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Disrupting a covert Iranian influence operation

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Re: Disrupting a covert Iranian influence operation

#141

Post by Maken »

akira2501 wrote: post #128
Maken wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that these sites are used to generate headlines that will be then shared by bots. Most people will never get pass that headline, the site is there to create the illusion of a real news source for those few who actually click the headline (but will probably never read the entire article because TL;DR). These healines are designed to reinforce certain bias and keep people inside their echo chambers, and tha…

We don't have to guess. We can precisely know the reach of these articles. Aside from this I wonder what value does GPT have here? It seems like it's saving "the covert Iranians" (how covert can you be if an American business points the finger right at you?) on the order of a few dollars an hour. It's hard to take seriously. On any level.

GPT just lets you do this on scale. It lets you create an endless stream of legit sounding new sites and flood the news aggregators until people that only gets information by Twitter/Facebook are consuming mostly your fake media. Then, when you have captured an audience by pandering to their interests, you slowly herd them towards whatever political view/consumer habits you want. It is nothing that haven't already be done in the past, but with LLMs is like going from craftsmanship to mass-production assembly lines.

Re: Disrupting a covert Iranian influence operation

#142

Post by stickfigure »

ignoramous wrote: post #27
stickfigure wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is clear to me that Russia, Iran, North Korea are playing a zero-sum game. Anything that creates chaos in US politics (or European politics) is in their interest. Donald Trump represents chaos.

> Russia, Iran, North Korea You're missing China & Israel: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/may/30/o... / https://archive.is/y0V3A And, according to OpenAI, they're interfering not just in the US: https://www.thehindu.com/elections/lok-sabha/openai-says-sta... / https://archive.is/RWn8X

Israel and China are not playing zero-sum games.

Israel certainly derives benefits from a powerful United States. They may want to influence US politics, but they have a strong collaborative interest.

China is more mixed, but our economies are still intertwined. The CCP might wish to shift balance and reduce the power of the United States, but we still have mutual interests.

On the other hand, if the leaders of Russia or Iran or North Korea could push a button that immediately and completely depopulates the United States without attribution, I'm pretty sure they would push it without hesitation.

Re: Disrupting a covert Iranian influence operation

#143

Post by walleeee »

littlestymaar wrote: post #137
walleeee wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hamas' attempt to drag them into war In fairness, this omits mention of other actors which have tried to bait Iran (and thereby drag the United States) into wider regional conflict Or perhaps Hamas assassinated its own politburo chairman in Tehran? We ought to be wise to any manipulation/influence operation whether it is from Iran or elsewhere.

That's why I said “their reactions since Hamas' attempt”. But I don't really think Israel genuinely wants to bring Iran to war (I mean, Smodricht and Ben Gvir are fanatics so I'm pretty sure they'd like to, but I don't think Netanyahou wants it, and I'm pretty sure senior Tsahal officers don't). But they are taking full advantage of Iranian's reluctance for escalation.

The military leadership does not want a war it knows it can't win, that's correct. This is why it has more or less openly rebuked the government on at least one occasion: pointing out that Hamas is an idea, for instance, and that you don't destroy an idea with bombs and bullets (note these things can destroy a city or a people).

Israeli society appears to be splitting. There is now a faction which is openly eschatalogical in not only tone but core epistemology and which exerts growing control over the state.

The fact that Netanyahu remains seated atop this increasingly schizophrenic tiger is not evidence of sound leadership or any real desire for peace, it merely demonstrates adroit maneuvering on his part and the subservience of the American political class. Before last October a decent fraction of Israeli society wanted to see him in a courtroom.

I think it's becoming less and less meaningful to speak of what "Israel wants". For that matter, the same may be said of the United States, whose foreign policy one would be hard-pressed to call coherent. One common factor appears to be an inability to recognize that other nations may have legitimate security interests, another seems to be indiscriminate paranoia, and intransigence a third.

Re: Disrupting a covert Iranian influence operation

#144

Post by ignoramous »

stickfigure wrote: post #142
ignoramous wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Russia, Iran, North Korea You're missing China & Israel: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/may/30/o... / https://archive.is/y0V3A And, according to OpenAI, they're interfering not just in the US: https://www.thehindu.com/elections/lok-sabha/openai-says-sta... / https://archive.is/RWn8X

Israel and China are not playing zero-sum games. Israel certainly derives benefits from a powerful United States. They may want to influence US politics, but they have a strong collaborative interest. China is more mixed, but our economies are still intertwined. The CCP might wish to shift balance and reduce the power of the United States, but we still have mutual interests. On the other hand, if the leaders of Russi…

> ...they have a strong collaborative interest

"Israel accused of planting mysterious spy devices near the White House" (2019), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20954298

> I'm pretty sure they would push it without hesitation

This "let's kill 'em all before they kill us" line of reasoning is... eerily similar to post-WW1 propaganda in Germany about the Bolsheviks: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/13/israel... / https://archive.is/f0jkN

Re: Disrupting a covert Iranian influence operation

#145

Post by stickfigure »

ignoramous wrote: post #144
stickfigure wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel and China are not playing zero-sum games. Israel certainly derives benefits from a powerful United States. They may want to influence US politics, but they have a strong collaborative interest. China is more mixed, but our economies are still intertwined. The CCP might wish to shift balance and reduce the power of the United States, but we still have mutual interests. On the other hand, if the leaders of Russi…

> ...they have a strong collaborative interest "Israel accused of planting mysterious spy devices near the White House" (2019), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20954298 > I'm pretty sure they would push it without hesitation This "let's kill 'em all before they kill us" line of reasoning is... eerily similar to post-WW1 propaganda in Germany about the Bolsheviks: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/au…

Yes, collaborators spy on each other.

