# Ian Miles Cheong ## Who He Is **Ian Miles Cheong** is a Malaysian national and right-wing social media influencer who built one of the largest MAGA-aligned audiences on X (formerly Twitter) despite having no apparent U.S. citizenship, residence, or direct ties. Operating from **Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia**, he amassed over 1 million followers on X (handle: @stillgray) by producing a high-volume stream of pro-Trump, pro-Musk, anti-immigrant, and anti-left content — primarily aggregating and reframing U.S. news clips, crime footage, and culture-war material with inflammatory commentary. He is the clearest case study in the 2024–2026 right-wing media ecosystem of a **foreign national monetizing American political polarization through platform incentives** — a role that raises questions distinct from but parallel to the [[FARA]] concerns around figures like [[Tim Pool]] (who was indicted for undisclosed Russian payments). ## Background and Political Evolution Born circa 1989 in Malaysia. Editor-in-chief of the gaming website **Gameranx** in the early 2010s. His political trajectory is one of the most extreme public pivots in online media: - **Pre-2014**: Self-identified progressive/feminist. Active in social justice spaces online. - **2014 (chat logs)**: Private chat logs surfaced showing Cheong **praising [[Adolf Hitler]]** and making explicitly pro-Nazi statements. He later claimed these were from a "dark period" and apologized. - **2014–2016 (Gamergate)**: Initially aligned with the anti-Gamergate side, then switched to pro-Gamergate — a pattern that tracks with his broader left-to-right migration. This pivot was itself controversial and raised early questions about whether his political positions were conviction-driven or audience-driven. - **2016–2020**: Gradual rightward drift. Began producing anti-SJW, anti-progressive content. Built a following in the "anti-woke" space. - **2020–2024**: Full MAGA alignment. Became one of the most prolific pro-Trump content producers on X. Content focus shifted to crime clips (disproportionately featuring Black suspects), anti-immigration material, and culture-war outrage. High engagement, high volume — sometimes 50+ posts per day. - **2024–2025**: Deepened Musk alignment after Musk's X takeover. Benefited enormously from X's creator ad-revenue sharing program, which pays high-engagement accounts directly. At least **$16,259 documented** in a single payout cycle. - **June 2025**: Abruptly turned against Trump, criticizing several administration positions. The pivot raised further questions about the transactional nature of his political commitments. ## The Foreign Money Question The "foreign money" accusation against Cheong operates on several levels: ### X Platform Revenue (documented) Cheong is a direct financial beneficiary of Elon Musk's X ad-revenue sharing program. This means a **Malaysian national is being paid by a U.S. platform to produce content that shapes American political discourse** — content that frequently includes misinformation. At least $16,259 has been documented in a single payout cycle. The total cumulative payout is likely substantially higher given his engagement volume. ### RT (Russia Today) Affiliation Cheong has produced content for or been cited by **RT**, the Russian state media outlet. The nature and compensation of this relationship are not fully documented, but it places him in the same orbit as other right-wing figures (Tim Pool, [[Tenet Media]] network) who were later found to have received undisclosed Russian payments. ### Rebel News (Canada) Affiliation with **[[Rebel News]]**, the Canadian far-right media outlet founded by Ezra Levant. Another foreign media operation in his portfolio. ### Offshore Corporate Structure The **ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database** lists a company called **Cyber Level Ltd.** registered in the **British Virgin Islands** and linked to Cheong. The purpose and financial activity of this entity are not publicly documented, but BVI registration is a standard opacity vehicle. ### What Has NOT Been Established No formal investigation, indictment, or FARA filing has established that Cheong receives direct payments from a foreign government. The "foreign money" concern is structural rather than prosecutorial: he is a foreign national who profits financially from producing polarizing American political content, with no transparency about the full scope of his income sources. The comparison to the Tim Pool/Tenet Media indictment is suggestive but unproven. ## Misinformation Record Cheong has a documented pattern of spreading false or misleading content: - **2020**: Misidentified a Black shooting suspect using incorrect information, generating viral racist harassment against the wrong person. - **2024**: Shared a video he claimed showed a Hamas execution that was actually footage from a completely unrelated context — a "fake execution hoax" that went viral before being debunked. - **2024**: Pro-Israel content he produced from Malaysia triggered a **Malaysian police investigation** under Malaysia's sedition and communications laws, given Malaysia's strong pro-Palestinian diplomatic position. - **Ongoing pattern**: Selectively edits and recontextualizes crime footage, protest clips, and immigration content to maximize outrage. The volume and velocity of his posting make individual fact-checking almost impossible — a feature, not a bug, of the engagement-farming model. ## Role in the Right-Wing Media Ecosystem Cheong occupies a specific structural role: - **Aggregation layer**: He rarely produces original reporting. Instead, he takes existing footage, news clips, and social media posts and repackages them with inflammatory framing for maximum engagement. This makes him a **distribution node** rather than a content creator — amplifying narratives originated elsewhere. - **Musk-era X beneficiary**: His rise tracks directly with Musk's transformation of X's incentive structure. The ad-revenue sharing program financially rewards exactly the kind of high-volume, high-engagement, polarizing content Cheong produces. He is a product of the platform's design choices. - **Foreign-national plausible deniability**: Because Cheong is not a U.S. citizen, he exists outside the normal accountability structures (congressional subpoena, FARA, FEC) that apply to domestic political operatives. This makes him useful to the ecosystem precisely because he is harder to regulate. - **Comparable figures**: [[Andy Ngo]] (who produces similar selectively-framed protest/crime content but is U.S.-based), [[Tim Pool]] (who was indicted for undisclosed Russian payments through a similar engagement-farming model). ## KB Significance Cheong matters for the KB as a case study in: 1. **Platform incentive structures creating foreign influence vectors** — Musk's X literally pays foreign nationals to produce American political content 2. **The engagement-farming-to-influence pipeline** — how algorithmic reward systems convert misinformation into income into political power 3. **The blurred line between "influencer" and "foreign agent"** — when the effect is identical but the legal framework doesn't apply 4. **Ideological flexibility as a tell** — his Nazi-to-feminist-to-Gamergater-to-MAGA-to-anti-Trump trajectory suggests audience capture rather than conviction ## Content Leads - **Blog**: "The Malaysian MAGA Influencer" — how a foreign national became one of America's most prolific right-wing content producers through platform incentives alone - **Foundations**: Engagement farming as a concept; platform incentive design; foreign influence without FARA - **[[YouTube]]**: "Who Is Ian Miles Cheong?" — the 5-minute version for a general audience, tracking the political evolution and the money trail ## Sources - [Ian Miles Cheong — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Miles_Cheong) - [X is paying people like Ian Miles Cheong to spread misinformation — Media Matters](https://www.mediamatters.org/twitter/x-paying-people-like-ian-miles-cheong-spread-misinformation) - [Right-Wing Influencer Based in Foreign Country — Rolling Stone](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/right-wing-influencer-foreign-countries-ian-miles-cheong-1235098657/) - [Ian Miles Cheong's journey from Gamergate to the far right — Daily Dot](https://www.dailydot.com/debug/ian-miles-cheong-gamergate-nazi/) - [Cyber Level Ltd — ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database](https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/nodes/10070868)