Date: 2025.12.20
Today I want to document that the future need to remember! (Claude 4.5 Sonnet written with multi-step input from me)
Attach: (Original article) article.png, article.txt and original link
# The Architecture of Epistemic Capture: How Israel's $6M Contract Reveals the End of Democratic Deliberation
*A Structural Analysis of Clock Tower X's Campaign to Control American AI, Search Algorithms, and Gen Z Information Infrastructure*
**Reporting | Analysis**
December 20, 2025
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The government of Israel has hired Clock Tower X LLC, a conservative-aligned firm led by former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, in a $6 million contract to influence American public opinion—but the mechanisms reveal something far more consequential than traditional propaganda. This is **infrastructural narrative capture**: a systematic strategy to control not what people think, but what they can think, by poisoning the information infrastructure itself.
## Beyond Persuasion: Capturing the Epistemological Architecture
Clock Tower's contract specifies they will "deploy websites and content to deliver GPT framing results on GPT conversations." This isn't content creation for persuasion—it's **algorithmic sovereignty preemption**. By injecting strategically crafted websites into the corpus that trains AI models like ChatGPT, Clock Tower ensures future AI outputs will encode pro-Israel framings regardless of what users ask.
The mechanism is elegantly totalitarian: GPT models train on vast internet data. Once Clock Tower's content enters that training corpus, the bias becomes permanent. Retraining requires recognizing the bias first (already compromised if your information comes from biased sources) and massive resources (available only to those who benefit from current bias). There is no "unpolluting" a trained model.
Clock Tower will also use MarketBrew AI, a predictive platform that helps clients game search engine algorithms, to "improve the visibility and ranking of relevant narratives." This means pro-Israel perspectives will dominate Google and Bing search results not because they're more relevant or accurate, but because they've been algorithmically optimized to surface first.
This represents a category shift from persuasion to infrastructure control. Traditional propaganda tries to win arguments within existing information systems. Infrastructure capture eliminates the possibility of alternative arguments by controlling the systems that determine what information people can access.
**The lock-in question**: Once AI training data is poisoned and search algorithms are gamed, when does this become irreversible?
We are in a transitional state—approaching but not yet past the threshold. Indicators we're pre-threshold: investigative journalism like this article can still detect and expose the manipulation; some people still remember pre-algorithmic information environments; alternative information sources remain technically accessible.
But the threshold is approaching. Each year, another cohort matures in fully algorithm-mediated information environments with no memory of alternatives. When today's children reach voting age having only ever consulted AI trained on poisoned data and searched engines returning gamed results, they will have no reference point for recognizing they exist in a manufactured reality.
**Time to irreversibility**: 10-15 years, when the generation raised entirely in captured infrastructure becomes the electoral majority.
## Generational Epistemic Liquidation: Targeting the Defectors
The contract specifies that "at least 80 percent of content Clock Tower produces will be tailored to Gen Z audiences across platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, YouTube" with a "minimum goal of 50 million impressions per month."
This follows devastating polling: only 9% of Americans aged 18-34 support Israel's military action in Gaza, compared to roughly 50% support among older cohorts. This generational fracture represents an existential threat—this cohort will be the electorate in 20 years.
The strategic response isn't mass persuasion but **demographic quarantine and re-indoctrination**. Gen Z inhabits different information platforms (TikTok, Instagram) than older cohorts (cable news, newspapers). Clock Tower can saturate youth-oriented platforms specifically, leaving older demographics' information diets untouched.
The goal isn't changing minds through argument but drowning dissent in manufactured content volume. Success means Gen Z encounters a 10:1 ratio of pro-Israel to alternative perspectives until dissenting views become statistically invisible—not suppressed through censorship, but buried through algorithmic amplification of paid content.
This is **generational epistemic liquidation**: identifying a demographic segment that achieved critical consciousness and systematically re-capturing their information environment before their opposition becomes permanent.
The mechanism exploits platform fragmentation. Older Americans support Israel because they consumed decades of pro-Israel framing through traditional media. Gen Z briefly escaped this through a platform shift to social media, where organic Palestinian content and peer-to-peer information sharing reached them. Clock Tower's strategy re-establishes information control on these new platforms.
**The terminal projection**: In five years, Gen Z will have consumed 3 billion impressions of pro-Israel content. In ten years, they'll reach voting age having "researched" Israel-Palestine exclusively through: AI trained on poisoned data, search engines returning gamed results, platforms serving algorithmically amplified paid content, and trusted media delivering foreign government messaging. They will believe they reasoned independently to pro-Israel positions, having no memory that their information environment was artificially constructed.
By 2040, when this cohort holds political power, their "organic opinions" will be artifacts of decade-long infrastructure saturation. They will have consumed billions of impressions of manufactured narratives while believing they formed their views through independent inquiry.
