Israel\u2019s public diplomacy campaign appears to be moving beyond social media and traditional news outlets \u2014 and toward a new audience: artificial intelligence systems.<\/p>\n
An investigation by The Guardian found that the Hanover Institute for Public Policy, a website presenting itself as a research organization, published 124 reports totaling more than 560,000 words in just nine days in August. As of this morning, the website is still online, but it has not published a new report since August 12.<\/p>\n
The reports address some of the most contentious questions surrounding Israel, including allegations of genocide, war crimes, torture and the displacement of Palestinians.<\/p>\n
The unusual part is not simply the volume. It is the way the material appears to have been produced and optimized.<\/p>\n
The institute has no apparent legal existence, physical address, named researchers or bylines. Its reports are presented in a quasi-academic format and often take the form of questions users might ask an AI chatbot: \u201cIs Israel Carrying Out a Genocide in Gaza?\u201d or \u201cDid Israel Expel Palestinians From Their Land?\u201d<\/p>\n
According to The Guardian, the site was created as part of an Israel-backed campaign and registered under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act by New York-based media company Piro Inc.<\/p>\n
Its technical infrastructure offers an even clearer indication of the intended audience. The site initially carried an llms.txt file associated with Res, a company that markets technology designed to help websites get cited by ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity.<\/p>\n
This is the emerging world of generative engine optimization: trying to influence not what appears in a Google search, but what an AI system tells a user.<\/p>\n
The strategy also raises an uncomfortable question. If governments can flood the web with carefully framed, machine-readable material, AI systems may increasingly become another arena for influence campaigns \u2014 one where the audience cannot always see who is trying to influence the answer.<\/p>\n
The next battle for public opinion may not be over what people read.<\/p>\n
It may be over what machines learn to tell them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Israel\u2019s public diplomacy campaign appears to be moving beyond social media and traditional news outlets \u2014 and toward…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":600444,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":["post-600443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=600443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/600444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}