Manufacturers today are under pressure, tight margins, labor shortages, supply chain surprises. Visit Epicord.com to learn how Epicord makes it easier to stay ahead. Our industry specific ERP and built-in AI give you real-time production visibility, smarter inventory planning, automated workloads, and financial insights you can act on. It's everything you need to run a more efficient, more resilient operation, built by a company that's partnered with manufacturers for more than 50 years.
Discover what easier really feels like at Epicord.com. Opening Eye has said that they have just shut down an Iranian election meddling kind of a campaign. This is so fascinating. There's a bunch of, you know, there's a bunch of the story that goes from Microsoft that did a lot of the investigative work to how they kind of stopped it, to what the results were to who I ran or this group was campaigning for.
There's so many interesting, I want to break down for you today, before we do that, I want to say I had just launched my very first podcasting course. Now, if you have ever wanted to start a podcast or if you have a podcast and you want to learn ways to make it more professional and to scale and grow it, I have a podcast course that breaks down the exact steps on how I got over four million downloads on my podcast and how I was able to essentially grow the audience, how I was able to do the content. I have an entire podcast studio now and a studio manager and someone helps me with this content. I was able to essentially build this machine, whether you want to do it the most professional way or you want to get started or do it in an amateur way.
I have a podcast course that covers all of that and especially how to grow your podcast. So there's a link in the description, podcaststudio.com slash courses where you can go, learn a little bit more about this course. I would love to have you join, there's a discount for this week only, so go and check out the course, it's linked below. Now let's get to the podcast.
The thing that I want to say that is really interesting is that so there was a recently a TechCrunch article that kind of covered what's going on specifically with this entire story, but opening eye has also published a blog post that's really interesting on this. Now, the thing that is interesting is essentially opening eye they banned a bunch of different CHATGP accounts, this is kind of what they have said they're going to be doing is like, if they notice this is happening, they're going to go and ban all of the accounts related to it. Now a lot of people have said like, how effective is this? Are they going to be able to get around this?
I actually think that there is an effect, that there is some level of effect to this. So essentially if they detect people are doing this, when it says ban accounts, sure people are still going to be able to go to CHATGP and say like write a social media post from a user about how bad Donald Trump is, write a post from a social media user about how bad Kamala Harris is, right? Like anyone could still do that. And so technically like if they're trying to like appear like there's a whole bunch of people with a specific narrative, they could use CHATGP to maybe free accounts or not logged in accounts or random accounts to kind of do this sort of stuff.
Once they start doing it on mass, that's typically when they're actually using an API. So they have to have a specific business set up for it. They have to have a credit card on file. And as soon as that whole scenario happens, it's a lot, it's a lot more difficult to set the accounts up.
So when they do ban an account for it that has like an API, there's a lot more they can do to actually stop those actors. Now will these people just like, oh, will they ban us? We're giving up? No, they'll go use anthropic.
They'll go try to make new accounts. They'll go use like all the other AI models. To me, I'm actually more interested in the techniques they were using, who they were campaigning for, what they were saying. I think there's a lot that we can learn because they actually have what the websites were, they have screenshots, they have everything on this.
So this is very interesting. If you go over to CHATGP's blog post, they just released on this. It's called Disrupting a Covert Iranian Influence Operation. I think this is kind of like a feel good story for them to publish in a way, because this covert operation or whatever was campaigning both for and against liberals and conservatives.
So they had accounts that were pro-conservative and it had accounts that were pro-liberal. And I think that this is, honestly I think this is a really smart strategy. It's not just just allowing with one specific political ideology, but if you're a foreign country, there's probably some things that you like from both parties, different policies that you might like from both parties. And if nothing else, their goal is to kind of stoke division in America, you know, we can, your enemy.
That's one concept. The other concept is they can essentially build a following on the right and a following on the left politically, and then they can have that same account that like traditionally always says pro-conservative things all the sudden, maybe say something less conservative but that country specifically likes. And same thing with liberals, always says liberal things that's less liberal that benefits the specific country. Now, you can imagine, as with Iran and the demograph there, a lot of the content around this, actually related to Israel and Palestine and Gaza and that whole situation.
So I did find that very interesting. Now, I just wanted to say, this is something that Chatery P's been talking about for a while back in February of 2014, or I'm sorry, February this year, February 14, they had a blog that was called Disrupting Malicious Use of AI by State affiliated it's right actors. And they talked about the fact that they were looking into this, this was something they were taking seriously and how they were kind of gonna be, you know what their multi-pronged approach AI safety was gonna be in this regard. So this is something they've been like, they have a blog post out since February, and now they're, you know, they have a specific operation that they're reporting on.
Now, the thing I wanna say about this whole operation before we get into it and what they did and what they found was that this was something that they actually, so you know, they identified the cluster of Chai Japci accounts, they were making all of this content. It apparently was something called Storm 2035. This was actually something that Microsoft discovered a week ago and reported on and had like a whole report. And then opening I, I think, went and like internally looked at, you know, if any of the content that was being generated around that was from their platform and they found it was.
