Fake Think Tank Set Up to Influence LLMs

Here is more from Responsible Statecraft, the online magazine of the Quincy Institute:

At a glance, the Hanover Institute for Public Policy looks like a new think tank dedicated to Israel/Palestine. The organization churns out think-tank style reports on questions such as “Does AIPAC Use ‘Dark Money in Elections?” and “Is Israel Carrying out a Deliberate Campaign of Starvation in Gaza?”

But the Hanover Institute is not a real think tank. None of the reports have bylines. A small disclaimer at the bottom of the webpage notes that the organization was created on behalf of the Israeli Government Advertising Agency by Piro, Inc, a firm co-founded by Daniel Rosenberg, the producer of Spike Lee’s “Inside Man.”

The Hanover Institute’s reports — all of which are about Israel and Palestine — appear to be part of an Israeli effort to influence chatbots. The institute’s “data reports” have footnotes and tables of contents, and they present arguments in a neutral tone, helping them appeal to chatbots like Claude or Gemini. Piro’s website says that it “author(s) content engineered for how LLMs evaluate credibility,” describing this service as "AI Story Optimization." Others refer to this practice of influencing artificial intelligence as “LLM poisoning.”

 

Quincy says the "fake think tank" has churned out 100+ reports since it started publishing on August 6. 

Here is a link to the Hanover Institute for Public Policy, which notes that its research is published under the institute's name rather than an individual's name.

The Growing Influence of the Cicero Institute

Here is more from the Washington Post:

[Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale] started the Cicero Institute, a think tank dedicated to bringing market-based solutions to social issues like criminal justice, health care and homelessness, but the group’s ideas got virtually no traction in solid-blue California. In Texas, Lonsdale urged the Cicero team to go bigger, to target the toughest societal problems with “bold” solutions that challenged the status quo.  

Over the next year, the group developed a controversial policy proposal: Cities should make it a crime to sleep outside, forcing people off the street, placing them in temporary shelters or treatment facilities, and sending them to jail if they refused.

No one paid much attention to Cicero at the time. The proposal ran counter to more than 15 years of federal and state policy, which held that forced treatment rarely works and that getting society’s most vulnerable into long-term housing should come before any intervention.

But five years later, Cicero’s vision has spread across the country. It is now the official policy of the Trump administration, and versions of Cicero’s proposal are law in 15 states, with 11 making it a crime to sleep outside.

Scott Centorino, who coordinated the White House’s homeless policy, told The Washington Post that Cicero was a critical partner in driving the administration’s position. “They are the best group out there with a lot of knowledge at the state level,” said Centorino, who left government a few months ago and is now a senior fellow at Cicero.

 

The article notes that across the US, Cicero has worked behind the scenes to shepherd 214 pieces of legislation into law in 29 states since 2021, on issues related to public safety, education, artificial intelligence, and health care.

It also notes that Cicero experts now hold weekly calls with White House officials to share lessons from their victories in US states. 

Here is what the New York Times has to say about the influence of Cicero. 

Think Tank Quickies (#335)

• Canadian think tank's website cloned by hostile foreign intelligence agency. 
• Move over McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group, the Harvard Undergraduate Consulting Group (HUCG) is the hot new consultancy and brings in millions.  About 450 students apply to join each semester, with an acceptance rate of around 10%.
• Why think tanks are a billion dollar business (video). 
• Matthew Christopher Wingate, the government relations director for defense and foreign policy at the Heritage Foundation, was detained by Capitol Police after his belongings tested presumably positive for cocaine and fentanyl when attempting to enter the Capitol complex.
• A conservative think tank's "Patriot's Row" near Capitol Hill is growing. 
• S&P's new center for thought leadership: The S&P Global Institute. 
• The Kissinger Institute's activities and mission - formerly housed within the Wilson Center - are now "thriving" under the China and the United States Program (CUSP), established in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. 
• How a premier Chinese think tank views US-China competition. 
• German Marshall Fund sells its historic Dupont Circle mansion for $11 million.
• NYT: What the crackup of the Heritage Foundation says about the post-Trump right. 

Trump Attacks Think Tank CAP

Here is more from The Hill:

President Trump on Monday lashed out at the Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank, after it released a report last month suggesting the National Guard deployments failed to reduce violent crime.

“Chandler Hall, representing, on Television, the foolish Center for American Lack of Progress, stated that adding the National Guard to Cities, including our now Great Again, Washington, D.C., had ‘NO impact on Crime,'” Trump wrote on Truth Social, referring to the report’s author. “How crazy is that. Hall was met with furious dissent.”

Trump called the research “another Radical Left SCAM, as are the people who fund this gaggle of Lunatics, including George Soros, Bill and Melinda Gates, Google, Apple, Visa, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Walmart, Toyota, T-Mobile, and NBC Universal.”

He added that he will file a lawsuit and add “some of the contributors to this Fake Organization.”

 

The Washington Post Editorial Board called Trump's attack on CAP "an affront to the First Amendment."