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"I talked to one of the Israeli passengers. He said that the airplane started to spiral and then began to descend. He mentioned that he somehow managed to enter the cockpit with one of the flight attendants, and together they restrained the pilot who was committing the stabbing while he was trying to sabotage the aircraft's systems." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that it is becoming increasingly clear that the stabbing pilot stabbed the captain because he wanted to crash the plane, which was mainly carrying Israeli citizens. (translated)

Iran’s cognitive warfare – when AI becomes the operating layer of state propaganda Iranian state-linked influence operators were not using artificial intelligence simply to write faster social-media posts. According to Anthropic’s September 2026 threat intelligence report, three separate operations connected to Iranian propaganda institutions were using Claude to help construct the machinery behind what the operators themselves called “soft war” and “cognitive warfare” – non-military efforts intended to shape public opinion inside Iran and abroad. Anthropic linked the activity to the Islamic Culture and Communications Organization (ICCO), which operates under Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance; the Islamic Propaganda Office of Khorasan Razavi; and the Bina Cultural Observatory, part of the Islamic Propaganda Organization. The company said each operation was run by someone working within or on behalf of the named institution. The attribution was based on a combination of account telemetry, institutional references disclosed during conversations, branded documents and open-source corroboration. Anthropic subsequently removed the accounts. AI as an operational headquarters The most significant feature of the operation was the role assigned to AI. Claude was used to develop campaign plans, doctrine manuals, coded project portfolios, persona systems, target databases, early-warning protocols, amplification schedules and ministerial planning documents. Anthropic described the model as the principal administrative and operational layer supporting the three campaigns, allowing relatively small groups of operators to create organisational structures and planning material that would otherwise have required a much larger staff. This distinction matters. The reported use of AI went considerably beyond content generation. Operators were using the model to help organise how influence activity should function: which audiences to target, which identities should deliver particular narratives, how official material should be repackaged and when amplification should take place. Human operators still determined objectives and supplied the underlying political doctrine; AI helped translate those decisions into an operational system. Anthropic found that all three operations explicitly connected their activity to Jihad al-Tabyin, often translated as “explanatory jihad”, a concept used within the Iranian state system to frame information activity as both a strategic and ideological responsibility. In internal planning material examined by the company, this doctrine was not merely rhetorical: it informed manuals and campaign structures used by the operators. ‘Not the narrator, but the director’ One sentence contained in the ICCO material captures the model particularly clearly. According to Anthropic, an operator described the role of Iranian cultural attachés as being “not to be the narrator, but the director” of the narrative. The distinction reveals the logic of attribution laundering. Instead of publishing an overt state message and asking foreign audiences to believe it, the operator attempts to create the appearance that the same narrative emerged independently from journalists, activists, foreign writers or ordinary citizens. Anthropic found that Claude was used specifically to make content appear to come from foreign authors or independent media organisations and to design hashtag campaigns that looked grassroots rather than centrally organised. The ICCO operation reportedly used the organisation’s international cultural network as part of this structure. Anthropic found ministerial-level documents carrying official ICCO branding, including a nine-part international influence portfolio. This makes the operation particularly significant because the infrastructure was not limited to anonymous social-media accounts; it intersected with formal state institutions and an existing network of cultural representation abroad. A multilingual content factory A second operation was associated with the Islamic Propaganda Office of Khorasan Razavi and what Anthropic described as a “cognitive warfare command room” operating from a seminary in Mashhad. Its organisers ran a multi-province content production system known internally as Manjanegh, or “Catapult”. According to Anthropic, dozens of activists were involved in repackaging publicly available reporting from Iranian security institutions under different personas so that the material no longer appeared directly connected to those institutions. The network used Claude to transform official government intelligence bulletins into customised material in Farsi, Arabic, Urdu, Malay, Spanish and English, while planning expansion into a total of 20 languages. Distribution extended across Iranian platforms such as Eitaa, Bale and Rubika and international services including X, Instagram, Telegram, TikTok and YouTube. Anthropic also documented paid amplification across more than 100 Iranian channels, including channels associated with IRGC narratives. The scale should nevertheless be interpreted carefully. Anthropic documented production infrastructure and some real-world dissemination, but it did not demonstrate that all planned campaigns were fully deployed or that they meaningfully changed public opinion. The company placed the operation in Category Three of its Breakout Scale, indicating multi-platform activity with content observed in external distribution channels, rather than evidence of strategic impact on entire populations. From security bulletins to apparently independent voices The Bina Cultural Observatory operation provides another example of the same architecture. Anthropic linked a director-level official at Bina to activity in which Claude generated messaging in the voice of an IRGC spokesperson. During the 2026 US–Israel–Iran war, the network also attributed false claims to Western institutions including CSIS, Brookings and RAND. The apparent objective was to make Iranian state-aligned claims look as though they had been independently validated by respected foreign research organisations. That technique is more sophisticated than simply publishing propaganda under a false name. It attempts to manufacture a chain of external validation: official information is transformed into apparently independent commentary, which can then be recirculated as evidence that outside observers have reached the same conclusion. Anthropic also found target databases naming international officials and Iranian opposition figures, as well as aggressive counter-narrative material directed against the Bahá’í community. These findings show that the infrastructure was designed not only for broad messaging but also for targeted influence activity against specific groups and individuals. What AI changed The Iranian operations described by Anthropic did not create a new doctrine of influence. Iran has used cultural institutions, official media, aligned organisations and covert or semi-covert online networks for years. What AI changed was the economics and organisational capacity of that model. A relatively small team could use the system to draft doctrine, create personas, translate material, structure target databases, produce campaign calendars and generate multiple versions of the same message for different audiences. The operator remained responsible for intent, political direction and selection of targets. AI reduced the amount of human labour required to turn those decisions into a functioning influence operation. The most revealing part of the case is therefore not that an Iranian propaganda network used a chatbot. It is that AI was being treated as part of the back office of information warfare – a system for converting state doctrine into apparently decentralised, multilingual and plausibly independent voices. Sources Anthropic — Detecting and countering misuse of AI: September 2026 https://www.anthropic.com/threat-intelligence-report-september-2026 Iran International — Iran state-aligned accounts used Claude to push IRGC narratives https://www.iranintl.com/en/202609105561 BNE IntelliNews — Yemen missile cell used AI to write guidance software, Anthropic says https://new.intellinews.com/articles/yemen-missile-cell-used-ai-to-write-guidance-software-anthropic-says-467296 This is Beirut — Anthropic report details Iranian propaganda operations https://thisisbeirut.com.lb/news/politics/anthropic-report-details-iranian-propaganda-operations-and-yemen-missile-development-using-claude Anthropic report — PDF mirror https://static.foxbusiness.com/foxbusiness.com/content/uploads/2026/09/anthropic-detecting-and-countering-091026-1.pdf Keywords #DISINFORMED #Episode11 #Iran #IranianInfluence #IranianPropaganda #CognitiveWarfare #SoftWar #JihadAlTabyin #Disinformation #InformationWarfare #InfluenceOperations #ForeignInterference #FIMI #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #AIPropaganda #GenerativeAI #ClaudeAI #Anthropic #SyntheticMedia #NarrativeManipulation #NarrativeLaundering #AttributionLaundering #PersonaNetworks #Astroturfing #SocialMediaManipulation #DigitalInfluence #StatePropaganda #IslamicCultureAndCommunicationsOrganization #ICCO #IslamicPropagandaOrganization #KhorasanRazavi #IRGC #MultilingualInfluence #Targeting #Amplification #OSINT #WRLD