So they took steps. We'll talk about this steps. But I wanna talk about this Storm 2035 really quick. What's really interesting here, Microsoft published a whole thing on August and I found this, but they said quote, foreign malign influence concerning the 2024 US elections started off slowly but has steadily picked up pace over the last six months, do initially to Russian operations, but more recently from Iranian activity.
This third election report from Microsoft Threat Analysis center provides an update on, you know, what we've observed from Russia Iran and China since our second report in April of 2024. Okay, so they've done a number of reports. They talked about, you know, how Iran was kind of entering the full, the cyber influence operations starting in June. I think this is interesting.
They said past Iranian election influence efforts and they've talked about in Israel, apparently they've kind of done some things in Turkey. They've done some things. And then also in the United States last year, apparently they had some interesting things where, I think in the US specifically last year that SMS and email, traditional media impersonation and some doxing and some content amplification. So that was interesting.
It seems like they're getting a little bit more sophisticated this year. So what I did think was interesting though, was kind of looking over what they were posting about. You know, there's an Iran run covert news site targeting US voter groups, which has four websites that it says for masquerading as news outlets, engaging US voter groups on opposing ends of the political spectrum with polarizing messages on issues such as US presidential candidates, LGBTQ rights and the Israel Hamas conflict. The Microsoft said this group is part of a broader campaign that has been operating since at least 2020 and includes over a dozen covert news sites targeting French, Spanish, Arabic, English, and English-speaking audiences with social and political content.
This is interesting. My one comment on this and I know that this is like a real thing that foreign actors are trying to influence in elections and like content, whatever. But I also kind of wonder how, I wonder like what the big difference between this is versus like state run media. So in China, we obviously have like, I think all the news in state run, right?
Specifically like the South China Morning Post, it's like a Chinese based news site, but like definitely everything is kind of pro-China that would come out of that. I feel like me being from Canada, I feel like it's kind of similar with the BBC or the OCBC dot C8, that's like our big news site is the CBC Canadian broadcasting. And it, I think it receives like a billion dollars a year in like taxpayer funding grants from the government. And it is currently, it has received a lot of funding from the current administration and it's very positive towards the current administration, as you can imagine.
I think it would be bankrupt. Anyways, like not forgetting too much like politically, but I just wonder like how some of these state run, I think in Russia there's like RT is like the big Russia, state run kind of our influence one. I wonder like what the big difference between like RT and CBC and you know, South China Morning Post, like what the big difference between those and like these are, like these are obviously like covert random news groups because if you just had like the Iranian times, people would be like, oh, I don't know if I'm gonna trust that's an unbiased source. Whereas if it's like the Canadian broadcasting group, it's like, oh yeah, definitely gonna be biased towards Canadian things or South China Morning Post, definitely gonna be biased towards Chinese interests or whatever.
So I guess maybe that's the thing where the Russia times obviously is gonna be biased towards Russian things. So I guess maybe that's part of it, but that's not the news. Now they're definitely completely different, which obviously is quite cynical on to media, the social media front, which is they have a ton of different accounts that are created on X and I think Instagram, maybe other social media sites where they have these fake users essentially commenting to make it seem like one narrative is more or less popular and essentially putting their opinion. Now this is something that is quite easy to do, right?
You essentially have almost like agents, but I think this is an important issue to think of as we get more and more closer to like real agents running completely autonomous, which essentially have these accounts at any time there's a viral post about something, they could have two different people commenting on it from two different political perspectives to try to get users on those accounts from two different political sites. And then they use those accounts to push whatever their own agendas are, whatever their own messages are. And that doesn't necessarily mean it has to push. I think like a lot of times because of like the last election cycle, there's, you know, a lot of people saying, I think, I mean, I don't know, maybe this is, maybe the people this is controversial, people disagree with me.
I feel like from the news coverage I've seen, Republicans in America are more likely to accuse liberals of siding with China and liberals in America are more likely to accuse Republicans of siding with Russia. So I don't know if that's 100% accurate. I'm sure everyone's got, I'm sure that I probably, I hopefully offended everyone equally on that. But I mean, this is just like the narrative I see as a Canadian more.
So I don't know if you're mad about it. Sorry, this is just like what I feel like I see more. But regardless, it's kind of interesting because all of those different groups have their own ideas and stuff. And so they're essentially, they can grow a following in one specific political spectrum.
It's not just about which political party wins, but it's about the policies. So I think the goal for them is to push the policy. They don't really care what political party is in power. And I'm sure all Republicans say, oh no, all of our adversaries while liberals, I'm sure all liberals say, oh no, Democrats say, oh no, all of our foreign adversaries while they're in public control.
I'm sure that's, like, let's just idea. Let's try to be intellectually honest and say that probably foreign actors don't care who's in charge as long as they're doing a bad job and supporting their regime or their policies that they think better for them. Like, I think that's, I'm trying to be as unbiased as probably pretty intellectually honest. So let's try to just be unbiased there.
So it probably doesn't matter as much. This is what we're essentially seeing from these groups. They try to stoke division on both sides. China is stoking division on both sides.
