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The Pentagon is running an AI propaganda mill targeting Latin America
- _3u10 4mo ago[flagged]
- zekrioca 4mo agoIt seems some AI propaganda has already worked on you.
- ggambetta 4mo agoIt seems you're not from LatAm.
- Gualdrapo 4mo agoI am and I can say with full certainty that the "socialism threat" paranoia in our region is incredibly stupid. The real threat has always been corrupt governments and corporations meddling in politics that gave away the birth of guerrillas (and even sponsored them) like here in Colombia. The "socialism bad" has been in many cases just an excuse for so many here to hold themselves in power and make the lifes of the less fortunate completely miserable. Power just corrupts, be it from "left" or "right".
- ggambetta 4mo agoI fully agree with you. However, when non-LatAm people talk about "socialism", they probably think of European-style socialism, which is awesome. LatAm socialism is a lot more extreme, and closer to full-on communism - my country still has people stuck in the 60s cold war era mentality and fully supporting the ideals of of the Soviet Union, still praising Cuba and Venezuela, reality notwithstanding. European-style socialism would be better. Full 60s socialism would be significantly worse. It's quite likely that people ITT are using "socialism" to refer to either, and we're all talking past each other.
- _3u10 4mo agoWhen I think of socialism I think of everything from Trump and to the left of Trump. Brazil/Argentina/Trump style tariffs, banning the import of DJI/BYD/Huawei, etc. and yes china is socialist too. I’m not American I don’t really think of America as capitalist wonderland. And yes cheap Bolivian subsidized gas is wonderful, same with subsidized Argentinian everything, 3:1 blue dollar etc. let me explicitly thank their populace for subsidizing many vacations and day to day living costs.
- boxed 4mo agoIt's strange that people look at the millions dead from starvation from communism, and the quite recent destruction of Venezuela, and still think communism can somehow work this time.
- wmwragg 4mo agoThere is a significant difference between socialism and communism, Americans seem to purposely conflate the two, they are not the same.
- throwaway290 4mo agoSmells like "no true scotsman" fallacy because they are nearly synonyms. Nobody in USSR could tell the exact difference or at least there was no consensus, and you are expecting modern Americans to do better huh? This basically sums it up: > According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, "Exactly how communism differs from socialism has long been a matter of debate, but the distinction rests largely on the communists' adherence to the revolutionary socialism of Karl Marx." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism#Communism_and_socialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism#Communism_and_social...) (To make it more fun Marxism is also its own thing)
- krige 4mo agoThat's entirely orthogonal to the fact that Americans thend to label literally anything and everything they don't like as communist. Especially any sort of social(ist) policy good for the people and bad for the 1%.
- boxed 4mo agoIt doesn't help that a lot of the suggested policies are mind numbingly stupid. Like "wealth tax" for people who own controlling equity in companies. Someone else values your company more and now you are forced by law to sell it and lose control, probably destroying the company.
- 4mo ago
- _3u10 4mo agoAhh it’s just fake AI that I can walk around with a beer and not get hassled? It’s fake AI that the top tax rate is 10%?
- dyauspitr 4mo agoYou can be capitalist without being right wing in this administration cares more about the latter
- keybored 4mo agoBeing capitalist (edit: the ideology) implies being right wing.
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago> Being capitalist implies being right wing Oh boy, no it does not. Supporting low-intervention markets (i.e. brutal competition among corporations) alongside high taxation of gains (and strong services for individuals) is absolutely coherent and both capitalist and not right wing. (It's a decent description of my politics.)
- keybored 4mo agoAren't you a venture capitalist? A left wing one?
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago> Aren't you a venture capitalist? Pretty much. > A left wing one? Wouldn't say that. I like wealth redistribution and taxation as a tool of both economic empowerment and political equalisation. I do have friends whom I'd consider left wing. I agree with them on many issues, from unionising bars to raising the minimum wage. I disagree with them on others, e.g. regulating everything for the sake of it.
- gdss 4mo agoyep, with brazil at the center...
- postsantum 4mo agoBrazil did a hecking bad thing. PIX can't be allowed, let alone expand
- gdss 4mo agoalright bro no one is taking you serious
- shakna 4mo agoHave they ever stopped? CIA and SOCOM have been dangling themselves into Latin American lives since they were invented. Assassinating presidents, spewing propaganda, assisting in coups. It would be a surprise, it they weren't using AI to add to the mix.
- oefrha 4mo agoI’d be shocked if the Pentagon isn’t running an AI propaganda mill targeting <insert any region of the world>.
- PearlRiver 4mo agoYou too can have no healthcare, no pension and no job security! Sign up to America today.
- penguin_booze 4mo agoFor those who signed up, the lessons are in the post.
- oobeoob11 4mo agoWell, yes, obviously. Did you notice there is also one (rather, a whole ecosystem) targeting Russia, one for Iran, one for China, one for EU, one for Japan, etc?
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago> one (rather, a whole ecosystem) targeting Russia, one for Iran, one for China I'm fine with this. > one for EU, one for Japan, etc? I'm not okay with this. Wouldn't lump the two together.
- tclover 4mo agoThat’s what someone full of propaganda would say
- zuzululu 4mo agoThis is odd. They have the budget to run with real journalists and outlets. Is this some reverse-psychology move? Where they want people to see that its AI and thus not take it seriously? What aim does that achieve?
- vintermann 4mo agoIt's not necessarily easy to find people who will want to work with that, especially when you were the Trump administration. I mean there used to be a fair amount of government loyalists remaining, working for outlets like Voice of America who, probably, sincerely thought they were doing a good thing. But they butted head with the Trump administration hard. For all loyalists there is a grifter to true believer ratio, and for the current admin it's bad. Why pay a hard-to-find true believer to make actually convincing propaganda, when you're a grifter yourself and have the opportunity to take the budget for yourself and let an LLM half-ass it?
