There was talk of a high-speed rail line that China would build in Panama. A new subway line in Panama City. A modern container port. China has been working to build ties and influence in Panama for years, part of its broader ambition to expand its footprint in Latin America. The effort has had some successes, but also plenty of setbacks. In 2017, China scored a major victory when Panama cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan, the self-governing island that China claims as its territory, and recognized Beijing instead. Panama had been one of the few countries worldwide to recognize Taiwan as a sovereign state. The following year, Panama became the first Latin American country to sign onto the Belt and Road Initiative, the Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s signature global infrastructure program, which is aimed at enlarging China’s geopolitical heft and countering American influence. A flurry of ambitious promises followed. China proposed to build a 250-mile high-speed rail line from Panama City, the capital, toward the western border with Costa Rica. It offered to help build a new subway line in Panama City. A consortium of Chinese companies, led by the conglomerate Landbridge, began developing a container port that was promised to be Panama’s most modern one. A Chinese state-owned company also won a $1.4 billion contract to build a fourth bridge over the Panama Canal. Eventually, the two countries said they would negotiate a free-trade agreement. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and [log into](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2025%2F01%2F15%2Fworld%2Fasia%2Fchina-panama-explained.html&asset=opttrunc) your Times account, or [subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription?campaignId=89WYR&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2025%2F01%2F15%2Fworld%2Fasia%2Fchina-panama-explained.html) for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? [Log in](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2025%2F01%2F15%2Fworld%2Fasia%2Fchina-panama-explained.html&asset=opttrunc). Want all of The Times? [Subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription?campaignId=89WYR&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2025%2F01%2F15%2Fworld%2Fasia%2Fchina-panama-explained.html).

Unlock seamless, secure login experiences with [**Auth0**](https://auth0.com/signup?utm_source=sourceforge&utm_campaign=global_mult_mult_all_ciam-dev_dg-plg_auth0_display_sourceforge_banner_3p_PLG-SFSiteSearchBanner_utm2&utm_medium=cpc&utm_id=aNK4z000000UIV7GAO)—where authentication meets innovation. Scale your business confidently with flexible, developer-friendly tools built to protect your users and data. [**Try for FREE here**](https://auth0.com/signup?utm_source=sourceforge&utm_campaign=global_mult_mult_all_ciam-dev_dg-plg_auth0_display_sourceforge_banner_3p_PLG-SFSiteSearchBanner_utm2&utm_medium=cpc&utm_id=aNK4z000000UIV7GAO) × 175962313 story [](//tech.slashdot.org/index2.pl?fhfilter=social)[](//tech.slashdot.org/index2.pl?fhfilter=china) Posted by [BeauHD](https://www.linkedin.com/in/beauhd/) on Friday January 17, 2025 @06:20PM from the fate-loves-irony dept. Longtime Slashdot reader [tlhIngan](/~tlhIngan) writes: _In what is perhaps the greatest irony ever, the operators of RedNote (known as [Xiaohongshu](https://www.xiaohongshu.com/explore)) have decided to "wall off" US TikTok refugees fleeing to its service as the [TikTok ban looms](https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/01/17/1518232/supreme-court-upholds-law-banning-tiktok-if-its-not-sold-by-its-chinese-parent-company). The reason? The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) [wants to prevent American influence from spreading to Chinese citizens](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/rednote-may-wall-off-tiktok-refugees-to-prevent-us-influence-on-chinese-users/). The ban is expected to be in place next week, while many believe that the [influx of Americans](https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/01/15/0729235/tiktok-users-flocks-to-chinese-social-app-xiaohongshu) to be temporary and just a reaction to the TikTok ban to move to another Chinese app. Many Chinese users are not happy with the influx as having "ruined" their ability to connect with "Chinese culture, Chinese values and Chinese news."_

The Trump administration is targeting government officials who had been flagging foreign interference in U.S. elections, despite ongoing concerns that adversaries are stoking political and social divisions by spreading propaganda and disinformation online, current and former government officials said. The administration has already reassigned several dozen officials working on the issue at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and forced out others at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, they said. The cuts have focused on people who were not only combating false content online but also working on broader safeguards to protect elections from cyberattacks or other attempts to disrupt voting systems. In last year’s election, the teams tracked and publicized numerous influence operations from Russia, China and Iran to blunt their impact on unsuspecting voters. Experts are alarmed that the cuts could leave the United States defenseless against covert foreign influence operations and embolden foreign adversaries seeking to [disrupt democratic governments](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/technology/election-interference-russia-china-iran.html). Arizona’s secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, warned in a letter to President Trump that the cuts were comparable to shutting down the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ahead of hurricane season. “This decision undermines Arizona’s election security,” he wrote, “at a time when our enemies around the world are using online tools to push their agendas and ideologies into our very homes.” Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and [log into](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2025%2F02%2F20%2Fbusiness%2Ftrump-foreign-influence-election-interference.html&asset=opttrunc) your Times account, or [subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription?campaignId=89WYR&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2025%2F02%2F20%2Fbusiness%2Ftrump-foreign-influence-election-interference.html) for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? [Log in](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2025%2F02%2F20%2Fbusiness%2Ftrump-foreign-influence-election-interference.html&asset=opttrunc). Want all of The Times? [Subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription?campaignId=89WYR&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2025%2F02%2F20%2Fbusiness%2Ftrump-foreign-influence-election-interference.html).

