The Atlantic (Gift) October 27, 2025

11/16/2025

At a time of multiple international crises, at a moment when the United States is about to engage in some kind of military action in Venezuela, as the National Guard is being sent to American cities against the will of American governors, the Pentagon’s official positions will be relayed by Timcast, The Epoch Times, LindellTV and the Gateway Pundit, which means that many people simply won’t believe Pentagon statements at all.

This appears to be the Trump administration’s preferred model, not only in the Pentagon but in the White House and everywhere else: Keep the public off-balance. Tell jokes, lies, and amusing stories or publish sinister AI-made videos, not in order to get Americans to believe government statements but in order to make them distrustful of all statements. If they aren’t sure what the U.S. military is really doing, then they won’t object. If people don’t believe anything they read anywhere, then they won’t be motivated to argue, to discuss, or even to engage in politics. Modern authoritarian propaganda, of the kind we are about to receive from the Pentagon and perhaps other government agencies, isn’t designed to produce true believers or mass movements. It’s designed to produce apathy.

In a world where more and more people get their information from ChatGPT, Grok, DeepSeek and Gemini, this information fog could grow worse over time, creating permanent misunderstandings or historical vacuums. One study has already shown that these AI chatbots frequently link to Russian state media and produce false information about Russia’s war on Ukraine. But Americans might not have to wait for AI to write false histories before we feel the consequences. If the public, our allies, our adversaries, and eventually the military itself no longer believe what the Pentagon is saying, then the Pentagon might find it faces obstacles to its credibility, and to its operational capability, much greater than those once posed by investigative reporters with access to the building.