The EU has released its second Report on Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) Threats late last month, which stated that Ukraine was the most targeted country, but also found the Asia Pacific, including Taiwan, to be under similar attacks.
The EU’s European External Action Service (EEAS) published the report on Jan. 23, based on 750 investigated FIMI incidents between Dec. 1, 2022 and Nov. 30 last year.
FIMI “describes a mostly non-illegal pattern of behavior that threatens or has the potential to negatively impact values, procedures and political processes. Such activity is manipulative in character, conducted in an intentional and coordinated manner, by state or non-state actors, including their proxies inside and outside of their own territory,” the report said.
Photo: Reuters
In the Asia-Pacific, a map in the report shows that Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia and Australia were also targeted.
In response to media queries about the attacks in the Asia-Pacific region, on which the report did not elaborate, the EEAS said a total of 12 cases targeting the region were recorded during the period covered, but also stressed that the EEAS’s “mandate and priorities are primarily focused on attacks against the EU coming from Russia.”
The EEAS listed several cases targeting Taiwan in the email.
One was a 300-page Chinese-language e-book slandering President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and the Democratic Progressive Party, promoted via social media platform X, Web sites and press release distribution services in the weeks leading up to the presidential and legislative elections on Jan. 13.
Another was an article denigrating Taiwan-US relations posted by the Chinese state-controlled Global Times and “laundered by Chinese FIMI infosphere Facebook pages,” the EEAS said. The article alleged that the US was using Taiwan to weaken China and that 30 political groups — mostly unspecified except for the pro-China Labor Party and Labor Rights Association — in Taiwan protested against Tsai’s US visit.
There was also the case of Chinese state-affiliated media outlets China Daily and CGTN, within an hour of each other on Aug. 12, publishing articles depicting China’s view on the history of Taiwan and the alleged legal grounds for China’s claim on Taiwan, the EEAS said.
Meanwhile, the report stated that “AI usage in FIMI is minimal,” a finding that is at odds with what Taiwan AI Lab has found in its research on Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections, which indicated generative artificial-intelligence (AI) has been widely used.
The EEAS responded to media question about the gap, saying they found most attacks in the 750 cases identified in the report were still conducted with low-cost, traditional manipulation techniques, but that the team is “well aware of the wide use of AI content during the latest Taiwanese elections and ... can expect similar AI-charged FIMI this year.”
The FIMI attack targets are global, EEAS said.
Ukraine was the most targeted country, with 160 cases recorded, while the US was targeted in 58 cases, followed by Poland with 33, Germany with 31 and France with 25, it said.
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