Category: Oversight project
AI’s biggest security risk is hiding in plain sight
The White House, federal regulators, and Congress are scrambling to develop a national approach to artificial intelligence. Yet almost no one is examining AI from an ethical or civil-society perspective. Policymakers frame it as an economic or national security issue. Those angles matter. But the deeper question — what it means to live in an AI-dominated world inside a constitutional republic — remains almost entirely unaddressed.
AI is already reshaping our political life, our civic discourse, and our education system. One of the clearest windows into this shift is the outsized influence of Wikipedia and Reddit. Large language models like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini consume a training diet heavy on both sites. AI systems don’t “know” anything in a human sense. They mirror patterns. And the patterns they ingest come from platforms run by anonymous editors, ideological moderators, and unaccountable gatekeepers.
No special-interest group today is fighting for Americans who will soon live in a world saturated with AI slop.
The Oversight Project examined the underbelly of this problem, beginning with Wikipedia. After noticing what looked like coordinated ideological editing campaigns, we sought to understand who was shaping the platform. What we found was a small, powerful cadre of editors with the authority to dictate what information is permitted. These editors operate anonymously — or so they believed.
We identified several of them and, more tellingly, where they were editing from. Some connections were foreign. Others showed activity that aligned with a 9-to-5 workday. It was clearly inorganic. That raised obvious questions: who pays these people, who coordinates them, and whether intelligence services are involved.
The most aggressive coordination appeared on politically sensitive topics, especially anything involving Israel or the Arab world. Automated tools tracked and reverted edits across thousands of pages to enforce a narrative. When Wikipedia realized we were mapping these networks, it panicked. To protect anonymity, the platform changed its internal rules to obstruct outside scrutiny. Then it retaliated by downgrading us to “deprecated” status — a ban in all but name. Anything sourced to us became unacceptable on the site.
We are sounding the alarm because foreign actors and domestic ideologues understand the power of controlling Wikipedia’s information flow. Our own intelligence agencies almost certainly understand it as well. In a recent interview, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger told me that intelligence services would be negligent if they were not influencing the platform.
Sanger also expressed regret about founding Wikipedia with Jimmy Wales, noting that like so many other institutions, it has been conquered by the ideological left and turned into a political instrument, a shift made even more consequential in the age of AI.
RELATED: Almost half of Gen Z wants AI to run the government. You should be terrified.
Man_Half-tube via iStock/Getty Images
This is where the danger becomes unmistakable. Most people treat Wikipedia and Reddit cautiously when browsing the internet, aware of the bias. AI does not. When you ask an AI system a question, it generates polished, authoritative-sounding answers built from those same sources — stripped of context, caveats, or transparency. What appears neutral is often laundered opinion.
This information-laundering must become part of the national conversation about AI. Some policymakers seem to understand the stakes. The Senate Commerce Committee has sent oversight letters and plans a hearing. The House Oversight Committee has signaled similar interest. Even Ed Martin, former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, has demanded information from Wikipedia.
But the truth is blunt. No special-interest group today is fighting for Americans who will soon live in a world saturated with AI slop. There is plenty of lobbying in Washington for everything except preserving an honest information ecosystem. Without intervention, public knowledge will be shaped by opaque networks of foreign actors, ideological activists, and machine-driven amplification on a massive scale.
Policymakers must recognize what is at stake and act before the architecture of public knowledge is fully captured. The future of AI — and the future of democratic self-government — depends on it.
Is this the insidious reason Biden’s FBI chose ‘Arctic Frost’ for anti-Trump weaponized investigation?
“Arctic Frost” was an FBI operation greenlit in April 2022 by former Director Christopher Wray and ex-Attorney General Merrick Garland that targeted various individuals supportive of President Donald Trump and/or skeptical of the results of the 2020 election.
The investigation, which was formally assigned to special counsel Jack Smith in November 2022, ultimately resulted in the four-count indictment Smith filed in August 2023 accusing Trump of attempting to disrupt the lawful transfer of power.
It turns out that the partisan nature of the investigation was baked in at the outset — right into its name.
‘They were so out of control, and thought they never would get caught.’
Following Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R) publication of documents on Friday showing that Wray, Garland, and former Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco approved the opening of Arctic Frost, Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, stated that “what you should know is that they were so out of control, and thought they never would get caught, that they named this investigation after an orange to mock Trump.”
RELATED: Damning new docs reveal who’s on Biden admin’s ‘enemies list,’ expose extent of FBI’s Arctic Frost
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Arctic frost is the name of a satsuma mandarin orange hybrid. Early in its investigation into Operation Arctic Frost, the Oversight Project revealed that “the corrupt FBI agents who opened this case named it this to mock” Trump.
