Pro-Chinese agents pose as activists to protest Canadian rare earth mine

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Click here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Pro-Chinese agents pose as activists on social media to protest Canadian rare earth mine The fake Twitter and Facebook accounts were created to give China, the largest producer of rare earth minerals, a competitive advantage, according to cybersecurity research company Mandiant on Tuesday. Since February of 2019, Mandiant has reported on a network of thousands of fake accounts on numerous social media platforms, websites and forums that support China's political interests. In a recent campaign, Mandiant coined Dragonbridge fake accounts that claimed to be concerned with local residents and environmentalists on Facebook to orchestrate protests against the Texas facility of Australian mining company Lynas Rare Earths Ltd., according to Mandiant. It was not known who was behind the campaign, the firm said.

The fake accounts claimed the processing facility would cause irreversible environmental damage and radioactive contamination that could cause cancer and deformities in newborns, Mandiant researchers said. The accounts also criticized President Joe Biden's plan to expedite the mining of these rare minerals. China has abused its dominance in the rare earth minerals market, critical for manufacturing mobile phones and other electronics, to threaten the U.S. with export bans. The Pentagon has promised to beef up domestic production. In 2021, the Australian company said that it could help it produce a quarter of the world's demand due to a US $30 million deal with Lynas.

Dragonbridge was behind false accounts criticizing a new mine in Saskatchewan from Canada's Appia Rare Earths Uranium Corp., which was announced this month, according to the report. The campaign s accounts sparked anger over USA Rare Earth LLC's plans to open a mine in Oklahoma, Mandiant said. The Department of Defense said it would look into the report, as it will look into issues relating to lack of transparency and over-reliance on concentrated foreign sources of critical minerals in key U.S. supply chains for essential global civilian and national security applications. According to Mandiant, the U.S. was storing bio-weapons in labs in the country, and Dragonbridge has been behind 10 disinformation campaigns targeting Ukraine. John Hultquist, vice president for Mandiant Intelligence said that the private sector is now being attacked by Chinese information operations, which are growing increasingly aggressive. Information operations are a problem for civil society, governments, and platforms, he said. They rarely target the private sector so directly and aggressively.