WEBVTT - Is This a Psyop? 0:00:05.800 --> 0:00:08.119 Brian Reed here, and I'm in the studio with our 0:00:08.210 --> 0:00:12.209 newest producer, Tracy Hunt, who recently was pulled into a 0:00:12.330 --> 0:00:15.310 weird cranny of the Internet, which made her wonder if 0:00:15.330 --> 0:00:17.020 there might be something bigger going on. 0:00:17.260 --> 0:00:21.220 Yes. I admittedly spend way too much time on TikTok. 0:00:22.380 --> 0:00:27.000 And the TikTok algorithm knows I'm Black. And so I 0:00:27.020 --> 0:00:29.670 get like beauty and fashion stuff. But a lot of 0:00:29.710 --> 0:00:31.910 that is just like Black woman focused as well. 0:00:31.930 --> 0:00:33.870 And that's what you like. That's what you're going on 0:00:33.909 --> 0:00:34.409 TikTok for. 0:00:34.690 --> 0:00:37.470 Yeah, that's what I like. I want to listen to 0:00:37.510 --> 0:00:40.140 Black women talk about Love Island. But then I'll also 0:00:40.180 --> 0:00:43.720 get these videos where it's like, you know, a Black 0:00:43.760 --> 0:00:47.459 guy on some Manosphere podcast and he's talking about how 0:00:48.170 --> 0:00:50.620 No one wants to be with Black women and Black 0:00:50.659 --> 0:00:54.880 women don't deserve good relationships. And then I'll see a 0:00:54.920 --> 0:00:57.470 video where a Black woman is talking about how Black 0:00:57.510 --> 0:01:01.310 men are terrible and violent. And then, oh, the diaspora wars. 0:01:01.730 --> 0:01:06.140 And that's like Black Americans talking about how African and 0:01:06.180 --> 0:01:09.750 Caribbean people just like steal their culture from Black Americans 0:01:09.810 --> 0:01:12.270 and how awful they are. And then I'll see some 0:01:12.330 --> 0:01:15.410 Black person in the UK talking about how Black Americans 0:01:15.450 --> 0:01:21.270 have no culture. And it's just very, very divisive and awful. 0:01:21.290 --> 0:01:24.070 And it just feels like it was created in a 0:01:24.230 --> 0:01:25.310 lab to piss me off. 0:01:26.390 --> 0:01:27.810 Can you play me one of these videos just so 0:01:27.850 --> 0:01:30.110 I can kind of see or hear what you're getting? 0:01:30.950 --> 0:01:31.190 Sure. 0:01:31.220 --> 0:01:31.310 Sure. 0:01:32.090 --> 0:01:34.550 You people come over here and y'all are disrespectful. And 0:01:34.569 --> 0:01:36.509 we don't go to your homelands and disrespect your homelands. 0:01:37.310 --> 0:01:39.770 If 20 million Black Americans went to Nigeria and started 0:01:39.810 --> 0:01:43.149 disrespecting the Nigerians, started taking from the culture, started operating 0:01:43.170 --> 0:01:44.880 the culture, and they're acting like the culture was theirs, 0:01:45.020 --> 0:01:46.380 y'all wouldn't let none of that fly. 0:01:47.740 --> 0:01:50.100 I should also add that I don't really hear these 0:01:50.240 --> 0:01:53.960 debates in real life, but online it feels like they're everywhere. 0:01:54.620 --> 0:01:56.700 There's a reason why Black women in general do very 0:01:56.780 --> 0:01:58.330 poorly when it comes to the dating scene. And the 0:01:58.390 --> 0:02:02.610 reason why is because they have masculine attitudes coming from 0:02:02.670 --> 0:02:03.810 single mother households. 0:02:04.150 --> 0:02:06.590 So it makes me wonder if this is just all 0:02:06.630 --> 0:02:11.130 designed to tear Black people apart and undermine our solidarity. 0:02:11.150 --> 0:02:14.450 And I'm not the only one wondering this because I 0:02:14.510 --> 0:02:16.970 see a lot of comments saying things like, this is 0:02:17.010 --> 0:02:22.900 the CIA. This is a PSYOP. Wait, what? Yeah. So 0:02:23.220 --> 0:02:27.139 I will look at some screenshots that I took to 0:02:27.200 --> 0:02:30.980 give you an idea what I'm talking about. So under 0:02:31.040 --> 0:02:34.940 one of these videos, a woman says, I swear it's 0:02:34.980 --> 0:02:37.980 the CIA doing this. I'm glad some of us are 0:02:38.020 --> 0:02:41.580 smart enough to see it. Another quote, I'm convinced this 0:02:41.660 --> 0:02:46.000 narrative has been pushed as a psyop. And somebody responds, oh, 0:02:46.060 --> 0:02:49.639 it's definitely a psyop. Here's another one. thank you for 0:02:49.700 --> 0:02:53.560 posting this. There's so much misinformation being passed around online, 0:02:53.900 --> 0:02:54.860 like it's a psyop. 