Reps. Krishnamoorthi, Schiff, and Speier Of The House Intelligence Committee Request Information From Twitter On Potential PRC Involvement in Platform Manipulation Campaign During Protests
WASHINGTON – Last night, Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi (IL-08), Adam Schiff (CA-28), and Jackie Speier (CA-14) of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence wrote to Twitter CEO Elon Musk regarding the possibility that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) may have used a network platform manipulation campaign on Twitter that restricted access to news about the protests in the PRC. Citing their concerns about the potential impacts of PRC’s growing cyber capabilities, including foreign malign influence operations, on American national security interests at home and abroad, the members requested information regarding the recent malicious activity, include any indications whether this activity was directed by the PRC, as well as Twitter’s own capabilities for detecting and identifying such activity.
“As you are aware, Chinese protestors took to the streets of several major cities and university campuses last week after a fire killed 10 people and injured nine in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region, on November 24,” the Intelligence Committee members wrote. “Thousands of protestors across China blamed the PRC’s strict coronavirus lockdown measures for delaying the firefighters’ arrival and called for an end to the restrictions. As the demonstrations spread to major cities and protestors began to demand political freedoms as well, CCP authorities violently cracked down on the protests, reportedly beating, dragging, and pushing protestors.”
“Video evidence of these confrontations, however, was suppressed online,” they continued. “CCP censors scrubbed them from the internet in China, and on Sunday, November 27, numerous Chinese-language accounts and bots spammed Twitter with links to escort services alongside city names in what researchers believe was an effort to suppress news regarding the widespread protests. For hours, searches on Twitter for information about the protests in the PRC were filled with spam and useless tweets, while Twitter’s reduced staff reportedly worked to resolve the information campaign.”
Citing the National Intelligence Council’s recently declassified assessment on “Cyber Operations Enabling Expansive Digital Authoritarianism” which reported that “China leads the world in using digital tools… to repress internal dissent” and “builds on its success at domestic repression when it conducts cyber operations in other countries,” the three members requested answers to the following questions by December 31st in order to better understand the extent of the PRC’s potential manipulation of Twitter and identify how recent changes at Twitter are affecting the threat of CCP foreign influence operations on social media:
- Has Twitter had any indication that the obstruction of access to Tweets on recent demonstrations in the People’s Republic of China was state-led?
- Does Twitter have any evidence on its platform of efforts by the People’s Republic of China or any other state actors to deliberately suppress access to information through the use of bots or other manipulations?
- Does Twitter currently have the capacity to identify largescale misinformation, disinformation, and information suppression on its platform as it occurs?
- Given Twitter’s emphasis on free speech, what measures are in place or underway to block efforts to prevent access to information through the network?
A copy of the letter is available here.