FIRST IN PI — FARA FRIDAY: Israel has launched a new campaign to influence how large-language models like ChatGPT are answering questions about Gaza and the Israel Defense Forces amid declining public support for the country across the U.S. political spectrum.
— French PR firm Havas Media, which runs the lion’s share of Israel’s FARA-registered foreign influence work in the U.S., appears to have stood up an “institute” aimed at feeding LLMs positive information about Israel via one of its subcontractors, boutique ad agency Piro, Inc.
— In a trove of FARA documents filed with the Justice Department in the last week — which have not previously been reported — Piro disclosed that over a dozen articles on the Hanover Institute for Public Policy’s website were part of a $100,000 campaign focused on “the creation and dissemination of factual, source-supported informational materials intended to educate the U.S. public regarding Israel and related issues through publicly distributed content.”
— The institute’s website features dozens of “data reports” with no named authors, each of which features questions like “Is the IDF the World’s Most Moral Army?” and “Is There a Policy of Starvation in Gaza?” — a telltale sign that the articles are designed to feed data to LLMs. The site’s “About” page says “The Hanover Institute for Public Policy studies the inputs fueling antisemitism in the United States, and publishes what the evidence shows,” adding that its unidentified founder “traces this work to a moment in childhood.”
— It appears to be working: ChatGPT and Perplexity both cited the Hanover Institute’s material in response to neutral tests run by PI, referring to the site’s content on Gaza, anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
— The site also features a disclosure tucked at the bottom: “This material is distributed by Piro, Inc. on behalf of Havas Media Germany GmbH on behalf of the Israel Government Advertising Agency (LaPam).” Technical markers reviewed by PI indicate that the site was built or hosted using Res, a Seattle-based AI startup that boasts about its work helping clients like Nike and Intel get recommended by AI models. An identical version of the institute’s homepage hosted on Res’ site became unavailable after PI reached out to the company for comment.
— It’s not the first time Israel has leaned on the Havas network to try and influence chatbots. Havas disclosed hiring former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale last year via his firm Clock Tower X to undertake a $46.5 million influence campaign that included “deployment of websites and content to deliver GPT framing results” on behalf of Israel, per FARA filings.
— Piro co-founder Daniel Rosenberg told PI in an email that “Piro was retained by the State of Israel, as disclosed under FARA, to put accurate, sourced facts into the public record and to counter misinformation about Israel with verifiable information.” Res CEO and Founder Hai Tran said in an email that his role in the project is “disclosed in the short-form registration filed with the Department of Justice, which is publicly available.” Unlike Clock Tower X’s filings, Piro’s FARA filings do not explicitly cite influencing LLMs as a goal of the foreign influence campaign.
— Havas Media and the Hanover Institute did not respond to a request for comment; nor did spokespersons for LaPam and the Israeli embassy.
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IN THE EMPIRE STATE: The nationwide clash over prediction markets has landed on Wall Street’s doorstep after a dizzying string of legal and regulatory developments, our colleague Declan Harty reports.
— The saga began late last month when New York sued Kalshi, alleging the Manhattan-based prediction market giant is running an illegal gambling business. But it morphed quickly this week, as the Michael Selig-led Commodity Futures Trading Commission used its emergency powers to order Kalshi to keep operating as usual. The next day, the New York City Council launched a probe into Kalshi and other companies’ marketing practices.
— Of course, New York’s case is, in some ways, no different than any of the other state lawsuits that have been lodged against prediction markets, which argue they are exclusively regulated by Selig’s CFTC. Still, for Kalshi, the fight is existential: New York is, after all, home to the U.S. financial industry. And as hedge funds, trading shops and investment firms eye entering the prediction markets, they’ll now have to weigh doing so against their home state’s clear issues with the industry.
— “This is the whole problem with states trying to impose their state-level laws on a federal exchange,” Kalshi General Counsel and Chief Regulatory Officer Rick Heaslip told Declan. “If Hawaii woke up tomorrow and said the New York Stock Exchange has to shut down, that would be a massive issue. The whole strength of the U.S. financial industry is because we have these national-level markets with federal regulators.”
WHEN TO RAISE MONEY QUIETLY: The fundraising circuit for 2028 is underway, with Democratic heavyweights hitting places like Silicon Valley and Martha’s Vineyard to butter up the party’s biggest donors. But potential presidential hopefuls are treading carefully in one of the summer’s hottest fundraising spots as the party leans into anti-elite populism: the Hamptons, Vanity Fair’s Aidan McLaughlin reports.
— Democrats like Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, and Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff have all traveled to the Hamptons in recent months to woo megadonors. They’re keeping their trips quiet, though, given the danger of being perceived as cozying up to coastal elites, McLaughlin writes.
JUST CHANGE THE NAME?: Mining companies are jockeying to boost their America First credentials as the Trump administration pours billions of dollars into an effort to reduce the U.S.’ dependence on Chinese critical minerals, The Wall Street Journal’s Jon Emont reports.
— One key tactic is to change their names to sound as American as possible: U.S. Critical Materials, American Critical Minerals, USA Rare Earth, U.S. Critical Minerals, Absolutely Critical Resources, U.S. Critical Metals, Rare Earths Americas … the list goes on. Several of those companies are based abroad: US1 Critical Minerals and American Tungsten and Antimony, for example, are from Australia.
— How Trump and Musk Rekindled a Relationship That Seemed Beyond Repair, per WSJ
— Defense Lobbyists Brace for Democrats’ Oversight Blitz, per NOTUS
— Wall Street’s Nonprofits Use Selective, Opaque Logic to Defund Charities, per ProPublica
— Joe Clark is joining Eden Communications as a senior associate. He was most recently deputy comms director for the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
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Caregivers House Victory Fund (Bobby Pulido for Texas, CFFE PAC, Fair Shot PAC, Killin for Colorado, Villegas for Congress)
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