At first glance, Noah R. Smith might seem like your typical social media user. His bio says he’s a father, a former “Track and Field representative,” and a current member of the PanAm Sports organization.
On July 14, a day after the first assassination attempt on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Smith shared three posts from an account named “TRUMP WON.”
One post declared, “AMERICA was attacked today … we must get it together. It’s literally a matter of life and death,” accompanied by an image depicting a divine hand halting a bullet aimed at Trump.
Another post urged “all MAGA GOD Fearing Patriots” to connect, stating, “Grow These Accounts, UNITED We Are Strong.”
While it might seem that Smith is a devoted Trump supporter, closer inspection suggests otherwise. His cover photo features Chinese watermarks, his profile picture is sourced from a company that provides photos, videos and music, and his bio is lifted from an authentic account named Laurel R. Smith.
In reality, Noah R. Smith is impersonating a U.S. voter who supports Trump. A joint investigation by VOA Mandarin and Doublethink Lab (DTL), a Taiwanese social media analytics firm, uncovered 10 such accounts on X.
These accounts are linked to China’s Spamouflage network — a state-sponsored operation aimed at supporting the Chinese government and undermining its critics. This network was first identified by social media analytics company Graphika in 2019 and was used to target Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters at that time.
Following the assassination attempt on July 14, the accounts began promoting pro-Trump content. Previously, they shared material consistent with Spamouflage’s broader interests: defending China, criticizing U.S. foreign policy, and exploiting divisive domestic issues such as gun violence and racial tensions.
DTL labeled this network of accounts posing as Americans “MAGAflage 1,” because they all seem to be promoting Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again [MAGA].”
“The MAGAflage accounts are different because they are not just criticizing stuff. They are amplifying positive content about Trump,” Jasper Hewitt, a digital intelligence analyst at Doublethink Lab, told VOA Mandarin.
He added that it’s too early to draw conclusions about whom China is supporting, as researchers are still tracking accounts that criticize both Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
“Engaging with the MAGA movement, or any part of the political spectrum, might merely be a new attempt to generate authentic traffic,” Hewitt told VOA.
The first MAGAflage network was discovered by Elise Thomas, a senior analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, in April 2024. This network focuses on promoting positive content of Trump. She told VOA earlier that by wrapping a topic in a U.S. partisan political frame, these accounts got “a reasonable amount of engagement from real American users.”
