Radio Free Asia (RFA) published an article explaining the reason that the U.S. closed China’s Consulate in Houston.
The article stated that the U.S. has known that the staff members at the consulate were conducting suspicious activities, but, for a while, it did not take any action. The Second Department of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which is the PLA’s intelligence unit, sent staff members from a large network company, with fake IDs, to China’s Consulate in Houston. Those technicians used a large video platform’s backend data to identify people who might participate in the Black Lives Matter (BLM) and ANTIFA’s protests and then created and sent them customized videos on how to organize riots and how to do promotions.
The purpose was to “weaponize” big data technology. It delivered relevant materials precisely to those people who were most likely to participate in the protests, while other people could not even find those videos.
RFA did not spell out the company names. A Twitter account said the technicians were from Huawei and the video platform they used to identify candidates and push videos to was TikTok.
Sources:
1. Radio Free Asia, August 7, 2020
https://www.rfa.org/cantonese/news/ear/ear-straw-08062020081345.html
2. Twitter, @Raymond999USA
据传:总参二部征派腾讯的人用假身份到休斯顿总领馆，利用抖音后台数据，分析出可能会参加暴动的人，帮BLM和ANTIFA向预设地域黑人定点推送暴动组织宣传视频，而其他人则搜不到那些视频。
FBI起初也没掌握他们如何进行组织串联，是总领事馆两个叛逃人员向美国供出了机密任务。
待核实!— Raymond (@Raymond999USA) August 4, 2020