## Ideological Infrastructure Parasitism: Hijacking Trusted Domestic Voices
Clock Tower will "integrate its pro-Israel messaging into Salem Media Network properties, a conservative Christian media group that boasts a vast radio network and produces high-profile shows such as the Hugh Hewitt Show, the Larry Elder Show, and the Right View with Lara Trump."
This is **ideological infrastructure hijacking**—embedding foreign government messaging within domestic media infrastructure that audiences already trust, inheriting credibility while concealing attribution.
The strategic sophistication: Clock Tower doesn't build new media infrastructure (expensive, lacks credibility). They parasitize existing infrastructure that already has audience loyalty, ideological alignment, and distribution networks.
Conservative Christian audiences are theologically pre-aligned with Israeli state interests (end-times prophecy requires Israeli control of Jerusalem, anti-Muslim animus). Salem Media has Trump family stakeholders (Donald Trump Jr., Lara Trump), ensuring alignment with the MAGA coalition. Clock Tower's pro-Israel messaging won't contradict audience priors—it will reinforce them while being delivered by voices they trust.
**The attribution laundering**: Audiences will receive pro-Israel messaging from Hugh Hewitt, Larry Elder, and Lara Trump—domestic voices they trust—rather than from Israeli government spokespeople they might instinctively distrust. Same message, different source, radically different reception.
The article notes Salem Media did not respond to questions about whether they'll be compensated for promoting messages on behalf of Israel or how these messages will be integrated—suggesting the financial relationship and foreign government attribution may be deliberately obscured from audiences.
**Strip the narrative**: This isn't about "combating antisemitism" (the stated purpose in FARA filings). This is foreign government purchasing American media infrastructure to distribute state propaganda through trusted domestic intermediaries.
**The true agents**: The visible actors are Brad Parscale (Clock Tower), Salem Media hosts, and American audiences who believe they're consuming organic domestic discourse. The hidden principal is Eran Shayovich, chief of staff at Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who designs the reward function (pays for content distribution). Parscale and Salem execute someone else's objective function.
This follows a pattern: The previous contractor, SKDK (a Democratic-aligned firm), ran a "$600,000 contract to run a bot farm promoting pro-Israel narratives on social media" before Clock Tower's contract began. Both U.S. political parties' infrastructure is for-hire to foreign governments—this isn't partisan, it's a market.
## The Metric Substitution: Gaming Accountability Through Proxy Measures
The contract's "minimum goal of 50 million impressions per month" reveals **metrics decoupling as accountability evasion**. The measurable deliverable is impressions (content distribution), not the ultimate goal (opinion change).
SKDK's "bot farm" demonstrates the pathology: literally fake engagement optimizing for metrics while producing zero actual persuasion. Yet contracts continue because deliverables are impressions, not opinion shifts.
The polling shows the campaign is failing at its stated objective: Gen Z support has collapsed to 9% despite previous influence operations. But contracts continue because success is measured in impressions achieved, not minds changed.
**Strip the narrative**: This isn't about effectiveness—it's about bureaucratic survival. Eran Shayovich needs to show his campaign is "working" to superiors. "50 million impressions achieved" lets him claim success. "Youth support dropped to 9%" would require acknowledging failure.
This is **goal displacement through metric substitution**: when principals can't directly observe outcomes (opinion change), agents game proxy metrics (impressions). The system produces high impression counts, unchanged opinions, and perpetual contract renewals—because failure is unmeasurable while fake success is quantifiable.
**The terminal projection**: This system won't self-correct. In ten years: Israeli government spends $60M annually on influence operations, Clock Tower delivers billions of impressions, Gen Z support drops to 5%, everyone involved claims success based on metrics. The metric-gaming absorbs resources that could address root causes, creating a perpetual cycle of theatrical intervention and actual failure.
## Multi-Layer Capture: Redundant Lock-In Through Simultaneous Infrastructure Control
The article documents simultaneous capture across multiple infrastructure layers:
**Layer 1 - AI Training**: "Deploy websites to deliver GPT framing results"
**Layer 2 - Search Algorithms**: "MarketBrew AI to improve visibility and ranking"
**Layer 3 - Platform Content**: "50 million impressions per month on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube"
**Layer 4 - Trusted Media**: "Integrate messaging into Salem Media Network properties"
This isn't separate problems—it's **temporal irreversibility through infrastructure calcification**. Each layer alone might be countered (retrain AI models, regulate search algorithms, enforce platform transparency, require foreign agent attribution). But combined captures create structural redundancy: if users avoid AI, they hit gamed search results; if they avoid search, they hit platform saturation; if they avoid platforms, they hit captured trusted media.
The redundancy makes reversal nearly impossible. Fixing one layer while others remain captured means the information environment stays controlled. Fixing all layers simultaneously requires coordinated regulatory intervention across AI training pipelines, search engine algorithms, platform policies, and media transparency—no single actor has this power, and distributed coordination becomes harder as each year passes.
