A report released by Mandiant on June 28th found a coordinated effort to generate outrage and protests against an Australian rare earth mining company, Lynas Rare Earths Ltd.
Lynas, the world’s largest rare earth mining company outside of China, is planning an expansion into Texas to extract materials which are valuable to consumer and defense products.
This influence operation aligns with the geopolitical goal of the PRC to curtail the United States’ ability to compete with or challenge the PRC’s dominance in the rare earth materials industry.
The campaign, using newly created Twitter and Facebook accounts masquerading as locals, aimed to drum up outrage over social media over the new Texas facility and President Biden’s March decision to invoke the Defense Production Act.
The inauthentic social media accounts leveraged authentic criticism of the mining industry, namely the environmental and health consequences for the region, in an attempt to start either a boycott, protest, or larger-scale online backlash of Lynas.
This influence operation featured a new development in Dragonbridge’s activities by micro-targeting susceptible individuals within online communities.
Despite this new development, the operation received minimal engagement from real individuals online and was ham-stringed by its poor execution.