0:02:55.300 --> 0:02:57.340 And when people are saying psyop, just to put a 0:02:57.360 --> 0:03:00.060 fine point on it, they mean a psychological operation, like 0:03:00.080 --> 0:03:06.440 a government operation that plays on people's psychology. What are 0:03:06.460 --> 0:03:09.760 they actually proposing they think might be going on? 0:03:10.780 --> 0:03:12.810 I think what they think is going on is that 0:03:13.840 --> 0:03:17.470 There may be like, you know, government intelligence groups that 0:03:17.490 --> 0:03:21.710 are maybe paying people to say these things. Maybe they're 0:03:21.750 --> 0:03:24.410 all bots that are like, you know, coming out of 0:03:24.450 --> 0:03:28.410 some Russian troll farm. Or maybe there are like people 0:03:28.430 --> 0:03:32.600 being seated in the community to spread these ideas who 0:03:32.620 --> 0:03:36.000 might not even necessarily believe them. Like agents? 0:03:36.580 --> 0:03:36.960 Yeah. 0:03:37.660 --> 0:03:40.869 I think they're drawing on a real history of And 0:03:41.370 --> 0:03:45.530 we haven't even said the big word yet, COINSELPRO, or 0:03:45.670 --> 0:03:50.460 Counterintelligence Program. And that was a series of covert, illegal 0:03:50.540 --> 0:03:54.080 operations run by the FBI in the 50s to early 0:03:54.140 --> 0:03:58.780 70s that were trying to infiltrate leftist political groups, including 0:03:58.820 --> 0:04:02.160 the civil rights movement, and destroy them from the inside. 0:04:03.000 --> 0:04:05.260 So we're not pulling this PSYOP thing out of nowhere. 0:04:05.280 --> 0:04:07.920 I know, but one of the tricky things about PSYOPs 0:04:07.980 --> 0:04:11.060 is it's like, hard to know if it's a PSYOP 0:04:11.220 --> 0:04:13.120 when it's happening. And that's the thing that kind of 0:04:13.160 --> 0:04:15.760 like sends you into a dangerous spiral. 0:04:16.760 --> 0:04:20.299 Whether or not it is a PSYOP, it sure is effective. 0:04:21.060 --> 0:04:23.840 It's just very, very convenient that there would be a 0:04:24.040 --> 0:04:27.000 lot of Black people yelling at each other on social media. 0:04:28.160 --> 0:04:30.100 So I can't tell you whether the stuff in my 0:04:30.180 --> 0:04:33.140 feed is a PSYOP. Honestly, a lot of it is 0:04:33.200 --> 0:04:36.420 probably just, you know, people fighting on the internet like 0:04:36.580 --> 0:04:39.330 real people do. But it made me want to know 0:04:39.510 --> 0:04:43.390 about the things we can prove are psyops, where organizations 0:04:43.450 --> 0:04:47.890 or people deliberately tried to manipulate Black people. I wanted 0:04:47.930 --> 0:04:49.810 to know how they did it and why. 0:04:50.940 --> 0:04:53.080 Got it. And that's the story you have for us today, right? 0:04:53.740 --> 0:04:58.279 That's the story. From KCRW and Placement Theory, this is 0:04:58.339 --> 0:05:01.390 Question Everything. I'm Brian Reed. We investigate how the truth 0:05:01.450 --> 0:05:04.250 gets buried, distorted, denied, and the ways people are fighting 0:05:04.270 --> 0:05:06.729 to make it matter again. And what Tracy found when 0:05:06.810 --> 0:05:09.330 she dug into this is that the disinformers who are 0:05:09.589 --> 0:05:12.310 targeting Black people in America, they don't make things up 0:05:12.390 --> 0:05:14.610 out of thin air. They have a tried and true 0:05:14.670 --> 0:05:18.470 strategy where they find something that already hurts with real 0:05:18.510 --> 0:05:20.560 history behind it and press on it. 0:05:20.560 --> 0:05:24.919 Mailman voting sounds great. But did you know that if 0:05:24.940 --> 0:05:27.980 you vote by mail, your personal information will be part 0:05:28.060 --> 0:05:30.719 of a public database that will be used by police 0:05:30.779 --> 0:05:32.719 departments to track down old warrants? 0:05:33.220 --> 0:05:38.099 Those are pain points in the Black community where we've 0:05:38.160 --> 0:05:39.919 already seen abuse from our government. 