With the recent announcement of China’s new Large Language Model (LLM) DeepSeek, Foreign Malign Influencers (FMI) have increased coverage of narratives that promote Chinese technological improvements. Many narratives focus on the humanitarian benefits of developing technologies and how Chinese political structures are maximizing both technological advancements and humanitarian impacts.
EdgeTheory models reviewed millions of items from FMI, revealing a concerted effort to boost global perspectives of China as a successful AI tech developer and altruistic force.
Sources promoting this narrative tend to highlight the humanitarian impacts of AI and robotics improvements in healthcare.
The above article describes how “the nation [China] will channel resources and investment into technological programs for elderly care services, such as humanoid robots and artificial intelligence.” The narrative also discusses China’s prioritization of “vocational schools to set up disciplines on…healthcare in recent years.”[1]
The FMI narrative was picked up and parroted by various social media accounts, as seen below.
This particular account has 4,898 Followers, but the FMI below has over 4 million Followers. This ChinaDaily post on X directly links to the article above claiming China AI improvements directly benefit China’s elderly community.
This narrative is not only China-based. Although most FMI sources publishing on AI applications in healthcare are aligned with China, sources aligned with Russia, Iran, and other foreign malign influencers also support the Chinese perspective. EdgeTheory Narrative Intelligence also identified a small presence of FMI in Africa and India.
While Ecns.cn publishes the majority of articles regarding AI in healthcare, Sports Moscow Trail, The Age of Australia, and Th
While Ecns.cn publishes the majority of articles regarding AI in healthcare, RAND Daily, Sports Moscow Trail, The Age of Australia, and The Female Times repost articles from each other to boost audience reach and engagement. None of the sources use social media to promote their message, relying instead on traditional dissemination methods to coordinate and promote a unified narrative.
By coordinating article reposts, FMI increase global narrative engagement without leveraging social media.
Narrative origins (indicated in yellow) tend to target (indicated in red) Washington DC and Davos Switzerland due to the 2025 World Economic Forum that took place on January 20-24.
FMI sources outside of China, Russia, or Iran also join in promoting anti-US and pro-China narratives. These sources tend to focus on US news that frame the United States as losing control of domestic government and fueling corrupt practices.
Sources use a range of tactics to achieve this. For example, the Philippines-based USA.Inquirer.net integrates sports coverage with political commentary on X (formerly Twitter, @inquirerdotnet). To its 3.9 million followers, the implied U.S. policy critique may seem as routine as the interspersed sports coverage.
By juxtaposing domestic protests with less significant events, FMI reinforce the perception that the US is evidently dysfunctional.
Specifically regarding healthcare, The Japan News (japannews.yomiuri.co.jp, @The_Japan_News) leverages its sizable social media following (219.6K followers) to suggest widespread corruption in US humanitarian aid and energy policy.
In the second example, The Japan News highlights Christopher Wright’s position in the fossil fuel industry to frame the US as irreparably corrupt.
EdgeTheory Narrative intelligence identified that although FMI narratives promoted mixed perspectives on job displacement issues, security concerns, and the ethical implications of AI, the common top themes in each article were definitively pro-China or anti-West.
In some cases, Chinese-aligned articles promote both pro-China and anti-West narratives side by side. On 9 Jan 2025, SCMP posted an article titled “How the Global South can defend against Trump’s AI offensive.”
The publication argues that Trump’s AI deregulation will harm the ability of developing countries to access AI-based tools, deepening the divide between first and third-world countries.
The author uses legitimate concerns for developing countries to frame US actions as antagonistic: “US policies to solidify its AI dominance will inevitably ripple across the Global South, which has historically struggled to access the benefits of advanced technologies.”
At the same time, the post highlights China’s successful AI integration within a strict legal framework that purportedly protects vulnerable nations while efficiently allocating resources for further AI developments: “while countries such as the United States and China have integrated AI into sectors from finance and healthcare to defence, many Global South nations lack the infrastructure to do the same.”
EdgeTheory Narrative Intelligence effectively identified these strategies across thousands of publishers, giving analysts real-time insights into influence campaign strategies.
An analysis of FMI sources suggests that Russian and Chinese information campaigns follow notably different strategic approaches to information operations. Specifically considering AI in healthcare, Russian sources tend to promote anti-US narratives while China-aligned sources focus more on pro-China amplifications.
Evaluating the top Russia-aligned sources reveals the divide in strategic emphasis. Below is a summary of the FMI narratives in the top articles from ZeroHedge.
By allowing Russia-aligned sources to promote anti-US narratives, Chinese sources effectively “export” their narrative attacks against the West while purporting to remain neutral.
However, by tracking the volume of articles promoting China’s perspectives, we can determine that Russian and Iranian sources are acting in concert with China to push a global influence operation.
Top China-aligned sources continue to push pro-China narratives across the same time period as Russian-aligned sources push anti-West stories.
While foreign malign influencers use different tactics, they often support enduring master narratives. Without the ability to track narrative themes across all FMI, analysts may miss the indications of coordinated narrative attacks, unwittingly allowing these attacks to go unchallenged. These narrative attacks distort public perception of military, political, corporate, and even humanitarian missions.
In a recent example, social media accounts have recently amplified the hashtag #USMotherOfTerrorism to promote anti-Western sentiment. Last week the hashtag was used by several accounts to compare the conditions of Palestinian and Israeli hostages after their release.
Accounts often seize on legitimate concerns[2] but deliberately avoid fair comparisons. In this case, mainstream US sources began to mimic FMI narratives without exploring how framing techniques may be affecting audience perceptions.
The below article from the AP highlights the good health of the three Israeli hostages Hamas released.
However, the article also states that over 100 additional hostages remain in Hamas captivity. Hamas could easily have released only the most well-treated hostages in order to boost their media reputation, but this possibility has gone unreported in mainstream news.
In a related article, the AP highlighted the poor treatment of the Palestinian detainees Israel released.
Other mainstream news sources advanced the narrative.
Although accurate, this one-sided reporting from mainstream sources risks reinforcing FMI narratives. These articles are often interpreted by FMI as validation of their claims, as seen in the comparison of different hostage situations. Relying on a single article for situational awareness, even from a credible source, can lead to overlooking critical information in rapidly evolving situations.
EdgeTheory Narrative Intelligence effectively aggregates sources to determine the top themes being pushed and what regions are being targeted by these narratives. With EdgeTheory, analysts can see through articles to the agendas they promote, whether deliberately or incidentally.
The public, government decisionmakers, and private entities must become informed regarding influence and counter-influence operations to maintain a decision advantage in a rapidly developing cognitive warfare landscape.
EdgeTheory’s Narrative Intelligence briefs can help reveal what narratives are being pushed in various regions and how audiences, companies, and government officials can strategically respond to counter false narratives.
With EdgeTheory, intelligence analysts can monitor the alignment of country-specific sources, identify and assess popular positions on new or ongoing armed conflicts, and determine the risk of conflict between audiences on any given topic. Utilizing multilingual narrative analysis provides analysts with a strategic edge in identifying risk vectors for targeted audiences, evaluating the likelihood of consumer support or opposition to development projects, and crafting aligned messaging to strengthen investor and public relations.
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[1] https://www.ecns.cn/news/society/2025-01-10/detail-ihemrznk1747578.shtml
[2] https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6608/%22Grave-for-the-Living%22:-The-health-status-of-Palestinian-prisoners-recently-released-from-Israeli-jails-indicates-their-systematic-malnutrition-and-torture
