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Washington accuses Russia of coronavirus misinformation

2020-02-22T13:44:46.432Z


A State Department official estimates that thousands of people are acting on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram "to sow discord".


Thousands of accounts linked to Russia on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram spread anti-American misinformation about the new coronavirus that has appeared in China, American officials told AFP.

Read also: Coronavirus: Xi Jinping thanks the Gates foundation for its financial support

The campaign for disinformation and the spread of conspiracy theories started a month ago, at a time when the death toll in China was three and the epidemic was only 200 cases in Wuhan, according to these officials. Today, the death toll has risen to more than 2,200 deaths and 75,000 cases in China, and more than a thousand cases in 26 other countries.

Read also: Coronavirus: two dead in Italy, a dozen barricaded cities

The Russian campaign recalls the KGB's attempts to pretend, during the Cold War, that HIV was an invention of American scientists. " The aim of Russia is to sow discord and weaken the institutions of the United States and its alliances from the inside, including through underground and pernicious campaigns ," said Philip Reeker, undersecretary of State responsible for Europe and Eurasia. " By spreading disinformation about the coronavirus, malicious Russian actors are once again choosing to threaten public safety at the expense of the overall response " to the epidemic, he added.

US diplomats responsible for combating Russian disinformation say that accounts in the names of fictitious people reproduce Russian lines of attack, not only in English but also in French, Spanish, Italian and German.

Discord

Spread theories include the idea that the virus was created by the United States to " wage an economic war on China ", that it is a biological weapon invented by the CIA, or that it is part of a Western strategy of “ anti-China messages ”. Tweets also falsely accuse Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, whose foundation has invested billions of dollars in international health programs.

The thousands of accounts involved were monitored for interfering in various crises around the world, from the war in Syria to the protests in Chile and France with the yellow vests. They post " almost identical " messages on the coronavirus, according to a report prepared for the Global Engagement Center of the State Department, the cell against foreign disinformation campaigns.

" This is typical of the Russian doctrine of information confrontation ," said an official. " The global number of coronavirus cases has not reached its peak, so the Russian strategy is to exploit the information environment in a very inexpensive but very effective way, in order to sow discord between China and us, or for economic reasons ”.

Real people

The State Department coincides with the start of the internet campaign on January 20, when the Russian state-controlled media began to broadcast anti-Western articles and interviews on the origins of the epidemic, notably RT and Sputnik . Account operators started the next day.

" It is unlikely to be a coincidence, " said an official. " When the Russian media started to come out with these theories, the Russian accounts really started to promote them worldwide ." These thousands of accounts work together with each other, on a daily basis, with identical phrases, tone and rhythm. We can all link them quite easily to RT, Sputnik and other media linked to Russia . ” " They are not robots, they are real people behind a keyboard, " added the official. " We can thus fully see at work their ecosystem of disinformation, including state television, websites close to them and thousands of false identities on the internet which, all, push the same themes ", commented Lea Gabrielle, who heads the Global Engagement Center.

Washington considers that Russian disinformation is hampering the health response to the virus, particularly in Africa and Asia.

" These operators seem to have carte blanche to sow discord, " said a State Department official, saying that the Russian trolls were autonomous and did not necessarily act on explicit orders. There is no need for a particular theme to be decided at the highest level. They have the independent ability to operate in this space to inflict the damage they want, with potentially catastrophic consequences . ”

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2020-02-22

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