I have yet to see compelling evidence that any foreign actor is meaningfully attempting to manipulate US debates around AI data centers. There are some examples of posts and articles—but nothing sustained or impactful. What am I missing?

New: Researchers have quantified how easy AI search is to manipulate. Just 13 words buried in a random Reddit comment can poison AI search results. They suggest this is not easy to stop: "The way you can attack these systems is so much dumber than you think it is" www.404media.co/it-is-trivia...

It Is Trivially Easy to Use Reddit to Manipulate AI Search, Research Suggests

"We show that a tiny snippet—just 13 words—of retrieved text on a UGC website like Reddit, Wikipedia, Quora, or Facebook can change AI agents to output spam / scam content pretty consistently."

404media.co

"Man posted support for Ukraine days before leaving trash in park" vibes from Overload.

Russian IOs are impersonating soccer players. The World Cup has kicked off!

Bummed by this OpenAI report. It's Spamouflage. It's not new and it's not impactful. If I was cynical, which I'm not, I'd say this report was just meant to stir up anti-China sentiment. openai.com/index/prc-li...

PRC-linked influence operations are targeting AI debates in the US

A new report from OpenAI details PRC-linked influence operations using AI to target U.S. tech debates, data center narratives, tariffs, and false claims about ChatGPT.

openai.com

Wonder if this says anything about the ops production timeline. I remember its Kirk narrative coming about 2 months after that incident, too.

gnida project@gnidaproject.bsky.social · 2mo ago

The latest Storm-1516 disinformation campaign is targeting U.S. and Ukraine. The campaign promotes a false narrative that Cole Allen, who was charged for attempt to assassinate Donald Trump in April, visited the Ukrainian embassy multiple times before the assassination attempt.

Reuters reported that Russia plans "to transport tens of thousands of Russian-Armenians to sway ‌the vote." Here's a screenshot of Mika Badalyan, a pro-Russia blogger with links to Ilhan Shor, offering to pay for that transportation. www.reuters.com/world/import...

Great piece on Russian IOs targeting Armenia. We're about to publish an in-depth look at these ops and others. But I have to say, @antibot4navalny.bsky.social Matryoshka monitoring is absurd. The amount of energy and expertise needed to find all those posts is wild www.euronews.com/my-europe/20...

A large scale disinformation campaign is targeting Armenia's election

For several months, Armenia has been the target of a wide-ranging Russian disinformation campaign ahead of its parliamentary elections in early June. Researchers say the operation is among the most ex...

euronews.com

My first quote in the New York Times is just me being shocked about something I had no idea was happening. I've done a lot of Overload watching but hearing that it had hijacked accounts for well-known individuals was new--and really concerning. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/21/b...

Bluesky Says Kremlin Is Hacking Its Platform to Spread Propaganda

nytimes.com

You have to pay attention. Russian disinformation can be very subtle.

Shout out to @indicator.media for its guide on Skills in Chrome. I customized a prompt and made this great Obsidian network map in like 5 minutes.

It's nice of TikTok to give us something on the influence operations it sees. But this is as close to nothing as possible.

Gotta love a cross over episode

Stoked to see the New York Times cite our research! www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Iran’s Meme War Against Trump Ushers In a Future of ‘Slopaganda’

The country’s propaganda apparatus has harnessed artificial intelligence tools to reach a global online audience primed for irony, irreverence and trolling.

nytimes.com

NEW Conspiracies claiming the attack at the White House Correspondents dinner on Saturday night was STAGED were everywhere online within minutes of the incident happening Like Butler, most of it is coming from the left.... www.wired.com/story/staged...

‘STAGED’: Conspiracy Theories Are Everywhere Following White House Correspondents' Dinner Shooting

The word “staged” exploded on social media following the attack, as both right and left-wing influencers and anonymous accounts spread unfounded conspiracy theories.

wired.com

Iranian embassies and officials on X have shifted from formal diplomatic messaging towards viral “shitposting,” using absurdity, humor and provocation to capture attention. New ISD analysis highlights the significant impact of this shift 👉 www.isdglobal.org/digital-disp...

Iran's diplomats launch a meme war - Institute for Strategic Dialogue

Iranian officials are using provocative, ironic content to go viral, driving massive engagement and reshaping state messaging during the war.

isdglobal.org

Put all the stats on Iranian embassies’ shitposting campaigns into one place. Since the war, embassy accounts have increased their volume of posts by 4X, likes by 30X, shares by 16X, and views by 14X. We're talking 900,000 views in 50 days. They found the formula www.isdglobal.org/digital-disp...

Iran's diplomats launch a meme war - Institute for Strategic Dialogue

Iranian officials are using provocative, ironic content to go viral, driving massive engagement and reshaping state messaging during the war.

isdglobal.org

Explosive Media seeming a little desperate of late. LEGO videos are only novel for so long.

Iranian diplomats using X to crowdsource soldiers seems bad? Also, spotted some unimpressive CIB around this effort, apparently tied to the Ahlulbait Indonesia.

The Economist cited our findings. On an unrelated note, I'll be retiring now. www.economist.com/culture/2026...

In the AI propaganda war, Iran is winning

A joyless theocracy produces wittier videos than the Trump administration

economist.com

I'm going to continue live tweeting my spreadsheets. Collectively, Iranian diplomats on X have received 30 times more likes since the war began than during the same period before it. It jumped from 660K likes to 21M likes. Stunning numbers.

Iran’s embassy in South Africa gained more views on X in the first 49 days of the war than 150 diplomatic accounts did in the 49 days before the war. A masterclass in shitposting (and potential bot use).

Something big funky going on with Iranian embassy posts. Iran's embassy in Tajikistan posted an AI video of Jesus knocking Trump's head off. It gained 13 million views in a single minute.

Messed around and found a couple pro-Iran networks on X that gained more than a billion (with a B) views in a month. They were boosted by X's For You feed and alerts. Iranian and Russian diplomats reshared them. These are great examples of small networks gaming X. www.isdglobal.org/digital-disp...

How pro-Iran networks gained a billion views on war propaganda - Institute for Strategic Dialogue

Two pro-Iran X networks gained over a billion views via coordinated misleading content and Premium verification under algorithmic amplification.

isdglobal.org

Iranian diplomats on X are going insane and putting up insane numbers. It's a total reversal of what they were doing pre-war. Here's the numbers for 125 embassy / diplomatic accounts: 46 days before the war: ~ 500K likes on 9K posts 46 days since the war: ~ 18M likes on 39K posts

I usually don't like to brag, but I can spend full days pulling data, adjusting the query, and pulling it again. That's probably my most valuable skill.

Iranian diplomats on the blockade

BREAKING: Orbán defeated in Hungary after 16 years in power

Earthquake in Hungary: Orbán defeated after 16 years in power

It's a stunning rebuke to one of the Western world's most entrenched populist leaders.

axios.com

I'm a huge fan of PBS. It's so cool to see our research, which we'll published a piece on in the next couple days, highlighted in this piece. www.pbs.org/newshour/nat...

Tripped up by misinformation? Here's a refresher on identifying AI

Here are some tips for distinguishing AI-generated content from reality in an online world where that continues to get harder.

pbs.org

Spoke to AFP about how Iran has crafted a wartime propaganda strategy tailored for the age of AI slop. It's amazing how shitposting (and bad US policy) has helped recast one of the world’s most repressive regimes as a witty underdog. www.france24.com/en/live-news...