> This "let's kill 'em all before they kill us" line of reasoning

You made this up, nobody proposed that. On the other hand, failing to acknowledge and address the fact that other people do in fact want to kill you is just plain stupid.

This comes to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Mahatma_Gandh...

Ghandi's assassin killed him on his third attempt. The prior two attempts failed; the guy was arrested and "released due to Gandhi's own policy of declining to press criminal charges".

There are probably people who think this is some sort of noble act. I am not one of them. The results speak for themselves.

Re: Disrupting a covert Iranian influence operation

#146

Post by CatWChainsaw »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #101
sweeter wrote: post #80

CNN just did a piece on private Israeli groups doing the exact same thing. It is pretty scary the shear scale of this. Literally any entity or group can spin up a ton of bots and use any AI service locally or otherwise, to attempt to sway public opinion.

It’s frustrating too seeing some people in AI say the technology has no negative implications. Of course it does. Foreign actors are using it to influence elections. But when Jeremy Howard was asked if he had done impact assessment of a large open source model release, he replied (roughly) “No. Impact is about the same as a new release of pencil and paper.” Which… actually that’s not true. Iran isn’t using pencil and…

Also frustrating to be constantly patronized that the negative consequences will definitely be outweighed by positive ones, pinky promise. Right now we have threats of job insecurity in basically every industry, Noah's Arc levels of spam, the undermining of democracy as a functioning form of government, and insane energy demands and environmental consequences. But on the plus side you can outsource the entire design team to one guy tweaking SD outputs and you can use an LLM to summarize the spam generated by a different LLM, so all's well that ends well I guess.

Re: Disrupting a covert Iranian influence operation

#147

Post by ignoramous »

stickfigure wrote: post #145
ignoramous wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...they have a strong collaborative interest "Israel accused of planting mysterious spy devices near the White House" (2019), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20954298 > I'm pretty sure they would push it without hesitation This "let's kill 'em all before they kill us" line of reasoning is... eerily similar to post-WW1 propaganda in Germany about the Bolsheviks: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/au…

Yes, collaborators spy on each other. > This "let's kill 'em all before they kill us" line of reasoning You made this up, nobody proposed that. On the other hand, failing to acknowledge and address the fact that other people do in fact want to kill you is just plain stupid. This comes to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Mahatma_Gandh... Ghandi's assassin killed him on his third attempt. The prior…

> You made this up, nobody proposed that

Well, you made broad stroke generalizations and prophesied an imminent apocalypse. The German propaganda was all about this back in the 1940s (as mentioned in the article), drumming up mass hysteria to justify the atrocities against the Soviets.

Even if you're biased and seem to have a binary view of the world (black v white, good v evil etc), may be you mean well, and I'm placing too much weight in your words.

> collaborators spy on each other

I think you read past the part where their spies sold secrets to the Chinese.

(Personally, for all his failings, I like Gandhi: His pacifying politics was net good for the stability of a vast, nascent country as diverse & poor as India, keeping it from plunging into chaos from artificially drawn up borders post 300 years of ruthless colonial repression).

Re: Disrupting a covert Iranian influence operation

#148

Post by TaylorAlexander »

CatWChainsaw wrote: post #146
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s frustrating too seeing some people in AI say the technology has no negative implications. Of course it does. Foreign actors are using it to influence elections. But when Jeremy Howard was asked if he had done impact assessment of a large open source model release, he replied (roughly) “No. Impact is about the same as a new release of pencil and paper.” Which… actually that’s not true. Iran isn’t using pencil and…

Also frustrating to be constantly patronized that the negative consequences will definitely be outweighed by positive ones, pinky promise. Right now we have threats of job insecurity in basically every industry, Noah's Arc levels of spam, the undermining of democracy as a functioning form of government, and insane energy demands and environmental consequences. But on the plus side you can outsource the entire design…

Agreed. I think the short term profit motive is really blinding people to the risks. Like we could have continued this in a research setting for longer to really get a sense for how to deal with these things, but folks wanted to productize because of profit potential backed by incredible hype.

Re: Disrupting a covert Iranian influence operation

#149

Post by littlestymaar »

walleeee wrote: post #143
littlestymaar wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I said “their reactions since Hamas' attempt”. But I don't really think Israel genuinely wants to bring Iran to war (I mean, Smodricht and Ben Gvir are fanatics so I'm pretty sure they'd like to, but I don't think Netanyahou wants it, and I'm pretty sure senior Tsahal officers don't). But they are taking full advantage of Iranian's reluctance for escalation.

The military leadership does not want a war it knows it can't win, that's correct. This is why it has more or less openly rebuked the government on at least one occasion: pointing out that Hamas is an idea, for instance, and that you don't destroy an idea with bombs and bullets (note these things can destroy a city or a people). Israeli society appears to be splitting. There is now a faction which is openly eschatalo…

Yeah, I agree with pretty much everything you said.
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