Claude’s Russian Propaganda Problem
Question Everything
Brian Reed
4.6 • 707 Ratings
🗓️ 14 May 2026
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
According to the fact-checking company NewsGuard, Claude has been a very reliable and accurate chatbot. But in the last month or so, users have started complaining that it seemed to be getting slower, stupider, and less trustworthy. So NewsGuard AI analyst Isis Blachez ran a test on Claude, to see if it is actually getting worse. And running this test revealed a whole new iteration of Russian disinformation campaigns, designed for the AI-era, that are evolving by the second specifically to coerce chatbots into deceiving us.
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Guests:
-
Isis Blachez, analyst for AI and France at NewsGuard
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Something I'm always thinking about is the way that algorithms are often self-reinforcing, giving us more of the content and news that we want to see, which isn't the most healthy way to take in information, which is why I'm excited to be partnering with Ground News. |
| 0:12.7 | Ground News shows you how the same story is being covered across the political spectrum, so you can actually get the full picture and not just the one version that's being given to you. |
| 0:21.0 | If you want to check it out, go to groundnews.com slash question to get 40% off their unlimited vantage plan. |
| 0:27.3 | Again, that's groundnews.com slash question. |
| 0:30.1 | Make sure you use our link so they know we sent you. |
| 0:32.9 | On the broad side, we take you into the heart of the south. |
| 0:36.5 | With stories that'll surprise you, Bigfoot apparently loves glowsticks. Right. Next to party, I guess. Exactly. He's a raver. And topics that dig into the muddy margins of history. Right. The good, the bad, the ugly. It's not clean at all. It's so messy. Wait a second. This is actually real. |
| 0:55.3 | Listen to the broadside. One story. Every week. Exploring the rich traditions of the South. |
| 1:04.7 | I saw a post the other day from journalist Isaac Saul of the Tangle newsletter, where he was worried about all the bullshit AI chatbots are spewing. |
| 1:16.1 | He explained how a reader had emailed him to say that a story Isaac had spent months putting together where he compiled and checked every claim of corruption tied to Donald Trump. |
| 1:25.2 | The reader had put the story into Chatachabit to quote-unquote |
| 1:28.0 | fact-check it, and the AI told them that most of it was false. Chachabit he told the reader |
| 1:32.5 | that there is no war with Iran, that Jared Kushner is not a negotiator in the war, that Qatar never |
| 1:37.7 | offered Trump a $400 million plane, that George Santos wasn't pardoned, that Trump never |
| 1:42.6 | launched a meme coin, and that the Trump |
| 1:44.3 | family crypto firm doesn't exist. |
| 1:46.8 | Of course, all of these things are real, do exist and are happening right now, Isaac wrote. |
| 1:52.8 | We're in deep, deep trouble. |
| 1:55.0 | The reader told Isaac they wouldn't even finish reading his article, because ChatGPT claims |
| 1:59.2 | so much of it was untrue. |
| 2:01.3 | We are just beginning to reckon with the drastic ways that AI chatbots are changing how people |
| 2:06.3 | get information. It's happening rapidly in real time. A lot of people are starting to use AI for news. |
... |
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