0:05:40.460 --> 0:05:44.140 Today, how psyops on social media target Black Americans and 0:05:44.180 --> 0:05:45.920 their vote. Stick around. 0:05:55.320 --> 0:05:59.729 So I was on TikTok looking for examples of online disinformation, 0:05:59.750 --> 0:06:02.770 and then I came across a video from a professor. 0:06:03.410 --> 0:06:07.080 She was talking about how harmful messages to and about 0:06:07.160 --> 0:06:08.960 Black people spread online. 0:06:09.480 --> 0:06:12.779 One of the biggest threats to Black life with AI 0:06:13.260 --> 0:06:16.700 is the fact that it is becoming more and more undetectable, 0:06:17.060 --> 0:06:20.790 which leads us into a space where misinformation, disinformation, and 0:06:20.850 --> 0:06:23.170 malinformation are able to proliferate. 0:06:23.670 --> 0:06:27.650 Her name is Dr. Christine McWhorter. She teaches broadcast reporting 0:06:27.710 --> 0:06:31.250 and media history at Howard University. And while she is 0:06:31.290 --> 0:06:35.200 an academic and a journalist, Professor McWhorter is also a 0:06:35.240 --> 0:06:39.120 person who experiences the internet day in and day out 0:06:39.400 --> 0:06:42.039 like the rest of us. And I like that she 0:06:42.060 --> 0:06:46.060 was on social media talking directly to Black people about 0:06:46.320 --> 0:06:48.670 all the BS that's always coming at us. 0:06:49.430 --> 0:06:50.270 So I called her up. 0:06:51.510 --> 0:06:54.610 So I got in touch with you because I saw 0:06:54.930 --> 0:06:58.330 a clip of you, I think on TikTok, talking about 0:06:58.650 --> 0:07:03.740 disinformation campaigns and how they're targeted towards Black people. And 0:07:03.820 --> 0:07:07.460 so I was wondering, what kind of research are you 0:07:07.880 --> 0:07:11.860 currently studying about this? My research centers around something called 0:07:11.920 --> 0:07:13.320 critical race media literacy. 0:07:13.480 --> 0:07:15.640 And yes, absolutely, I know that's a mouthful. 0:07:16.220 --> 0:07:19.770 But critical race media literacy talks about how media does 0:07:19.970 --> 0:07:24.570 racial harm, how we can get people to understand and 0:07:24.590 --> 0:07:27.530 evaluate that harm, and how we can challenge that harm. 0:07:28.250 --> 0:07:31.410 She walked me through three campaigns where media was used 0:07:31.450 --> 0:07:34.950 to target Black voters— Each one turned out to be fake. 0:07:35.630 --> 0:07:40.930 The first started around the 2016 presidential election. Piggybacking off 0:07:40.970 --> 0:07:44.270 the growing popularity of the Black Lives Matter movement, two 0:07:44.310 --> 0:07:48.730 groups popped up on Facebook and Twitter, Black Matters U.S. 0:07:49.230 --> 0:07:54.450 and Blacktivist. They posted very, like, extremely pro-Black. 0:07:54.010 --> 0:07:54.970 Messages, right? 0:07:55.270 --> 0:07:58.870 Things about police brutality, things about Black maternal health, things 0:07:58.930 --> 0:08:02.890 about the Black community and education. And so they were 0:08:02.950 --> 0:08:07.470 gaining followers. They were gaining community. Black Matters U.S. would 0:08:07.510 --> 0:08:11.920 grow to have about 200,000 followers on Facebook. The fake 0:08:11.960 --> 0:08:14.280 Blacktivist group had more than 360,000 likes, and they were 0:08:14.300 --> 0:08:21.989 capital I involved. And they did this for almost two years. 0:08:22.350 --> 0:08:25.330 It got to the point where they were helping organizations 0:08:25.610 --> 0:08:31.750 plan protests. There was a, right, like real in-person protests. 0:08:32.070 --> 0:08:35.890 With Black Matters U.S., there was even money involved. Someone 0:08:35.929 --> 0:08:38.819 from an actual Black activist group met with a woman 0:08:39.580 --> 0:08:42.599 who gave him a debit card to help pay for 0:08:42.630 --> 0:08:46.100 a protest. Like, that's how real it was. But while 0:08:46.140 --> 0:08:49.690 these groups were highlighting real issues for Black people, and 0:08:49.770 --> 0:08:54.579 even organizing and supporting protests, their solutions to these issues 0:08:54.840 --> 0:08:57.839 started to look a little suspicious the closer we got 0:08:57.860 --> 0:09:02.120 to Election Day. Not that long before