Spamouflage (also tracked as Dragonbridge, Taizi Flood, and Empire Dragon) is an influence operation that Graphika has monitored since 2019. It is active across more than 40 online platforms where it employs inauthentic accounts to seed and amplify videos and cartoons that promote pro-China and anti-Western narratives. Based on open-source indicators and assessments shared by industry partners, Graphika attributes this activity with high confidence to Chinese state-linked actors.
Spamouflage’s tactics have evolved over the last five years, including engaging with broader geopolitical topics, producing content in multiple languages across mainstream and alternative social media platforms, experimenting with persona building, and leveraging AI tools to create content. In that time, our monitoring shows the operation has become markedly more aggressive in its attempts to influence online discourse about U.S. politics.
● In 2020, the operation frequently criticized the U.S. political system and policies but rarely directly referenced U.S. elections.
● In the months before the 2022 U.S. midterm elections, the operation began to engage explicitly with election-related topics. It spread content that directly criticized the Republican and Democratic parties and their leaders, and cast U.S. domestic and foreign policy “failures” as a product of the country’s political system.
● Since mid-2023, we have observed Spamouflage accounts increasingly seed and amplify content denigrating U.S. election candidates, sowing doubt in the legitimacy of the U.S. electoral process, and spreading divisive narratives about sensitive social issues including gun control, homelessness, drug abuse, racial inequality, and the Israel-Hamas conflict. This content, some of which was almost certainly AI-generated, has targeted President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump, and, more recently, Vice President Kamala Harris
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