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What if Russia didn’t have to convince you of anything new? What if it could simply exploit what you already believe? That’s the idea behind a Russian-linked disinformation network that hijacks real social media conversations to spread propaganda and influence U.S. elections. We follow the trail from celebrity rumors to Congress, and ask whether AI can spot the manipulation before it spreads. Lear...

In Social Security’s database, a few keystrokes can turn a living person into a dead one. As part of a deportation scheme, DOGE pushed to do just that to 2.7 million people — without checking whether they were actually dead. Social Security whistleblower Jeremiah Schofield decided to stop them. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Deepfakes are getting harder to spot. But digital forensics expert Hany Farid says the bigger problem isn’t just that AI can fool us. It’s that even when something is real, people may refuse to believe it. What happens when seeing is no longer believing—and the truth has a hard time catching up? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In 30 years of representing whistleblowers, national security attorney Mark Zaid has never had so many government lawyers come to him for advice. They’ve seen things inside the Trump administration that trouble them. And they want to blow the whistle. But as lawyers, they know the law. Which, as it turns out, may be part of the problem. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Frances Haugen walked out of Facebook with more than 20,000 pages of internal documents. And somehow, nobody caught her. Now her story is getting the Hollywood treatment in Aaron Sorkin’s new movie, The Social Reckoning. But how did she actually pull it off? Haugen takes us behind the scenes of her surprisingly low-tech operation—and explains why the next Facebook whistleblower might not be so luc...

Space Is Getting Crowded. And Nobody’s in Charge Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Across Russia, the internet keeps going dark. The Kremlin says the blackouts are necessary to stop Ukrainian drones. But critics say it is really helping Vladimir Putin accomplish something he’s been working toward for years: an internet the Kremlin can control — and, when it wants to, cut off from the rest of the world. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Once someone believes a conspiracy theory, can anything change their mind? Researchers tried something unexpected: an AI chatbot. After just eight minutes of conversation, some conspiracy theorists were significantly less convinced. What did the bot know about changing minds that we don’t? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Eliot Higgins built Bellingcat on a simple idea: give enough people the right tools, and they can figure out what really happened. It’s called open-source intelligence, or OSINT. But AI can now generate convincing fakes in seconds. Higgins tells us what happens when finding the truth becomes a race against the internet itself. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

States are passing age-verification laws designed to keep kids safer on social media. But figuring out who’s a kid means finding a way to check everyone’s age. Three decades after the first fights over kids’ rights online, we look at a new question: Could protecting minors end up changing the internet for all of us? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

A Texas company is testing drones designed to stop school shooters using sirens, strobe lights and pepper spray. The idea isn’t new. In 2022, Taser-maker Axon proposed putting drones in schools — a plan that led most of its AI Ethics Board to resign. We revisit our story about the fight over whether drones belong in schools — and what happens when a company’s own ethics advisers say it has gone to...

Generative AI can write, compose music and make art. But it learned by training on work made by humans — often without their permission. In this CyberMonday crossover with WAMU and NPR’s 1A, we ask: should we allow AI to train on human work? And if it does… what can we do about it? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

We’ve tried laws. Parental controls. Age restrictions. And demands that tech companies make social media safer for kids. But there’s one group adults don’t always think to consult: the kids themselves. This week on Click Here, what online safety looks like when teenagers get a say. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Arturo Bejar was a Meta employee who tried to warn the company that its platforms were harming kids. Eventually, he told a California jury, and a week later, Meta announced its landmark $17 billion settlement. We sat down with the whistleblower who tried to get Meta to listen. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

U.S. officials say Iran-linked hackers are targeting water utilities across the country. So we’re revisiting the story of Nick Lawler, who got a call from the FBI one day in 2023. Chinese state hackers, they told him, had somehow found their way inside the small-town utility he ran in Littleton, Massachusetts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

When North Korea targeted security researcher Alejandro Caceres, he did something Americans aren’t supposed to do: he struck back — and knocked the country’s entire internet offline. Now, a new Trump administration memo is raising the possibility that, under special circumstances, Americans could strike back at cybercriminals — legally. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Journalist Jason Rezaian spent a year and a half in an Iranian prison, cut off from the outside world. So when Iran shut down the internet across the country for 88 days during the early weeks of the war, he had some idea of what that kind of isolation felt like. And he saw something else: just how closely the internet and power are now intertwined. Iran understands that. Rezaian thinks the U.S. s...

China builds bridges, high-speed rail and cities at a pace the United States can barely imagine. Economist Dan Wang, author of Breakneck , says there’s a reason: China is run by engineers, while America is run by lawyers. That difference explains a surprising amount about how China works — including what happens when you try to engineer a society. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-c...

Millions of people around the world fell in love with Genshin Impact. The Chinese video game was fun. It was beautiful. And it was approved by the Chinese Communist Party. We take an updated look at how China’s booming gaming industry became a powerful way to export culture — without making it feel like an export. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This year, Iran shut down the internet for more than three months, cutting millions of people off from the world — and from each other. We go inside Iran’s internet shutdown and look at why that isolation wasn’t just a consequence. It was the goal. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Inside Iran’s viral Lego videos mocking Trump and Netanyahu — and how AI is turning propaganda into entertainment. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Turns out, driverless cars don’t like fireworks. On the Fourth of July, a hundred thousand people poured out of San Francisco’s fireworks show at once. Robotaxis in the area went haywire. Some froze in intersections. Others drove over live fireworks. And it made us think of an earlier conversation we’d had with NYU professor Gary Marcus about what happens when machines trained on a predictable wor...

AI models are tested in sandboxes — sealed-off environments designed to keep them away from real systems. This summer, two models found a way out. In this Cyber Monday crossover with WAMU and NPR’s 1A, we go back to one of the earliest hackers who understood something we’re still learning about technology: build a system, and someone will inevitably test its limits. Learn about your ad choices: do...

It was a tiny water authority in rural Pennsylvania. A hack that barely made national news. Today, as suspected Iranian hackers target water systems across the country, we return to that story. What once looked like an isolated incident, now looks like a warning.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In a mass shooting, doctors have seconds to decide who lives and who dies. Could AI help make those decisions? We return to a story about a DARPA program asking where medicine ends and technology begins. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices