President Donald Trump on Sunday warned that Iran is using AI technology as a “disinformation weapon” to deceive and demoralize the American people.
“Iran has long been known as a Master of Media Manipulation and Public Relations. They are Militarily ineffective and weak, but are really good at ‘feeding’ the very appreciative Fake News Media false information,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday.
“Now, A.I. has become another Disinformation weapon that Iran uses, quite well, considering they are being annihilated by the day,” he said.
Trump listed several instances of media manipulation by Iran, including “phony ‘Kamikaze Boats’ shooting at various Ships at Sea,” claims that Iran shot down five U.S. refueling planes, and false images of “buildings and ships that are shown to be fire” – including the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln.
Trump said these stories were “knowingly fake,” and suggested American media outlets that played along “should be brought up on Charges for TREASON for the dissemination of false information.”
“The fact is, Iran is being decimated, and the only battles they ‘win’ are those that they create through A.I., and are distributed by Corrupt Media Outlets. The Radical Leftwing Press knows this full well, but continues to go forward with false stories and LIES,” he said.
The president said he was “thrilled” to see Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr “looking at the licenses of some of these Corrupt and Highly Unpatriotic ‘News’ Organizations.”
Trump was evidently referring to a post Carr wrote on social media platform X on Saturday, in response to an earlier complaint from the president about false stories of U.S. tanker planes getting destroyed in Saudi Arabia.
“Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions – also known as the fake news – have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up,” Carr warned in his X post.
“The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not,” he said.
“It is very important to bring trust back into media, which has earned itself the label of fake news,” he contended.
Trump mentioned AI again in remarks to the press on Monday, saying information warfare was the only battleground Iran currently has the advantage in.
“They showed buildings in Tel Aviv catching fire and burning to the ground, skyscrapers burning. They showed buildings in Qatar. They showed buildings in Saudi Arabia burning, but they didn’t burn. They weren’t hurt. It was all artificial intelligence. The worst kind of artificial intelligence. It’s terrible. And that’s the only thing, the only thing, I think that’s the only thing they have,” he said.
Reuters on Sunday took exception to Trump’s slam at kamikaze boat fake news, insisting it has “verified images filmed from the Iraqi port of Basra, which showed explosive-laden Iranian boats appearing to attack two fuel tankers, killing at least one crew member.”
“Iranian state media did claim that Iran’s military struck the USS Abraham Lincoln, though the claim was not widely picked up by Western outlets,” Reuters conceded.
The UK Guardian, which is not generally supportive of President Trump, reported on Friday that AI-generated disinformation is “spreading like wildfire on social media,” and a great deal of it shows false Iranian military victories against the United States and Israel.
The leftist New York Times (NYT) agreed that a “torrent of fake videos and images generated by artificial intelligence have overrun social networks” during Operation Epic Fury,” including “huge explosions that never happened, decimated city streets that were never attacked or troops protesting the war who do not exist.”
The NYT said these false images have been “seen millions of times online through networks like X, TikTok and Facebook, and countless more times within private messaging apps popular in the region and around the world.”
The NYT story, which was published on Friday, mentioned some of the same hoax videos Trump highlighted in his Sunday post on Truth Social.
“The use of A.I. images of places in the Gulf – being burnt or damaged – becomes more important in Iran’s playbook, because it allows them to give a sense that this war is more destructive and maybe more costly for America’s allies than it might actually be,” observed associated professor of media analytics Marc Own Jones of Northwestern University in Qatar.
“The scale is truly alarming and this war has made it impossible to ignore now. What used to require professional video production can now be done in minutes with AI tools. The barrier to creating convincing synthetic conflict footage has essentially collapsed,” Queensland University of Technology digital media expert Timothy Graham told the BBC last week.
The BBC saw some evidence that popular opinion has been influenced by the avalanche of fake videos, particularly among people who believe Iran’s missile and drone attacks on U.S. bases, Israel, and the Gulf Arab states have been far more damaging than they actually were. Among other perversions, a lively industry of fake but realistic-looking satellite imagery purporting to show widespread destruction has spun up during the Iran war.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Monday announced the arrest of 35 individuals from nine countries over the weekend for “publishing video clips on social media platforms containing misleading, fabricated content and content that harmed defense measures and glorified acts of military aggression against the UAE.”
The suspects were accused of mixing real footage with AI-generated images “falsely suggesting explosions, strikes on prominent landmarks, and large fires across various areas of the UAE.”
Breitbart News social media director Wynton Hall, whose new book CODE RED is published tomorrow, understands the danger of AI twisted to work against truth, free speech, and the United States. Hall explains, “America has one foot in the roses of possibility and promise of technological innovation, and one foot hovering over the landmines that we are going to have to collectively navigate our way though as a society. Every one of those landmines touches every policy specialty that the conservative movement has entered.”
Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who was named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in AI, praised Code Red as a “must-read.” She added: “Few understand our conservative fight against Big Tech as Hall does,” making him “uniquely qualified to examine how we can best utilize AI’s enormous potential, while ensuring it does not exploit kids, creators, and conservatives.” Award-winning investigative journalist and Public founder Michael Shellenberger calls Code Red “illuminating,” ”alarming,” and describes the book as “an essential conversation-starter for those hoping to subvert Big Tech’s autocratic plans before it’s too late.”
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