China, Russia target Pentagon agency with disinformation campaign

NEWS AND ANALYSIS:

China and Russia have joined forces in an aggressive disinformation campaign involving both covert and overt operations designed to discredit a key Pentagon agency.

The campaign against the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, known as DTRA, involves claims that the agency is involved in secret biological weapons work in Europe.

As a result, DTRA has launched a new counter-disinformation initiative that involves what U.S. defense officials say is a truth-based effort to more clearly explain the agency’s operations and mission.

The joint Chinese and Russian campaign has been underway for over two years, and officials described it is a classic joint information operation against the United States. The target is the DTRA’s “biological threat reduction” program that was launched in the 1990s as part of a post-Soviet effort to limit the spread of dangerous arms.

During Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin began claiming that a group of laboratories in Ukraine were actually U.S. “military biological laboratories” secretly engaged in making bioweapons. The Pentagon and U.S. government have tried since then to dispel the false narratives, with limited success.

“DTRA does not own any bio labs in Ukraine,” a DTRA fact sheet states. “Accusations of military biological activity or human experimentation are demonstrably false.”

The DTRA-sponsored program in Ukraine seeks to help consolidate and secure pathogens and work with the Ukrainians to help the government there detect and report disease outbreaks before they pose threats.

DTRA Director Rebecca Hersman criticized the China-Russia disinformation effort in a statement.

“These narratives are powerful because they’re scary and play on primal fears — especially the false biological narratives on the heels of a global pandemic,” she said. “Specifically, for DTRA, WMD foreign malign influence threatens our personnel, reputation and capacity to support our partners abroad to prevent WMD use.”

A DTRA spokesman said the agency is updating its website with recent examples including explaining how Chinese propaganda on the subject is recycling Russian propaganda. Russian forces took control of two of the laboratories after the invasion and continue to deny Ukraine access to the facilities.

The Russian and Chinese disinformation campaign has continued through false media reports, mainly in the developing world, and through sophisticated propaganda operations. Both authoritarian governments invest large-scale resources in their information operations.

For DTRA, the disinformation turned uglier in July when Russian state media aired a government “documentary” that was 80% focused on criticizing Ms. Hersman. The documentary was hosted by Maria Butina, who was convicted by the Justice Department in 2018 for acting as an unregistered Russian agent and subsequently returned to her homeland.

Other DTRA personnel, including Air Force Maj. Gen. Lyle K. Drew, its deputy director, have also been attacked in the campaign as nefarious actors.

DTRA officials have also been harassed by Russian propagandists as part of the campaign. Counter-disinformation officials said the program seeks to “name and shame” DTRA officials in seeking to promote the false narrative that Ukraine and the United States are engaged in building biological arms.

What was once a disinformation campaign exclusively conducted by Russia has since been joined by China in recent months. Beijing has tried to use the military biological lab narrative to divert attention from its handling of the early days of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic. For several years, China has claimed the coronavirus behind the pandemic originated in a U.S. Army laboratory in the United States and not in Wuhan.

Recognizing its problem in dealing with disinformation, DTRA recently created a special unit focused on countering the narrative outside the United States, a defense official said.

The Defense Advanced Research Agency is also taking part in developing counter-disinformation efforts in support of DTRA.

“The bottom-line concept is bringing in as many information-related capabilities as possible in promoting the truth,” the official said.

The Congressional Research Service has also tried to debunk the Beijing-Moscow narrative alleging there are networks of “military biological laboratories” in Ukraine and elsewhere.

“To the contrary, the United States has cooperated with Ukraine on biological security programs ranging from laboratory security to disease surveillance and pandemic response,” the report said.

Congressional panel: China espionage on the rise

Chinese spying cases and transnational repression — the systematic effort to target overseas dissidents — is rapidly increasing in the United States, according to a new report by a House subcommittee.

Between January 2021 and this month, federal authorities logged more than 55 cases of China-related espionage in 20 states, the House Homeland Security subcommittee on counterterrorism, law enforcement and intelligence said in a recent report.

The cases involved the transmission of sensitive military information to Beijing, theft of trade secrets, harassment and repression of Chinese dissidents and obstruction of justice.

“The government of China and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) seriously threaten the economic well-being, homeland security and democratic values of the United States,” the report said. “Cases of Chinese espionage throughout the U.S. have expanded rapidly with Chinese nationals and non-Chinese individuals acting on behalf of the People’s Republic of China allegedly committing a variety of forms of espionage including but not limited to, government, military, and economic espionage.”

According to subcommittee statistics, between 2000 and 2023, 224 incidents of Chinese spying were detected against the United States. An estimated 80% of economic espionage prosecutions are linked to actions benefiting the Chinese system, and about 60% of all trade secrets theft cases were carried on by Chinese agents.

Billions of dollars’ worth of U.S. intellectual property stolen by China was estimated to have cost each American family about $4,000 to $6,000, the report said.

Regarding transnational repression, China’s government is the largest source of covert and overt attempts to silence dissidents outside China who are critical of the regime.

China expanding signals intelligence in South China Sea

Satellite images obtained by a British think tank reveal that the Chinese military is expanding capabilities on Triton Island in the South China Sea as part of a major electronic spy program based in the strategic waterway.

Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, revealed in a report published Oct. 17 that the new sites on Triton, when completed, will “significantly increase China’s signals intercept and electronic warfare capabilities across the disputed Paracel Islands archipelago and add to a wider surveillance network spanning much of the South China Sea.”

Chatham House analysts John Pollock and Damien Symon used satellite imagery to identify the military construction on Triton between August 2022 and September of this year, upgrading the island outpost China calls Zhongjian Dao with radar and other structures. The buildup has been underway since 2015.

“The enhanced facility on Triton is likely to offer a challenge to China’s competitors in the region and internationally,” the report said. China seized the Paracels from Vietnam in a 1974 naval battle, with competition for access to its waters increasing after the recent discovery of oil and gas reserves.

The new radar on the island was identified as a synthetic impulse and aperture radar, or SIAR, that can reportedly detect radar-evading stealth aircraft. The commercial spy satellite photos make clear that earlier assumptions that the People’s Liberation Army was building a long runway on Triton were incorrect.

The island is being used for the counter stealth radar and “a suspected launching point for an anti-ship missile battery,” the report said.

The new radar is thought to be linked electronically with at least three other anti-stealth aircraft radar systems on other Chinese bases in the South China Sea, including Hainan Island, a major military base.

The new radar base also limits Vietnam’s military forces by tracking and targeting naval vessels.

“The facility may also impede attempts by the American, British and Australian navies to challenge China’s ‘nine-dash-line’ claim by navigating the waters of the Paracel,” the report said.

Strategically, the expansion of the radar network in the Paracels could also erode U.S. and allied military technological superiority in the region, the report said.