The Wall Street Journal recently revealed that Israel is spending roughly $50 million on an American influence campaign involving artificial-intelligence-generated text messages, conservative media, online influencers, and former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale.
According to the report, millions of Americans have received messages from seemingly friendly senders named “Emma” or “Sarah,” asking for their opinions about Israel, Iran, and global security.
This story was published only a matter of days after Vice President JD Vance accused some Israeli officials of attempting to manipulate American opinion in order to keep the Iran conflict going and frustrate US diplomacy via influence campaigns in America.
Israel is right to spend serious money defending itself on the cognitive battlefield. The failure is not the size of the investment.
The failure is both that we didn’t expose those detractors running campaigns in America twisting the truth against Israel and that we treated an existential national-security responsibility as a marketing challenge that can be outsourced to advertising agencies, political consultants, and algorithms.
Fifty million dollars can buy messages, impressions, consultants, and data. As the famous Beatles song suggests, “money can’t buy you love.”
What our government forgot is that it also cannot buy you trust in a short-term campaign. Without trust, the campaign risks becoming another missile fired at Israel’s own legitimacy.
The accompanying cartoon captures the problem.
In an American town square, people happily drink apparently pure water while polished robots assure them, “We just want to explain Israel to you.”
But beneath the ground, the information pipes have been fed by Qatar, Iran, China, and Russia for decades. Nearby, hostile operatives pour accusations of “genocide,” “war crimes,” and “death to the IDF” into the public reservoir.
The drinkers see the sparkling fountain. They do not see who is influencing the content of the pipes.
This is how cognitive warfare operates. The objective is not simply to persuade someone to accept one false allegation.
It is to influence the entire information environment through which that person interprets every subsequent event. Once the water supply is contaminated, offering the public an explanation is not a winning strategy.
Israel’s enemies understood this long ago. Qatar did not merely purchase advertisements promoting its agenda. It invested for decades in media, universities, research institutions, political relationships, and cultural influence.
Iran, China, and Russia do not separate intelligence, diplomacy, information operations, cyber activity, and national strategy into unrelated assignments. They construct ecosystems intended to shape what societies see, whom they trust, and which political choices become acceptable.
Israel, by contrast, repeatedly behaves as if its problem is insufficient explanation (i.e. hasbara – public diplomacy).
When hostility rises, we produce another video, hire another spokesperson, launch another campaign, and count another million impressions. We measure how many people saw our content, not whether legislation changed, a university acted, a false legal allegation was defeated, or an ally maintained political support.
That is a communications activity. It is not strategic influence.
From hasbara to strategic influence
The new campaign does contain important innovations. Israel has correctly identified younger Americans – including younger conservatives – as a critical audience.
It recognizes that artificial intelligence and search engines are becoming gateways through which people understand history and current affairs. It is collecting audience data, producing content at scale, and attempting to compete in environments Israel neglected for too long.
Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar is also correct that public diplomacy must be funded as seriously as jets, bombs, and missile interceptors.
The latest Pew data explain why: 60% of American adults view Israel unfavorably, as do 57% of Republicans between 18 and 49.
This is no longer only a problem on the progressive Left. It has reached the emerging generation of the Republican Right and is weakening what was once a broadly bipartisan alliance.
But responding to an existential threat through a collection of commercial contracts creates a dangerous contradiction. If the cognitive war is truly a war, where is the war cabinet?
Where is the national intelligence assessment? Where is the chain of command integrating the Prime Minister’s Office, Foreign Ministry, intelligence community, IDF, Diaspora Affairs Ministry, and Israel’s diplomatic missions?
Who defines the strategic objectives, tests the messages, examines unintended consequences, and measures policy outcomes?
Most importantly, who is accountable if the strategy fails?
The IDF would never outsource the defense of Israel’s airspace to mercenaries and then evaluate them by counting how many interceptor videos received views.
Yet Israel has placed significant elements of its defense against cognitive missiles in the hands of advertising firms, foreign consultants, and politically connected intermediaries.
These contractors may be talented. Parscale understands political data and digital targeting. Media firms understand distribution. Influencers understand their audiences. But none of them is responsible for the national security of Israel or the safety of Jewish communities worldwide.
Ultimately there are four major failures with the campaign that need addressing:
anonymity instead of authenticity;
impressions instead of policy impact;
contractors instead of an integrated national command;
persuasion without policy feedback.
The reported use of AI personas presents an additional danger. A recipient who believes she is communicating with a person named Emma, only to discover an automated system connected to a foreign government campaign, is unlikely to feel better about Israel.
She will feel manipulated. The tactic can validate the very allegation Israel’s adversaries promote: that support for Israel is manufactured through concealed influence rather than earned through truth and shared values.
In cognitive warfare, credibility is ammunition. Once expended, it is extremely difficult to replace. Israel needs a permanent cognitive-security directorate operating under a national-security authority.
It must research the networks contaminating the information supply, expose their funding and methods, communicate through credible and properly disclosed messengers, receive continuous feedback, and connect that feedback to policy decisions.
Its measurements must move beyond clicks and impressions to consequences: votes, regulations, diplomatic decisions, prosecutions, university policies, media corrections, and durable changes in public attitudes.
This command must also be capable of telling Israel’s political and military leaders when the problem is not merely how a policy is explained but how it is understood and experienced.
Public diplomacy cannot succeed if it functions only as the final packaging department for decisions already made. Strategic influence requires communication to be considered before, during, and after policy formation.
Israel is not facing an eighth “front” that can be addressed with occasional public relations.
It is fighting an all-out war – one that affects its freedom of military action, diplomatic alliances, legal legitimacy, economic relationships, and the physical security of Jews around the world.
The government deserves credit for finally putting serious resources into this battle. But purchasing reach is not the same as building influence, and neither is it the same as earning trust.
Israel does not need more robots to build trust and legitimacy. It needs to defend the reservoir, expose those poisoning it, and take responsibility for the entire system – from the source of the information to its ultimate effect on policy.
The national security of Israel and the Jewish people is too important to outsource.