ExclusiveIran, China Launch Autonomous AI Influence Campaigns | China in Focus

Welcome to China in Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. Our top story, President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping prepare for a high-stakes meeting in Washington with trade, AI, and tensions over Iran all on the agenda. We're probably not going to see anything monster huge. From Iran to China, AI-powered agents are being used in new ways across social media, raising new concerns over Did Huawei use Skycom to help Iran evade U.S. sanctions? We look at what a former Skycom engineer and bank records reveal about the relationship. Monday, China officially confirms its leader Xi Jinping's visit to Washington from September 23rd to 25th. Beijing says that Xi's visit would help guide ties between the two countries. Meanwhile, it is also confirmed officially that President Trump will greet Chinese leader Xi Jinping at Joint Base Andrews in person on Wednesday. First Lady Melania Trump's office announces U.S. military flyovers for Xi's visit, featuring a B-2 bomber and four F-22 Raptors. President Trump will greet Xi in person at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday. The president has repeatedly expressed optimism about the summit. We're going to have a very good meeting. We're doing very well with China. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant met with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in New York on Sunday. After about eight hours of talks, Besant called the meeting very successful. The two sides agreed to launch a U.S.-China AI dialogue. Washington proposed a notification mechanism. The notification for whether there are incidents, whether there has been something that rises up to a national security level from AI, because we think that just like with any cross-border activity, that moving from opaque to more transparency between the number one and the number two AI powers in the world is very important. Officials also confirmed the Board of Trade is now operating. The two sides will work to identify non-sensitive goods that could be traded at lower tariffs. China described the talks as candid, in-depth, and constructive. But there was no update on the tariff truce, which is set to expire on November 10th. Both sides are probably aiming to try to extend that ceasefire anywhere from a few months to the end of the Trump administration. My guess is it's going to be somewhere around one year. If they don't, then in a month or so, we will be on the precipice of a new escalatory spiral. I think most people want to avoid that as possible. Last Thursday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi. The Iran conflict was among the topics discussed. It appears the Chinese have been providing to Russia and Iran, at least based on media reports and what we hear in Washington circles. Even though the U.S. has been raising these issues and likely to do so when the two leaders meet, it's unclear to me that the U.S. is going to make Chinese significant assistance a red line in the relationship. That is, either you do what we asked you to do, or we're going to impose massive sanctions on you. I don't think that the U.S. wants the relationship to go off the rails. Many analysts are not expecting a major breakthrough from the Washington summit. Our dependence on China really hasn't changed in terms of dependence on critical minerals and other key components. I think Xi Jinping comes into this feeling like they stared down Trump and they have the relationship basically where the U.S. is really not going to try to escalate in any significant way to push China on any of its red lines. Both sides want stability. While trade and AI are dominating the Trump-Xi summit in Washington, Beijing has made it clear that Taiwan remains at the core of its red lines. China claims Taiwan as its own, even though it has never ruled the democratically governed island. Now, both Taipei and Tokyo are watching the upcoming summit closely, with concern about how President Trump may handle the Taiwan issue. Taiwan's authorities say they remain in close contact with Washington. They also point to repeated U.S. assurances that its longstanding policy toward Taiwan has not changed. Taiwanese Vice President Xiao B. Kim, in an interview aired Monday, said Taiwan will not compromise its democracy or freedoms in the face of China's growing military and gray zone pressure. President Lai Ching-te is repeatedly called for maintaining the cross-strait status quo while strengthening Taiwan's defenses. For Beijing, Taiwan remains a central issue in the U.S.-China relationship. China has repeatedly opposed U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. At their May summit in Beijing, Xi Jinping told President Trump that if the Taiwan issue is not handled properly, it could push U.S.