China is pushing divisive political messages online using fake U.S. voters

A long-running Chinese influence operation is posing as American voters on social media in an attempt to exacerbate social divisions ahead of the 2024 presidential election, according to a new report from the research company Graphika.

The push by the campaign known as “Spamouflage” includes accounts claiming to be American voters and U.S. soldiers. They posted about hot-button topics including reproductive rights, homelessness, U.S. support for Ukraine, and American policy toward Israel. They criticized President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris as well as former President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, and sometimes used artificial intelligence tools to create content.

The group of fake accounts Graphika identified is small — 15 accounts on X (formerly known as Twitter), one on TikTok, as well as a persona impersonating a U.S. news outlet across platforms. They claimed to be U.S. citizens or U.S.-focused activists “frustrated by American politics and the West,” the report said. With the exception of one TikTok video, they didn’t gain much traction with real users online.

Still, the activity underscores how China is “engaging in these more advanced deceptive behaviors and directly targeting these organic but hyper-sensitive social rifts” as part of a broader effort “to portray the U.S. as this declining global power with weak political leadership and a failing system of governance,” said Jack Stubbs, Graphika’s chief intelligence officer.

The U.S. intelligence community said in its most recent election security update in late July that China’s influence operations “are using social media to sow divisions in the United States and portray democracies as chaotic.”

However, intelligence officials say they