The Pentagon's "Anti-Vax" Psyops Campaign Against China

Enquiring minds have so many unanswered questions.

In case you missed the Reuters news story, during 2020 and 2021, the Pentagon used fake social media accounts and bot farms to flood Filipinos with messaging about the ineffectiveness of Chinese PPE and China’s Sinovac (COVID-19) vaccine.

Just to be clear, I am not expressing any opinion regarding the safety and effectiveness of Sinovac. This story is about the US DoD intentionally spreading anti-vax disinformation.

Reuters writes:

Through phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos, the military’s propaganda efforts morphed into an anti-vax campaign. Social media posts decried the quality of face masks, test kits, and the first vaccine that would become available in the Philippines – China’s Sinovac inoculation.

Reuters identified at least 300 accounts on X (formerly Twitter) that matched descriptions shared by former U.S. military officials familiar with the Philippines operation. Almost all were created in the summer of 2020 and centered on the slogan #Chinaangvirus – Tagalog for China is the virus…

After Reuters asked X about the accounts, the social media company removed the profiles, determining they were part of a coordinated bot campaign based on activity patterns and internal data.

A Twitter search of #chinaangvirus today produces a few legacy posts, such as:

---

These are typical bot farm accounts.

Note: whenever I post something UK-related about MEP Andrew Bridgen and vaccines or Nigel Farage, my comments are flooded with low-node bot accounts, most likely from the 77th brigade, UK’s special ops unit focussed on “information warfare”, attacking me with ad hominems. I have blocked literally thousands of such accounts from my X/Twitter feed. This is a typical strategy for the intelligence services community in the USA and the UK.

If I post a negative Biden post on Twitter, I get similar bot farm ad hominem posts. These trackers and bot accounts are oriented to the US social media community. It is easy to assume that these bot attacks are coming from a Democratic party-related organization, but I don’t actually know. But I do know that the use of web crawlers to identify a target post is now common and then once identified, this is followed up with a bot attack.

---

A Bot is an automated account programmed to interact like a user on social media. Bots are used to push narratives, amplify misleading messaging, and distort online discourse. The name “bot” came from a shortened version of the name robot.

A Web crawler, which is also called a spiderbot is an automated Internet program that systematically browses the World Wide Web for specific types of information.

---

Typically, these accounts have less than a hundred following and followers. The still current Twitter accounts that I identified as using the #Chinaangvirus (the Pentagon’s hashtag for attacking China) below have all the hallmarks of being bots.

---

---

---

---

According to Reuters, the U.S. military’s anti-vax effort began in the spring of 2020 and “expanded beyond Southeast Asia” before it was terminated in mid-2021.

The military program started under former President Donald Trump and continued months into Joe Biden’s presidency, Reuters found – even after alarmed social media executives warned the new administration that the Pentagon had been trafficking in COVID misinformation. The Biden White House issued an edict in spring 2021 banning the anti-vax effort, which also disparaged vaccines produced by other rivals, and the Pentagon initiated an internal review, Reuters found.

So, let’s be clear: the above paragraph was written to take the blame off of Biden. In fact, it is written to make Biden look like an anti-propaganda crusader. Reuters asserts that the bot accounts could still be found on Twitter until they enquired or heard about the program (which would have been in 2024), and then those accounts disappeared. However, the above paragraph asserts that Biden “issued an edict” in the spring of 2021 to disband the program. So, did the Pentagon continue the program without permission from spring 2021 until the bot accounts were removed?

This also demonstrates that the Pentagon was directly involved in promoting genetic (primarily mRNA)- based vaccine solutions for SARS-CoV-2 and suppressing alternative solutions developed at the same time by competing nation-states using more established technologies. The American public deserves to know why. Was this a case of the DoD pushing global acceptance of a new (NATO-based) technology platform? Is this an example of the US Government attempting to pick winners and losers in public health medical countermeasure development? Was this the consequence of some backroom deal with Moderna and Pfizer? Or was this just another attempt to justify the illegal deployment of Emergency Use Authorization despite other alternative pharmaceutical solutions being available?

Regardless, we now have yet another well-documented example of the US Government intentionally deploying DIS-information: intentionally spreading falsehoods to advance a political objective.

Then there is this doozy:

The U.S. military is prohibited from targeting Americans with propaganda, and Reuters found no evidence the Pentagon’s influence operation did so.