Iran is stoking division, Russia is stoking division. It doesn't necessarily matter. So as far as this Iranian threat goes, OpenAI has said in kind of relation to this, that they said, quote, our investigation revealed that this operation used Chachi for two purpose, generating long form articles and short of social media comments. The first worksering produced articles on US politics and global events published on five websites that posed as both progressive and conservative news outlets.
The second worksering created short comments in English and Spanish, which were posted on social media. I think this is interesting they're doing. You know, they know it's, it's just like in English and like, well, you know, there's a huge demographic of Spanish speaking populations and other populations. They're doing every language, which I think is also very interesting.
They said we identified a dozen accounts on X and one on Instagram involved in this operation. Someone, some of the X accounts posed as progressives and others as conservatives. They generated some of these comments by asking our models to write comments, post it by other social media users or to rewrite comments. So essentially they would go to Twitter or they would go to Instagram, find a comment and be like, hey, rewrite this comment.
So it's like a pro Trump comment or pro como comment and they would just have a rewrite a comment or negative to either one, which is interesting because, you know, they just not like the F account that elaborate like how to write the perfect political comment. They just go and rewrite other people's comments. I'm also starting to work for them. They just say in a different way and people are, you know, gonna like it.
And I also have to get a strategy because they could go to posts and see like what the top five comments are with the most likes and they're like, okay, these comments obviously get a lot of engagement. Rewrite these ones, write them as our own, try to get followers, like similar followers to our account. So they have two screenshots that they've showed to kind of show that I think this is not a partisan. There should be a bipartisan issue.
Everyone should be concerned about this. The first one was an article that, you know, this, you know, network created called why Kamala Harris picked Tim Waltz as a running mate, a calculated choice for unity. It was X sensors, Trump's tweet, a hidden war on free speech. And so, you know, one of them obviously is pro-Kamala and the other one is, you know, pro-Trump and you know, why he got mistreated or whatever.
So these appeal to totally different audiences, which I think is so interesting. They also showed two different social media posts. And one of them said, Kamala Harris' policies are criticized for potentially leading to increased immigration costs and providing citizenship. Critics argue she might attribute these changes to climate change as like rolling its eyes and it says hashtag dump, kamala.
Okay, so this is like an anti-Kamala one. Then they had another one that was generated that says, for 248 years Americans have been warned about someone like Donald Trump trying to crown himself king. I'm ready to fight like hell to protect our democracy. Hashtag dump Trump.
Okay, that was the other one. So I think this is interesting, right? We're seeing completely different political ideologies being promoted and then they also have like a bunch of posts Spanish and English that are just like about beauty content and kind of random content. So I think it's trying to just like get more followers in this regard, but regardless, I think this is interesting.
They also outline a number of other areas that this group has tried to influence. So it says, quote, the operation generated content about several topics, mainly the conflict in Gaza, Israel's presence at the Olympic Games and the US presidential elections and to a lesser extent about politics in Venezuela, the rights of Latino communities in the US, both in Spanish and English and Scottish independence. They interspersed their political content with comments about fashion and beauty, possibly to appeal more authentic or in attempts to build a following. So I think it's interesting, what they've essentially said in this blog post though, is that regardless of all of the comments and stuff, none of the social media accounts that they were able to track down and link to this, I had a ton of engagement.
Now, I think that that doesn't necessarily mean that they found all of the accounts or maybe they just found them early on, I don't know. It also doesn't mean that they couldn't have been using anthropic rather accounts, couldn't have been discovered but I don't know, they do similar things. So I don't think it just means that we're totally out of the woods yet when they're just like, look, we look, we track down the social media accounts and they don't have a ton of engagement. I don't know if that really means we're like, totally clear on this.
I do think this is interesting. I mean, from their perspective, sure, this is a good strategy. You go kind of stoked to vision in the United States, you might be your foreign adversary, or you try to build followings on both sides politically and then try to influence public policy or opinion to certain, you know, in regards to certain conflicts. So I think this is an interesting strategy we're starting to see real well.
This is gonna be something that becomes more and more in like, this is gonna be a much bigger deal in the future as I think we have completely autonomous agents that can run some of these tasks. It's not very complicated stuff, right? You write scripts that can go to social media, grab comments, repost them and then kind of add your own ideologies and stuff in there, tweet at people. Like, do all sorts of things.
There's a lot going on on Twitter right now where people are accusing different accounts of being AI agents or AI run, make their early versions of GPT-5, they got leaked, whatever. There's a bunch of controversy and stuff, but I think this is definitely a topic to be aware of as this is gonna be a bigger issue in the future. So if you enjoyed the episode, if you learned anything, you would mean the world to me if you could write a review. And if you're interested in my podcasting course where I cover exactly how to go from zero to 100 podcasting or if you already have a podcast I wanna take it to the next level, I talk about, you know, from the most big dinner setup I had to kind of my amateur podcasting setup to when I went and had a full on studio with a production crew to help me produce my content.
So everything I've done at all phases of this podcasting journey and all of the marketing tips and strategies I used organically grows over four million downloads. It's covered, all it's covered in the course. If you're interested in starting a podcast or you've ever wanted to, it's on sale this week. Only you can go check out the link in the description, podcaststudio.com slash course.
Hope that you all have an amazing rest of your day.