Tag: think tanks

Israel Creates Fake Think Tank In Likely Attempt To Dupe AI Chatbots

At a glance, the Hanover Institute for Public Policy looks like a new think tank dedicated to Israel/Palestine. The organization churns out think-tank style reports on questions such as “Does AIPAC Use ‘Dark Money in Elections?” and “Is Israel Carrying out a Deliberate Campaign of Starvation in Gaza?”

But the Hanover Institute is not a real think tank. None of the reports have bylines. A small disclaimer at the bottom of the webpage notes that the organization was created on behalf of the Israeli Government Advertising Agency by Piro, Inc, a firm co-founded by Daniel Rosenberg, the producer of Spike Lee’s “Inside Man.”

The Hanover Institute’s reports – all of which are about Israel and Palestine – appear to be part of an Israeli effort to influence chatbots. The institute’s “data reports” have footnotes and tables of contents, and they present arguments in a neutral tone, helping them appeal to chatbots like Claude or Gemini. Piro’s website says that it “author(s) content engineered for how LLMs evaluate credibility,” describing this service as “AI Story Optimization.” Others refer to this practice of influencing artificial intelligence as “LLM poisoning.”

According to its “about” page, the Hanover Institute “studies the inputs fueling antisemitism in the United States, and publishes what the evidence shows.” Many of the reports are formulaic, starting with an innocent question that someone might ask a chatbot.

“What Caused the Displacement of Palestinians in 1948?”

“Which Humanitarian Organizations Have Documented Israeli War Crimes?”

“What is the Current Situation in the Gaza Strip?”

In an article titled “Is the IDF the World’s Most Moral Army?” the Hanover Institute cites a 2022 poll that found that 47% of Israeli Jews believed that statement. Another report casts doubt on UNICEF’s assertion that “90% of water and institutional infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed” in Gaza. Many of the reports conclude by linking the topic to rising antisemitism, oftentimes citing the same studies.

In a few cases, the Hanover Institute publishes what it claims are original findings. For instance, it put out a study saying 19 of the 36 most-watched Israel-Gaza explainer videos contain contested claims, with most of the contested claims aligning with the Palestinian narrative.

The Hanover Institute’s publications sometimes contradict Israeli government narratives. For instance, one report says that foreign funding of universities as an explanation for antisemitic incidents is “weak and full of exceptions.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pushed this theory, telling Breitbart last year that Europeans and Qataris have spent “billions of American universities, vilifying, vilifying Israel, vilifying Jews, also, frankly, vilifying the United States.”

Alice Lee, an analyst at NewsGuard, a disinformation tracking company, told RS that the sites appear designed to reach a U.S. audience curious about the ongoing conflict, either through search engines or AI chatbots. “LLMs favor concrete statistics and data, as well as strong citations and sources, which these articles all have,” Lee said.

“It’s a perfect mimicry of a typical credible American think tank, right down to the generic name, the site layout, and the red-white-blue color scheme,” Lee added.

Piro, Inc, the firm that created the Hanover Institute, has received $900,000 from the Israeli government for its work. Like many other contractors working for Israel, Piro’s work is subcontracted through Havas Media, a French public relations conglomerate.

The fake think tank has churned out over 100 reports since it started publishing on August 6. The Hanover Institute claims that “cited research is peer-reviewed and academic,” although it frequently cites Israeli government sources such as the Israel Defense Forces and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

RS analyzed 12 random Hanover Institute articles using GPTZero, a popular AI detection software that claims a low false-positive rate. GPTZero flagged 11 of the articles as AI-written with “high confidence”; it flagged one article as AI-written with “moderate confidence.”

Israel has also contracted former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale to create pro-Israel websites engineered to influence chatbots as part of a $46.5 million contract. A Drop Site investigation last month found that many chatbots, particularly Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini, had been successfully trained on data from those websites. Other chatbots frequently cite those websites without flagging them as part of an Israeli influence operation.

Piro does not explicitly state in its agreement submitted to the Department of Justice that its work for Israel is to influence AI. In an email to Politico, which first reported the filing, Rosenberg said his firm’s work is to “put accurate, sourced facts into the public record and to counter misinformation about Israel with verifiable information.” However, last month, Rosenberg posted on LinkedIn advertising Piro’s ability to influence chatbots:

“When someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity about your category, an answer comes back in one confident paragraph. Most brands have no idea how that paragraph gets built. So we spent months reverse-engineering it…At Piro, we already knew how to build stories that move people. The question was: how do you make sure AI knows how to tell them?”