-China relations into a dangerous place. But Washington says its Taiwan policy has not changed. After the May summit, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States opposes any forced or coerced change to the status quo across the Taiwan Strait. Now, with another Trump-Xi summit just days away, uncertainty is growing again. In Asia, allies are watching closely for any signs that Washington could soften its position on Taiwan in exchange for economic gains from Beijing. In Japan, there are concerns that any perceived U.S. concession on Taiwan could weaken regional deterrence and raise security concerns for Japan. On Tuesday, Japanese Prime Minister is expected to meet with President Trump. That comes just one day before Trump is set to personally greet Xi Jinping at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday. I think that the president does not want war in the Taiwan Strait. I think that is a very different kind of fight than what has occurred in Venezuela and Iran. Basically, two countries are defenseless against U.S. forces. That is not the case with the People's Liberation Army. I think he also wants to make sure that the American stock markets do not go down dramatically. And so keeping the peace commercially with China, giving predictability to investors is important. China and Iran are using a new kind of AI to influence what people see online. The systems use open source AI models to create fake accounts, push false narratives and coordinate activity across social media with little human involvement. According to the New York Times, security researchers confirm that both China and Iran are running state-backed operations using advanced artificial intelligence. Instead of manual posting, these campaigns rely on Chinese open source AI models. These models create autonomous AI agents that handle every single stage of an influence campaign, from opening fake accounts to coordinating messaging across social media. The bots do it all without human involvement. Officials say AI-generated accounts posed as ordinary Americans posted political content and interacted with other users. Experts say tech companies cannot intervene or shut the systems down because these open source AI models run on private hardware. With November's U.S. midterm elections approaching, officials and intelligence officials have concerns that these automated harder trace networks will be weaponized to sway American voters. To discuss the upcoming meeting between President Trump and Chinese regime leader Xi Jinping, NTD's Chris Beers was joined by retired Marine Colonel and former U.S. diplomat Grant Newsham. Take a look. And I think what's going to happen is they're going to talk about trade. That's one that I think that both countries have a real interest in. The Chinese don't want us to keep tariffing them, and we want the Chinese to actually unleash or start selling us more rare earth minerals on which so much of our industry depends. You might have the currency rates talked about as well. The Chinese currency is said to be too strong, and thus that makes it easier, excuse me, it's too weak, and thus it makes it easier for them to export and put other foreign countries out of business. AI might come up. Taiwan's probably going to come up as well. But ultimately, it's as if the president and Xi Jinping are sizing each other up to see who makes a mistake, who shows some weakness, who shows a willingness to compromise. One can be properly skeptical that either side's going to mess up. And you mentioned Taiwan. A key question overshadowing this meeting, Grant, is President Trump's stance toward Taiwan. He's withholding right now a $14 billion arms sale to the island nation and has suggested it could be a good bargaining chip with China. What is your view of his choice? Well, I wouldn't read too much into what President Trump has said about the arms sale and maybe using it as a bargaining chip. I think he understands, and his staff certainly understands, the importance of a solid position on Taiwan. And I don't think he's going to cut some sort of a so-called grand bargain with Xi Jinping, basically selling out Taiwan in exchange for trade concessions or what have you. But you do have to be very careful that the president doesn't say something that suggests that there's a weakening in U.S. commitment to Taiwan, or that could be interpreted that way. All right. And you also mentioned AI. Just in recent days, U.S. tech leaders called for slowing AI development over safety concerns, while China is a bit more bullish on AI. Grant, how do you think President Trump will approach AI in his talks with Xi? I think he's going to see what Xi Jinping has to say about it. I don't think the president is going to do anything that puts America at a disadvantage when it comes to AI. And when it comes to the idea of reaching some sort of agreement on guardrails, so-called with the Chinese, well, look at every other agreement the Chinese have ever reached. They never followed that. And President Trump just signed a new Russian sanctions law that gives him authority to impose tariffs of up to 100 percent on major buyers of Russian oil, which of course includes China. So how does that change the dynamics going into this summit, that new power? Well, it gives the Americans some leverage. The Chinese do have a lot of trouble, just with getting oil, but that's another question here. The only bright spot in the Chinese economy is their export, their ability to move products overseas and to earn convertible currency, like real money. And that is the only bright spot. And it also keeps a lot of people employed. It keeps their factories operating. So tariffs are something that really frightened us. And the idea that not just the oil tariffs over oil, but also on other