Imagine sitting down after a long day, maybe in Taipei or Kaohsiung, and scrolling through social media. A video appears, professionally made, showing a local politician saying something shocking about energy policy or food safety. It looks real, it sounds real, and within minutes it has been shared thousands of times. But it was never true. It was manufactured, deliberately, and aimed at you. This is not paranoia. According to Taiwan’s National Security Bureau, in the first nine months of 2026, China spread more than 2.5 million pieces of disputed or false information targeting Taiwan. That is a staggering number, especially compared to the more than 1.69 million items during the same period a year earlier, representing a jump of about 48 percent. The intelligence agency reported this to lawmakers with a clear warning: Beijing is stepping up its information warfare ahead of Taiwan’s November elections for city mayors and county magistrates. For ordinary Taiwanese people, this means that the content flooding their screens is not random nonsense; it is part of a calculated campaign to confuse, divide, and influence how they vote.
What is this content actually about? The report says it focuses on issues that touch everyday life: energy policy, food security, and defense, as well as the platforms and images of specific candidates. These are not abstract political theories. They are the things people argue about at dinner tables, worry about while shopping, and debate with friends. By flooding the information space with false or misleading claims about these topics, the goal is to distort public understanding and turn voters against candidates or parties for reasons that are not grounded in reality. Beijing, which views Taiwan as part of its own territory despite Taiwan’s objections, has denied interfering in Taiwanese elections or spreading disinformation. But Taiwan has long complained about what it calls China’s “gray-zone” tactics, a blend of military pressure, cyberattacks, and political manipulation that sits below the threshold of outright war. The report makes clear that information warfare is just one front in a broader campaign to push Taipei into accepting Beijing’s sovereignty claims. The barrage of falsehoods is not designed merely to inform or persuade; it is designed to destabilize trust, both in institutions and in the democratic process itself.
How does this digital assault actually work? The report describes a two-stage process that begins with China’s official state media. These outlets create the narrative, planting a story or a talking point that fits Beijing’s interests. Then the narrative is amplified through “online troll armies” and public relations firms, often operating in coordinated networks. The tactics are varied and constantly evolving: content farms churn out articles and posts in large volumes, AI-generated videos make fake footage increasingly difficult to detect, fake accounts pose as real Taiwanese citizens, and coordinated comment flooding ensures that certain messages dominate discussions. The goal, the report says, is to sow discord among Taiwanese people. That means pitting different communities against one another, amplifying existing grievances, and making people feel angry, confused, or hopeless. It is an emotional form of warfare, because the most shareable content is often the most divisive. A well-crafted lie can go viral much faster than a cautious fact-check, and by the time anyone debunks it, the damage has already been done. For ordinary users, it often feels impossible to tell who is a genuine neighbor and who is a foreign operative, or which video was filmed by a real journalist and which was generated by software.
Perhaps the most worrying part of the report is the growing role of artificial intelligence. The National Security Bureau warns that China has expanded its use of AI technology to manipulate information in ways that are more targeted and more effective than ever before. AI is being used to gather information on Taiwanese current affairs, candidates’ policies, and polling data, allowing Beijing to shape influence operations with surprising precision. Instead of blasting the same message everywhere, operatives can tailor false narratives to specific groups of voters, using data to figure out what worries them, what angers them, and what might push them to vote in a certain way. The report explicitly says that these AI-driven techniques are aimed at “affecting voter preferences and election outcomes.” The messages are distributed across the platforms where Taiwanese people actually spend their time, including Facebook, Threads, YouTube, and online forums. This is not a subtle shift. It means that voters are not simply being exposed to propaganda; they are being studied, profiled, and psychologically targeted by machines. And because AI can generate videos and articles at enormous speed, the pace of this form of warfare is only accelerating. The result is an information environment where reality itself becomes fragile, and where people may start to distrust everything they see, even true and valuable reporting.
The operation is not limited to foreign voices pretending to be locals. Chinese state media have increasingly amplified Taiwanese critics of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, including influencers and politicians linked to the opposition Kuomintang. This was revealed in a Reuters investigation conducted with the Taipei-based research group IORG. By elevating these voices, Beijing creates the appearance of organic, grassroots Taiwanese opposition to the current government, when in fact it is being nurtured and spread by state-backed outlets. This is strategic and clever, because it makes the propaganda feel homegrown. It is much easier to distrust a stranger with a fake account than to distrust a familiar local politician or social media personality. Alongside this information campaign, Taiwan also faces relentless cyberattacks. The National Security Bureau’s data shows that Chinese cyberattacks on Taiwanese government agencies averaged 2.58 million per day in the first nine months of 2026. Threats surged dramatically starting in June, reaching 185.6 million in July and 106.4 million in August. The report says it cannot be ruled out that these attacks were advance intelligence-gathering and harassment preparation aimed at interfering in Taiwan’s year-end “nine-in-one” elections. This suggests that the digital assault is comprehensive: it targets not only voters’ minds but also the infrastructure that keeps government and elections functioning.
What does all of this mean for the people living through it? It means that democracy in Taiwan is being tested in a way that is both subtle and relentless. The disinformation campaign is not a single event but a constant background hum, a fog of manipulation that surrounds every election. It is easy to feel exhausted, cynical, or even frightened when everything online seems designed to deceive. But there is also a deeply human response emerging. People are learning to check sources, to question videos, to have conversations with their families about what is real and what is fake. Civil society groups, journalists, and ordinary citizens are working to expose manipulation and promote media literacy. The report from the National Security Bureau is important, but it is not a call for panic. It is a reminder that in an open society, the best defense against manipulation is not censorship or paranoia, but awareness, community, and a shared commitment to truth. Taiwan has weathered military pressure, diplomatic isolation, and constant digital attacks, yet it continues to hold elections and debate its future openly. That resilience is remarkable. The information war is real, and it will likely get worse as AI improves. But as long as Taiwanese people refuse to be turned against one another, as long as they keep demanding honesty from their leaders and themselves, then the attempt to sow discord will fail. In the end, the battle is not just about votes; it is about whether a society can trust its own eyes and ears. And that is a fight worth caring about, not only for Taiwan but for everyone who believes in democracy.