As Mark Galeotti notes, the main department responsible for active measures within the KGB was originally named “Service D,” a reference to disinformation ( dezinformatsiya). in an attempt to promote communism, discredit the Western liberal order, and redirect Western criticism of the Soviet Union. During the Cold War, for example, the Soviet Union deployed what it dubbed “active measures” against the U.S. Nor are information operations new phenomena. Other countries, such as Russia and Iran, are also known to carry out significant information operations. Of course, China is not the only foreign state engaged in targeting the American public through the information space. Sample of posts created by PRC against Lynas. More recently, PRC information operations (IOs) took aim at the U.S.’s midterm elections, with posts that disparaged certain senators and spread disinformation about politically-motivated violence.

China has a veritable chokehold on the global market for rare earth elements, controlling almost 90 percent of their production-an edge that Beijing is eager to maintain. Rare earth metals are critical to producing a range of technologies, including semiconductors, batteries, cell phones, electric vehicles, renewable energy systems, and missiles. The PRC’s goal was to do reputational damage to one of the main threats to its dominance in the geopolitically important rare earths sector. The vast majority of posts came from fake accounts that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) created and maintained as part of an influence operation. Their posts also denigrated Lynas’s environmental record and called for protests against the construction of this facility and a boycott of the company.Įxcept the posts were not written by Texas residents-nor even by real people. A year later, numerous concerned Texas residents began to criticize the deal on social media, claiming that Lynas’s facility would create pollution, lead to toxic waste dumping, and harm the local population’s health. Department of Defense to build a processing facility for rare earth elements in Texas.

In 2021, Lynas-the largest rare earths mining and processing company outside China-finalized a deal with the U.S. Last summer, a coordinated campaign by users on Facebook and Twitter targeted the Australian company Lynas.

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