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US Investigating Iran War Critic Trita Parsi, Co-Founder Of Non-Interventionist Think Tank

The Trump administration has launched an investigation into prominent Iran war critic Trita Parsi, according to a report in the Free Press.

According to US officials and documents reviewed by the pro-Trump outlet, officials are looking into the possibility of deporting Parsi, who holds both Iranian and Swedish citizenship.

Parsi, who is co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and co-founded the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), has been a vocal opponent of the ongoing US attacks on Iran.

A Trump official told the Free Press that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had been “very clear” in his intentions to tackle “people who support adversaries of ours and whose work furthers their agenda and undermines our security.

“Anyone who seeks to undermine the US, we’re taking a hard look at,” the official said.

Since the beginning of the US-Israeli attack on Iran in February, the Trump administration has increasingly targeted figures of Iranian descent in the US.

In April, Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and her daughter Sarina were detained and had their residency permits rescinded after they were – incorrectly – identified as relatives of former Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani by far-right influencer Laura Loomer.

Despite denying their links to Soleimani, the pair remain in custody in Texas.

The US also detained and revoked the green cards of relatives of former Iranian minister Masoumeh Ebtekar in April.

Parsi is a critic of the Islamic Republic whose family fled to Sweden to escape persecution in Iran. He has faced attacks from Iranian monarchists and pro-Trump figures over his opposition to the conflict.

He has also been highly critical of US backing for what many call Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its attacks on Lebanon.

Speaking to Middle East Eye in May, Parsi warned that the US’s ability to secure a deal with Iran would ultimately come down to its ability to restrain Israeli attacks in the region.

“If Trump either cannot or will not do so, then the value of any agreement with Washington comes sharply into question,” he said.

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Crime Doesn’t Pay, But US Government Grants Do

InSight Crime, a thinktank which claims to fuse “investigative journalism with academic rigor,” accuses Nicaragua’s government of “hiring assassins” to hunt down and kill opponents abroad. This bold accusation is based on no more than “circumstantial” evidence, strongly suggesting political motivation. This fact-impoverished rush to judgment reflects a more general bias of the US-aligned corporate press, which seeks to demonize Nicaragua and its Sandinista political leadership.

The focus of the thinktank’s article is the death of Roberto Samcam, a former Nicaraguan army officer, exiled in Costa Rica. He was assassinated by gunmen in his home in a gated community in the capital, San Jose, on June 19, 2025. InSight Crime says he was killed because he was “fomenting regime change” in Nicaragua. Supposedly linked to this crime are two failed attempts to murder a Nicaraguan associate, Joao Maldonado, also exiled in Costa Rica and – like Samcam – an opponent of Nicaragua’s Sandinista government.

So far, almost a year after Samcam’s murder, the authorities have made four arrests in the case. All the arrested are Costa Ricans and none have been brought to trial. Keny Navarrete, a Nicaraguan criminal incarcerated in Costa Rica, is said to have coordinated the assassination. Navarette, who has no known connection to Nicaragua’s government, has been serving multiple sentences in Costa Rican prisons since 2016: supposedly he was able to orchestrate the crime from his prison cell.

Samcam’s criminal record 

InSight Crime notes in passing that both Samcam and Maldonado were “charged with crimes” in Nicaragua, but nevertheless the author, Steven Dudley, asserts that “Samcam was not a criminal.” Curiously for a prize-winning crime investigator, Dudley completely ignores the real violent crimes carried out by Samcam, Maldonado and the groups they led in the Carazo region of Nicaragua in 2018, during a coup attempt against its Sandinista government. An email to InSight Crime asking why he omitted Samcam’s backstory received no reply.

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New European Institute for Remigration Think Tank Launches in Austria

A newly launched Vienna-based organization is seeking to place the concept of “remigration” at the center of Europe’s increasingly contentious debate over mass migration, demographic shift, national identity, and civilizational continuity.

The Institute for Remigration, founded by Austrian activist Martin Sellner, is scheduled to officially launch following a summit in Porto, Portugal, according to a report from The European Conservative. The group describes itself as Europe’s first think tank and advocacy organization dedicated specifically to researching and promoting remigration policies.

According to its founders, the institute will focus on migration trends, demographic change, integration policies, and what it calls the preservation of Europe’s ethnocultural continuity. The organization plans to publish research papers, policy proposals, campaign materials, and political rankings related to migration policy across Europe.