Here is the translation: "There is the lead rope! 👍 What was concealed by the closed gate at Seszták yesterday could not be hidden in Kecskemét! There's Bazsi! Wrinkled white shirt, head down, accompanied by a few black-masked tax officials. Where has the Szekler blood gone? Where is the big vest and the innocent cultural-saving tale now? Nowhere... Only the bare numbers remain! 1079 times, 17.3 billion forints shuffled into the party's treasury before the elections. In the NKA 'swimming pool', they have turned off the tap, no more splashing around. On Monday, he was still threatening as a minister, now he's being pushed through the negotiating door. Does he dare to tell the judge that the Somló dumpling eating contest served the survival of the Hungarian nation? It's just a matter of minutes before thirty days; Miklós can already warm up the upper bunk at Nagy Ignác!" (translated)

„Az igazságszolgáltatás által kiszabott büntetések végrehajtása az állam kiemelt felelőssége, és Tennessee lakossága azt várja el, hogy a végrehajtás ne csak törvényes és alkotmányos legyen, hanem hatékony is”Bill Lee kormányzó bejelentette, hogy a sikertelen kivégzési kísérlet után az államban felfüggesztette a halálos ítéletek végrehajtását, és külső vizsgálatot rendelt el annak kivizsgálására, hogy mi történt pontosan. #halálosítélet #kivégzés #méreginjekció

I wanted to remain sober at first and not speak, but I have thought a lot about Malek since the announcement of his passing, and I told myself that it was a good thing to pay tribute to him. I met him on a TeamSpeak we called "TS Netteux" back in the day, over 10 years ago now. It was a TS where almost the entire French subtop scene of the early CS:GO was present. I still don't know how I ended up there since I was just a guy who played on FACEIT and had never played as a team. I found myself with pros and semi-pros from the scene, and I was so happy to be with those guys and to be able to play with them. My only obsession was for one of them to give me a chance to play with them as a team. There were several young players in the same situation on the TS, we had no concept of team play, we only thought about individual skill and making highlights to impress the subtop players. I remember one day when Malek had us join a server, with other guys like me who were hanging around on the TS. We were on Dust2, and he was telling us to imagine a line that divides the map in two, the bombsite A and the bombsite B, and that the goal as terrorists was to go to the bombsite where there were the least CTs. He also made comments about our approach to the game: "You only think about shooting and getting kills, but in a round, the time you spend shooting an enemy is 2 seconds. You put all your attention on those 2 seconds, but what are you doing for the next 1 minute and 40 seconds, and what can you do to help your team win the round?" He was teaching us the basics of team play, and we listened to him attentively. I had the opportunity to run into him at LANs from time to time and chat a bit with him. We weren't particularly close, but the exchanges were always fascinating and very direct with him. I think he wanted to be validated by his peers, like all of us, the players and more broadly, the actors of the CS scene in France. And it's true that having a track record helps a lot to obtain that validation, but I think it's important to value his work, and more broadly the work of passionate people in the scene, whether they have a track record or have done great things in the competitive scene or not. Rest in peace, Malek. (translated)

Laura Codruța Kövesi, the chief prosecutor of the European Public Prosecutor's Office, announced that the organization of the European Public Prosecutor's Office could be established in Hungary, which could start conducting searches and investigations as early as next year, with the aim of uncovering fraud and corruption cases involving national resources. (translated)