the election, the 0:09:02.240 --> 0:09:06.760 online messaging changed to voter suppression messages. So then they 0:09:06.800 --> 0:09:10.230 would say things like, well, we shouldn't vote. There's no 0:09:10.350 --> 0:09:13.630 point in it. The system isn't for us. There are 0:09:13.670 --> 0:09:17.070 no good options. They're using narratives like this so that— 0:09:18.150 --> 0:09:22.630 it would suppress the Black vote. The election came and went. 0:09:23.370 --> 0:09:27.520 Donald Trump was elected president over Hillary Clinton. Whether the 0:09:27.559 --> 0:09:30.660 campaign convinced Black people to vote or not, we still 0:09:30.700 --> 0:09:34.340 don't know. But it was too little, too late. It 0:09:34.360 --> 0:09:37.650 wasn't until the fall of 2017, almost a year later, 0:09:37.670 --> 0:09:39.110 that the truth came out. 0:09:40.110 --> 0:09:42.790 A Twitter and Facebook account, both disguised to look like 0:09:42.809 --> 0:09:45.330 they were run by the same Black activists, were actually 0:09:45.350 --> 0:09:46.270 the work of Russians. 0:09:47.750 --> 0:09:53.059 This campaign used both Facebook and Twitter to basically advance 0:09:54.140 --> 0:09:57.690 a message that would exploit the racial tensions that exist 0:09:57.809 --> 0:10:00.910 in this country effectively as part of the larger Russian 0:10:00.929 --> 0:10:06.650 goal of undermining American democracy, sowing political discord, contributing to 0:10:06.700 --> 0:10:10.380 an atmosphere of partisanship and incivility. 0:10:12.360 --> 0:10:16.480 The social media sites shut down these accounts in 2017. 0:10:16.480 --> 0:10:20.240 And later, the Senate Intelligence Committee confirmed the pages were 0:10:20.250 --> 0:10:24.960 run by Russia's Internet Research Agency, a troll farm, in 0:10:25.000 --> 0:10:28.680 a campaign that targeted Black Americans more than any other group. 0:10:30.320 --> 0:10:35.500 So to your point about psyops, yes, covert operations exist, 0:10:35.600 --> 0:10:39.340 and they're very sophisticated and they're very detailed. The second 0:10:39.380 --> 0:10:43.160 campaign didn't need fake activists. It hid behind a real 0:10:43.220 --> 0:10:48.370 nonprofit and pretended to be something it wasn't. There was 0:10:48.470 --> 0:10:54.080 a nonprofit called Building America's Future. And Building America's Future 0:10:54.559 --> 0:10:58.460 is important because it was funded through something called dark money. 0:10:59.300 --> 0:11:04.579 Dark money is money that goes through organizations like nested organizations. 0:11:04.620 --> 0:11:07.520 So there'll be one organization that feeds money to another 0:11:07.580 --> 0:11:10.400 organization that feeds money to another organization, and it makes 0:11:10.679 --> 0:11:13.849 that money untraceable. And the reason for that is there 0:11:13.910 --> 0:11:16.290 are certain types of nonprofits that do not have to 0:11:16.330 --> 0:11:20.100 disclose who their donors are. So one, for example, is 0:11:20.300 --> 0:11:24.540 a 501c4. Most people have heard of a 501c3. That's 0:11:24.559 --> 0:11:29.329 a regular nonprofit like the Red Cross or NPR. 501c3s 0:11:29.400 --> 0:11:32.870 aren't allowed to dabble in politics. A 501c4 is an 0:11:32.970 --> 0:11:36.770 organization that can receive large donations and they don't have 0:11:36.809 --> 0:11:40.390 to say who gave them that money. So what someone 0:11:40.429 --> 0:11:43.630 will do, a very rich person will do, is give 0:11:43.670 --> 0:11:46.980 the money to the 501c4 organization. So they more or 0:11:47.020 --> 0:11:50.140 less serve as a go-between for rich donors who want 0:11:50.179 --> 0:11:54.160 to remain anonymous and super PACs who have political agendas. 