Outside forces are waging cognitive warfare on Taiwan with the intention of creating social conflict and distrust between the self-ruled island and its friends, local intelligence authorities have warned.

Disinformation was circulating in Hong Kong and Macao online discussion forums, alleging that Taiwan’s National Security Bureau was illegally wiretapping officeholders of the ruling party and the government, and officers stationed in foreign countries, the bureau said on Thursday.

The language usage in the fake news indicated that the mainland Chinese were behind the effort, it added.

The top intelligence agency said that an anonymous person who claimed to have been a bureau employee for more than 20 years used fake accounts to spread the disinformation.

Upon investigation, the bureau found that the falsehoods surfaced as early as 2020 on the internet platforms CyberCTM.com in Macao and Discuss.com.hk in Hong Kong, and came from a Twitter account under the name of one Anna Williams from Eastern Europe.

Some of the characters in the messages had been converted from simplified Chinese to the traditional version, and the translated names of countries and universities were those commonly used by mainland Chinese people, the bureau said.

“Investigations showed that these were actions by outside forces to wage cognitive warfare against Taiwan,” it said.

The bureau said it would continue investigating and urged the public not to be misled by fake news.

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