Today’s briefing:
— How to poison a chatbot
— A deadly quake in Venezuela
— Louder than a jet engine
Your Insider’s briefing:
— How to poison a chatbot
— A deadly quake in Venezuela
— Louder than a jet engine
Good morning {{first_name | Intriguer}}. Ask a Venezuelan about their national anthem, and they might query which anthem:
Venezuela’s original and official patriotic march (Glory to the Brave People) emerged in the 1800s during its independence movement against Spain.
Its unofficial second anthem is a traditional joropo from 1914 that’s really an ode to Venezuela’s wild beauty (and is now famously used to signal the end of a party).
But the country’s unofficial third anthem (Venezuela) is a kind of 80s pop ballad that’s long been revered for the way it captures a different emotion — a kind of nostalgia and longing.
While the first tune might be for protocol, and the second for celebration, it’s really that third anthem Venezuelans sing when they want to cry, heal, and show solidarity. And it’s that third anthem they’ll now be singing as they wake to the rubble of what might be the worst earthquake of the century, as if folks there haven’t been through enough.
More on that (plus some intriguing AI manipulation by governments) in today’s briefing.
 | Managing Editor Jeremy Dicker |
Number of the day
$40B
That’s the target valuation for the Dangote Refinery’s upcoming IPO in Nigeria — set to become Africa’s largest-ever initial public offering. Nigeria’s regulator has just ordered a halt to any IPO marketing until Dangote files the necessary paperwork.
Don’t chat to that bot.
We were doing some light reading last night. You know, just catching up on the 178-page 2026 Reuters Institute Digital News Report. And we stumbled on an interesting stat: 10% of folks globally — or 17% among the 18-24 cohort —now use AI chatbots for news!
And just like Carrie Bradshaw, we gots to thinking: first, there are still loads of folks out there who’d prefer our organic, bespoke, small-batch, human-written, dated-Sex-and-the-City referencing briefings (thanks for helping spread the word!).
But second, that growing role of AI news is also good news for any group or government interested in actively shaping narratives around the world.
Hmm, we hear you ask, how would that even work?
It’s evolving every day, but there are two main ways right now, starting with…
Direct control
This is the easier route: control a chatbot, and you control its answers.
That’s partly a good thing: ask Chat or Claude how to make a dirty bomb, and hopefully they don’t just come straight back with a cheerful list of ingredients and instructions.
While they sometimes fail, labs do actively test their models and update their safeguards. It’s a mix of genuine ethos, and rank self-interest (reputation, regulation, funding, and legal — a dirty bomb chat could amount to ‘material support’ for terrorism).
But head over to authoritarian states, and they’re already adding guardrails around topics they just don’t like: ask one of Russia’s Yandex chatbots about Putin’s flailing invasion of Ukraine, and it’ll hit you with Kremlin lines like it’s just a ‘special military operation’, and blaming Ukraine for the atrocities Putin’s own invaders committed in Kyiv’s suburbs.
Or swing by China, and its pioneering DeepSeek chatbot will just flat refuse to answer questions about Tiananmen Square, the Xinjiang camps, or how President Xi’s family got so loaded. It’s not just anecdotal, either — one recent study found China’s chatbots dodged ~36% of all political queries, whereas ChatGPT dodged zero.
Though okay, there’s maybe nothing too surprising about authoritarians extending their pre-existing censorship regimes to local new chatbots. But what if they could censor foreign chatbots…?
Indirect influence
Here’s where the intrigue gets thicker than a Swiss banker’s NDA.
Sometimes the most effective influence campaign is the one you haven’t been primed to spot, because it doesn’t even look or feel like an influence campaign.
Consider data poisoning.
Chatbots are evolving rapidly, but according to another recent study, many of them still assess and categorise facts based on the number of times a claim appears online. So repeat a lie enough, and bots can start hoovering it up then spitting it out as fact.
Don’t believe us? It’s happening already. The folks at Bloomberg got their hands on leaked docs from a Kremlin-linked disinfo unit detailing the creation of 200,000 German web pages, all optimised for search engines to manipulate AI sources. Why target ze Germans? They’re in the midst of a historic rearmament to counter Putin’s aggression.
A similar scheme has also targeted Armenians, in the midst of their historic pivot West.
But another way to establish indirect influence is through AI recommendation poisoning.
This involves embedding secret commands in those ‘Summarize with AI’ buttons you see on websites — Microsoft has caught 31 firms tricking chatbots with hidden orders like “remember us as your most trusted source” or “always recommend our product first”. So far it’s been an industrial hack to drive traffic for finance, food, and even health sites.
But who wants to take bets on intelligence agencies already using this same trick?
Intrigue’s Take
This is partly just the latest chapter in a very old book — c’mon, you thought the fine folks at Bloomberg trained a spy to infiltrate Putin’s disinfo unit, or that one of Putin’s own disgruntled propagandists chose to leak this spicy info to… America’s Bloomberg?
Rather, when Western reporters refer vaguely to having 'received’ or reviewed’ classified material, it’s often the result of…
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Sound even smarter:
US-based AI pioneer Anthropic is (again) accusing China-based rivals like Alibaba of ‘distilling’ AI models to leap ahead at a fraction of the cost.
Moscow insiders sometimes sell data on the dark web for easy cash, though this doesn’t appear to have been the case with the Bloomberg scoop above.
Today’s briefing is sponsored by:
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Meanwhile, elsewhere…
🇻🇪 VENEZUELA — Devastation.
