward than others: “Broken English, brilliant brain, I love Trump,” one account’s bio said.

Harlan’s profile picture, which Graphika researchers say was created using artificial intelligence, was identical to that of a previous account linked to Spamouflage. Messages sent to the person managing Harlan’s accounts were not answered.

Several of the accounts linked to Spamouflage remain active on TikTok and X.