0:11:55.120 --> 0:11:58.920 Here's how it works. A secret donor gives money to 0:11:58.960 --> 0:12:03.040 Building America's Future. Then Building America's Future sends that money 0:12:03.160 --> 0:12:06.180 to a super PAC who can use that money any 0:12:06.260 --> 0:12:09.800 way it likes in political campaigns with no links to 0:12:09.820 --> 0:12:13.540 the original person who donated the money. That's why it's 0:12:13.600 --> 0:12:17.880 called dark money. I should point out that both parties 0:12:18.040 --> 0:12:21.980 use dark money. But what made Building America's Future different 0:12:22.440 --> 0:12:25.900 is it pretended to be something it wasn't. It had 0:12:25.950 --> 0:12:29.630 these many organizations underneath, and each one of those organizations 0:12:29.970 --> 0:12:34.550 targeted a different community to give information to. And much 0:12:34.590 --> 0:12:39.970 of that information was disinformation. Disinformation aimed at keeping Kamala 0:12:39.990 --> 0:12:44.410 Harris out of the White House. Building America's Future funded 0:12:44.470 --> 0:12:47.469 a super PAC that ran ads telling Muslim voters in 0:12:47.510 --> 0:12:52.229 Michigan that Harris was pro-Israel, while Jewish voters in Pennsylvania 0:12:52.570 --> 0:12:56.449 got ads depicting Harris as an enemy to Israel. Building 0:12:56.490 --> 0:13:03.230 America's Future also created a fake pro-Harris group called Progress 2028. 0:13:03.230 --> 0:13:07.650 According to the Washington Post, Progress 2028 made ads praising 0:13:07.710 --> 0:13:12.010 Harris for policies she didn't support, like mandatory gun buybacks, 0:13:12.440 --> 0:13:16.660 and universal health care for undocumented immigrants. And for Black 0:13:16.700 --> 0:13:20.579 voters in several swing states, there were ads about cigarettes, 0:13:21.380 --> 0:13:25.760 menthol cigarettes specifically. And like a lot of these PSYOP campaigns, 0:13:26.140 --> 0:13:31.450 they were blending the truth with fiction. In 2022, the 0:13:31.470 --> 0:13:36.250 Biden administration had proposed banning menthol cigarettes, then dropped the 0:13:36.290 --> 0:13:40.579 ban two years later, citing feedback from several groups. Building 0:13:40.600 --> 0:13:43.990 America's Future picked up on that issue and distorted it. 0:13:44.340 --> 0:13:47.120 Yeah, you heard that right. Instead of solving the problems 0:13:47.160 --> 0:13:50.440 that matter to you, Kamala Harris and D.C. Democrats are 0:13:50.480 --> 0:13:52.440 coming after your menthol cigarettes. 0:13:53.540 --> 0:13:57.540 Most Black people who smoke do smoke menthol cigarettes. And 0:13:57.580 --> 0:14:00.699 Professor McWhorter says that's why they focused on them in 0:14:00.720 --> 0:14:04.040 the first place. And they had done that based on 0:14:04.580 --> 0:14:07.750 research that they had that there was a large group 0:14:07.760 --> 0:14:11.390 of Black people that preferred menthol cigarettes. It turned out 0:14:11.429 --> 0:14:15.510 that two Republican consultants actually created Building America's Future during 0:14:15.550 --> 0:14:18.770 the first Trump administration. In the lead up to the 0:14:18.770 --> 0:14:22.980 2024 election, they got a Republican pollster to ramp up 0:14:23.030 --> 0:14:26.700 all these anti-Harris attack ads to the tune of around 0:14:26.700 --> 0:14:32.400 $ 35 million. Reminder, the funders are supposed to remain anonymous, 0:14:32.880 --> 0:14:35.140 which is probably why the sources who came forward to 0:14:35.200 --> 0:14:39.450 expose the truth behind Building America's Future were also anonymous. 0:14:40.850 --> 0:14:45.470 Not one, not two, not three, but four separate anonymous 0:14:45.510 --> 0:14:50.700 sources verified Elon Musk is funding building America's future. It 0:14:50.740 --> 0:14:53.680 was Reuters that reported this, and we would never have 0:14:53.740 --> 0:15:04.200 known if it weren't for good journalism. There is this 0:15:04.380 --> 0:15:07.760 one term that kept coming up in my conversation with Dr. 0:15:07.830 --> 0:15:12.130 Christine McWhorter. Those are pain points in the Black community. 0:15:12.230 --> 0:15:14.730 Pain points in the Black community. And that's a pain point. 0:15:15.050 --> 0:15:20.770 A legitimate, actual pain point. McWhorter says online disinformation campaigns 0:15:20.810 --> 0:15:24.990 that target Black people try to locate and exploit very 0:15:25.070 --> 0:15:29.880 specific fears in the Black community. When people identify with 0:15:29.920 --> 0:15:33.320 those pain points in the narrative... it makes it easy 0:15:33.600 --> 0:15:35.420 for the narrative to take you to a false place. 