Though geographically distant, Canada and Asia are on the frontlines of damaging disinformation campaigns by authoritarian states. These campaigns are intended to destabilize our democratic institutions and undermine our security to suit foreign actors’ interests by weakening the cohesiveness of our societies, which are based on the rule of law, resilient democratic institutions, and trust in information. As the dissemination and targeting of disinformation is not bound by national borders, Canada and partners in Asia – and beyond –have a deep-seated interest in mutually investing in the resilience of our democratic institutions through co-operation.
Disinformation and its impact on society
Disinformation refers to “false information that is intended to manipulate, cause damage and guide people, organizations and countries in the wrong direction,” according to the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, and is understood as part of the ‘misinformation, disinformation and malinformation’ (MDM) trinity.
The U.K.-based international human rights organization Media Defence further distinguishes MDM as misinformation as information that is false, but the person who is disseminating it believes that it is true, and disinformation as information that is false, and the person who is disseminating it knows it is false. “It is a deliberate, intentional lie, and points to people being actively disinformed by malicious actors.” The organization further defines malinformation as information that is based on reality but is used to inflict harm on a person, organization, or country.
MDM has been estimated to cost the global economy at least US$78 billion each year. Canada’s political institutions, businesses, and citizens are not immune to its destabilizing and nocuous effects. MDM, and in particular disinformation, commonly known as “fake news,” is ubiquitous in social media spaces such as X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook, among others, and is deployed by domestic and foreign actors both during and outside electoral cycles.
Dr. Kyoko Kuwahara of the Japan Institute for International Affairs (JIIA) argues that disinformation damages public trust in institutions, including elections, and may even pose a threat to democracy itself. Furthermore, she says, new technologies such as machine learning, natural language processing, and amplification networks are being used to discredit factual information and divide open societies. In the context of Japan, Kuwahara, in her work with the MacDonald Laurier Institute, has found that China’s disinformation campaigns are several fold and regionally focused on Okinawa, the archipelago prefecture home to 75 per cent of U.S. military bases and personnel in Japan. In some cases, these campaigns promote false narratives that the Ryukyu Kingdom (today’s Okinawa) was an independent state subordinate to the Qing Dynasty. The purpose of this localized campaign is to foment social and identity divisions between Okinawa and the main islands of Japan, even an independence movement. In other cases, Beijing is understood to deploy narratives in Okinawa to erode support for the U.S.-Japan Alliance, the cornerstone of Japan’s security in the Indo-Pacific.
What is deeply concerning for open, democratic societies such as Canada and Japan – and others – is that disinformation is increasingly and perpetually deployed by adversaries across the spectrum of social media. It has the effect of not only spreading information that is not true but also what German historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt contends “is not aimed at making people believe a lie but ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A people that can no longer distinguish between the truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong. And such people, deprived of the power to think and judge, are, without knowing and willing it, completely subject to the rule of lies. With such people, you can do whatever you want.”
Canada and co-operation in fighting back against MDM
For Canada to be effective in combating disinformation requires it to work with like-minded partners to reduce MDM’s corrosive effects on our societies. This entails at least four steps.
First, we need to enhance our human and technological abilities to identify disinformation and the dissemination paths that nefarious actors leverage.
Second, after identifying disinformation and its conduits, we need to devise new strategies to eliminate and mitigate MDM. This requires investing in research on MDM domestically and internationally including convening experts to share best practices at Track 1.5 or 2.0 dialogues.
Third, there is a strong case for developing offensive disinformation capabilities to deter serial perpetrators of these tools of destabilization. Without robust deterrence, serial propagators of MDM may feel they have nothing to lose by disseminating disinformation to achieve their political objectives. Deterrence is the best defence.
Fourth, Canada will need to develop and share strategies with our allies and partners in Asia to help inoculate all our societies against disinformation. This will require a mixture of technological, regulatory, and educational solutions to build disinformation literacy and critical reading and thinking skills to inculcate instinctual awareness and the ability to quickly differentiate between disinformation and real information.
