Israel-funded 'Hanover Institute' feeds AI chatbots synthetic reports

An Israeli government contractor has stood up a fake think tank whose reports are written by AI and formatted, right down to the llms.txt file on its homepage, for ingestion by ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. Since August 6, the Hanover Institute for Public Policy has posted more than 100 'data reports' on Israel, Palestine and antisemitism. None carries a byline.

The Israeli Government Advertising Agency, known as LaPam, subcontracted the operation through HAVAS Media to Piro Inc., an American firm co-founded by Daniel Rosenberg, a producer on Spike Lee's 'Inside Man.' 404 Media reported that an April 2026 invoice put the contract at $900,000 for content development and distribution, followed by a June invoice of $100,000 for two months of work. Hanover is registered as a foreign agent under FARA.

The pitch to clients is unusually explicit about the target. On LinkedIn, Piro wrote that 'Every day, more buying journeys begin with an AI conversation instead of a Google search,' and its own site markets a service called 'AI Story Optimization' for content 'engineered for how LLMs evaluate credibility.' GPTZero flagged 11 of 12 randomly tested Hanover pieces as AI-written with high confidence, according to Responsible Statecraft; 404 Media said 'three Hanover Institute articles we tested were written entirely by AI. Only the bibliography at the end of each article was human written.'

Margaret DeReus, executive director of the Institute for Middle East Understanding, called it 'a disinformation and propaganda machine.' Rosenberg's stated defense is that his firm's job is to 'put accurate, sourced facts into the public record.'

A separate pro-Israel chatbot-influence contract, reported at $46.5 million, went to Brad Parscale. Two AI experts in our Who's Who directory shared the 404 Media piece the day it ran.