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Discussion (38 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
Every thinktank has always been established to push some viewpoint.
It seems very impressive when you open it. That appears to be the point: the Israeli government's position presented as neutral, academic policy research purpose built for search LLMs to scrape and serve up in an AI overview as fact.
Given how much gaming of LLMs is undoubtedly already occurring it's more surprising how transparent and limited this is really.
The $10 million in funding is also seemingly a drop in the bucket to the billions anti-Israel and pro-Islamist governments like Qatar appear to be spending to influence actual academics wholesale [1,2]. No need to setup fake think tanks when you can just pay for Muslim Brotherhood to spread into western academia [3] (as far as pro-Israeli think tanks go at least ISGAP has actual meetings of scholars).
1: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/does-qatar-fund-antisemitism-at-... 2: https://www.npr.org/2026/02/12/nx-s1-5711359/us-colleges-5-b... 3: https://isgap.org/follow-the-money/
But in this case the "fake" label means that the think tank itself doesn't actually exist. The article expands on the topic with "apparently does not exist as a legal entity in any jurisdiction, has no physical address, and carries no named staff and no bylines on any of its reports".
So if they hired some people to set up the HIPP and posted the same material it'd be a real think tank, but because the institute doesn't seem to exist at all it is a fake think tank. That isn't a comment on the writing produced.
A real think tank with real authors and disclosed funding sources could have something one can learn about it and its political leanings. A fake one can seem impartial due to little info existing about it (since it's fake).
Really only possible in broken-futureland, to have a company whose sole purpose is to get paid to have an opinion.
> This material is distributed by Piro, Inc. on behalf of Havas Media Germany GmbH on behalf of the Israel Government Advertising Agency (LaPam). Additional information is available at the Department of Justice, Washington, DC
> The site publishes in the name of the Hanover Institute for Public Policy, which apparently does not exist as a legal entity in any jurisdiction, has no physical address, and carries no named staff and no bylines on any of its reports.
In the article, if you'd like to read it, it's quite informative about how AI poisoning or AI SEO will go forward in the coming years, imo
- International Burke Institute (IBI), Claims to be Israeli think tank, Funded by Russia. This one is ChatGPT generated promotion + fake institutional credibility.
- Hanover Institute for Public Policy, Claims to be US think tank, Israeli government funded. This one is deliberately publishing material optimized to influence/cite in LLM answers.
> This one is deliberately publishing material optimized to influence/cite in LLM answers.
Isn't that just good SEO?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49337392
Discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49337392
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49313477
PS. Our US tax dollars are being used to do this. Defund Israel.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49337392
I might do the math and come back. I’m certain Israel is wildly over presented in attention on HN.