 Chinese propagandists are using ChatGPT to write posts and comments on social media sites — and also to create performance reviews detailing that work for their bosses, according to OpenAI researchers. The use of the company's artificial intelligence chatbot to create internal documents, as well as by another Chinese operation to create marketing materials promoting its work, comes as China is ramping up its efforts to [influence opinion](https://www.npr.org/2024/05/30/g-s1-1670/openai-influence-operations-china-russia-israel) and conduct surveillance online. "What we're seeing from China is a growing range of covert operations using a growing range of tactics," Ben Nimmo, principal investigator on OpenAI's intelligence and investigations team, said on a call with reporters about the company's latest threat report. In the last three months, OpenAI says it disrupted 10 operations using its AI tools in malicious ways, and banned accounts connected to them. Four of the operations likely originated in China, the company said. The China-linked operations "targeted many different countries and topics, even including a strategy game. Some of them combined elements of influence operations, social engineering, surveillance. And they did work across multiple different platforms and websites," Nimmo said. One Chinese operation, which OpenAI dubbed "Sneer Review," used ChatGPT to generate short comments that were posted across TikTok, X, Reddit, Facebook, and other websites, in English, Chinese, and Urdu. Subjects included the Trump administration's dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development — with posts both praising and criticizing the move — as well as criticism of a Taiwanese game in which players work to defeat the Chinese Communist Party. In many cases, the operation generated a post as well as comments replying to it, behavior OpenAI's report said "appeared designed to create a false impression of organic engagement." The operation used ChatGPT to generate critical comments about the game, and then to write a long-form article claiming the game received widespread backlash. The actors behind Sneer Review also used OpenAI's tools to do internal work, including creating "a performance review describing, in detail, the steps taken to establish and run the operation," OpenAI said. "The social media behaviors we observed across the network closely mirrored the procedures described in this review." Another operation OpenAI tied to China focused on collecting intelligence by posing as journalists and geopolitical analysts. It used ChatGPT to write posts and biographies for accounts on X, to translate emails and messages from Chinese to English, and to analyze data. That included "correspondence addressed to a US Senator regarding the nomination of an Administration official," OpenAI said, but added that it was not able to independently confirm whether the correspondence was sent. "They also used our models to generate what looked like marketing materials," Nimmo said. In those, the operation claimed it conducted "fake social media campaigns and social engineering designed to recruit intelligence sources," which lined up with its online activity, OpenAI said in its report. In its [previous threat report](https://cdn.openai.com/threat-intelligence-reports/disrupting-malicious-uses-of-our-models-february-2025-update.pdf) in February, OpenAI identified a surveillance operation linked to China that claimed to monitor social media "to feed real-time reports about protests in the West to the Chinese security services." The operation used OpenAI's tools to debug code and write descriptions that could be used in sales pitches for the social media monitoring tool. In its new report published on Wednesday, OpenAI said it had also disrupted covert influence operations likely originating in [Russia](https://www.npr.org/2024/09/23/nx-s1-5123927/russia-artificial-intelligence-election) and [Iran](https://www.npr.org/2024/11/09/nx-s1-5181965/2024-election-foreign-influence-russia-china-iran), a spam operation attributed to a commercial marketing company in the Philippines, a recruitment scam linked to Cambodia, and a deceptive employment campaign bearing the hallmarks of operations connected to North Korea. "It is worth acknowledging the sheer range and variety of tactics and platforms that these operations use, all of them put together," Nimmo said. However, he said the operations were largely disrupted in their early stages and didn't reach large audiences of real people. "We didn't generally see these operations getting more engagement because of their use of AI," Nimmo said. "For these operations, better tools don't necessarily mean better outcomes." _Do you have information about foreign influence operations and AI? Reach out to_ [_Shannon Bond_](https://www.npr.org/people/763523701/shannon-bond) _through encrypted communications on Signal at shannonbond.01_