Free Republic

Iran surges cyber-enabled influence operations in support of Hamas. 02/07/2024 Iran surges cyber-enabled influence operations in support of Hamas Introduction As the Israel-Hamas war broke out on October 7, 2023, Iran immediately surged support to Hamas with its now well-honed technique of combining targeted hacks with influence operations amplified on social media, what we refer to as cyber-enabled influence operations.1 Iran’s operations were initially reactionary and opportunistic. By late October, nearly all of Iran’s influence and major cyber actors focused on Israel in an increasingly targeted, coordinated, and destructive manner, making for a seemingly boundless “all-hands-on-deck” campaign against Israel. Unlike...

China's Communist Party is intensifying covert influence operations in the United States that include funding Washington think tanks and coercing Chinese Americans, according to a congressional commission report. The influence operations are conducted by the United Front Work Department, a Central Committee organ that employs tens of thousands of operatives who seek to use both overt and covert operations to promote Communist Party policies. The Party's United Front strategy includes paying several Washington think tanks with the goal influencing their actions and adopting positions that support Beijing's policies. "The [Chinese Communist Party] has sought to influence academic discourse on China...

With much of the country’s attention focused on Russian “influence operations” ahead of the 2018 elections, one long-time China watcher says that Beijing has historically posed a much bigger threat to the U.S. than Moscow and continues to do so, though that is changing thanks to the policies of the Trump administration. “It’s a huge problem. China’s information and influence operations have been extremely effective,” Bill Gertz, senior editor at the Washington Free Beacon and author of several books detailing the Chinese threat to the U.S., told Fox News Tuesday. “They are literally buying up former officials. They are utilizing...