0:15:36.160 --> 0:15:40.900 Can I give one more example? Yeah, absolutely. In 2020, 0:15:40.900 --> 0:15:45.670 there was a disinformation campaign that involved robocalls, and the 0:15:45.730 --> 0:15:52.190 robocalls were targeted to Black voters. The calls were coming 0:15:52.230 --> 0:15:56.250 from someone calling themselves Tamika Taylor from Project 1599, and 0:15:56.870 --> 0:16:00.810 they targeted Black voters in swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, 0:16:00.910 --> 0:16:06.490 and Michigan. And it said, if you use mail-in ballots, 0:16:06.990 --> 0:16:09.470 they will have your data and they will use your 0:16:09.510 --> 0:16:10.870 data for these three things. 0:16:11.250 --> 0:16:14.640 Mail-in voting sounds great. But did you know that if 0:16:14.680 --> 0:16:17.680 you vote by mail, your personal information will be part 0:16:17.760 --> 0:16:20.440 of a public database that will be used by police 0:16:20.460 --> 0:16:23.680 departments to track down old ones? Can we use our 0:16:23.730 --> 0:16:27.800 credit card companies to collect outstanding debt? The CDC is 0:16:27.960 --> 0:16:30.620 even pushing to use records for mail-in voting to track 0:16:30.660 --> 0:16:32.320 people for mandatory vaccines. 0:16:32.380 --> 0:16:34.900 And they will use your data to look at your 0:16:35.000 --> 0:16:38.400 medical records and force you to get vaccinated. And we 0:16:38.420 --> 0:16:41.040 know in 2020, that was a huge thing. And then 0:16:41.060 --> 0:16:45.640 her final message to would-be mail-in voters, correction, mail-in Black voters. 0:16:46.120 --> 0:16:49.020 Don't be finesse into giving those types of information to 0:16:49.040 --> 0:16:52.550 the main. Stay safe and be aware of those type 0:16:52.570 --> 0:16:52.830 of emails. 0:16:55.470 --> 0:16:57.670 The reason why I bring this up is because those 0:16:58.210 --> 0:17:02.520 are pain points in the Black community where we've already 0:17:02.580 --> 0:17:06.700 seen abuse from our government. We already have abuse from imprisonment. 0:17:07.100 --> 0:17:09.440 And that's a pain point because of the way that 0:17:09.500 --> 0:17:15.010 the government has misused and abused us in regards to arrest, imprisonment, 0:17:15.109 --> 0:17:19.930 the whole complex. Obviously, there's been economic abuse historically. And 0:17:19.990 --> 0:17:24.040 then also medical trust issues. A lot of black and 0:17:24.060 --> 0:17:27.399 brown people did not want to get vaccinated because of Tuskegee, 0:17:27.820 --> 0:17:30.699 because of Henrietta Lacks, because a lot of our community 0:17:30.770 --> 0:17:33.630 doesn't trust the government because they have, in fact, lied 0:17:33.690 --> 0:17:35.930 about medical issues and we don't want to be involved. 0:17:36.730 --> 0:17:39.190 But if it feels like an extra hurt, if it 0:17:39.230 --> 0:17:43.570 feels like a fear and specifically a black fear of 0:17:44.410 --> 0:17:48.900 a fear where we've been harmed before by our own government, 0:17:49.500 --> 0:17:53.150 that's a sign and that's a trigger. The robocall was 0:17:53.210 --> 0:17:56.730 especially nefarious because, according to a lawsuit, they hired a 0:17:56.830 --> 0:18:00.290 Black actress to voice the commercial. And I couldn't help 0:18:00.330 --> 0:18:04.449 but notice that Project 1599 sounds a lot like the 0:18:04.530 --> 0:18:10.210 Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project. They also, in my opinion, clumsily 0:18:10.430 --> 0:18:14.840 used Black slang like finesse and the man. And of course, 0:18:15.859 --> 0:18:19.000 her name was Tamika. Who is Blacker than Tameka Taylor? 0:18:19.020 --> 0:18:21.320 You know, yeah. 0:18:21.640 --> 0:18:26.070 Yeah, that's a Black woman. It was relatively easy to 0:18:26.130 --> 0:18:29.550 figure out who was behind this scheme. It's right there 0:18:29.710 --> 0:18:30.710 at the start of the call. 0:18:31.270 --> 0:18:35.870 Hi, this is Tameka Taylor from Project 1599, a civil 0:18:35.910 --> 0:18:39.429 rights organization founded by Jack Berkman and Jacob Wool. 0:18:40.300 --> 0:18:44.520 Jacob Wool and Jack Berkman, two white Republican operatives from Virginia. 