Elevated
Fake
The more synthetic media is perceived to be legitimate and authoritative, the content is more likely to be trusted, persuasive, and acted upon.
Synthetic media can range from non-interactive, not ongoing, or not consistent (low) to interactive, ongoing, and consistent (high).
Synthetic media can range from very recognizable and familiar (high) or hardly (or not) recognizable and familiar (low).
Synthetic media can range from evoking a significant affective response (high) to barely or not at all eliciting an affective reaction.
Synthetic media can range from broadcast to a wide human audience or technical security measures (high) to a narrow, specific human audience or tailored technical security measure (low).
Deepfake technology intentionally using the likeness of famous and/or credible authorities in an effort to shape the behaviors, attitudes, beliefs and/or emotions of the target audience
Adversaries seeking to outrage target audiences, resulting in collective mentality to mobilize into volatile engagements or damaging, violent protest
Information, especially of a biased, misleading or non-rational nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view
The media is intended to serve as a catalyst for political argument, discord and divisiveness.
False information purposely spread to influence public opinion or obscure the truth
Influence operations, also known as information operations or psychological operations, are strategic approaches used to shape the perceptions, decisions, and behaviors of target audiences to achieve specific objectives.
Intentional strategy and tactics meant to mislead, misdirect and manipulate the perceptions of a target audience through simulation (showing the false) and/or dissimulation (hiding the real)
Creation and dissemination of unverified information, which is often speculative and lacks a solid basis in fact
Tactic leveraging thousands of inauthentic accounts across numerous social media platforms, websites, and forums that promote various narratives in support of the political interests of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)
Chinese tactic of targeted social media campaigns, sophisticated forgeries, cyberbullying and harassment of individuals, distribution of rumors and conspiracy theories, and other tools and approaches to cause damage to the target state
The interplay or fusion of conventional as well as unconventional instruments of power and tools of subversion
Chinese Communist Party Perception Management
Stratagem generally refers to scheming and military strategy (or tactics—taolue); the war planning (or scheme, plot—mohua) employed by the two opposing combatants to be used at different levels of military strategy, military campaign, and military tactics in order to obtain victory.
The tendency to seek information that confirms or supports a predetermined position or conclusion.
In assessing other people, it is the tendency for a person’s undesirable trait to be generalized to possess other poor traits.
Tendency to take actions consistent with the actions of others, especially those we perceive as similar to ourselves. Can be exploited by either creating a referent group or referencing a referent group.
Technique that attempts to implant a false memory in the target through suggestion.
A feeling of dissatisfaction with one’s situation or circumstances. May be leveraged by an attacker by offering a path toward resolving the source disgruntlement as a means of manipulating the target.
An attacker leverages fear to gain target compliance.
Affective responses--emotions, moods and feelings--effect cognition and perception. Media that intentionally causes a high degree of emotional load can significantly image how target audience member perceives and thinks about the subject of the media.
The Mere Exposure Effect is a cognitive bias where individuals show a preference for things they’re more familiar with. Repeated exposure to a stimulus increases liking and familiarity, even without conscious recognition.
Familiarity is the sense of knowing or recognizing someone (or something) due to previous exposure or experience. Things can feel familiar (even when they are not) when they seem recognizable (recognition heuristic) and easily understood (processing fluency)
Both humans and automation may be targeted by synthetic media attacks. This criteria references whether the target of the attack was human or automation. The highlighted icon represents the intended target of this submitted media.
Human
Technical
Hybrid
Unknown
A measure of if the attack was constructed by a human or by artificial intelligence. The highlighted icon represents the method of control of this submitted media.
Human
Automation
Hybrid
Unknown
The medium is the format of the content submitted. Highlighted items represent all of the various formats contained in the submitted content.
Text
Image
Video
Audio
Technical complexity of the atttack.
How damaging the attack was intended to be.
Chaos injection is the intentional introduction of evocative material--which is often ambiguous and unresolved--to cause confusion and disorder.
Evoke feelings of hopelessness
Create group, organization or societal division
Intentional strategy and tactics meant to mislead, misdirect and manipulate the perceptions of a target audience through simulation (showing the false) and/or dissimulation (hiding the real)
Instigating, eliciting or forcing the target audience to take and action that is advantageous to the deepfake threat adversary
The creator and/or disseminator of the media seeks to create political discord, argumentation and divisiveness.
Perception management is the deliberate effort to influence and control the perception of a target audience through strategic use of information, communication, and other practices to shape the way something is observed and interpreted.
Motivation is the underlying activator, purpose or sustained reasons for why the deepfake threat actor wants to create nefarious synthetic media.
CCP effort to disrupt and influence Taiwan Election
Targeting is the threat actor’s intentional selection of a target audience, or the group or individual whom he is interested in impacting with his deepfake campaign.
Taiwan and Asia as prime target audience
Research & Reconnaissance occurs when the threat actor is effortfully gathering information about the target audience, the optimal channels to conduct their campaign on, the relevant narratives for the attack, and type of content that will have the desired impact on the target audience.
Understanding and context surrounding Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Lai Ching-Te (賴清德)
Preparation & Planning are the steps and processes that the threat actor takes to acquire the tools and content needed to create the deepfake media for their campaign and their deliberation for the execution of the campaign.
Collection of image and video materials of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Lai Ching-Te (賴清德)
Production is the threat actor’s use of tools and content for the creation and development of deepfake media for their attack campaign.
Lower-quality Wav2Lip production
Narrative Testing. A narrative is a story, or an account of related events or experiences. A good narrative will have story coherence, such that both the story being told and its relationship to the real world are cohesive and clear. In deepfake campaigns, threat actors consider and evaluate the possible narratives—particularly in relation to events and context—to support the campaign in an effort to maximize the believability and efficacy of the attack.
Portraying Lai Ching-Te (賴清德) as supporting a coalition between the Kuomintang (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and falsely depicted him commenting on DPP scandals
Deployment is the threat actor’s intentional transmission of deepfake content to the target audience through selected online channels.
Taiwanese media and social media
Amplification is the threat actor’s intentional efforts to maximize the visibility, virality and target audience exposure to their deepfake content.
Additional social media accounts and AI bot amplication
Post-Campaign is the period after the target audience has received and been exposed to the deepfake content.
This deepfake was one of many targeting Lai Ching-Te (賴清德) during the Taiwanese election