In a YouTube video, a voice in English announces that China has researched and developed its own ultra-thin 1-nanometer chip – a staggering claim given that the chip isn’t expected in commercial devices for another decade.
“Recent news from China has sent ripples of excitement and astonishment across the globe,” gushes the voice-over on the China Charged YouTube channel. “This revolutionary breakthrough is more than a technological marvel; it is a game-changer that will redefine the global tech landscape.”
“Prepare to have your mind blown,” says another video, this time on the channel Unbelievable Projects. “Welcome to today’s video, in which we’ll discover why America remains behind China in infrastructure development.”
These voices and their “good news” about China are evidence that the Chinese Communist Party and its overseas proxies are using artificial intelligence to flood YouTube with propaganda videos, according to a new report that describes a “coordinated inauthentic influence campaign” on the platform.
The 1nm claim is about as believable as hearing that China built a space elevator. It does not need debunking, it debunks itself.
Probably because aimed at an American audience, in Europe we know that our infrastructure is shit but also don’t compare ourselves to China but rather to the likes of Japan or Switzerland (who unlike the rest of us actually get trains right). Mostly because Chinese infrastructure is a lot of bling and relatively sparse but high-impact projects, compared to where they were 50 years ago it’s impressive but looking at the whole country it’s quite uneven development. Ukraine has better rural infrastructure than China, and unlike China Ukraine is piss-poor. Comparisons to the US come into play when it comes to what not to do.