A deepfake video featuring US Congressman Rob Wittman falsely endorsing military support for Taiwan was created and distributed on TikTok to influence Taiwan's 2024 presidential election.
On December 29, 2023, a deepfake video emerged on TikTok featuring US Congressman Rob Wittman falsely appearing to endorse military support for Taiwan if Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidates won the January 13, 2024 presidential election. The fake video included a caption in traditional Chinese stating it was an interview with Wittman, vice chairman of the US House Committee on Armed Services, publicly campaigning for the DPP. In the manipulated video, Wittman was falsely portrayed as saying the US would accelerate arms sales to Taiwan, send military personnel to assist training, and invite Taiwan's army to train in the US if Lai and Hsiao became president. The deepfake was strategically timed to coincide with Taiwan's upcoming presidential election and was intended to create false voter concerns about US meddling in the election. AFP fact checkers discovered the original source material was a March 2, 2022 interview with Wittman published by US television station WUSA on their website and YouTube channel, where Wittman never mentioned Taiwan. The incident represents part of broader Chinese government efforts to promote disinformation about the DPP to undermine Taiwanese support for the party.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
Using AI systems to conduct large-scale disinformation campaigns, malicious surveillance, or targeted and sophisticated automated censorship and propaganda, with the aim of manipulating political processes, public opinion, and behavior.
Human
Due to a decision or action made by humans
Intentional
Due to an expected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed
No population impact data reported.