China-Linked Social Media Network Seeks To Shift COVID Responsibility From China to U.S.

Long after COVID-19 ended, China is still trying to shape the world’s perception of the pandemic. On August 6, FDD’s Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation (CCTI) identified at least 50 coordinated assets across 10 platforms spreading claims that U.S. biological laboratories developed bioweapons that caused COVID-19. This network revives a longstanding Chinese effort to shift blame for the pandemic and portray Washington as a biological threat. Evidence That the Network Is Coordinated and China-Linked The network operates across TikTok, Tumblr, Facebook, YouTube, Blogspot, X, Quora, Pixiv, and Chinese-language forums. Its posts used hashtags such as #USBiolabs, #DTRASecrets, and #AmericanBioHazard while alleging that the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) manages a secret military laboratory network for the development of infectious diseases. Other posts claimed U.S.-supported facilities stored high-risk pathogens and destroyed samples in Ukraine to conceal evidence. The accounts repeatedly posted identical or nearly identical text, hashtags, cartoons, videos, and images, often within just hours of each other. For example, the same article, or excerpts of it, appeared across dozens of Tumblr and Facebook accounts. Sentences from this article also often serve as titles for the network’s YouTube videos. Identical cartoons appeared on additional TikTok and YouTube channels. Chinese-language artifacts provide the clearest evidence of a China link. One TikTok account’s metadata showed the user had the app’s language set to Chinese. One YouTube channel had previously posted content in simplified Chinese, and another YouTube channel’s cartoon bears simplified Chinese characters. On top of these operational security lapses, the network’s cross-platform repetition closely resembles previously documented activity from a persistent Chinese campaign known as Spamouflage. The campaign has generated little visible engagement so far, but even low-impact networks can seed material for future amplification. China Adapting Russia’s Playbook The U.S. biolab narrative has a long Russian pedigree. After Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Moscow claimed that U.S.-supported Ukrainian public-health facilities were covert biological-weapons laboratories. Chinese officials and state media amplified those allegations and separately promoted suspicions that COVID-19 originated at Fort Detrick. In turn, this false claim was adapted from the KGB’s “Operation Denver,” which pushed the conspiracy theory during the 1980s that AIDS originated at the base, which is the home of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease. Beijing has also tailored the narrative to divide Washington and Taipei. In 2023, Chinese state media amplified allegations, based on a forged document, claiming that the United States directed Taiwan to build a biological-weapons laboratory. Related social media posts falsely alleged that Taiwanese authorities were collecting blood samples to help Washington develop genetic weapons targeting Chinese people. Ironically, strategists from the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) People’s Liberation Army (PLA) have openly discussed the potential development of bioweapons targeting specific ethnic groups or populations. The newly identified network applies the same framework to a June 12 disclosure by the former director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, concerning more than 120 U.S.-funded laboratories in more than 30 countries. The network’s content included figures and language from the release but transformed them into unsupported claims that the facilities constitute a “paramilitary biological network” for biowarfare. Policymakers Should Anticipate Weaponization When Disclosing Sensitive Information While officials may seek to increase transparency when releasing information, U.S. officials should also account for predictable foreign influence when conducting disclosures. For example, this particular campaign heavily leveraged Gabbard’s disclosures as purported evidence of a covert weapons program. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) could have plausibly anticipated that Beijing, and likely Russia as well, would weaponize it. When disclosing sensitive information that adversaries can weaponize, federal agencies should share information with law enforcement and the intelligence community to proactively monitor for foreign malign influence campaigns that exploit the disclosure. Once these campaigns are identified, agencies can actively address them through a variety of legal means, for example, through public exposure or by sharing information on foreign activity with platforms that can take down coordinated inauthentic networks. Max Lesser is a senior analyst on emerging threats at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ (FDD’s) Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation (CCTI), where Thomas Crehan is an intern. For more analysis from the authors and FDD, please subscribe HERE. Follow FDD on X @FDD and @FDD_CCTI. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on foreign policy and national security.