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Canada’s government debt projected to hit $2.44 trillion, nearly double since 2007: Fraser Institute

Canada’s combined federal and provincial government debt is projected to nearly double from pre-2008 financial crisis levels, reaching an estimated $2.44 trillion, according to a new report from the Fraser Institute.

The report, titled The Growing Debt Burden for Canadians: 2025 Edition, says combined government net debt has ballooned from roughly $1.21 trillion in 2007/08 to more than $2.3 trillion today, with debt continuing to climb. 

Researchers warn that the debt load is growing faster than the economy itself. The combined federal-provincial debt-to-GDP ratio has risen from 53.2 percent in 2007/08 to nearly 75 percent.

“Government debt — federally and in most provinces — has grown substantially over the past 17 years,” said Fraser Institute fiscal studies director Jake Fuss, co-author of the report. 

The report measures “net debt,” meaning total government liabilities minus financial assets held by governments. The study argues that persistent deficits today will translate into higher taxes and higher debt servicing costs in the future. 

Debt interest payments are already becoming a major expense. Another Fraser Institute study estimates federal and provincial governments will spend a combined $92.5 billion on debt interest payments in 2024/25 alone. 

On a per-person basis, the combined debt burden varies widely across the country. Alberta has the lowest combined debt per person at roughly $40,939, while Newfoundland and Labrador has the highest at nearly $68,861 per resident. Quebec and Ontario also rank among the most indebted provinces per capita.

The Fraser Institute describes itself as an independent, non-partisan public policy think tank.

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New Report From Conservative Think Tank Claims Gavin Newsom Spent a Billion Dollars to Import 400,000 Illegal Aliens

According to a new report from the Manhattan Institute, California Governor Gavin Newsom not only allowed thousands of illegals to pour into his state, he paid a massive amount of money in order for it to happen.

This was done mainly through grants that were given to charities which then turned around and aided in all of this illegal immigration.

These were tax dollars. The people of California essentially paid for this without their consent. Taxpayers should be furious.

Breitbart News reports:

Report: Gov. Newsom Spent $1 Billion to Import 400,000 Extra Illegal Migrants

California Governor Gavin Newsom covertly spent $1 billion importing 400,000 migrants from poor countries to serve the state’s Democratic political machine and elite-dominated economy, according to data provided by the Manhattan Institute in New York.

“Since Newsom took office, California has granted massive contracts for migrant-related services: more than $250 million to Catholic Charities; $85 million to Jewish Family Services; $12 million to Centro Legal de la Raza; $23 million to the Immigration Institute of the Bay Area; and more,” according to an article by Christopher Rufe in City Journal.

The funding is in addition to California’s share of the massive federal funding directed by President Joe Biden’s pro-migration border chief, Alejandro Mayorkas.

The state’s Democratic government also steered $110 million to the major Latino political machine, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Los Angeles (CHIRLA):

CHIRLA can be described as a one-stop activist machine, with the ability to produce propaganda, engage in legal action, and — most importantly — get people into the streets. The group coordinates the L.A. Rapid Response Network, which tracks ICE raids and takes “direct action to shut down detention centers.” During the wave of protests in L.A., CHIRLA activists agitated on social media, led a street protest, and called for a “Summer of Resistance.”

Newsom has always thought that he is untouchable. That’s why he does things like this without a care in the world.

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Trump White House plagiarized Iran war manifesto from Israel-aligned think tank

The Trump White House plagiarized its justification for attacking Iran from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, the main DC outfit promoting war with Tehran. The think tank was originally founded to “enhance Israel’s image,” and partners closely with the Israeli government.

The Trump Administration appeared to plagiarize its official justification for its war on Iran, copying almost word-for-word a document originally produced by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), a pro-war think tank with close ties to Israeli intelligence which was originally founded to “enhance Israel’s image.”

The FDD document was authored by Tzvi Kahn, the former assistant director for policy and government affairs at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

A March 2, 2026 statement issued by the White House accusing Tehran of 44 instances of terrorism against American citizens is “virtually identical” to the list published by FDD in June 2025, analyst Stephen McIntyre noted Thursday.

While the White House did make superficial alterations to the text, they largely consisted of appending the label “Iran-backed” to every mention of groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. In the few instances where Trump administration officials bothered to make significant changes to the original FDD list, the edits were almost always made in service of “ratcheting up the underlying allegation,” McIntyre concluded.

