We are talking here about a paper describing a global disinformation machine that:

1. Takes 496 real historical crises as training data.
2. Generates “plausible” blends of fact and fiction by design.
3. Segments output by psychological persona type.
4. Treats confabulation as a core feature.
5. Runs thousands of automated iterations to optimize framing.
   […]
   It produces believable sounding precedents on demand, like historical analogies that feel authoritative but are computationally optimized to move specific audience segments toward predetermined conclusions.

Let me explain how this works in real life.

The nails-on-chalkboard contradictions about President Truman being spread all over the world right now serve as proof of concept. Within small targeted communities, targeted lies stick like peanut butter. The Trump operation spreads the following contradicting narratives all at the same time:

• MAGA frame: “Department of War is a title that restores founding strength, by reversing Truman for being too weak and woke”
• Constitutional conservative frame: “Truman was strong and brave, he did Korea without Congress, and the big man established precedent”
• Interventionist hawk frame: “We’re back to winning, like before the weak-kneed Truman messed it all up”
• Legal skeptic frame: “America in Panama 1989 was perfectly normal”

Yeah, what a mess. Internally, each frame is meant to be coherent, despite contradicting other frames. Collectively, it makes zero sense. It’s a “power” transfer model that bypasses the cognitive defenses of isolated communities.

~ Full article…

William DeFoor’s mugshot, picturing him staring wildly into the camera, began to spread the day of the arrest, along with posts and memes about the incident in early January 2026.

On January 5th, 2026, X[3] user @catturd2 posted the mugshot, writing, “This is the dork who they arrested for smashing JD Vance’s windows with a hammer. Crazy eyes as usual,” garnering over 18,000 likes in under a day.

Later that day, X[4] user @LucasSa56947288 posted, “He doesn’t appear to be: – Black – Muslim – Transgender – Immigrant – Somali,” garnering over 1,400 likes in a day.

That same day, X[5] page @reddit_lies posted a screenshot claiming that DeFoor’s father is a Democrat, garnering over 1,700 likes in under a day. Shortly after, X[6] user @DaveMcNamee3000 posted an edit of DeFoor with wider eyes, resembling a J.D. Vance baby face edit, garnering over 950 likes in under a day.

~ Full article…

The New York Times even cited Mark Nevitt, a professor of law at Emory University and a former Navy lawyer, to say the U.S. hijacking Venezuelan oil tankers was legal because they were enforcing the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea without noting, rather importantly, that the U.S. never signed the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. But it needed to feel vaguely rules-based and international-y, so unilateral U.S. dictates were passed off as ersatz international law.

This pro bono PR for Trump also came in the form of several articles and headlines that heavily implied Venezuela had broken some type of international law by trading its oil and evading U.S. piracy, complete with the breathless reports into Venezuela’s so-called “dark fleet” or “shadow fleet” — which, again, is only “dark” and “shadow” to one of the 193 U.N. member states: the United States. Despite Trump paying little attention to international law or even bothering to reference it — all while proudly boasting of stealing Venezuelan oil and trumpeting the Monroe Doctrine — the idea that the U.S. could be engaging in such shameless might-makes-right power projection was apparently too unseemly to mention. Instead, unilateral U.S. claims, almost in unison, became international law through vibes.

Left unmentioned is that it is indeed quite unusual for countries to follow the laws of other countries, and Venezuela is under no more moral or legal obligation to follow U.S. law than the U.S. is under a moral or legal obligation to follow Venezuelan law, or Iranian law, or Serbian law. By trading oil and refusing to submit to U.S. piracy, Venezuela was breaking no Venezuelan law and no international law — a fact almost never mentioned by anyone in the U.S. media.

~ Full article…

Trump calling his unilateral aggression a “police action” is the Gleiwitz doctrine.
[…]
Hitler made this playbook infamous. Trump is running it again. This is what Hitler said to his generals on August 22, 1939, the week before murdering Honiok:

I will provide a propagandistic casus belli. Its credibility doesn’t matter. The victor will not be asked whether he told the truth.

Then Operation Himmler (August 31, 1939) used Honiok’s body and staged fake Polish attacks on German installations, including the famous Gleiwitz radio station incident, to fake the appearance of Polish aggression. Nazi SS operatives dressed in Polish uniforms, broadcast anti-German messages, and left Konserven behind.

On September 1, 1939 Hitler broadcast pure propaganda, as he said he would:

This night for the first time Polish regular soldiers fired on our own territory. Since 5:45 a.m., we have been returning the fire… I will continue this struggle, no matter against whom, until the safety of the Reich and its rights are secured.

Trump is repeating this Gleiwitz history as the true precedent for his abuse of the phrase “police action” in Venezuela. The criminal espouses the vocabulary of law enforcement and blocks police from responding, while committing the crimes.

~ Full article…

The single-celled cowboy George [5] was not even this lazy in searching for pretexts for the war in Iraq; but what can you do when the disguise of a “war on drugs” immediately peels off the moment you recall that with those same tiny hands, he literally amnestied a proven Latin American drug trafficker the day before—the former right-authoritarian president of Honduras, whom they had imprisoned in an American jail for life because of the mountains of cocaine he and his brother pumped into the USA [6], perhaps even directly to Casa Paella [7]—in order to help his party cronies, ahem, “win” the elections and build yet another concentration camp in another Central American state, following the model of Bukele’s El Salvador [8]. It looks like the embodiment of fears about a global deal between two imperialisms: “you leave us the Western Hemisphere, we leave you Ukraine.”

~ Full article…

According to the IDF, a wave of overnight strikes involved 40 fighter jets dropping 100 munitions on dozens of Iranian military facilities in Tehran and other areas of Iran.

In addition, this morning, the Arak nuclear site was struck, including the reactor’s containment structure, “a key component in plutonium production,” the military says.

Among the targets struck elsewhere in Iran overnight was a facility in Natanz used by Iran to develop nuclear weapons, the IDF says.

~ Full article…

U.S. government officials first reported the injury in Cuba in 2016.

~ Full video…

The short version is that everything you thought you knew about the security of the internal network behind your Internet router probably is now dangerously out of date.

~ Full article…

In a bizarre turn of events, a Ranchi man was acquitted in a drugs case after police informed the court that nearly 200 kilograms of seized marijuana, worth Rs 1 crore, had allegedly been destroyed by rats while stored in police custody.

~ Full article…

President Donald Trump says the United States ⁠has ‘captured’ Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife and flown them out of ⁠the country after “large-scale” strikes.

~ Full article…