A Pentagon-approved bot attack attempted to thwart global COVID-19 vaccinations, report finds

A new investigative report found proof of hundreds of online bots spreading anti-China and anti-vaccine propaganda abroad.

According to a new investigative report by Reuters, the Pentagon ran a year-long vaccine disinformation campaign using social media bots — all part of an anti-China political play built on problematic COVID-19 disinformation.

One part of a larger, locally-targeted anti-vax campaign around the world, the propaganda efforts sought to discredit the validity of China’s Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine among internet users in the Philippines, where the vaccine had been deployed. Messaging included the phrase #Chinaangvirus, reportedly Tagalog slang for "China is the virus."

Reuters reports that the campaign was reportedly run to "undermine China’s growing influence in the Philippines," after the vaccines and other public health interventions were made readily available. The efforts "aimed to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy" of such aid. The strategy was greenlit by a secret order signed by then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper — elevating China and Russia to the priority of "active combat" and allowing for non-State Department-sanctioned psyops.

At least 300 fake accounts impersonating Filipinos were active on X/ Twitter between spring 2020 and mid-2021, right before a period of record deaths in the country — the platform later removed all of the accounts after being asked about their existence by Reuters.

"We weren’t looking at this from a public health perspective. We were looking at how we could drag China through the mud," an anonymous senior military officer told the publication.

A wider network of bots and fake accounts created by the U.S. military ran to local audiences across Central Asia and the Middle East, proliferating misinformation such as the idea that vaccines were not halal according to Islamic law. Some accounts had tens of thousands of followers.

Spanning across both the Trump and Biden administrations, former military officials told the publication that there were also accounts spreading such claims on Facebook and Instagram. Meta reportedly alerted the Pentagon that the accounts would be removed for violating platform policies, but they remained.

In 2021, the National Security Council ordered an end to the propaganda campaign in favor of an entirely pro-vaccine messaging push.