Reuters released an exclusive investigation report on the 14th that the US Department of Defense launched a secret operation during the first year after the outbreak of COVID-19, and constantly used false accounts to spread false information about China's Sinovac vaccine on social media. US officials said bluntly that "what we are considering is not public health, but how to drag China into the water". Because the US did not share vaccines with other countries in time, it "can only discredit Chinese vaccines".

It was reported that the US military's action was particularly targeted at the Philippines. Reuters found at least 300 relevant false accounts manipulated by the US military on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), almost all of which were established in the summer of 2020, and concentrated on the slogan "China is a virus". One account said that Chinese vaccines "may be rat drugs". In addition, this action has also been extended to some other countries in the global South, including Central Asia and the Middle East.

The spokesman of the Philippine Ministry of Health said, "The relevant departments of the countries concerned should investigate the Reuters report.". Several Philippine personnel were extremely angry after learning about the US military action. Nina Castillo Carandang, a former member of the National Immunization Technical Advisory Group of the Philippine Ministry of Health, criticized that when the Philippines had no independent vaccine production capacity and was "desperate", the US military actually "sprinkled salt on our wounds". Some US personnel also admitted that the US military's practice "touched the bottom line" and "unforgivable".

On March 1, 2021, the Philippines officially launched New Crown Vaccination (CCTV)

Reuters quoted three former US military officials as saying that the action was pushed by Major General Jonathan Braga, then the commander of the US Pacific Army's Special Operations Department. He had long hoped that the US military would increase its propaganda efforts. At first, the purpose was to hope people in East and South Asia would "understand that the new crown originated in China" and incite local people to question the Chinese vaccine. After the operation, Braga was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General in August 2021 and became the current commander of the US Army Special Operations Command.

A senior US military official involved in the operation said, "We have not considered this matter from the perspective of public health", "We are thinking about how to drag China into the water".

Biden and Trump's team did not respond to the request for comment on the secret plan.

The spokesman of the US Department of Defense acknowledged that the US military "uses various platforms, including social media, to combat malicious propaganda against the US, allies and partners". She also tried to "bite back", claiming that "China has also spread false news claiming that the new crown originated from the United States".

In response to the incident that "Western media discredit the poor effect of Chinese made vaccines", the spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China previously said that the Chinese inactivated whole virus vaccine can stimulate better cellular immunity and immune memory, and plays a key role in preventing disease onset, severe disease and death. China has always put the safety of vaccines first. The safety of vaccines in China is good, and the overall adverse reaction reporting rate is low. Practice has proved that Chinese vaccines are safe and effective.

"When we have no way out, the United States is throwing salt on our wounds."

After the full outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020, China soon announced that it would provide assistance to countries around the world, including giving masks, respirators, etc. In May 2020, it announced that the COVID-19 vaccine being developed would be a global public product and would ensure that developing countries could obtain it. However, the vaccines developed in the United States have been given priority to vaccinate Americans because of the "America First" strategy. At the initial stage, tens of thousands of doses of vaccines were even scrapped because no one had vaccinated them. The United States government also allowed American enterprises to "freely price" other countries.

In July 2020, then President Duterte of the Philippines requested China to give priority to the vaccine needs of the Philippines, and China soon agreed.

Reuters reported that China's influence in the Philippines is also an important reason for the US military's campaign to discredit China's vaccine. A senior US military official who participated in the propaganda campaign against Southeast Asia told Reuters, "We have not done a good job in sharing vaccines with partner countries, so the only thing we can do is to discredit China's vaccines." Some false accounts manipulated by the US military also took this opportunity to attack Duterte, saying that he was willing to give up the sovereignty, mineral and economic interests of the Philippines for the sake of vaccines.

The spokesman of the Philippine Ministry of Health said that the relevant departments of the countries concerned should investigate the matter. Reuters reported that several Philippine personnel were extremely angry after learning about the US military action. Nina Castillo Carandang, a former member of the National Immunization Technical Advisory Group of the Philippine Ministry of Health, criticized that when the Philippines had no independent vaccine production capacity and was "desperate", the US military actually "sprinkled salt on our wounds".

Reuters pointed out that although it was impossible to assess the influence of US military propaganda, the vaccination work in the Philippines in 2021 was slowly promoted, and some people were unwilling to vaccinate the new crown vaccine with Chinese assistance, so Duterte said in June 2021 that "during the current crisis, so many Filipinos ignored the government's persuasion that I felt speechless", He even said, "Get vaccinated or I will be put in prison".

