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The Russell Brunson Show

The Propaganda Playbook: Deepfakes (Why You Can’t Trust What You See Anymore) - #Marketing - Ep. 125

The Russell Brunson Show

Russell Brunson

Marketing, Business, Entrepreneurship

4.8982 Ratings

🗓️ 27 April 2026

⏱️ 19 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

There’s a moment when you can’t tell what’s real anymore. You watch a U.S. Senate candidate look right into the camera, speaking clearly, saying words that match things he’s posted online for years - and a few hours later you find out he never sat in that chair, never opened his lips, and never had a single thing to do with the video. That’s not science fiction. That’s a campaign ad that ran in front of millions of voters last week. And once you see what’s actually happening behind it, you can’t unsee it. In this episode, I walk you through five of the AI propaganda moments stacking up right now - and then I introduce you to a French philosopher named Jacques Ellul, who back in 1962, before the internet, before social media, before AI, predicted almost exactly what we’re living through. But here’s where it gets uncomfortable for me. I’m not standing on the outside of this looking in. I use AI every single day in my business, and I’ve run the exact tension Ellul warned about - including one experiment that converted cold traffic perfectly and made my own community feel betrayed. So I share what those experiments taught me, and I give you the 3-question framework I now run every AI-assisted piece of content through. Key Highlights: ◼️The five AI propaganda moments stacking up right now - from deepfake political ads on both sides, to Grok generating 6,700 explicit fake images per hour, to the grandmother scam calls one in four Americans have already received ◼️Why Jacques Ellul’s idea of “sociological propaganda” - written in 1962, before the internet existed - predicts every algorithm and “for you” page running today better than anything Bernays ever wrote ◼️The behind-the-scenes story of two AI ads I tested with my own audience: the deepfake “AI Russell” that converted cold traffic but made warm fans feel betrayed, and the cartoon “Baby Russell” that flipped both ◼️The 3-question framework I now run every AI-assisted piece of content through - the “Amplification Test”, the “Disclosure Test”, and the “Relationship Test” ◼️Why borrowed trust always comes back to bite you - and how to tell when AI is amplifying your real message vs. fabricating a fake one At the end of the day, this episode isn’t about being anti-AI. I genuinely believe it’s the biggest opportunity entrepreneurs have seen since the start of the internet. But Ellul’s warning was that the most dangerous propaganda is the kind that gets built into the system itself - and right now, we’re building AI into everything. Into our ads, our content, our politics, our kids’ education, and the way we decide what’s true. So the real question is: when the propagandist is no longer a person but an algorithm with no conscience and no off switch, who do we hold accountable when the line gets crossed - and how do we know we’re not crossing it ourselves? ◼️If you’ve got a product, offer, service… or idea… I’ll show you how to sell it (the RIGHT way) Register for my next event → https://sellingonline.com/podcast ◼️Still don’t have a funnel? ClickFunnels gives you the exact tools (and templates) to launch TODAY → https://clickfunnels.com/podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Do you have a funnel, but it's not converting? The problem 99.9% of the time is that your funnel

0:05.0

is good, but you suck at selling. If you want to learn how to sell so your funnels will actually

0:09.3

convert, then get a ticket to my next selling online event by going to sellingonline.com slash podcast.

0:14.7

That's sellingonline.com slash podcast. This is the Russell Brunson show.

0:24.9

I want you to watch something. This is a candidate running for the U.S. Senate in Texas and is looking straight into the camera. He's speaking clearly.

0:29.7

He's reading from things he posts on social media years ago, and it looks completely real.

0:34.5

Oh, I remember this one. Radicalized white men are the greatest domestic terrorist threat in our country.

0:41.3

But that man never filmed that video.

0:43.3

He never sat in that chair, he never said those words.

0:45.3

The entire thing was created by artificial intelligence.

0:48.3

It's a deep fake.

0:49.3

And Iran is an actual political ad to millions of voters.

0:52.3

And in a tiny little text in the corner, so small you're probably going to miss it, it says AI generating. And that's just one. In Georgia, they deep faked a sitting U.S. senators saying things he never said. The White House is also putting out AI-generated content to promote the Iran war. One in four Americans have now received a phone call where AI cloned a family member's voice trying to steal their money. And Elon Musk's AI was generating over 6,700

1:16.6

fake sexual images of real people every single hour, including minors. This is not science fiction.

1:22.2

This is happening right now. And the propaganda technique behind all of it was predicted over

1:26.4

60 years ago by a man that

1:27.8

almost nobody has ever heard of.

1:29.7

His name is Jacquille Ewell.

1:31.4

And what he wrote in 1962 is so terrifyingly accurate about what's happening today that's

1:36.3

going to change how you look at every ad, every video, and every piece of content you see online,

1:40.5

including mine.

1:43.2

This is the propaganda playbook, where I take the biggest stories in the news and decode the propaganda techniques that are hidden inside of them. And then I show you how to use the ethical versions of the same techniques to grow your business. So that said, let's get right into it. Okay, so let me walk you to what's actually happening right now, because most people have seen one or two headlines about this, but when you stack all of it it together it paints a picture that is way bigger than any single story example number one the

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