Taiwan security agency flags rise in Chinese disinformation ahead of local elections — SkimNews
Get the Geopolitics newsletter
Daily geopolitics — wars, elections, sanctions, the diplomatic moves that move markets. Free.
- Taiwan's National Security Bureau reported that China spread more than 2.5 million pieces of disputed or false online information targeting Taiwan in the first nine months of 2026, up roughly 48% from 1.69 million items a year earlier.
- The bureau found the China-originated content concentrated on energy, food security, and defense policy, as well as specific candidates running in November's elections for city mayors and county magistrates.
- China has expanded its use of AI to manipulate information, deploying AI-generated videos, fake accounts, content farms, and coordinated comment flooding on Facebook, Threads, YouTube, and online forums to gather intelligence on Taiwanese current affairs, candidates, and polling data.
- Chinese state media amplified critics of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, including influencers and politicians linked to the opposition Kuomintang, according to a Reuters investigation with Taipei-based research group IORG.
- Chinese cyberattacks on Taiwanese government agencies averaged 2.58 million per day in the first nine months of 2026, with detected threats surging to 185.6 million in July and 106.4 million in August.
- The bureau said the June attack surge could not be ruled out as "advance intelligence-gathering and harassment preparation aimed at interfering" in Taiwan's year-end "nine-in-one" elections; China's Taiwan Affairs Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Why it matters: The NSB has now quantified an industrial-scale election interference operation: 2.58 million daily cyberattacks plus AI-generated content farms targeting named candidates, a threat level that moves beyond traditional influence efforts and puts Taiwan's electoral machinery directly in the crosshairs before voters go to the polls in November.
Ask SkimNews
