In a YouTube video, a voice in English announces that China has researched and developed its own ultra-thin 1-nanometer chip – a staggering claim given that the chip isn’t expected in commercial devices for another decade.
“Recent news from China has sent ripples of excitement and astonishment across the globe,” gushes the voice-over on the China Charged YouTube channel. “This revolutionary breakthrough is more than a technological marvel; it is a game-changer that will redefine the global tech landscape.”
“Prepare to have your mind blown,” says another video, this time on the channel Unbelievable Projects. “Welcome to today’s video, in which we’ll discover why America remains behind China in infrastructure development.”
These voices and their “good news” about China are evidence that the Chinese Communist Party and its overseas proxies are using artificial intelligence to flood YouTube with propaganda videos, according to a new report that describes a “coordinated inauthentic influence campaign” on the platform.
Propaganda is a quantity over quality game. You’re not trying to convince the die-hard supporters of the other side, that’s not realistic. You’re trying to give informational cover to your own side.
It’s like suppressive fire. Is the machine gunner specifically trying to kill the enemy? No, he’s sending bullets whizzing overhead to change their behavior. Then his buddies can circle around their cover and very specifically aim at and kill them.
edit: You are right that it’s no 5d chess though. It’s more like the excuses you’d get out of a young kid. Just flak, intended to get in the way. Fired in quantity.
There’s also Russian style propaganda which isn’t really about sending any specific message but more about sowing chaos. It’s about blasting people with so much contradictory information that they become overwhelmed and exhausted and just give up trying to pay attention to anything. To say it a different way it’s about lowering the signal to noise ratio to the point where most people lose the signal.
China tends to favor targeted disinformation, they tightly control what people hear and have specific messages they push. Russia just tries to scream incoherent gibberish where nobody can hold a conversation anymore.
“Flood the zone with shit”
— Steve Bannon
That makes sense, but the targets of my first paragraph wouldn’t be the die-hards. It would be people who think they can identify fake news - but their hubris is what makes tricking them even easier. It would actually be much easier making fake accounts than making the fake YT videos.
If I was to use your analogy - it’d be like if the gunner’s level of effort to land hits or to whiff were the same. [S]he’d obviously just hit them.