Alexis Madrigal: Welcome to Forum. I’m Alexis Madrigal. It feels to me like there’s some sort of physical law governing how much we can understand about a big global event. There’s undoubtedly an enormously greater volume of raw information flowing to us about events in Iran and the broader Middle East right now than in the past—and yet it seems we can make no more meaning from it than if we were working from six inches of daily newspaper reporting in 1944. We’re drowning in tidbits of data about the war—mountains of analysis, all kinds of media, real and fake—and the onslaught isn’t just informing us or depicting the war, but also distracting from and distorting it.
Here to discuss what’s happening, we’re joined by Kyle Chayka, staff writer at The New Yorker. His recent piece on the war is titled “War in the Age of the Online Information Bomb.” Welcome, Kyle.
Kyle Chayka: Thanks for having me.
Alexis Madrigal: Kyle’s also the author of Filterworld. You may remember he came on the show to talk about the book. We’re also joined by Tiffany Hsu, a technology reporter with The New York Times. Hsu covers the information ecosystem, including foreign influence, political speech, and disinformation. Welcome, Tiffany.
Tiffany Hsu: Thanks for having me.
Alexis Madrigal: And we’ve got Drew Harwell, technology reporter at The Washington Post. Welcome, Drew.
Drew Harwell: Hey, thanks for having me.
Alexis Madrigal: Kyle, let’s start with you. Let’s talk about the overall chaos and disorganization of the information environment, and how you think people here in the U.S. are responding to that.
Kyle Chayka: It really is chaotic. I suppose every global event feels chaotic, but what struck me about the war in Iran and the wider conflict is how I first began seeing it—through videos from influencers in Dubai. This was, like, the first evidence and reporting, as it were, of the conflict: influencers pointing their phone cameras at the sky over fancy hotels, and you see missiles and planes flying. It speaks to how the footage we’re consuming is both professionalized and totally informal. It’s not reporting from the ground from CNN.
Alexis Madrigal: There’s no Wolf Blitzer with all the green graphics behind him—you know what I mean?
Kyle Chayka: No. It’s improvised, and yet so densely documented because we all have camera phones. Anyone, anywhere in the world can start shooting. I think this started with the invasion of Ukraine, but now we’re seeing it at a new, more extreme level.
Alexis Madrigal: Yeah. Tiffany, at the same time, the countries involved in the war are employing propaganda techniques. What have you seen out of Iran that might be different? Not influencers, but official—or unofficial—government efforts.
Tiffany Hsu: This has been happening more in conflicts around the world, but it’s really come to the fore in this Iranian conflict—and that’s AI. There’s just so much content out there that’s manipulated by AI, completely generated by AI, or, in some cases, real content that’s claimed to be AI. It’s really distorting the sense of reality that we have.
Alexis Madrigal: Let’s talk about one of the examples you recently reported on. Netanyahu, the leader of Israel, had to post a “proof of life” video showing his ten fingers—because people used to say AI videos could be identified by weird or extra fingers. What a strange and dystopian sign of our media environment.
Tiffany Hsu: Honestly, I write about crazy things all day long, but that one was a doozy. It’s not unheard of for people in power to post proof-of-life videos. I think Duterte in the Philippines did a Facebook Live a few years ago to prove he was alive. But I’ve never heard of someone of Netanyahu’s stature having to film a video holding up his hands to show he’s not dead.
The circumstances that led to it were intense—and what followed was kind of unbelievable. He gave a press conference that was recorded, and a clip circulated on social media where people claimed to see six fingers on his hand. That used to be a tell of AI, maybe two years ago, but it’s not anymore because AI has gotten so much better.
Still, people across the internet said, “Netanyahu has six fingers—clearly he’s AI, so he must be dead.” A couple days later, he goes to a café on the outskirts of Jerusalem and posts a video of himself ordering coffee, very conspicuously holding up his hands and talking about the situation.
In a normal information ecosystem, that would have ended it. People would say, “Okay, there’s Netanyahu. The café posted photos. There’s corroboration.” But now, in the AI age, people think the proof-of-life video is also AI-generated. And then more videos proliferate—showing the new leader of Iran in the same café, or Netanyahu in a sports jersey, or even Elvis—just to prove it could be faked.
Alexis Madrigal: Right—proving it could be faked. Which is true.
Tiffany Hsu: Exactly.
Alexis Madrigal: Drew, let’s talk about what the U.S. is pushing out as well. You’ve been covering this, and it feels entirely different from how the U.S. military used to post on social media.
Drew Harwell: Oh yeah, one hundred percent. The Pentagon and the White House—even during Trump 1.0—were very buttoned-up online. They were serious, even with war operations, and treated everything very clinically.
Now, during Trump 2.0 and the Iran war, you see the meme lords and edgy voices inside the White House really coming out and treating the war like everything else—as a big joke. You see missile strike videos posted to X, Instagram, and TikTok—real-world footage from Central Command mixed with Call of Duty, SpongeBob SquarePants, Halo, even Top Gun, cut into hype videos.
The White House points to them as signs of “Operation Epic Fury” doing well. And it’s wild, because the videos are working—they’re getting a lot of attention, which is the metric they’re optimizing for. Lots of views on X.
But I spoke to veterans and Gold Star families for a story today, and they’re horrified. These are people who traditionally support the military. They understand the mission. But they see these videos and say, “These are real wars, with real people who may come back dead or injured—and the White House is treating it like a meme to score points.”
It’s been shocking to see this kind of edgy, 4chan-style governance, and I’m curious how it’ll pay off.
Alexis Madrigal: Yeah. It feels like you’re watching an AND1 Mixtape or something—the music, the editing. These hype videos make it harder to imagine the war as a real thing. That’s one of the effects.
We’re talking about how governments, social media users, and others are shaping the way we hear about and understand this war. We’re joined by Drew Harwell, technology reporter with The Washington Post; Tiffany Hsu, technology reporter with The New York Times; and Kyle Chayka, staff writer at The New Yorker.
We want to hear from you. How are you informing yourself about this war? What memes or posts have you seen that raised questions for you? How are you finding sources you trust? Give us a call at 866-733-6786. That’s 866-733-6786. You can email forum@kqed.org, or find us on social media—BlueSky, Instagram, Discord—we’re @KQEDForum.
I’m Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned.