Essential in this process will be political parties across the political spectrum agreeing that they will not deploy disinformation in their political competition for leadership. This means making an irreversible commitment to only disseminate information that is fact-checked. Like-minded partners could similarly invest in fact-checking as part of their domestic information spaces, enhancing the effects of commitments to preventing disinformation from circulating in our open societies.
Frontline partners and approaches
States and political entities on the frontline of combating disinformation will be essential partners. In Europe, the Ukraine and Poland are frontline states in Russia’s efforts to destabilize the EU and recognize that it is an ‘indivisible security’ concept. According to the Kremlin, indivisible security means that one country’s security cannot come at the expense of another. In practice, indivisible security for Moscow means extending Russia’s sphere of influence and interfering in the affairs of sovereign states through a variety of tactics, including disinformation.
Warsaw and Kyiv, with their shared historical experience with dealing with Russia’s disinformation, as well as some linguistic and cultural similarities with Russia, are well positioned to share their tactics and strategies in identifying, mitigating, and combating MDM deployed by Moscow directly or through third parties funded by Russia.
NATO is also a critical partner in mitigating disinformation because of its collective capabilities and capacities. Its work in combating Russian cyber warfare and dissemination of disinformation, at least since the 2014 invasion of Crimea, makes NATO an experienced ally and consequential partner in fighting back against disinformation, especially given the depth of its technical expertise and resources.
While not a silver bullet against Russia’s disinformation war, NATO’s four-pillar approach to combating Moscow’s asymmetric MDM attacks is useful. This approach includes understanding the information environment, engaging with the public, exposing major cases of disinformation, and co-ordinating with allies and partners. NATO proactively creates content to enhance literacy among its member states but also the global community to debunk Russian disinformation. This includes but is not exclusive to fact-checked videos concerning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and videos delegitimating theories that the U.S. was operating clandestine biological weapons plants in Ukraine.
Canada’s experience with foreign interference in its 2019 and 2021 elections – especially by China – and continued clandestine efforts to utilize disinformation to destabilize Canada’s democracy make it a frontline state in the war on MDM. The threat has become especially acute as China sees Canada as the weak underbelly of the U.S. For Beijing, Ottawa is a useful tool to create security headaches for the U.S. through the deployment of disinformation that sows divisions in Canadian society and erodes trust in the electoral process, the positions of politicians, and support for the U.S.
While some scholars argue that countries like Japan have accidental resilience in the disinformation age due to culture, language, and widespread skepticism about China, Japan’s minister of defence argues that it is not enough and that Japan needs to “develop information capabilities capable of responding to information warfare including hybrid warfare in the cognitive domain.”
Disinformation coalition building in the Indo-Pacific
Canada and Japan should work together in the Indo-Pacific region with frontline states and political entities in dealing with disinformation, such as South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, and New Zealand.
In her report Driving Wedges: China’s Disinformation Campaigns in the Asia-Pacific, Julia Voo of the U.K.-headquartered Institute for International Security Studies details Beijing’s comprehensive and pervasive disinformation campaigns in the region, with Seoul and Tokyo being subject to disinformation from not only China but also North Korea and Russia.
Taiwan, meanwhile, is in a permanent state of disinformation deployment, with Beijing inundating Taiwanese- and Chinese-language media with disinformation to try to erode trust in the media, civil society, and the government. In its report on Taiwan’s 2024 presidential election, the German-based think-tank Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) highlights that China uses a “sophisticated, multi-pronged approach to influence public opinion, far beyond fake news, with AI posing an ever-growing threat. Research shows China is involved in massive influence operations.”
In an interview with MERICS for its report on the 2024 election, sociology professor Lin Thunghong says that Taiwan takes “an ‘ABC’ approach: Raising Awareness, Balancing disinformation by presenting other views, and fact-Checking.”
