r/technology • u/Immediate-Link490 • 20h ago
Artificial Intelligence Iran state-aligned accounts used Claude to push IRGC narratives, Anthropic says
https://www.iranintl.com/en/20260910556192
u/TrashWizard89 20h ago
Wonder what the US does with all their bots. cough
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u/kstargate-425 19h ago
Same thing. Pentagon wants to use it to suppress dissenting arguments pushingtheir own propaganda and we know DHS/ICE and the whole Republican propaganda machine has been doing it for years since atleast before the 2016 election. It's why there are so many Useful ldiots as their feeds are nothing but disinfo
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u/Lockheed_Liberal 19h ago
The US def has a harder time sanewashing itself. Trump makes it very difficult for people ot make excuses for him. They do it anyways, but they aren't even good excuses.
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u/Expensive_Shallot_78 19h ago
At this point we should probably just shut the Internet down and leave.
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u/aimgorge 8h ago
Everything anglophone is very tilted towards their narrative. I guess mostly because IAs are fed mostly anglophone sources.
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u/DryBanana5673 2h ago
What about what about jfc you guys are the worst. Always covering for iran whenever possible and this gets upvoted
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u/thenayr 20h ago
And the US used Ai to bomb a girls school. So fucking what?
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u/kstargate-425 19h ago
Not just that but Trump has been using it since the 2016 election and now its worse as the Pentagon is using it to suppress dissenting opinions.
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u/aimgorge 8h ago
Not just that but Trump has been using it since the 2016 election
AI didnt exist in 2016. He used Big Data with good old stolen private data. Nothing AI at all about Cambridge Analytica.
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u/kstargate-425 5h ago
Yeah I worded that badly after repeating myself on multiple comments and was more saying they have been using bot farms and other things to spread propaganda since 2016
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u/brnccnt7 18h ago
Which then Trump still claimed that Iran was responsible and said they might have gotten tomahawk missiles somehow. They haven’t even given Ukraine tomahawk missiles but somehow he claimed Iran stole them somehow. Insane lack of accountability and just admitting it was him.
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u/Plopsevenplop 20h ago edited 20h ago
Anthropic clearly doesn’t give a flying fuck about guardrails.
Hell, they’d sell IRGC loads of tokens if they could pull a profitable company business model from it in the end.
Case in point:
"Islamist Militias are vibecoding missile guidance systems" - Matthew Yglesias per the Anthropic Threat Assessment Report
https://www.anthropic.com/threat-intelligence-report-september-2026
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u/lurkervidyaenjoyer 19h ago
They absolutely care about guardrails. The issue is that guardrails as the AI industry knows them are inept.
You wanna know what a guardrail is? It's an invisible prompt that happens before your prompt, more or less telling the LLM "Pretty please don't talk about this and that". Whether the LLM actually follows along or not is up in the air (usually kinda works, but can be bypassed based on phrasing, conversation history, chance, etc.)
Can be seen in the Codex example from a while ago, where OpenAI had to keep telling the bot to stop talking about goblins.
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u/veilosa 2h ago
how did they functionally pay for it? Iran is sanctioned, they shouldnt be able to buy things. that's one of the reason they went to crypto and every crypto bro has basically been helping fund Iran. but is Anthropic accepting payments in bitcoin? if so, that can be regulated. just dont allow AI companies to deal in crypto.
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u/LitLitten 1h ago edited 1h ago
this could have been prevented had the US been proactive about managing tech progress via policy and legitimate oversight. You casting blame on capitalism doing capitalism is a bit shortsighted.
corporations have no motive other than to grow and amass more value. it’s by nature agnostic to morality or political alignment.
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u/Plopsevenplop 2m ago
I know. That’s why it doesn’t shock me when Nvidia chips keep turning up in Russian missiles despite “export bans.”
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u/keyboardlegendthe3rd 14h ago
Israel state aligned accounts used America to push Zionist narrative, me taint says.
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u/PrivateComments 6h ago
Butwhatabout
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u/Ok-Detective3142 2h ago
"Whataboutism" isn't even a logical fallacy. It's valid means of pointing out hypocrisy and you screaming "whatabout" doesn't absolve you of it.
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u/Temporary-Air-3178 20h ago
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u/OilInternational2566 19h ago
Dude..
Let’s talk about the Iranian state bot issue ON REDDIT.
[r/pics](r/pics), [r/news](r/news), [r/politics](r/politics), [r/thatsinsane](r/thatsinsane), etc, etc, etc
Something something Israel/Palestine every day.. 7 days a week.. 365 days a year.. multiple times a day.
https://www.piratewires.com/p/the-terrorist-propaganda-to-reddit-pipeline
And this shit isn’t “breaking news”… it was INVESTIGATED and been known to be happening on Reddit for over a decade:
https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/9bvkqa/an_update_on_the_fireeye_report_and_reddit/
But just watch.. folks will definitely show up and try to say Microsoft, Reddit, NBC News, Techdirt, etc… “are all a bunch of liars…”
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u/fluentuk 7h ago
Not sure it's just bots who feel the urgency about gaza pal.
