A government agency was spreading dangerous rumors about the coronavirus vaccine, playing on people’s religious beliefs to sow chaos, Reuters revealed last week. Was it Russia? China? Iran, perhaps? The culprit turned out to be someone closer to home: The U.S. military.
Both the Trump and Biden administrations signed off on a psychological operation aimed at discrediting Chinese-made vaccines, using fake social media accounts to target foreign countries, Reuters reported. The program ended in late 2021, after executives at Facebook and officials from other U.S. government agencies raised concerns about the content.
It’s far from the only time Washington spread dodgy rumors and straight-up lies through fake online accounts. The anti-vax campaign is the latest in a series of pro-American disinformation campaigns that have been exposed over the past few years. While the U.S. government warns about the use of “fake or misleading personas” to “amplify conspiracy theories,” it also uses the exact same tactics to sow distrust against China, Russia, and Iran.
A 2023 strategy document by the U.S. military, for example, calls on U.S. forces to “weaponize information to manipulate an adversary’s perception of reality by influencing and disrupting social systems and technical connections that are foundational to a modern society. Disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda can trigger a chain of events in an adversary’s society that gradually degrades its domestic unity, undermines societal trust in its government and institutions, and diminishes its international stature.”
Such chaos is an opportunity “to prevent [enemies] from opposing U.S. actions, or to better position U.S. joint forces in the event of armed conflict,” the document states.
But the anti-vax campaign stands out because of the subject matter. The U.S. government has long been worried about “vaccine hesitancy” and people’s mistrust of medical authorities at home. But they encouraged vaccine hesitancy and sowed doubt about medical authorities abroad—as if foreigners’ reactions to the pandemic would not have an effect on America.
Hellbound and Down 