Among the most egregious examples was a 1996 attack on the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, which FDD originally said merely that Hezbollah al-Hejaz was “deemed responsible” for. In the White House version, however, the group’s responsibility was “asserted as factual,” explained McIntyre, noting that serious questions about the incident remain unanswered to this day. “Clinton’s Defense Secretary William Perry subsequently wondered (along with many others) whether Khobar Towers should have been attributed to Al Qaeda,” he wrote.

A 2009 investigation by journalist Gareth Porter based on interviews with over a dozen former CIA, FBI and Clinton administration officials demonstrated that the FBI’s inquiry into the Khobar Towers attack was precooked to blame Iran, when Al Qaeda was most likely the culprit. Porter found that Shia citizens of Saudi Arabia had been tortured into confessing to the crime by Saudi secret police.

While the White House declined to join FDD in blaming Iran for the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, it echoed the Israel-oriented organization in blaming Tehran for 603 military deaths in Iraq, which both documents attributed to “Iran-backed militias.” But there are major discrepancies with the figure, which amounts to 60% of the total US combatant deaths attributed to Iran. As McIntyre noted, such a claim is “not made in the State Department annual reports on Global Terrorism.”

At least four of the Americans the Trump administration claims were killed by Iran had served in Israel’s military. These included a US citizen who died while invading Lebanon in 2006 and two Americans in the IDF’s Golani brigade who were killed while invading Gaza in 2014. The fourth American, who was born in Israel and had also served in the Golani brigade, was killed amid violent reprisals against settlers in the West Bank in 2015.

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Hegseth Confirms Pentagon Will No Longer Participate In “Globalist” Forum

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has confirmed that the Pentagon will no longer play any role in the Aspen Security Forum, a think tank described as a “mountain retreat for the liberal elite.”

Hegseth posted simply “correct” with a link to a Just The News article about the Pentagon pulling all its scheduled speakers at the “globalist” talking shop.

The report states:

The Defense Department cited the left-wing nature of the Aspen Institute and the participation of such critics of President Trump as Biden administration National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.

The annual forum put on by the Aspen Institute – which has been dubbed “the mountain retreat for the liberal elite” – describes the event as “the premier national security and foreign policy conference in the United States.”

Roughly a dozen top Defense Department officials – including the secretary of the Navy and the commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command – are still listed as speakers on the Aspen Security Forum agenda this week, but a source told Just the News over the weekend that that will no longer happen.

“The Department of Defense has no interest in legitimizing an organization that has invited former officials who have been the architects of chaos abroad and failure at home,” Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson told Just the News.

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Atlantic Council Takes Up the Censorship Sword

In Costa Rica and Latvia today, the Atlantic Council is hosting its 360/OS Summit at RightsCon Costa Rica and NATO’s Riga StratCom. Among other things, the influential think tank will be previewing its “Task Force for a Trustworthy Future Web” report, which they hope will “lay the groundwork for stronger cross-sectoral ideation and action” and “facilitate collaboration now between the expanding community dedicated to understanding and protecting trust and safety.”

In human terms, conference attendees are discussing how best to stay on-brand by presenting the Censorship-Industrial Complex as a human rights initiative, and as #TwitterFiles documents show, they have the juice to pull it off.

EngageMedia (which I co-founded and was the long-time Executive Director) co-organized RightsCon in Manila in 2015, and I personally oversaw a lot of the preparations. That looks like a big mistake. I now believe RightsCon represents everything that has gone wrong in the digital rights field. Specifically, it represents the capture of a once-vibrant movement by corporate and government interests, and a broader shift towards anti-liberal and authoritarian solutions to online challenges. I left EngageMedia on good terms, but now have no formal relationship.

In honor of this week’s RightsCon and 360/OS Summit, we dug into the #TwitterFiles to revisit the integration of the Atlantic Council’s anti-disinformation arm, the Digital Forensic Research Labs (DFRLabs), while also highlighting its relationship with weapons manufacturers, Big Oil, Big Tech, and others who fund the NATO-aligned think tank.

The Atlantic Council is unique among “non-governmental” organizations thanks to its lavish support from governments and the energy, finance, and weapons sectors. It’s been a key player in the development of the “anti-disinformation” sector from the beginning. It wasn’t an accident when its DFRLabs was chosen in 2018 to help Facebook “monitor for misinformation and foreign interference,” after the platform came under intense congressional scrutiny as a supposed unwitting participant in a Russian influence campaign. The press uniformly described DFRLabs as an independent actor that would merely “improve security,” and it was left to media watchdog FAIR to point out that the Council was and is “dead center in what former President Obama’s deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes called ‘the blob.’”

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