U.S. Spams Chinese Intelligence with Millions of Horse Girl TikToks

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Following the “saving” of TikTok last week, U.S. intelligence agencies have apparently adopted a strike-first approach to confuse and potentially debilitate the Chinese, who they fear could be spying on American users.

On Friday, a multi-agency team of government-enlisted hackers for the National Security Agency (NSA) and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agencies (CISA) joined forces to temporarily hijack U.S. and Chinese TikTok feeds for nearly two days.

Their aim? To dominate the app for millions of users around the globe using one, very specific algorithm: Horse Girl content.

“It was basically a massive show of force—a little bit of stick-swinging—by the U.S. government,” said Fred Tinsley, executive director of the Social Media Cybersecurity Agency. “If you were on TikTok during that period, maybe you were looking for your usual Trad Wife content, or a makeup tutorial, but that’s not what you got.

“What you got was an 30+ hour loop of horsey content: Cute baby horses, naughty donkeys falling down, the signs people would notice if someone stopped riding horses, inter-barn drama, horse show anxiety, how they’re pissing off their trainers.

“It was all very ‘inside baseball,’ in a sense, but also, I think for the NSA and CISA, it served their point. They wanted a flex that would get the attention of those potentially looking to steal American data and information. And also, they wanted to be a little annoying.

“It’s like, ‘We see you, we know what you’re up to, and if you don’t knock it off, there’s 36 hours of horse girl TikToks coming to a feed near you.’”

According to industry experts, the ruse seems to have worked. One Chinese intelligence informant we spoke with on a condition of anonymity said his fellow cyber spies were “gob smacked” by the move—yes—but mostly by the content.

“These TikToks tell us a lot about American ‘horse girls,’ and frankly, we have a lot more questions,” they informant said. “They could be riding around on yachts, and living in mansions, and instead, they spend all their time and money making farm animals do tricks? Very unusual,” the informant said.

“And clearly, these horse girls live in fear of a lot of things: taking care of their horses in the cold, their trainer’s disapproval, showing up at events looking disheveled, significant others finding out how much they’re spending… these themes, over and over and over again. It just wouldn’t stop. They wouldn’t stop.