New Index Takes the Pulse of China’s Growing and Dynamic Foreign Influence - Power 3.0: Understanding Modern Authoritarian Influence By Sarah Cook In just the past month, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) added to its long track record of foreign influence. New details have emerged about the PRC’s continued involvement in espionage...

An updated version of my recent piece on the China Index findings on CCP foreign influence around the world is up at the Power 3.0 blog.

Thanks to the NED for improving and publishing it!
www.power3point0.org/2025/10/21/n...

My latest @aspi-org.bsky.social The Strategist on Tailored Psychological Warfare: A #Deepfake Video of Hong Kong Activists

📍Significance > a more tailored & comprehensive approach of psychological warfare
📍An early test for China's future ops

Threads⚡️x 7
www.aspistrategist.org.au/tailored-psy...

My team is organizing a workshop on information disorder at the CSCW conference (Oct 18, Bergen, Norway). We aim to convene scholars committed to understanding mis & disinfo, scams, online hate, etc. Applicants should submit 2-6 page position papers by Aug 1: cscw2025infodisorder.netlify.app

Another harrowing night in Kyiv and my neighbourhood is getting pummelled.

A boy ran into my shelter with his family earlier, crying. “I thought this was my last night,” he told his grandma as she cuddled him.

Then, at 3:00 am: “I’m 8 years old now! It’s already my birthday!”

Civic Idea are a terrific organization doing impactful work under very difficult circumstances. Their latest report looks at Iranian entities evading sanctions through Georgia:

civicidea.ge/wp-content/u...

Every day is Independence Day in Taiwan | The Strategist In a speech kicking off his ‘10 Talks on the Country’ series on 22 June, Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te declared that Taiwan ‘is of course a country’, citing its democratic system and separate histo...

The idea that Taiwan might one day declare independence misses the core of the cross-strait issue. For many Taiwanese, especially those born after martial law, independence isn’t a destination; it’s the condition they already live under. www.aspistrategist.org.au/every-day-is...

Sadly, I think we've been teaching digital/media literacy all wrong. Instead of focusing on teaching people how to be skeptical and spot manipulation, we should focus on teaching people how these systems work so they can effectively use them to share their messages and promote their values.

Trump’s ‘fear factor’: Scientists go silent as funding cuts escalate Many worry about retribution. But for others, speaking out is worth the risk

This is a collective action problem. Being silent is not going to help you in the end: the liars are doing keyword searches to find offending grants whether you talk or not. THEY are framing the public convo while you 🤐. I can’t stress that enough. A quick thread:

www.science.org/content/arti...

Hong Kong police arrest father and brother of wanted activist Anna Kwok Hong Kong national security police have arrested the father and brother of wanted activist Anna Kwok for allegedly dealing with her finances, local media reported on Friday, in the first use of the city's security law on family members.

This is beyond outrageous! #HongKong authorities have sunk to a new despicable low in their escalating transnational repression in arresting the father and brother of human rights defender in exile Anna Kwok, executive director of Hong Kong Democracy Council. www.reuters.com/world/asia-p...

"我是台灣人，我反藍白共”.

台南人好厲害

Russia seeds chatbots with lies. Any bad actor could game AI the same way. In their race to push out new versions with more capability, AI companies leave users vulnerable to “LLM grooming” efforts that promote bogus information.

Hard to overstate the extent to which we have handicapped our ability to deal with adversarial
abuse because “ceNsOrsHiP!” screamers have cowed people into ceasing to study, and companies into ceasing to mitigate, the most transparently manipulative things. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

State Terror A brief guide for Americans

"the president defied a Supreme Court ruling to return a man mistakenly sent to a gulag... and spoke of sending Americans to foreign concentration camps.
This is the beginning of an American policy of state terror, and it has to be identified as such to be stopped"
snyder.substack.com/p/state-terror

We "defend Christian values" by using ballistic missiles to kill children as they gather to attend Easter worship.

Australian Signals Directorate with an advisory on malware targeting Uyghur, Taiwanese and Tibetan groups and civil society actors.
www.cyber.gov.au/about-us/vie...

Hong Kong: Drop national security charges for social media posts - ARTICLE 19 Hong Kong authorities must release pro-democracy activist Chow Kim-ho and stop using national security laws to stifle online expression.

#HongKong: Drop national security charges for social media posts - @article19.bsky.social calls for immediate and unconditional release of Chow Kim-ho www.article19.org/resources/ho...

Bravo

In the face of disinformation, defenders of democracy are often drawn into endless battles against falsehoods. This is precisely the trap laid by anti-democratic movements.

But we don’t have to play along.

Read our our latest statement 👇
www.disinfo.eu/we-fight-dis...

ICE says its job is to stop illegal ‘ideas’ crossing the border in since-deleted X post The agency said the post was put up in error.

But Biden was the censorship president, right?

www.politico.com/news/2025/04...

A reminder that if the government can send migrants to a prison camp without any due process, it can send U.S. citizens there, too. I know because this happened to me and my family in 1942.

“History repeats itself, first as a tragedy, second as a farce.”
— Karl Marx

Last Week in Censorship: March 31 to April 6, 2025 Senator calls for violence against journalists; Book purges in the military.

The Trump administration is directing so many attacks on the First Amendment my team @americansunlight.org launched a weekly censorship tracker 🫠

americansunlight.substack.com/p/last-week-...

Me and My Censor | Made in China Journal When Liu Lipeng first contacted me in July 2020, I was still in China. I initially wanted to write this as a fictional short story, but I didn’t have the courage to do it at the time because it would ...

Deep dive in the experience of censorship in #China "it provides insight into how China has come to be where it is today: although I was a #Weibo censor, I am not a bad person." madeinchinajournal.com/2025/04/03/m... @vivianwu.bsky.social @madeinchinajournal.com #MurongXuecun #慕容雪村

20 Lessons on Tyranny: by Timothy Snyder / read by John Lithgow YouTube video by PoliticsGirl

This is incredible! John Lithgow shares 20 lessons on tyranny by @timothysnyder.bsky.social. Please take a moment, and share this widely. www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXR5...

How Can Canada Tackle Foreign Interference Without U.S. Ally? The US pull back from its liberal-minded engagements in China poses new challenge for Canada: how to curb Beijing’s foreign interference without US support.

New from Diana Fu & me for @asiapacificfdn.bsky.social. We argue that an autocratic Trump administration means Canada has not only lost an ally in the fight against foreign interference, it has gained a new adversary.

Next week will be busy: I am also going to be in Milan to contribute to this workshop on AI and misinformation on 11 April.

If you’re in Milan you can attend in person. If you’re elsewhere, you can follow it online. Participation is free but registration is required: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...