Chinese Online Influence Operation Spreads Anti-American Conspiracy Claims

President Donald Trump is to blame for the worsening fentanyl crisis in the United States. The U.S. manipulated the elections in Honduras last November. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is a corrupt militarist.

All of these false claims have been pushed by a previously unreported influence operation likely connected to China uncovered by FDD’s Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation (CCTI). The network consists of more than 330 inauthentic social media accounts and is designed to connect false assertions to audiences in the United States and in U.S. partner nations. Between December 2025 and February 2026, the coordinated network posted material across X, Tumblr, Blogspot, Quora, and YouTube, manipulating each platform’s algorithms to push its content to real users.

The Network’s Six Clusters and Their Narratives

The network is composed of six distinct clusters, each focused on advancing distinct narratives to different audiences, but all aligned with Beijing’s interests.

The first and largest cluster — made up of 151 accounts — targeted audiences in the United States. On February 2, for example, four accounts claimed that President Donald Trump had worsened the fentanyl crisis, with other contributors posing as American citizens to exonerate China. While these accounts have virtually no followers, the posts generated thousands of coordinated replies and reposts from a similarly inauthentic amplification network. This tactic is used to manipulate platform algorithms into pushing content into the feeds of real users.

The second cluster alleged that U.S. organizations — including the National Endowment for Democracy and the International Republican Institute — orchestrated “Taiwan-U.S. collusion” plots to undermine China. This cluster also denied Beijing’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Tibet.

A third cluster of accounts focused on discrediting Uyghur activists, while attempting to inject anti-Uyghur sentiment into debates in Canada and Japan.

A fourth cluster accused the United States of interfering in Honduras’s recent presidential election, alleging that Washington manipulated the vote count.

A fifth cluster portrayed Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who recently won a landslide in the country’s national election, as corrupt and militaristic. The accounts likely sought to influence debates leading up to Japan’s February 8 elections.

A final cluster amplified protest hashtags in the Philippines, framing U.S. ally President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. as illegitimate.

Why the Operation Is Very Likely Chinese

The network’s narratives align closely with official Chinese government messaging, while its tactics closely mirror previous Chinese-linked “Spamouflage” influence campaigns.

The same accounts defend Beijing’s repression of the Uyghur population in Xinjiang, frame Western organizations as “subversion tools,” and echo the rhetoric commonly used by Chinese state media.

While many of the accounts in the network portray themselves as citizens of the country they are posting about, X’s location transparency features reveal that several accounts are based in Hong Kong or connected via the China Android app. Additionally, the accounts are most active during standard business hours in China.

Washington Needs an Interagency Counter-Influence Capability

Most of the accounts in the network have little engagement. Nevertheless, identifying them as part of an influence campaign enables social media companies to remove accounts for violating platform policies on coordinated inauthentic behavior before they reach virality. Collectively the accounts manipulate recommendation algorithms to push their narratives on unsuspecting social media consumers.

As U.S. adversaries manipulate the information environment, Washington should establish a permanent, centralized capability to identify, attribute, and disrupt these operations.

This capability should be modeled on the now-dismantled Foreign Malign Influence Center within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. This center integrated intelligence across agencies, leveraged experts from the entire intelligence community, and built effective public-private partnerships. Additionally, the director for cognitive advantage at the National Security Council should play a central role in this effort by coordinating offensive and defensive responses, advising on effective countermeasures, and ensuring a nonpartisan approach that imposes meaningful costs on adversaries engaged in influence operations.

Maria Riofrio is a research assistant at FDD’s Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation (CCTI) where Max Lesser is a senior analyst on emerging threats. For more analysis from Maria, Max, and FDD, please subscribe HERE. Follow FDD on X @FDDand @FDD_CCTI. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on foreign policy and national security.