nytimes.com - Documents examined by researchers show how one company in China has collected data on members of Congress and other influential Americans.
The Chinese government is using companies with expertise in artificial intelligence to monitor and manipulate public opinion, giving it a new weapon in information warfare, according to current and former U.S. officials and documents unearthed by researchers.
One company’s internal documents show how it has undertaken influence campaigns in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and collected data on members of Congress and other influential Americans.
While the firm has not mounted a campaign in the United States, American spy agencies have monitored its activity for signs that it might try to influence American elections or political debates, former U.S. officials said.
Artificial intelligence is increasingly the new frontier of espionage and malign influence operations, allowing intelligence services to conduct campaigns far faster, more efficiently and on a larger scale than ever before.
The Chinese government has long struggled to mount information operations targeting other countries, lacking the aggressiveness or effectiveness of Russian intelligence agencies. But U.S. officials and experts say that advances in A.I. could help China overcome its weaknesses.
A new technology can track public debates of interest to the Chinese government, offering the ability to monitor individuals and their arguments as well as broader public sentiment. The technology also has the promise of mass-producing propaganda that can counter shifts in public opinion at home and overseas.
China’s emerging capabilities come as the U.S. government pulls back efforts to counter foreign malign influence campaigns.
U.S. spy agencies still collect information about foreign manipulation, but the Trump administration has dismantled the teams at the State Department, the F.B.I. and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency that warned the public about potential threats. In the last presidential election, the campaigns included Russian videos denigrating Vice President Kamala Harris and falsely claiming that ballots had been destroyed.
The new technology allows the Chinese company GoLaxy to go beyond the election influence campaigns undertaken by Russia in recent years, according to the documents.
In a statement, GoLaxy denied that it was creating any sort of “bot network or psychological profiling tour” or that it had done any work related to Hong Kong or other elections. It called the information presented by The New York Times about the company “misinformation.”
“GoLaxy’s products are mainly based on open-source data, without specially collecting data targeting U.S. officials,” the firm said.
After being contacted by The Times, GoLaxy began altering its website, removing references to its national security work on behalf of the Chinese government.
The documents examined by researchers appear to have been leaked by a disgruntled employee upset about wages and working conditions at the company. While most of the documents are not dated, the majority of those that include dates are from 2020, 2022 and 2023. They were obtained by Vanderbilt University’s Institute of National Security, a nonpartisan research and educational center that studies cybersecurity, intelligence and other critical challenges.
Publicly, GoLaxy advertises itself as a firm that gathers data and analyzes public sentiment for Chinese companies and the government. But in the documents, which were reviewed by The Times, the company privately claims that it can use a new technology to reshape and influence public opinion on behalf of the Chinese government.
nytimes.com 04.08 - The introduction of a state-approved messaging app has raised fears that Russia could be preparing to block WhatsApp and Telegram.
Russia is escalating its efforts to curtail online freedom, taking new steps toward a draconian state-controlled internet.
The authorities are cracking down on workarounds that Russians have been using for access to foreign apps and banned content, including through new laws signed by President Vladimir V. Putin this past week. Moscow has also been impeding the function of services from U.S. tech companies, like YouTube, that Russians have used for years.
At the same time, the Kremlin is building out a domestic ecosystem of easily monitored and censored Russian alternatives to Western tech products. That includes a new state-approved messaging service, MAX, which will come preinstalled by law on all new smartphones sold in Russia starting next month.
The idea, experts say, is to migrate more Russians from an open internet dominated by the products of Western tech giants to a censored online ecosystem, where Russians primarily use software under the gaze and influence of the state. The effort has advanced significantly amid wartime repression, but it is unclear how far it will go.
“The goal here is absolute control,” said Anastasiia Kruope, a researcher at Human Rights Watch who wrote a recent report on declining Russian internet freedoms.
The Kremlin wants to control not only the information available online but also where and how internet traffic flows, Ms. Kruope said, so the Russian internet can function in isolation and be switched on and off at will. Russia’s technical capabilities for clamping down are improving, she added.
“They are not perfect,” Ms. Kruope said. “They are not nearly at the level they would like them to be. But they are getting better, and this is the reason to start paying attention.”“The goal here is absolute control,” said Anastasiia Kruope, a researcher at Human Rights Watch who wrote a recent report on declining Russian internet freedoms.
The Kremlin wants to control not only the information available online but also where and how internet traffic flows, Ms. Kruope said, so the Russian internet can function in isolation and be switched on and off at will. Russia’s technical capabilities for clamping down are improving, she added.
“They are not perfect,” Ms. Kruope said. “They are not nearly at the level they would like them to be. But they are getting better, and this is the reason to start paying attention.”
nytimes.com (29.07.2025) - Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota activated the National Guard to help the city of St. Paul address a cyberattack that was detected last Friday.
Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota on Tuesday activated the state National Guard to help officials in St. Paul, the capital, respond to a complex cyberattack that was first detected on Friday.
Mayor Melvin Carter of St. Paul said the city had shut down the bulk of its computer systems as a defensive measure as state and federal investigators tackled what he called “a deliberate, coordinated digital attack, carried out by a sophisticated external actor.”
Mr. Carter said that the F.B.I. and several state agencies were helping assess who was behind the attack. He declined to say whether ransom had been demanded or whether there was any evidence suggesting a foreign government was behind the attack.
City officials said they have yet to ascertain whether sensitive data had been stolen.
Emergency services, including police response systems, were not crippled by the attack, the city said in a statement. The shutdown meant that city employees did not have access to the internet in municipal buildings, and that routine services such as library loans and online payment systems were inaccessible.
Large and small cities across the United States, along with school systems and hospitals, have been targeted in cyberattacks in recent years. Such attacks are often carried out by individuals who compromise networks and encrypt data, then demand ransom payments in order to restore access.
Attackers sometimes steal sensitive data — such as credit card information — that they can later sell online.
St. Paul officials said they detected unusual activity on their network Friday morning and eventually realized the city’s networks had been breached. Deeming it a serious attack, they sought help from the governor and federal law enforcement agencies as well as cybersecurity companies.
Mr. Walz issued an executive order on Tuesday directing the National Guard to assign military computer experts to assist officials in St. Paul. In the order, Mr. Walz said that “the scale and complexity of this incident exceeded both internal and commercial response capabilities.”