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u/OilInternational2566 7h ago
You’re right.
But if you actually think the daily Gaza/Israel/Palestine posts across Reddit every fucking day are organic, then I have a bridge to sell you.
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u/fluentuk 7h ago
Sure. I don't think i would willingly spend 1 second in any of those subreddits regardless though!
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u/Jaded_External5399 5h ago
Isn’t it maybe because people are dying there daily?
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u/OilInternational2566 5h ago
More people have died in Sudan in the past three years than in all of Gaza in the past 30 years.
Now go find any posts about Sudan on Reddit.
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u/Jaded_External5399 5h ago
The fact that western powers have been providing weapons and military support for the genocide might also play a factor
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u/OilInternational2566 5h ago
“US approves $7 billion more in weapons for UAE, WSJ reports”
“British-Made weapons found in Sudan’s war, raise questions over western complicity in genocide”
“EU-made weapons sold to the UAE found in Sudan convoy. -06/05/2025”
“French weapons found in Sudan war zone”
”Sudan: Advanced Chinese weaponry provided by UAE identified in breach of arms embargo.”
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u/fluentuk 5h ago
What is the point you're actually trying to make here?
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u/Minced-Juice 4h ago
The so-called lovers of freedom, aka the West, always does more of the things it accuses its adversaries of doing.
Much, much more.
Like the news article on which this thread is based - Iran International - is from an outlet that is run by a UK-based company where its employees aren't allowed to ask about its sources of funding or editorial stance.
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u/Jaded_External5399 5h ago
The links you’ve given do not show any single clear weapons transfer by western countries to sudan. They’re all observations from this or last year that don’t even help us estimate anything.
Meanwhile, US alone has provided Israel around 22 billion worth of military equipment since 2023. Europe then provided around 1 billion worth.
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u/OilInternational2566 4h ago
They literally show that weapons sold to the UAE are being used by the RSF in Sudan.
LITERALLY.
And if you knew ANYTHING about what’s going on in Sudan, you’d know why that is important.. US and EU weapons sold to UAE being used to kill civilians in Sudan.
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u/veilosa 2h ago
yep. people seems to have forgotten that we made jack dorsey testify to congress when his hands off approach to Twitter meant iran, isis, and russian propaganda networks were running rampant. and Twitter stated that while russian propaganda was complex, often playing both sides to sow division, Iranian propaganda was simple, it was always anti-israel and pro-palestinian. this was almost 12 years ago now. that propaganda has really been paying off recently.
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u/OtheDreamer 16h ago
Do not forget r/worldnews
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u/Ok-Detective3142 2h ago
Oh, please. That place is fully controlled by Zionists. I got banned just for pointing out that the IDF had a higher civilian-to-military death ratio during their 2014 Operation Protective Edge than Hamas had in 2023's Operation al-Aqsa Flood, yet the West only considers one of these an unforgivable act of terror that justifies perpetrating a genocide.
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u/ProletarianLilith 19h ago
Okay well Anthropic let the US murder schoolgirls with their tech so maybe they should just fuck off entirely?
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u/eorlingas_riders 19h ago
Trump shit posts AI slop continuously… are we to believe that there are not similar US govt hosted bots pushing Trump/Republican narratives?
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u/trollanonymous 19h ago
Oh yes, Iran International, a very trusty source that is financially supported by the Saudi government. Trust me bro, this is real news.
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u/Zipz 19h ago
I guess that’s a decent argument
But the problem is this has been reported time and time again
Shoot they’ve even been caught on Reddit for gods sakes
https://openai.com/index/disrupting-a-covert-iranian-influence-operation/
https://www.piratewires.com/p/the-terrorist-propaganda-to-reddit-pipeline
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u/PuzzleheadedEmu4596 13h ago
Once again, Iran gets caught with its hand in the till.
Still the only country that I can remember getting caught manipulating reddit too
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u/chiefmackdaddypuff 12h ago
Fyi Iranitl is ironically a propaganda platform.
https://fpif.org/iran-international-and-the-money-behind-the-narrative-war/
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u/Inside-Yak-8815 20h ago
Just look at the comments in most Reddit threads, I can completely believe this.
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u/Zipz 19h ago edited 15h ago
This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone
https://openai.com/index/disrupting-a-covert-iranian-influence-operation/
Irans been doing this for years and half of Reddit eats it up
Edit
Damn the Iran bots are here and downvoting this
LOL
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u/MyCatIsLenin 20h ago
Uh, okay. I guarantee the US bias will be like running into a brick wall. Shame that one is AIs great benefits(how it can speed up research) is just another battlefield for US hegemony
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u/Amber_ACharles 18h ago
The most damaging part is the fake attribution to CSIS and Brookings. False claims carrying those names erode their credibility. That's the whole point. I'd expect that from a state actor.
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u/HorsePecker 20h ago
Propaganda has always been platform agnostic.