0:18:45.109 --> 0:18:49.689 They faced charges for voter intimidation and telecommunication fraud in 0:18:49.830 --> 0:18:53.449 several states, and a civil rights group sued them in 0:18:53.490 --> 0:18:57.510 federal court for civil rights violations, including the Ku Klux 0:18:57.570 --> 0:19:01.980 Klan Act. The FCC fined them $ 5 million for the 0:19:02.040 --> 0:19:05.260 robocall campaign, and they agreed to pay the New York 0:19:05.320 --> 0:19:08.640 attorney general's office more than a million dollars in a settlement. 0:19:09.440 --> 0:19:12.600 In Michigan, they were sentenced to one year of probation. 0:19:13.680 --> 0:19:16.060 They were back in the news this fall after 60 0:19:16.060 --> 0:19:20.420 Minutes investigated them for their latest side hustle. They allegedly 0:19:20.540 --> 0:19:23.980 told people they could broker pardons with the Trump administration 0:19:24.460 --> 0:19:28.400 in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars. So that's 0:19:28.500 --> 0:19:34.399 three elections, 2016, 2020, 2024, and three operations aimed at 0:19:34.440 --> 0:19:37.770 Black voters that we know about from Russia and far-right groups. 0:19:38.380 --> 0:19:41.330 And we only found out about them because of investigative journalism. 0:19:41.800 --> 0:19:46.850 anonymous sources and lawsuits, usually long after the elections already happened. 0:19:48.630 --> 0:19:52.700 We just had the midterms. Black voters turned out against Republicans. 0:19:53.400 --> 0:19:55.920 But was anyone running a PSYOP against them this year? 0:19:56.720 --> 0:19:59.920 We may not know for a while. But Professor McWhorter 0:19:59.980 --> 0:20:02.380 says there's a new tool out there that could make 0:20:02.420 --> 0:20:07.030 the next PSYOP even harder to catch. AI and digital blackface. 0:20:09.750 --> 0:20:10.330 After the break. 0:20:14.100 --> 0:20:17.320 Lately, Professor McWhorter has been using her TikTok to talk 0:20:17.359 --> 0:20:22.300 about how AI fits into the disinformation landscape. Sometimes Black 0:20:22.320 --> 0:20:25.780 people are so fake. And I mean that literally because 0:20:25.840 --> 0:20:32.070 sometimes Black people are AI-generated. She's talking about digital Blackface, which, 0:20:32.380 --> 0:20:35.949 with AI, has become even easier to pull off. Digital 0:20:35.970 --> 0:20:39.840 Blackface is when someone who isn't Black performs Black identity 0:20:39.980 --> 0:20:43.600 or pretends to be Black online. But instead of pretending 0:20:43.660 --> 0:20:47.010 to be Black, disinformers can now just create fake Black 0:20:47.050 --> 0:20:50.270 people to do and say the things to fit their narrative. 0:20:50.810 --> 0:20:55.369 Here's an example. There was a radio host in Florida. 0:20:55.450 --> 0:20:58.930 His name is Mark Kay, and he has something like 0:20:59.170 --> 0:21:03.699 a million followers. He made a picture of President Trump, 0:21:03.820 --> 0:21:08.020 and he's surrounded by Black women online. And they're, you know, smiling, 0:21:08.060 --> 0:21:11.639 getting along in the picture. And it's manufacturing this sense 0:21:12.020 --> 0:21:16.060 of the Black community loves me. Like, I'm, you know, 0:21:16.180 --> 0:21:18.000 all of this stuff. Y'all are saying I'm racist, but 0:21:18.020 --> 0:21:18.740 clearly I'm not. 0:21:18.780 --> 0:21:19.200 Look at these. 0:21:19.260 --> 0:21:23.080 And not just Black people, but Black women, right? Black women, especially, yeah. 0:21:23.500 --> 0:21:26.460 You know, and people look at that and use it 0:21:26.550 --> 0:21:30.110 as evidence of something that the Black community did not 0:21:30.150 --> 0:21:35.600 necessarily say. But all those women, they're A.I., McWhorter says 0:21:35.680 --> 0:21:39.160 she's worried that these kind of stunts with AI-generated Black 0:21:39.200 --> 0:21:43.459 people are increasingly harder to detect. And we're not saying, 0:21:43.880 --> 0:21:46.300 you know, that there are no Black people that love 0:21:46.320 --> 0:21:46.860 President Trump. 