US admitted it spread anti-vax COVID propaganda in Philippines to disparage China

Washington, D.C. – The U.S. Defense Department admitted it spread propaganda in the Philippines aimed at disparaging China’s Sinovac vaccine during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a June 25 document cited by a former top government official earlier this month.

The U.S. response to the Philippines was recounted in a podcast by Harry Roque, who served as spokesman for former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. Reuters subsequently reviewed the document, which hasn’t been publicly released by either government. The news agency was able to verify its contents with a source familiar with the U.S. response.

“It is true that the (Department of Defense) did message Philippines audiences questioning the safety and efficacy of Sinovac,” according to the document, which references information sent from the U.S. Defense Department to the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs and Department of National Defense. According to the document, the Pentagon also conceded it had “made some missteps in our COVID-related messaging” but assured the Philippines that the military “has vastly improved oversight and accountability of information operations” since 2022.

The U.S. admission followed a June 14 Reuters investigation that revealed how the Pentagon launched a secret psychological operation to discredit Chinese vaccines and other COVID-19 aid in 2020 and 2021, at the height of the pandemic.

Through phony internet accounts with tens of thousands of followers meant to impersonate Filipinos, social media posts decried the quality of face masks, test kits and China's Sinovac shot. As a result of the Reuters investigation, the Philippine Senate Foreign Relations Committee launched a hearing into the matter and sought a response from the U.S.

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According to the June 25 document, Pentagon officials concluded its anti-vax campaign was “misaligned with our priorities.” It says the U.S. military told Filipino officials that operatives “ceased COVID-related messaging related to COVID-19 origins and COVID-19 vaccines in August 2021.”

The Philippines’ defense and foreign affairs departments did not respond to requests for comment about the U.S. military’s admission that it ran the propaganda program. Department of Defense spokesperson Pete Nguyen declined to confirm the U.S. response cited in the document. But he acknowledged the Pentagon did distribute “social media content about the safety and efficacy of Sinovac.”

At the time the Pentagon launched its campaign, national security officials in Washington worried that China was exploiting the pandemic to negotiate important geopolitical deals and undermine U.S. alliances internationally by sending aid to the Philippines and other nations.

The clandestine psychological operation uncovered by Reuters wasn’t limited to the Philippines. It also targeted developing countries across Central Asia, the Middle East and Southeast Asia in 2020 and 2021. The Philippines and those other nations were, at the time, heavily reliant on China’s Sinvoac to inoculate their populations against the deadly virus.

In Southeast Asia, the Philippines was among the countries hit hardest by the coronavirus. By 2024, COVID-19 had killed almost 67,000 Filipinos, and the number of infections there had reached more than 4 million, according to World Health Organization data.

In the wake of the U.S. propaganda efforts, however, then-Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte had grown so dismayed by how few Filipinos were willing to be inoculated that he threatened to arrest people who refused vaccinations.

“You choose, vaccine or I will have you jailed,” a masked Duterte said in a televised address in June 2021. “There is a crisis in this country … I’m just exasperated by Filipinos not heeding the government.”

Reuters identified a network of hundreds of fake accounts on X, formerly Twitter, that closely matched descriptions shared by former U.S. military officials familiar with the Philippines operation. When Reuters asked X about the accounts, the social media company removed the profiles after independently determining they were part of a coordinated bot campaign.

The military program started under former President Donald Trump in the spring of 2020 and continued for months into Joe Biden’s presidency, Reuters found – even after alarmed social media executives warned the new administration that the Pentagon had been trafficking in COVID-19 misinformation. The Biden White House issued an edict in the spring of 2021 banning the anti-vax effort, which also disparaged vaccines produced by other rivals, and the Pentagon initiated an internal review, Reuters found.

Nguyen, the Pentagon spokesperson, had said the review "found that the U.S. military was not responsible for the troubling social media content related to the Philippines."

Asked whether the social media accounts with those particular posts were handled by contractors or other non-military partners working on behalf of the U.S. government, Nguyen declined to say. He also declined to answer questions about U.S. military anti-vax propaganda efforts across Central Asia and the Middle East.

Briefed on the Pentagon’s secret anti-vax campaign by Reuters, some American public health experts also condemned the program, saying it put civilians in jeopardy for potential geopolitical gain. An operation meant to win hearts and minds endangered lives, they said.

“I don’t think it’s defensible,” Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease specialist at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine, told Reuters. “I’m extremely dismayed, disappointed and disillusioned to hear that the U.S. government would do that,” said Lucey, a former military physician who assisted in the response to the 2001 anthrax attacks.

The effort to stoke fear about Chinese inoculations risked undermining overall public trust in government health initiatives, including U.S.-made vaccines that became available later, Lucey and others said. Although the Chinese vaccines were found to be less effective than the American-led shots by Pfizer and Moderna, all were approved by the World Health Organization.

“It should have been in our interest to get as much vaccine in people’s arms as possible,” said Greg Treverton, former chairman of the U.S. National Intelligence Council, which coordinates the analysis and strategy of Washington’s many spy agencies. What the Pentagon did, Treverton said, “crosses a line.”

In a statement to Chinese media after the Reuters investigation in June, a Sinovac spokeswoman blasted the U.S. military. “Stigmatizing vaccination will lead to a series of consequences, such as a lower inoculation rate, the outbreak and spread of disease, social panic and insecurity, as well as crises of confidence in science and public health,” said Sinovac spokeswoman Yuan Youwei.

The Reuters investigation has spurred a Senate probe in the Philippines led by Senator Imee Marcos, head of the Foreign Relations committee. At a hearing on June 25, Marcos described the U.S. military campaign as “evil, wicked, dangerous, unethical.” She questioned whether it violated international law and wondered whether the Philippines had any legal recourse.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: US admitted it spread anti-vax COVID propaganda in Philippines to disparage China