- Cthulhu_ 4mo agoReal journalists / content writers have pesky morals and tend to become whistleblowers when they've had enough.
- FooBarWidget 4mo agoWhat are you talking about? There are entire groups of renowned "journalists" that turn out to be CIA collaborators. The renowned New York Times admitted they receive approval from the US government. Bellingcat, renowed "independent investigative journalists", turns out to be CIA-funded, and is awfully quiet with their investigations in situations where it does not suit NATO allies' agenda. There's a reason why the public distrusts journalists more and more. Many people still think the problems are limited to domestic journalism, and haven't connected the dots yet w.r.t. that foreign policy journalism is just as bad, if not worse.
- applicative 4mo agoThe only systematic state propaganda in question is the propaganda you are retailing here. Bellingcat-o-mania in particular is a pure, paid, propaganda initiative of Putin's Assadist phase. Billions were spent to produce armies of brains that type what you just typed.
- rurban 4mo agoHollywood is not just targeting Latin America. Marvel and DC are everybody fascists dreams.
- JumpCrisscross 4mo agoWhen it comes to traditional spycraft, I'm of the opinion that everyone does it and everyone has to. Everyone does it. It's of tremendous value. And it doesn't particularly hurt us when we get caught. But the First Amendment is a cultural touchstone for America. Even if everyone else does this nonsense, it's not of demonstrable value and it does hurt us when we get caught like this. Unilateral disarmament isn't usually an option. But it is, I think, when it comes to this. I think we should pass a law banning undisclosed social media, psyop and other unattributed propaganda campaigns among (a) allies and (b) other democracies (as judged by a neutral source).
- dm_ 4mo agoWhat I think many of the jaded comments about how "it was ever thus" miss is what it means that American soft power is reduced to AI slop. During the Cold War, the CIA famously funded all sorts of cultural endeavors, but much of the output (if not directly CIA-created, then at least bolstered by the Agency) is still held to have been culturally relevant: abstract expressionism (https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20161004-was-modern-art-a-weapon-of-the-cia https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20161004-was-modern-art-...), the Kenyon Review (https://www.thecollegianmagazine.com/the-kenyon-review-and-the-cia/ https://www.thecollegianmagazine.com/the-kenyon-review-and-t...), etc. Lots to criticize in the Cold War, but I think you can at least make the argument that this was emblematic of an American cultural power that was self-assured of its own value and legitimacy. In comparison, now we have...LLMs creating personal finance tips?
- JumpCrisscross 4mo agoGenuine question, were we ever great at this?
- dm_ 4mo agoIf "we" = "the USA": 1. I think the examples I linked to are real, in the sense that they were both a) CIA funded (or boosted) and b) are broadly credible cultural output. 2. Voice of America was a real media outlet with real cultural impact. There are also non-American examples. The BBC World Service is (or was) pretty widely listened to, which strikes me as a pretty big soft-power boost for an otherwise waning colonial power. I do think what separates those from (apparently) this example is that they were all output that had genuine value to the target audience. That's sort of like the discussion around USAID: it was, indeed, also often CIA-adjacent and, during the Cold War, was anything but a purely altruistic endeavor (which is why it's so funny to see reactionaries describing it as some sort of bleeding-heart operation), but it nonetheless provided genuine value to recipients of its relatively meager budget. What seems to be the dominant philosophy in Washington now is either a) America can get all the same cultural influence for cheap via AI, or b) soft power influence doesn't matter anyway because America has the Tomahawk missiles. I think both of those views are likely to be incorrect.
- 4mo ago
- yanhangyhy 4mo agoIf the American system is so good, why does it always need to be promoted in such strange ways? LA people should be so eager to be pro-America
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago> If the American system is so good Putin doesn't plaster Europe with propaganda because he thinks the Russian system is good. He does it for power. And if your system is that good, propaganda is effective.
- thrance 4mo agoThere's a joke that goes something like this: > A Soviet visits America and says: "Wow, the propaganda is so good here! Much better than back home", an American replies: "What propaganda!? We don't have propaganda here!", to which the Soviet responds: "Exactly!".
- hagbard_c 4mo agoIt is an arms race just like any other. Country A says "we're the best", country B says "Country A is a bunch of liars, look at us", country C says "in contrast to the clear propaganda coming from A and B the truth is that we've found the answer to every question", A counters with "B does nasty things to ${ethnic_group}", B says "C stole every answer from us", C says "A and B are ruled by geriatric know-nothings", etc. Propagandists are going to propagandise no matter whether they're in a representational republic, a democracy, a constitutional monarchy, an oligarchy or a dictatorship. Some of the propaganda is closer to the truth than other but it is still propaganda.
- RickJWagner 4mo agoI just left Reddit, where a Cuban that moved to America is hosting an AMA. It’s incredible. The guy seems to be giving brutally real opinions, the good and the bad, and telling his life’s story. Reddit readers ( admitting they’ve never been to Cuba ) try to shout him down and tell him what he should be thinking. It’d be nice to hear more first hand stories like that.
- phs318u 4mo agoThe USA meddling in South American politics? Say it ain’t so! It’s so bizarre to me that in the US heartland, Latinos are demonised, yet beyond US borders they care so much about the democratic welfare of their South American amigos.
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- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- sometimelurker 4mo agoyou can actually learn a lot about the world by just guessing whats happening. you don't even need to read the news, you can just guess correctly.
- dmvjs 4mo agooh just the one?