27 Jul 2025 Search

Russian networks flood the Internet with propaganda, aiming to corrupt AI chatbots by Annie Newport and Nina Jankowicz. Our report details evidence that the so-called “Pravda network” (no relation to the propaganda outlet Pravda), a collection of websites and social media accounts that aggregate pro-Russia propaganda, is engaged in LLM grooming with the potential intent of inducing AI chatbots to reproduce Russian disinformation and propaganda. Since we published our report, NewsGuard and the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab)—organizations that study malign information operations—confirmed that Pravda network content was being cited by some major AI chatbots in support of pro-Russia narratives that are provably false. (The biggest LLM stories are still either somebody with good content tries to keep it out of training sets or somebody with bad content tries to get it in. Related: Google AI Overview is just affiliate marketing spam now by David Gerard.)

CA insurance premiums likely to rise by Lynn La. The department said the models should help avoid year-to-year (premium) fluctuations following major disasters while taking into account wildfire mitigation at the individual, community, state and federal levels. (like the man said…)

Shorting Your Rivals: A Radical Antitrust Remedy by Alex Tabarrok. Just tie executive pay to relative performance—make the A-B CEO’s bonus depend on beating C’s performance. This is good for shareholders, aligns incentives even in private markets, and doesn’t require making big public bets. (imho real companies probably won’t do this because real investors are index funds that own A, B, and C.)

America’s AI Action Plan: Strength Through FAFO by David Newhoff. Unlike major transformative undertakings of the past—the action plan cites the space race—no technology has had the potential to crawl into every aspect of social, economic, and political life as AI. Data runs the world, which means those who control the data run the world. Hence, the promise of what AI could do for society rests entirely on the guardrails and oversight which the industry rejects out of hand and the Trump administration believes are unnecessary.

Cyber Security: A Pre-War Reality Check by Bert Hubert. Earlier, Russia disabled a lot of the electricity networks in Ukraine using a similar kind of attack. And it turned out that the Ukrainians were so good (and their systems so simple and robust) that they had a disruption of like only six hours, which is really impressive….They knew how to restore their systems from scratch. If we get an attack like this on VodafoneZiggo or on Odido, and they don’t get external help, they will be down for half a year, because they don’t know anything about their own systems. (ICYMI: the USA, in military exercises, successfully raided Pearl Harbor twice, in 1932 and 1938. I’m sure it will be fine this time though.) More: Europe’s Self Inflicted Cloud Crisis

How did newspapers in places like Harrisburg, Birmingham, and Syracuse become some of America’s most-read online? by Jonathan V. Last. The top 25 list includes the dailies in many of the large metro areas you might expect; if your city has NFL, NBA, and MLB teams, there’s a very good chance your local newspaper made the list. But the order is sometimes surprising, and no newspaper company generates more of those surprises than the Advance Local papers, whose numbers are frankly astonishing for those unfamiliar with the company’s history of outperformance. (Meanwhile, The Washington Post is dying. I can tell you “how.” But not “why.” by Jonathan V. Last.)