The paper was published in the Chinese-language journal Modern Defence Technology on April 3.

The study was led by Ling Haifeng, professor with the Army Engineering University of the PLA in Nanjing, Jiangsu province. Ling is a top information science expert who has overseen the data security of large-scale military operations, according to a People’s Daily report in 2019.

With a billion users around the world, TikTok has dual headquarters in Los Angeles and Singapore, a US ally.

But the app is also a wholly owned subsidiary of ByteDance, a tech giant based in Beijing that must comply with Chinese laws and regulations.

TikTok has faced criticism from both sides since the war broke out in Ukraine more than a year ago.

The platform suspended new video uploads and live streams from Russia. More than 1,000 accounts affiliated with the Russian government have also been removed, according to the company.

But some critics said TikTok was not doing enough to counter Russian influence compared to other social media platforms.

The Alliance for Securing Democracy, a US-based national security advocacy group, noted in a report last month that Russian state-controlled broadcaster RT had more TikTok followers than The New York Times. It also found that Russian news agency RIA Novosti’s top TikTok post this year gained more than 5.6 million views while its top Twitter post had fewer than 20,000 views.

Speaking before the US Congress, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, a Singaporean citizen, denied claims by US government officials and lawmakers that the company had spied for China.

“ByteDance is not an agent of China or any other country. We do not promote or remove content at the request of the Chinese government,” he said during the landmark hearing on March 23.

The Post contacted TikTok about the results of the Chinese military’s study, but the company did not respond by the publication deadline.

Ling and her colleagues define cognitive warfare as an organised campaign aimed at manipulating the perceptions of targeted audiences and changing their decisions or behaviours.

“This is the first time civilian hi-tech companies have carried out cognitive warfare during a large-scale war. Media-driven cognitive warfare based on the mobile internet has had huge repercussions in this conflict,” the study said.

According to Ling’s team, the US government and its allies have used social media platforms to promote content highlighting Russian cruelty while giving Ukrainian politicians and forces more friendly exposure.

These companies had also offered a platform for government agents to employ AI to create fake texts, images and videos that had “pushed the Russian army up against the gunpoint of public opinion”, they added.

The Chinese researchers noted that Russia also used private companies for similar tasks but did not elaborate.

They said the war in Ukraine had taught China a valuable lesson.

On the one hand, China has learned it must strengthen support for its private hi-tech companies and enable them to deal with strategic challenges such as the trade and chip wars, according to the researchers.

“On the other hand, as the control and influence of civilian hi-tech companies has become more prominent, the differences in their ideas and interests and those of the state have become more explicit,” the study said.

“To respond to their challenge to traditional state power, stronger supervision should be implemented. With risk awareness and bottom-line thinking, effective measures should be taken to prevent the risks civilian hi-tech companies might bring in politics, economy, culture, communications networks and military security.”