Australia and New Zealand are also not immune to the deployment of disinformation in their social media and traditional media spaces. On the contrary, they are seen in a similar light to Canada, namely, as targets of Beijing’s attempt to attenuate support for foreign and domestic policies that target China. Additionally, Beijing and Moscow understand that the deployment of disinformation to enhance, dilute, and corrupt information, narratives, and government policies is useful in fracturing these societies on relevant issues that could make co-operation with the U.S. more difficult because of divided support.
By way of example, one international group of researchers found that “[f]rom January to December 2023, in a research project that collected more than 3,000 items about the 2023 Australian Indigenous Voice Referendum that had been published across the Chinese-language social media platform called WeChat[,] [t]he findings revealed an increasing prevalence of misleading information in relation to the referendum and Indigenous communities, disseminated across Chinese-speaking migrant communities.”
Danielle Cave and Albert Zhang of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) have also outlined in their research the use of digital transnational repression and the deployment of disinformation in targeted spaces. They showed that the Chinese Communist Party’s toolkit increasingly includes disinformation that bullies, cajoles, and silences debate on issues that matter to China or targets individuals who may be seen as voices that are influential in shaping views on China.
While a multilateral approach to combating disinformation will be critical, several approaches need to be considered so that it can involve frontline states and political entities. A state-to-state multilateral agreement is feasible between Canada, Japan, the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Ukraine, Poland, South Korea and other frontline states, but would not include Taiwan because of its non-state status and each country’s respective ‘One-China’ policy.
Platforms for disinformation co-operation require synergizing comparative advantages. Taiwan, a constant target of cyber-attacks and the deployment of disinformation to destabilize trust in its political systems and security, has much to share with Canada and other partners in developing a formula for identifying and mitigating the effects of disinformation.
However, considering Taiwan’s status complications, a non-state consortium of universities and/or research institutes could be a more appropriate strategy to maximize the co-operative benefits that would come from including Taiwan without violating the ‘One-China’ policy.
Canada, for its part, has sophisticated research institutes – such as the Perimeter Institute – and the technology to boost existing strategies to combat disinformation. It is also active in conducting a national cyber and disinformation review following the 2021 election in which credible evidence of foreign interference by a wide range of nefarious actors, including China, India, Iran, Pakistan, and Russia, was found. It was discovered, for instance, that by deploying disinformation in the Mandarin-language social media space, an actor traced back to Mainland China was able to enhance the narrative that Conservative politicians would be vehemently anti-China and foment anti-Chinese Canadian discrimination, among other narratives meant to shift ethnic Chinese Canadians’ voting preferences away from Conservative politicians toward Liberal candidates. The latter were framed as less willing to take more national-interest-based approaches to dealing with an increasingly assertive and, at times, coercive China.
Promoting a global anti-MDM coalition
As Canada prepares to host the G7 Summit in Kananaskis, Alberta, in June 2025, Ottawa has an opportunity to promote a G7 co-ordinated effort to combat disinformation with fellow G7 members. At the same time, Canada should present the idea of a non-state-level approach to disinformation through the promotion of a consortium of universities and research institutes to collectively pool their resources to combat disinformation.
Both initiatives would complement each other and be inclusive, ensuring that frontline actors like Taiwan and their invaluable experience are also leveraged to mitigate the global scourge of MDM.
Furthermore, Canada should take the opportunity to make combating disinformation and making democracies more resilient against MDM by including disinformation as a major part of any joint communique released by the G7. An additional joint communique could be released focusing specifically on disinformation and the weaponization of the social media space, akin to the Hiroshima G7 Summit, when a separate communique was issued on the theme of economic coercion.
Lastly, as host, Ottawa has the unique opportunity to use the G7 to hold a ‘Combating Disinformation’ conference, workshop, and/or seminar before, during, or after the Summit. Experts and scholars could be convened to convey to G7 leaders the trends, dangers, and strategic approaches to combating disinformation. Necessarily, the experts would come from frontline states and political entities facing the dangers of MDM.
• Edited by Erin Williams, Senior Program Manager, and Vina Nadjibulla, Vice-President Research & Strategy, APF Canada
