Israel spends $9 million on AI influence campaign led by former Trump aide Brad Parscale

Israel has launched a multimillion-dollar campaign led by a former senior advisor to President Donald Trump to reshape how artificial intelligence platforms portray the nation.

As platforms such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini play an increasingly central role in shaping global perceptions, countries, corporations, and powerful interest groups are committing significant resources to influence their outputs.

According to a report by Axios, Israel hired Brad Parscale, a Republican digital strategist who served as the manager of Trump’s 2020 election campaign, last September to lead a pro-Israel social media and digital initiative.

Market Brew, an online search and AI modeling company in which Parscale’s firm has invested, began working to “inject” Israel-friendly content into the “veins” of the digital environment. The objective is to present information in a format specifically optimized for ingestion by AI platforms. As part of this effort, digital strategists developed a simulated AI platform to test whether their content was being successfully scraped and indexed by various sites.

The extent to which these tactics have influenced AI outputs remains unclear. Scott Stouffer, founder and Chief Technology Officer of Market Brew, noted the technical limitations of such efforts. “There is a misconception that you can somehow directly influence or persuade AI systems,” Stouffer said. “That is not actually how these systems work.”

The AI-focused initiative comes at a time when Israel’s popularity in the US has seen a measurable decline. During this period, pro-Israel figures frequently warned that the country was losing the “social media war.” A recent Pew Research Center survey indicated that 60% of Americans hold a negative view of Israel, an increase from 53% a year ago.

Parscale’s team observed that AI platforms were relying heavily on information they characterized as anti-Israel, which they believed was fueling negative sentiment. In response, the team launched a project aimed at ensuring AI systems present Israel in a more favorable light.

The team created nine websites designed to align with the “reasoning” and data-processing patterns of platforms like ChatGPT. These sites were built to simulate the type of content most likely to be prioritized by AI algorithms. Among these assets are paxpoint.org, which emphasizes “Israel’s ongoing commitment to peace and coexistence,” and factsignal.org, which outlines “how the designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization reflects a global consensus.”

The strategists discovered that information most likely to be captured by AI platforms is typically characterized by a factual tone, rigorous organization, and grounding in established sources.

While Parscale’s team claims success in having their content incorporated into the responses of popular AI systems, they have declined to release supporting data. When Axios performed searches on ChatGPT regarding Israel and Hamas using phrases found on the team’s websites, none of the specific sites were cited in the responses.

Stouffer clarified the strategic intent of the project, stating, “What you can do is ensure your information is structured, sourced, and consistent, so that when someone asks a question, these systems are more likely to find that information. It’s less about changing the conversation and more about ensuring your facts are eligible to be part of the conversation.”

Israel has paid Parscale’s firm $9 million for these services and recently renewed the contract with the former Trump advisor. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has explicitly identified the execution of a robust social media campaign as a national priority.

Beyond the AI-focused efforts, Parscale’s team is also conducting broader pro-Israel initiatives, including SMS-based outreach and digital advertising campaigns.