Some US personnel are also ashamed of the US military's approach. Greg Treverton, the former chairman of the US National Intelligence Council, said that the US government should have encouraged as many people as possible to be vaccinated. The US military approach "touched the bottom line".

Daniel Lucey, a clinical professor of infectious disease medicine at Gaizel School of Medicine in Dartmouth, believes that the US military's approach is "inexcusable". "I feel very depressed, disappointed and disillusioned that the US government should do so." He is worried that the US government's approach will reduce the public's trust in the government's health sector as a whole and will bite back at the US.

A report by the National Institutes of Health in early 2023 shows that some Americans' hesitation and rejection of vaccination have led to at least 230000 unnecessary deaths.

In September 2021, the flag representing 630000 people who died due to the new crown on the National Plaza of the United States (AFP)

"Until this year, some illegal accounts were still active"

Reuters reported that the US military action was opposed by the US State Department. A former US State Department official who expressed opposition at the time said that they believed that such public opinion should not be promoted during the epidemic.

However, these opposition voices did not stop the action. In the past, the local US embassy could veto relevant actions with one vote, but in 2019, the then US Defense Minister Mark Esper signed a secret directive, upgrading the strategic competition between the US and China and Russia to a "state of war", allowing the military to ignore the State Department when conducting actions against China and Russia.

The National Defense Authorization Act passed by the US Congress in the same year also allows the US military to carry out secret propaganda operations against other countries, including in areas where there is "no hostile action". However, US laws prohibit the US military from launching propaganda actions against US citizens, and Reuters has not found that the US military has tried to do so.

In addition, some relevant American social media platforms have also expressed their opposition. It is reported that "Meta", the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, told the US military as early as the summer of 2020 that it found that the US military used false accounts to spread false information about the COVID-19 epidemic on its own platform, which violated the rules of the platform.

In this regard, the US military promised to stop spreading false information about the COVID-19 epidemic, but argued that these false accounts were used for "anti-terrorism" and asked Facebook not to cancel relevant accounts or delete relevant information published according to the platform rules. Reuters found that until this year, some of the accounts violating the platform rules were still active.

Former US Defense Minister Esper (surging image)

However, the US military has not stopped spreading false information about the COVID-19 epidemic. At the beginning of 2021, when Biden came to power, Facebook contacted the new National Security Council and asked it to stop the US military action. Reuters reported that the committee members were "shocked" when they learned the details of the US military action. In the spring of 2021, the National Security Council officially called a halt to the campaign to discredit Chinese vaccines. A former senior US military official involved in the campaign said that the committee "told us that we should support all vaccines". However, due to "unknown reasons", the dissemination of false information will not stop until the summer of 2021.

At the end of 2021, the US Department of Defense carried out an internal investigation and found that a lot of information disseminated in this action aimed at discrediting Chinese vaccines was "basically irrelevant to any reasonable military purpose".

Reuters quoted a senior official of the US Department of Defense as saying that the Ministry of Defense has withdrawn some of its directives issued in 2019, and now requires the US military to work closely with local personnel and restrict them from launching public influence actions.

However, the Joint Competition Concept report launched by the US military in February 2023 still shows that the US military can "destroy the social trust and political foundation of China and Russia through such subversive means as spreading false information on social media, packaging false narratives into news". Reuters reported that the "General Dynamics IT", which subcontracted the US military to discredit Chinese vaccines, won the bid again in February this year, and the US military will pay US $493 million to it to "continue to carry out secret influence operations".

On March 15, a reporter asked a question at a press conference of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. According to Reuters, former President Trump of the United States signed a secret presidential decree in 2019, authorizing the CIA to set up a special team to spread the words that discredit the Chinese government in China, Southeast Asia, the South Pacific, Africa and other places through covert means such as buying false social accounts from the media. What is the speaker's comment on this?

"I remember Director Burns of the CIA said publicly not long ago that he had invested more resources in intelligence activities against China. The relevant reports you just mentioned echoed Director Burns' remarks, which also proved once again that the United States has systematically disseminated false information about China all year round, which has become an important means of the United States' cognitive war against China." Wang Wenbin said.

Wang Wenbin pointed out that the US Republican Senator Rand Paul once said frankly that the US government is the largest disseminator of false information in the world history. The US often accuses other countries of spreading false information, but in fact, the US itself is the real source of false information.

"Fabricating and spreading lies will only accelerate the bankruptcy of its own reputation and spread false information, which will not stop China's progress, and will only make the United States itself more and more dark," said Wang Wenbin.