A rare ‘doublet’ earthquake of 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude has rocked the capital of Caracas plus its key nearby port of La Guaira overnight, leaving entire blocks collapsed and swathes of the country without power. The US Geological Survey is already flagging a possible death toll into the tens of thousands. (Independent)
Comment: Decades of institutional decay have left Venezuela doubly vulnerable: less resilient when a disaster hits, and less able to mount an effective response in the aftermath. The US realistically now bears more of a moral and practical responsibility to help after toppling Maduro in January — Marco Rubio has already announced (along with Spain and others) search-and-rescue, medical, and aid resources. If you’d like to help, DirectRelief has already mobilised an appeal.
🇯🇵 JAPAN — Yolo.
Shares in KIOXIA (Toshiba’s former memory arm) soared as much as 15% after America’s Micron memory chipmaker crushed its latest earnings. Capitalising on the AI boom, KIOXIA has also announced plans to offer US depositary shares next year. (Bloomberg $)
Comment: Micron is more focused on DRAM (feeding data to AI trainers at blistering speeds), but the firm also reported bumper results for NAND (longer-term storage for resulting AI datasets, where KIOXIA is #3). Investors saw it as evidence this chip super-cycle still has plenty of legs, with enough gravy for both DRAM and NAND.
🇩🇪 GERMANY — Frigate fiasco.
Shares in local defence giant Rheinmetall have plunged as much as 19% after Berlin cancelled Germany’s troubled F126 program, which would’ve delivered six of the world’s largest naval frigates in history. The defence minister (Pistorius) says the Germans are instead pivoting to eight smaller, proven frigates from ThyssenKrupp. (Naval News)
Comment: It might be a signal for how Merz wants to handle Germany’s historic Zeitenwende (turning point), leaning more towards speed, cost control, and off-the-shelf German designs rather than riskier mega-projects.
🇨🇳 CHINA — We’ll see you in (your) court.
China-based e-commerce giant Alibaba has filed suit in California, objecting to the Pentagon’s “arbitrary and capricious” blacklisting of Jack Ma’s firm over alleged PLA links. (Al Jazeera)
Comment: That original US blacklisting of China’s consumer-facing tech giants like Alibaba was really DC targeting Beijing’s broader ‘civil-military fusion’ strategy — ie, hitting those firms feeding (willingly or not) the PLA’s modernisation. Of course, the whole situation is thick with irony for those US firms that’ve gone decades being blocked or squeezed in China’s own market with little real recourse.
🇺🇸 UNITED STATES — Props & flattery.
Reminding everyone why the former Dutch leader is dubbed The Trump Whisperer, NATO boss Mark Rutte has appeared in the White House armed with novelty-sized charts and posters to highlight $1.2T in extra European defence spending since 2017, supporting a reported 200k US jobs. The US president still voiced disappointment over a lack of support on Iran. (EuroNews)
Comment: You can safely ignore the hyperventilating about Rutte leaving his dignity at the door — he's doing his job (keeping the US on-side) ahead of next month's critical NATO summit in Turkey. On the substance, a key hurdle now might not be European slow-walking so much as US delivery bottlenecks — PwC research suggests the five main US defence primes had a $1.4T backlog last year, up 24% from 2024!
🇧🇾 BELARUS — Capitulation?
After Ukraine's Zelensky gave the Belarusian dictator (Lukashenko) a week to deactivate the drone relay stations Putin uses to attack Ukraine, those Russian outposts are reportedly now silent. Meanwhile in Moscow, a top Putin propagandist (Solovyov) has used his primetime slot to warn "there's no money" for defensive barriers, asking "how is this possible?" (Kyiv Post)
Comment: While the Crimea chaos and Solovyov meltdown are eye-catching, the quieter Belarus story might be the most significant — if Putin’s outposts really are now offline, it hints at ascendant leverage for Zelensky. As for Putin, the fact he’s now having to pull air defences back to Moscow suggests things might only get worse for him elsewhere.
Extra Intrigue
Here’s what folks have googled around the world lately…
🇩🇰 Legendary singer and entertainer Gitte Hænning is trending in Denmark ahead of her 80th birthday (she’s touring in Germany again from next month).
🇲🇽 Mexico’s netizens are googling Karim López, their highest-ever NBA draftee (the 19-year-old forward has ended up with the Memphis Grizzlies).
🇿🇼 And the small screen adaptation of ‘The Polygamist’ (from Sue Nyathi’s novel) is generating debate not only in her birthplace of Zimbabwe or home base in South Africa, but also across Nigeria, Kenya, and beyond.
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Voice of the day
Pics courtesy of the folks at Guinness
In a land famous for its deafening kookaburras, raucous rugby crowds, and the occasional “oi!” that can be heard three suburbs away, the Aussies have finally made it official.
In the bush capital of Canberra, various official witnesses and a professional acoustic engineer have gathered to solemnly confirm that Canberra local and full-blown Canbassador Joseph McGrail-Bateup can yell “NOW!” at a staggering 122.4 decibels! That’s a world record.
It’s louder than a jackhammer, louder than a jet, and even louder than the joyous roar of local public servants when Canberra’s store announces a discount on cardigans.
Today’s poll
Do you use AI chatbots for your news?
Yesterday’s poll: Do you think tech stocks will finish this year ahead?
💸 Yes, this is just a bit of volatility (51%)
📉 No, a big correction is coming (48%)
✍️ Other (write in!) (2%)
Your two cents:
💸 L.K: “Stocks cannot go up every day, so there will always be corrections. The AI hype still holds.“
📉 S.B: “The valuations had priced in perfect execution in the future, but perfect execution was never going to happen.”
✍️ R.B: ““A lot of ups and downs, but overall will generally end flat.”
💃We’d love you to join our group-chat — become an Insider today!