0:21:46.960 --> 0:21:47.800 Of course, there are some. 0:21:48.040 --> 0:21:51.160 But my point is, you can manufacture a consensus where 0:21:51.200 --> 0:21:56.500 there is none. And so AI is making everything trickier. 0:21:56.940 --> 0:21:58.700 We used to be able to say, oh, this person 0:21:58.740 --> 0:22:02.180 has like six fingers. So obviously, like, that's not a person. 0:22:02.850 --> 0:22:05.470 AI is too good now. Yeah, they got really good 0:22:05.510 --> 0:22:07.669 at hands and it was over for us. 0:22:09.740 --> 0:22:10.440 Yeah, it's over. 0:22:10.520 --> 0:22:11.200 It's over. 0:22:11.220 --> 0:22:12.200 We can't. We don't know. 0:22:12.220 --> 0:22:12.880 We can't tell. 0:22:13.020 --> 0:22:13.300 Yeah. 0:22:14.040 --> 0:22:18.119 So I'm wondering, like, how do you counteract that? How 0:22:18.180 --> 0:22:19.880 do you get the truth out there? 0:22:19.900 --> 0:22:22.330 I have some solutions for this. 0:22:22.609 --> 0:22:23.129 OK, yeah, yeah. 0:22:23.330 --> 0:22:27.450 One of the biggest things that I am an advocate 0:22:27.750 --> 0:22:33.189 of is that people should be making counter narratives. It's 0:22:33.230 --> 0:22:35.430 important to say that a counter-narrative can only be told 0:22:35.630 --> 0:22:39.230 from a member of the racially marginalized community. So if 0:22:39.280 --> 0:22:41.170 I'm going to tell a counter-narrative about Black people, I 0:22:41.900 --> 0:22:45.820 pretty much better be Black, right? The 1619 Project, Nicole Hannah-Jones, 0:22:46.060 --> 0:22:49.880 was one of my favorite counter-narratives. Our Black historians tell 0:22:49.900 --> 0:22:52.320 the truth about what history is censored about, and that 0:22:52.359 --> 0:22:55.939 did great work. Nick Warder told me, if you're Black 0:22:56.060 --> 0:22:58.420 and you have something positive to say about our community, 0:22:59.020 --> 0:23:02.109 hop on social media and say it. We need all 0:23:02.130 --> 0:23:05.820 the counter-narratives we can get. There are people who do, 0:23:05.960 --> 0:23:09.590 they have the absolute gift of gab. hilarious and fun. 0:23:09.869 --> 0:23:14.250 Like Khalil Green, who does history about Black people and 0:23:14.290 --> 0:23:17.609 he counters falsehoods. And he's really great, right? 0:23:18.070 --> 0:23:21.210 So did y'all know that Tupac Shakur was named after 0:23:21.270 --> 0:23:25.130 one of history's greatest indigenous resistance leaders? The name Tupac 0:23:25.150 --> 0:23:28.149 comes from a Quechua language spoken by the Incan people 0:23:28.300 --> 0:23:30.120 of this region in South America. 0:23:30.140 --> 0:23:33.400 I think one of the things we have to make 0:23:33.480 --> 0:23:37.320 sure that we do is put out things that are engaging, 0:23:37.340 --> 0:23:40.500 that they're entertaining, that people really want to hear and 0:23:40.520 --> 0:23:44.159 listen to, that they would listen to anyway, if it 0:23:44.220 --> 0:23:48.210 wasn't even necessarily, you know, me teaching you about disinformation, 0:23:48.550 --> 0:23:53.050 wagging my finger at you about, you know, fact-checking. Now, 0:23:53.250 --> 0:23:56.270 is it, you know, is the algorithm going to pick 0:23:56.310 --> 0:23:59.119 it up as quickly as they pick up a fight 0:23:59.240 --> 0:24:02.780 in the street? Maybe not. But I think it goes 0:24:02.840 --> 0:24:05.540 a long way in making sure that people hear what 0:24:05.560 --> 0:24:09.020 we actually have to say. I asked Professor McWhorter what 0:24:09.100 --> 0:24:13.060 disinformation she's paying attention to right now. And she said, 0:24:13.440 --> 0:24:17.220 after the blue wave midterms, to look out for disinformation 0:24:17.570 --> 0:24:22.070 blaming Democrats for programs that the Republicans have cut. The 0:24:22.230 --> 0:24:27.149 biggest one, in my opinion, this is just my two cents, 0:24:28.090 --> 0:24:35.510 narratives about... What will happen economically are extremely important because 0:24:35.590 --> 0:24:39.510 there are several things that were triggered in the big, 0:24:39.550 --> 0:24:45.020 beautiful bill that will not take place until after the midterms. 0:24:45.660 --> 0:24:49.420