Panic-fueling coronavirus texts may have been the work of Chinese agents, report claims

In March, text messages about the U.S. going into nationwide lockdown caused a wave of panic, prompting the National Security Council to publicly declare them as fake. 

Now, a new report by the New York Times claims Chinese operatives may have helped proliferate those messages, using new, "alarming" techniques. 

Citing six unnamed American officials working in six different agencies, the report claims that Chinese agents helped push the messages across platforms. What makes this particularly troublesome is the fact that these messages showed up on people's phones as texts, which is a disinformation tactic that some of the New York Times' sources haven't encountered before.  Read more...