products might be forthcoming, that's something that Xi Jinping doesn't want. And it does give the president some leverage. And of course, China does have leverage of the United States in terms of the supply of critical minerals, controlling the vast majority, some say up to 98 percent of the of those critical minerals necessary to develop things like AI, smartphones, data centers, what have you. So how do you think that will factor in here? Because that's a bargaining chip that Xi has at his disposal. Well, it's a huge bargaining chip. And you'll recall the beginning of the Trump administration, when the president was really getting tough on China, that for the first time, the Chinese played the rare earth card. And they said, not so fast. And what you had was within a couple of weeks, U.S. businesses started coming into the White House saying, if this continues, we're going to have to stop production. So this put the president in a very bad position. It stopped his efforts, made him go back a bit. The Chinese have since promised to send more rare earths our way more easily to U.S. companies. But they haven't fully lived up to that. They haven't really lived up to it. American businesses are still managing to get by as things stand. But it is a very delicate situation. And the Chinese do have a very good card to play. At the same time, our tariffs and sanctions and export controls in both directions, those give us a lot to work with as well. One way to look at this is sort of two people, each has a hand on the other side's throat, and which one can squeeze harder and which one can last longer. Did Huawei help Iran get around U.S. sanctions? That's one of the allegations the Justice Department has made against the Chinese tech giant. In a Brooklyn courtroom last Thursday, a former Iranian engineer testified that while he was working for a company called Skycom in Iran, Huawei was really running the show. He also testified that he saw U.S. sanctioned equipment at a Skycom project involving a company ultimately controlled by the Iranian regime. The U.S. government says Huawei used Skycom as an unofficial subsidiary to get around sanctions and obtain U.S. goods. And prosecutors say Huawei tried to hide that connection, presenting Skycom as just a business partner. And because banks believed that Skycom was separate from Huawei, they continued providing services to the Chinese tech giant. One bank processed more than $100 million in Skycom-related transactions through the U.S. Huawei has denied all the charges. Back in 2012, a Reuters report said Skycom offered to sell more than $1 million worth of embargoed HP computer equipment to Iran. In a statement to Reuters, Huawei denied helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions, saying Skycom was just a business partner. But Bikveddadi, an engineer who worked for Skycom between 2007 and 2008, testified that he knew he was actually working for Huawei, even though his contract was with Skycom. He used a Huawei email address for work and said the Skycom office in Iran was connected to Huawei's network. And in an email from a Huawei employee about one of the projects, Bikveddadi was referred to as a Huawei engineer. The government also showed the jury several bank statements and annual return forms. They show that a Huawei subsidiary transferred its shares in Skycom to a supposedly independent third party. But the government says that company was actually controlled by Huawei. After the transfer, Huawei allegedly described Skycom as a local business partner rather than a subsidiary. Coming up, and a big win for the West, pushing back against China in the Arctic. The U.S. has reached a new security agreement with Denmark and Greenland. More on that after the break, here on China In Focus. And staying with the Arctic, President Trump announced Friday that the United States had reached a new security agreement with Denmark and Greenland. Greenland is a self-governing territory within Denmark. To discuss the agreement, NTD's Dawn Ma was joined by Carla Sands, former U.S. ambassador to Denmark. First, she explained why this agreement is important. This is important because it's something that's been on the back burner for President Trump now for almost 10 years. President Trump has made a win, or I would say it's a three-way win. The U.S. has won, Denmark has won, but I think the Greenlanders have won too. Because Greenland has told us for the decades past that they're going to go independent. So when they go independent in this century, the United States will be their security partner. Just like Iceland went independent in the 20th century and left Denmark, Greenland's going to do the same thing. And this deal gives our U.S. military complete access, much less friction than in the past. When I came in as ambassador, there were problems with our diplomacy between Greenland and the U.S. Our relationship was broken. My predecessor under Obama had broken the diplomatic relationship. So we were able, the Trump administration and I, was able to put a consulate in Greenland to re-establish our diplomatic relationship. All this had happened under President Trump's first term. And now to see President Trump say, yes, and now we're going to come in and secure Greenland and have full access, it does create less friction than we had in