Sen. Marco Rubio targeted by Chinese Spamouflage disinformation campaign

Several fake news campaigns have been launched by Chinese disinformation operation Spamouflage, also known as Dragonbridge, against Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., in recent months after initially targeting the senator during his reelection campaign two years ago, reports The Register.

While the 2022 attacks involved false new stories calling the senator “unhinged” and detailing his apparent feud with former President Donald Trump that mistakenly referenced Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, instead, Spamouflage’s new intrusions entailed the exploitation of accounts on X, formerly Twitter, to post negative replies to the official account of Rubio, who vehemently opposes China, according to a study from Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub. “Given how Rubio has recurred as a target and the nature of some of what we have identified here, it may be that accounts targeting him are employed to test new tactics before they are applied more broadly. That may mean that Rubio is the proverbial canary in the coal mine and a warning of at least some things to come,” said researchers Darren Linvill and Patrick Warren.