As the coronavirus spread last year, former President Donald Trump and leading U.S. conservatives floated the idea that the virus may have escaped from a Chinese lab or was created by China as a bioweapon. China pushed back. A nine-month AP investigation, conducted in collaboration with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab , found China launched what may be its first global digital disinformation campaign, using its growing presence on Western social media to seed and spread stories suggesting the U.S. created COVID-19 as a bioweapon. Here are 6 key takeaways from AP’s investigation: 1. Since 2016, Russia has been widely seen as the leading foreign actor spreading disinformation. With COVID-19, China took the lead, continuing to spread conspiracies about the origins of the virus long after Moscow stopped. 2. China has landed with a bang on Western social media. The number of Chinese diplomatic […]