The US military is NOT prohibited from targeting Americans with propaganda. They may do so during crisis management and disaster relief.

The 2010 DoD Psychological Operations manual, signed off by current Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, clearly states that:

“When authorized, PSYOP forces may be used domestically to assist lead federal agencies during disaster relief and crisis management by informing the domestic population” [1].

They are also allowed to do so when directed by the executive branch.

So, Reuter’s assertion that the campaign was not conducted on US citizens because the military is not allowed to is misinformation. Whether or not Americans were targeted in this campaign is a different matter.

Furthermore, Although many believe that the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 banned the use of propaganda by the US government, nothing is further from the truth.  The Smith-Mundt Act only applied to specific media outlets developed by the US Government for foreign markets, and only to the US State Department and to the relatively obscure Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). Furthermore, most of the prior restrictions placed by that act were repealed or amended in 2013. 

Nothing stops the US Government, including the CIA, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), CISA, and DoD, from propagandizing the American people. Our government, media, universities, and medical establishments are just a few of the domestic organizations that routinely use propaganda. During COVID-19, the use of propaganda against the American people by the USG and its contractors was rampant and has been well documented.

In reading Reuter’s news story, one has to conclude that releasing this information may have been intentional. Reuters does not write how it was able to come by the information. For instance, did sources in the Pentagon speak in the capacity of a whistleblower, or did those who spoke have authorization to do so? What we don’t know is why. Was it because the Pentagon was aware that either a foreign entity had learned of the program and was about to blow the whistle to the press on it, or did someone leak the information to Reuters, or was it released intentionally to hurt the election campaign of Donald Trump?

To implement the anti-vax campaign, the Defense Department overrode strong objections from top U.S. diplomats in Southeast Asia at the time, Reuters found. Sources involved in its planning and execution say the Pentagon, which ran the program through the military’s psychological operations center in Tampa, Florida, disregarded the collateral impact that such propaganda may have on innocent Filipinos.

“We weren’t looking at this from a public health perspective,” said a senior military officer involved in the program. “We were looking at how we could drag China through the mud.”

The problem with the above-bolded statement is that it basically comes from a government source. Would the government inform the American public about their true objectives? And what were those true objectives? There could be many equally valid reasons for this propaganda campaign. For instance:

• The US government clearly wished and still wishes to dominate the emerging market for mRNA products.

• Is this because of governmental capture by Pfizer and Moderna/BioInTech?

• Is this because the USG wishes to dominate the world vaccine supply, particularly in its satellite countries, such as the Philipines?

• Is there a policy to stop China/CCP from trading with the Philippines in general?

All of these statements could be true at the same time.

We do know that we don’t know how the Pentagon is using the press to get out the information it wants us to hear.

A news story in the South Morning China Post states that the Pentagon is not denying this secret campaign to discredit Chinese vaccines and that the US Department of Defense has suggested that the move was an attempt to counter “malign influence campaigns.” This is more evidence that the Pentagon is directing the mainstream press into printing what it wants Americans to think, feel, and hear about this fifth-gen warfare campaign against China.

I read many derivative news stories on mainstream media about this story today. The one thing that stands out is how they basically just reprint the same storyline laid out by Reuters without adding any analytical insight. Also, there is a complete lack of any other news sources attempting to validate the statements made by Reuters. So many questions and no answers!

• Who were the whistleblowers?

• Did the officials sharing this story have permission to speak for the Pentagon?

• Who were the top U.S. diplomats overseas who objected, and why haven’t they come forward?

• What other countries were subjected to this propaganda?

• Why are the statements from Reuters about how the US military is prohibited from targeting Americans with propaganda not questioned by other news outlets?

When one has detected evidence demonstrating a PsyWar campaign, all trust is removed from the equation.

Political warfare is the art of heartening one’s friends and disheartening one’s enemies.  It makes use of ideas, words, images, and deeds to compel or convince friends, foes, or neutrals into cooperation or acquiescence. Effective political warriors know that the best way to prevail in modern ideological conflict is not through killing but through persuasion, cooption, and influence.

Frank Gaffney, Jr.,

References:

1.         Army, U., Pyschological Operations, U. Army, Editor. 2010, US Government: Washington DC.

---

---

---