the past when we had to kind of go and do these tripartite meetings and everything was very, very formal. Now it's basically going to be what we need, we're going to get in order to make sure that Russia and China, and especially China, don't control the region. If I may, one more point. When I got there to Denmark and Greenland as ambassador, I was told that China, Chinese companies, and they are Chinese state-owned, had minority interest in a majority of those critical earth mineral mines. And there was no U.S. ownership of any of those mines. Now today in the Wall Street Journal is an article that claims that the Danes had kept Chinese critical investment out, anything sensitive. It's not true. It is fake news. The Danes allowed the Chinese full access. In fact, Denmark controls the foreign policy of Greenland and the entire government of Greenland and most of the CEOs were flown to Beijing in 2017, the red carpet rolled out for them, the C-suite executives around the table, what can we do for you? And they tried to pull them into their Belt and Road Initiative. So don't believe the stories that the Danes are telling. They allowed China to do a lot and they allowed Russia to do a lot in that region. And there are other issues that the Danes didn't take care of. But this is a great day and a win. It's for all of us, a great win. You're saying this is a great win. Can you also speak to us about Greenland's geographical location and why it matters so much to the U.S. and how does this benefit the U.S. and national security? Greenland is part of North America. It's right off the U.S. northeast coast. And it's one third the size of the continental U.S., so it's humongous with only about 57,000 people living there. So about the size of a small town or medium sized town in the United States. And so it's unsecure. Denmark has the security and the foreign policy controls over Greenland, basically Greenland, the Greenlandic government controls the rest. But defense and foreign policy are two big things. And President Trump understood that without Denmark securing Greenland, and in fact, in the first Trump administration, President Trump said to the prime minister of Denmark, look, Greenland's not secure. You need to do more investments in the Arctic. You have to secure it because it's our neighbor. And she said, yes, I will. I'll invest $200 million. But she didn't. She invested about $2 million. And that was just for education, not for security. So Denmark had no interest or ability to defend Greenland or to develop it. So President Trump understands that Greenland controls the seas of the North Atlantic. And that's that big G.I.U.K. gap. And G.I.U.K. means Greenland, Iceland and the U.K. So it's the North Atlantic seas. And that's where a lot of trade, our biggest trade is with the E.U. It's more than a trillion dollars a year. And that goes across the seas by ship, but also by plane. And then we have our defense, our offense and defense capabilities. We have to be able to get across the Atlantic. Whoever controls Greenland will control those seas and those skies. And Ambassador, you mentioned Chinese companies in the region earlier. I think we'd be remiss if we didn't go a bit deeper into this issue, because how notable do you think it is that China and Russia are being shut out as a result of this deal? Because President Trump is saying, quote, no U.S. adversary can ever have a base in Greenland or have a military presence in Greenland. What is your reaction to this? Well, I'm thrilled that President Trump has included that in the agreement because Greenland's so large that there are people coming in and out that the Greenlanders and Danes don't even know who it is or that people are coming and going. It's so gigantic. They don't really have a control of their AOR, their area of responsibility. Now that it's going to be United States responsibility, we'll make sure that we have the technology and the personnel to know who is coming and going. This is a really big deal with the Russian ships and subs and the Chinese ships. And the fact that, for instance, those Greenlandic undersea cables get cut by ships that come in the area that are scientific ships or fishing ships, whatever. There's a lot of mischief, but there's also malign goals. China wrote a paper in 2018 called The Polar Silk Road. And in that, they claim the right to 40 percent of what's in the water and in the ground in the Arctic because they have 40 percent of the world's population. And they said they're in near Arctic country, which there's no such thing. There's nothing even close. And they're not close to the Arctic. So China's conflating things. But when you muscle, if you're persistent, sometimes you get there. I mean, look at them with the Spratly Islands. Xi told Obama, oh, we're not going to do anything there. We're not militarizing the Spratly Islands. We're just doing some things. But as a matter of fact, they made it like a giant military base, just this little coral reef that isn't even theirs. It belongs to another country. It's disputed. And so, for instance, China will make an effort to take advantage everywhere they can. And it's very, very insidious how the Chinese Communist Party works. And I'm not talking about the Chinese people. I'm talking about the party run by Chairman Xi and his henchmen.