Many of Trump’s detractors — including disgraced former FBI Director James Comey — have in years past suggested that he has an orange pigmentation.
In addition to serving as a nod to fellow Trump antagonists, the alleged naming of the operation as an intended insult to Trump signals that it was, from its very inception, nothing more than a partisan campaign aimed at the ruination of the president and his allies.
Blaze News has reached out to the FBI for comment.
Editor’s note: Mike Howell is a contributor at Blaze News.
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House committee declares unauthorized Biden autopen pardons ‘void’ in damning new report
The House Oversight Committee released a nearly 100-page report on Tuesday deeming invalid those executive actions and pardons issued without proper authorization and with machine-generated signatures in former President Joe Biden’s name.
“Barring evidence of executive actions taken during the Biden presidency showing that President Biden indeed took a particular executive action, the Committee deems those actions taken through use of the autopen as void,” said the report.
‘Hold those who orchestrated this coup d’etat accountable.’
In hopes that real consequence might be dished out following their damning report — a report that suggests the country was effectively run in recent years by unelected Biden staffers — the Republican-led committee has also asked the Department of Justice to both review the validity of every executive action taken during the previous administration and to “determine whether legal action is necessary to ameliorate consequences of any illegitimate pardons granted, or executive actions implemented, throughout the Biden Autopen Presidency.”
The Oversight Project got the ball rolling in March by revealing that Biden’s signature on numerous executive orders, pardons, and other documents of national consequence was machine generated.
While other presidents have made extensive use of the so-called autopen, there is cause besides Biden’s mental deterioration to doubt the validity of many of the documents issued in his name.
For starters, there are reports of staffers and family members making decisions on his behalf; Biden allegedly admitted to having no memory of signing a greatly impactful order that bore an autopen signature; Biden’s signature appeared on documents while he was absent and in at least one case on vacation; and internal emails from the Justice Department show that there was a high-level understanding in the Biden administration that many of the commutations autopenned in the former president’s name were legally flawed.
Following a review of approximately 1,597 enrolled copies of documents bearing Biden’s signature — including pardon warrants and executive orders — the Oversight Project concluded in a Monday report that 846 of 958 executive orders, pardons, commutations, and proclamations were signed with autopen.
RELATED: Biden freed killers with a pen he didn’t even hold
Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images
Broken down further by category, the Oversight Project indicated that of the Biden-era documents reviewed, 59.2% of the executive orders; 96.3% of the presidential proclamations; 75% of the pardons, including the pardons for Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley, members of the Biden clan, and former members of the House Jan. 6 select committee; and 51.8% of the commutations were signed with autopen.
Biden apparently signed all but one bill into law by hand.
“We, as a nation, operated for years without a functioning president and instead ceded executive power to a politburo of unelected bureaucrats who exercised presidential power via autopen,” the watchdog group stated. “These statistics are alarming. The time is now for the administration and Congress to hold those who orchestrated this coup d’etat accountable.”
The Oversight Project’s bombshell exposé earlier this year paved the way for additional investigations into the legitimacy of autopen-signed Biden-era documents, namely those launched by DOJ pardon attorney Ed Martin, the Trump White House Counsel, and the House Oversight Committee.
The Oversight Committee’s Tuesday report, the product of a five-month probe, indicates that Biden aides made liberal use of the autopen to carry out official actions without evidence of the former president’s approval.
The committee — echoing a finding of the Oversight Project — found, for instance, that 32 of 51 clemency warrants were signed with digital copies of Biden’s signature but without any contemporaneous paperwork linking Biden to the decisions.
Former Idaho Solicitor General Theo Wold testified during a U.S. Senate hearing in June that with regard to the clemency warrants, the “president actually has to make the decision — that cannot be delegated to a staffer or an adviser,” but there was no indication “that anyone other than staff were making these decisions.”
In addition to highlighting apparent evidence that senior Biden White House aides exercised the authority of the former president, the committee asked the DOJ to investigate three top Biden White House aides who previously refused to testify to the committee: Biden White House physician Kevin O’Connor and aides Anthony Bernal and Annie Tomasini.
Blaze News has reached out to the DOJ for comment.
Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said in a statement obtained by CNN, “Our report reveals how key aides colluded to mislead the public and the extraordinary measures they took to sustain the appearance of presidential authority as Biden’s capacity to function independently diminished. Executive actions performed by Biden White House staff and signed by autopen are null and void.”
A Biden spokesperson stated, “This investigation into baseless claims has confirmed what has been clear from the start: President Biden made the decisions of his presidency.”
“There was no conspiracy, no cover-up, and no wrongdoing. Congressional Republicans should stop focusing on political retribution and instead work to end the government shutdown,” added the spokesperson.
Biden told news outlets in June, “I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations.”
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