Pinned tweet: if you've clicked on my profile because you're wondering why you follow me, my display name used to be Sam Atis and this used to be my profile picture, but I got sick of being anon. Please don't unfollow!
🚨NEW: Dozens of accounts defending Jensen Huang after his affair with an alleged Chinese spy appear to be fake.
They are part of a much wider pro-Nvidia campaign, linked to an Israeli influence firm that says it shut down last year…
But the accounts never stopped posting. 🧵
I just unraveled the biggest AI astroturfing campaign I’ve found yet.
I found hundreds of fake accounts posing as Americans. The operation traces back to a supposedly defunct Israeli influence company.
They posted thousands of times in the last year to support Nvidia, back chip exports and data centers, attack U.S. lawmakers, and dismiss concerns about AI.
When it broke that Jensen Huang, Nvidia's CEO, was romantically involved with an alleged spy (who runs a company accused of chip diversion and whom US officials believe was passing information to Beijing), dozens of these accounts rushed to Jensen’s defense.
These accounts have targeted people pushing for export controls that ensure advanced chips aren’t going to China. Chris McGuire, a former White House national security official, got more than 100 replies from the astroturf network attacking him and his position on chips. Lawmakers who criticized the chip sales were called “peabrains” and “pure evil,” and accused of spreading “anti-Trump propaganda.”
Throughout this yearlong pro-Nvidia campaign, the operators have been hiding their tracks. They quietly deleted nearly two-thirds of the pro-Nvidia posts that we found, something they seem to do for many of their campaigns.
These accounts have spent years running campaigns that appear to serve the interests of corporate and political clients — most recently supporting the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan’s civil war, a group the U.S. government has accused of genocide.
Many of them trace back to a supposedly defunct Israeli influence company, Koios. In 2025, Haaretz reported that Koios helped run a covert pro-Qatar campaign devised by aides to Benjamin Netanyahu. While Koios claims to have ceased operations in 2025, it looks to me that many of its associated people and accounts moved their work to a new company, IntellACT, that spun up just as the old one shuttered.
Nvidia told me it has no relationship with the Israeli team linked to these accounts, and that while it has recently become aware of the operation, it is also trying to find out who is behind it. So, who is funding a yearlong campaign to shape one of the most important policy fights in history? I’m not sure, but I think it deserves a formal investigation. And Congress has that power.
Read my full article:
https://t.co/ATwWhw5BVD
@jayphoward It's similar to (social) scientists describing an effect as significant when the effect size is actually small. It's just begging to be misunderstood.
NVIDIA lobbies hard in DC to be allowed to sell more AI chips to China.
Last year, when Fareed Zakaria asked Jensen Huang if it matters who wins the AI race between the US and China, he said: "I don't think it does."
And now we learn he's been sleeping with a Chinese spy.
So, the current position of the NVIDIA board is that there’s “no reason to believe that national security was compromised” by Jensen Huang having an affair with a Chinese spy.
wtf?
The Economist rightly recognises pornography as free expression and Britain’s new anti-porn laws as grotesque censorship.
But to Rob Jessel, co-author with Jo Bartosch of a dreadful anti-porn screed, this classic liberal stance amounts to going “guns blazing for rape”.
Now Russell Brand's been convicted of rape, we need to talk about Sylvie Berki. Because she can't speak for herself.
In 2014, Ms Berki said she'd been assaulted by Russell Brand.
But if she talks about it, even now, she risks jail.
@ShakeelHashim I haven’t look into this at all but this does seem quite likely to be acquiescence bias, where people just have a tendency to answer ‘yes’ in polls. Would be interested in the responses to similar questions on other issues.