This is the future and we all need to be working against it. Are there watchdogs measuring the response of each of the chat interfaces to detect this?

PS. Our US tax dollars are being used to do this. Defund Israel.

[dupe]

Discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49337392

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49313477

what makes a thinktank fake? no real authors? the about page seems rather standard to me - https://hanoverinstitute.com/hanover/about

Every thinktank has always been established to push some viewpoint.

Yeah but this is especially interesting because it’s Israel doing it and Israel bad. Just don’t look at the thousands of other think tanks, universities, politicians and their funding that comes from other sources.

Astroturf ops used to need warehouses of typists, see Zersetzung files or old Sockpuppet Gate scandals circa 2011. Now one guy with an API key does it. Cheaper, not new.

Just in case you were as confused as I was... There appear to be two completely different fake think tanks, reported almost simultaneously.

- International Burke Institute (IBI), Claims to be Israeli think tank, Funded by Russia. This one is ChatGPT generated promotion + fake institutional credibility.

- Hanover Institute for Public Policy, Claims to be US think tank, Israeli government funded. This one is deliberately publishing material optimized to influence/cite in LLM answers.

(insert meme of multiple Spider-Men pointing at each other here)

Technically not even same meme, think it's Xzibit "yo dawg" territory now: fake think tank funding fake think tank reporting on fake think tanks.

Hanover Institute does not claim to be a US think tank. Their about page is very clear about their affiliation.

> This one is deliberately publishing material optimized to influence/cite in LLM answers.

Isn't that just good SEO?

SEO for robots reading dead internet's last remaining audience.

Two separate incidents different actors, different methods isn't confusing, it's the story. Conflating them into one "AI propaganda" blob is how both get memory-holed.

This sounds illegal; isn't foreign interference illegal?

Previous discussion

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49337392

if there is the need to pollute information there is a reason behind and that's enough to judge and realize the intentions.

I mean just even from the titles mentioned in the article:

“Is Anti-Zionism Antisemitism?” “Did Israel Expel Palestinians From Their Land?” “Is Israel Carrying Out a Genocide in Gaza?”

no need to even read them, if you have to pose those questions and pollute their answers the intention is pretty clear.

What's the difference between a fake thinktank and a real thinktank?

Who else but Quagmire

Criticizing Israel isn't allowed on HN

870+ comments not blocked on its prior listing here eight days ago.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49337392

Do you think there are more posts about Israel here, or any other non-US nation?

I might do the math and come back. I’m certain Israel is wildly over presented in attention on HN.

Israel? more like the UK with the help of China

Ran into this building a scraper — checked robots.txt and site meta tags, found telltale signs: stock author photos, no LinkedIn history, registration dates a month old. Domain WHOIS is your friend here.

From the article:

"Well, just talking about this though could contribute to antisemitism."

Are there any bullshit detector LLM benchmarks?

> Much of the generated content [from Russia] was to promote a self-described “expert community” called the International Burke Institute (IBI). The IBI brand was associated with a website which was registered in February 2025. This site claimed that the Institute was based in Israel.

This is the Russians using Israel as a cover. Not what the article linked is about.

This is not a related source at all, the article and discussion you linked is about a cluster of ChatGPT accounts originating in Russia. The discussion of this thread is about a US thinktank set up and funded by Israel to game AI for propaganda. This is getting meta - are you trying to game the discussion about this AI gaming thinktank?

That is a completely different article about a completely different case.

On the Uyghur Genocide, we've seen aerial photography of the camps, images inside the camps, and survivors have testified before the UN on horrific accounts of abuse. Some of the most heinous stories I've ever read have come from that event, published by widely reputable outlets. Hard disagree that it's a government psyop.