A 24-year-old creator films herself unboxing skincare. Halfway through, her voice goes serious and the cuts get tighter. "I just learned that China is trying really hard to beat the US in AI. If they do, it could mean China gets personal data from me and my kids." The post goes up tagged as #ad. Nowhere on the screen does it say who paid for it.

The agency that handed her the script — and the $5,000 — works for a nonprofit called Build American AI. That nonprofit is a project of Leading the Future, a super PAC with $140 million in commitments and roughly $51 million left to spend. Its donors include OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, and Andreessen Horowitz.

WIRED broke the story this weekend. The reporter found out about the operation because the agency tried to recruit him into it. Other creators confirmed they got the same pitch. The instructions were specific: don't tag Build American AI. Don't disclose who's paying. Just deliver the message.

The message comes in two phases. Phase one was lifestyle content celebrating American AI innovation. Phase two — the one running right now — is fear. China steals your data. China takes your jobs. China endangers your kids. Sample lines were provided. The agency, SM4, paid up to $5,000 per TikTok video for influencers to read them.

A few numbers worth keeping in front of you. 53% of US adults get news from social media. 38% of adults under 30 say they get news from influencers regularly. Leading the Future entered 2026 with $70 million in cash. None of the creators on its payroll operate under journalistic ethics, and the people watching them don't know they're being marketed to.

OpenAI's spokesperson denies any "corporate affiliation" with Build American AI or Leading the Future. That is technically true. The corporation didn't write the check. The president of the company did, personally. The distinction is real and meaningless.

This is not lobbying. Lobbying is filed, named, and registered. This is a coordinated influence operation, run by marketing agencies, that buys reach from creators who never told their audiences they'd sell it, and packages industry talking points as personal opinion to viewers who can't see the strings. The technical word for that is propaganda.

The same executives telling you AI is the most important technology of our lifetime are funding videos that inject anti-China panic into your For You page. They want a regulatory environment that lets them mass-harvest data for training. So they pay creators to scream that China is going to mass-harvest your data. The trick works because nobody can see the strings.

My Opinion

I'll be blunt. This is the dirtiest move the AI industry has pulled, and the bar was already on the floor. Greg Brockman's name is in the ledger. Joe Lonsdale's name is in the ledger. They wrote the checks. The checks paid SM4. SM4 paid creators. The creators read scripts written by people whose entire business model depends on you not noticing they wrote them.

What bugs me most isn't the hypocrisy — Silicon Valley has been hypocritical for thirty years. It's the precision. They picked lifestyle creators because their audiences trust them more than journalists. They picked TikTok and Instagram because that's where young voters get their news. They wrote scripts about kids' safety because nothing kills nuance faster than a parental panic. This was engineered, by adults, with a budget, to bypass your skepticism. The 1950s tobacco industry hired doctors to do this. We didn't forgive that. I see no reason to start.

If you support pro-AI policy on the merits, make the case. Put your name on it. Buy a billboard. Testify in front of the Senate. The thing you don't get to do — the thing that should disqualify you from polite conversation — is hire a 22-year-old to read your industry's talking points to her followers without telling anyone you paid her. Expect this to get worse before the midterms. $51 million is a lot of TikToks. Watch for the same talking points coming out of mouths that have never said the word "GPU" before. When you see it, name it.

Author: Yahor Kamarou (Mark) / www.humai.blog / 03 May 2026