Israel has launched a new campaign to influence how large-language models like ChatGPT are answering questions about Gaza and the IDF amid declining public support for the country across the U.S. political spectrum.
By Jacob Wendler, reposted from POLITICO, August 14, 2026
Two Articles Below:
FIRST IN PI — FARA FRIDAY: Israel has launched a new campaign to influence how large-language models like ChatGPT are answering questions about Gaza and the Israel Defense Forces amid declining public support for the country across the U.S. political spectrum.
French PR firm Havas Media, which runs the lion’s share of Israel’s FARA-registered foreign influence work in the U.S., appears to have stood up an “institute” aimed at feeding LLMs positive information about Israel via one of its subcontractors, boutique ad agency Piro, Inc.
In a trove of FARA documents filed with the Justice Department in the last week — which have not previously been reported — Piro disclosed that over a dozen articles on the Hanover Institute for Public Policy’s website were part of a $100,000 campaign focused on “the creation and dissemination of factual, source-supported informational materials intended to educate the U.S. public regarding Israel and related issues through publicly distributed content.”
The institute’s website features dozens of “data reports” with no named authors, each of which features questions like “Is the IDF the World’s Most Moral Army?” and “Is There a Policy of Starvation in Gaza?” — a telltale sign that the articles are designed to feed data to LLMs. The site’s “About” page says “The Hanover Institute for Public Policy studies the inputs fueling antisemitism in the United States, and publishes what the evidence shows,” adding that its unidentified founder “traces this work to a moment in childhood.”
It appears to be working: ChatGPT and Perplexity both cited the Hanover Institute’s material in response to neutral tests run by PI, referring to the site’s content on Gaza, anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
The site also features a disclosure tucked at the bottom: “This material is distributed by Piro, Inc. on behalf of Havas Media Germany GmbH on behalf of the Israel Government Advertising Agency (LaPam).” Technical markers reviewed by PI indicate that the site was built or hosted using Res, a Seattle-based AI startup that boasts about its work helping clients like Nike and Intel get recommended by AI models. An identical version of the institute’s homepage hosted on Res’ site became unavailable after PI reached out to the company for comment.
It’s not the first time Israel has leaned on the Havas network to try and influence chatbots. Havas disclosed hiring former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale last year via his firm Clock Tower X to undertake a $46.5 million influence campaign that included “deployment of websites and content to deliver GPT framing results” on behalf of Israel, per FARA filings.
Piro co-founder Daniel Rosenberg told PI in an email that “Piro was retained by the State of Israel, as disclosed under FARA, to put accurate, sourced facts into the public record and to counter misinformation about Israel with verifiable information.” Res CEO and Founder Hai Tran said in an email that his role in the project is “disclosed in the short-form registration filed with the Department of Justice, which is publicly available.” Unlike Clock Tower X’s filings, Piro’s FARA filings do not explicitly cite influencing LLMs as a goal of the foreign influence campaign.
Havas Media and the Hanover Institute did not respond to a request for comment; nor did spokespersons for LaPam and the Israeli embassy.
By Nick Cleveland-Stout, reposted from Responsible Statecraft, August 17, 2026
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?”
Jacob Wendler is a lobbying and influence reporter at POLITICO, where he serves as the lead author of POLITICO Influence, a daily guide to K Street.
Nick Cleveland-Stout is a Research Associate in the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at the Quincy Institute. Previously, Nick conducted research on U.S.-Brazil relations as a 2023 Fulbright fellow at the Federal University of Santa Catarina.
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