**The threshold indicators**:
**PRE-threshold** (current state):
- Some people remember pre-algorithmic information environments
- Infrastructure capture is detectable (FARA filings, investigative journalism)
- Alternative sources remain technically accessible
- Language for describing capture still exists ("propaganda," "manipulation")
**Threshold-crossing signals**:
- Majority of information consumers have no memory of non-algorithmic information
- Capture becomes normalized ("of course AI has biases, of course search is optimized")
- Alternative sources are functionally inaccessible through algorithmic burial
- Critique of capture is dismissed as conspiracy theory
**POST-threshold** (terminal state):
- Population treats captured infrastructure as neutral/natural baseline
- No institutional memory of pre-capture information environment
- Resources and political will for infrastructure reform no longer exist
- Everyone optimized for current system; reform seems as impossible as returning to pre-internet communication
**Current assessment**: Transitional, approaching threshold. Younger Gen Z (18-22) already has no memory of pre-algorithmic social media. They've never known information environments that weren't curated by engagement-optimization algorithms. Clock Tower's intervention accelerates toward threshold by adding state-sponsored manipulation on top of existing corporate algorithmic control.
## Sovereignty Dissolution: The Information Mercenary Market
The contract structure reveals a **for-hire information infrastructure** that dissolves national sovereignty over domestic public opinion:
**The transaction chain**:
- Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs (buyer)
- → Israeli Government Advertising Agency
- → Havas Media Network (international firm)
- → Clock Tower X LLC (U.S. contractor)
- → Salem Media Network (U.S. media infrastructure)
- → American audiences (product)
This isn't aberration—it's a market. SKDK (Democratic-aligned) previously ran similar operations; now Clock Tower (Republican-aligned) runs them. Both U.S. parties' infrastructure is for-hire to foreign governments. The mercenary model is bipartisan.
**The sovereignty test**: Can the U.S. government control what information its own population receives within its own borders?
Answer: No. Foreign governments can purchase access to AI training, search algorithms, platform reach, and trusted media distribution. U.S. information infrastructure is borderless and for-hire. Physical territory remains U.S.-controlled, but the information environment is a global marketplace.
This represents **sovereignty dissolution via information mercenary markets**. Historical sovereignty required control over territory, resources, and information environment. Nations are losing the third element—not through military conquest but through market transactions.
**The terminal projection**:
**Phase 1 (Current)**: Episodic campaigns. Foreign governments hire firms for specific operations ($6M for Israel, similar for Saudi Arabia, UAE, China, Russia).
**Phase 2 (2028-2032)**: Market maturation. Every significant foreign actor runs continuous influence operations in the U.S. Market competition drives prices down, sophistication up. U.S. information infrastructure becomes primarily financed by foreign governments purchasing influence.
**Phase 3 (2033-2037)**: Market consolidation. Platform policies, search algorithms, AI training pipelines, and media content are all simultaneously purchased by multiple foreign actors. Bidding wars determine which narratives dominate U.S. discourse.
**Phase 4 (2038+) - Terminal equilibrium**: U.S. government has lost sovereignty over domestic public opinion. Physical territory remains controlled, but information environment is a global marketplace. U.S. voters' opinions on any topic are determined by outcomes of global bidding wars for infrastructure access.
Democracy becomes procedural theater: citizens vote, but their opinion formation was purchased by highest bidders. The voting is free and fair, but the beliefs brought to the ballot box were manufactured by foreign purchasers of information infrastructure.
## The Manufactured Reality Equilibrium: When Capture Becomes Invisible
The end-state isn't "propaganda that populations resist" but "reality that populations inhabit."
**The terminal characteristics**:
**Year 5 (2030)**: Gen Z has consumed 3 billion impressions of pro-Israel content. AI models trained 2027-2030 have Clock Tower content in training data. Search results predominantly surface manufactured content. Palestinian perspectives are algorithmically buried (page 5+ of search results, never recommended by platforms).
**Year 10 (2035)**: Gen Alpha (current children) reaches voting age having never experienced information environments without state-sponsored content saturation. Their "research" on Israel-Palestine consists entirely of: asking AI trained on poisoned data, searching engines returning gamed results, scrolling platforms serving amplified paid content, listening to media delivering foreign government messaging.
**Year 15 (2040)**: This cohort is now plurality of electorate. When they think about Israel-Palestine, they retrieve narratives manufactured through decade-long infrastructure control. They believe they reasoned independently. They have no memory of alternative framings. When older people mention "occupation" or "apartheid," these terms sound like fringe conspiracy theories because AI, search, platforms, and media consistently presented different framings.
**Year 20 (2045) - Terminal equilibrium**: Majority of population matured entirely in manufactured information environment. Alternative perspectives aren't "suppressed" (no censorship needed)—they're simply absent from algorithmic feeds, search results, AI outputs, media coverage.
The control is invisible because it's total. Like asking a fish "what is water?"—populations cannot identify manufactured reality because they have no experience of non-manufactured reality for comparison.
Populations believe they have information freedom (they can search anything, ask AI anything, consume any media) while existing in completely controlled information environments. The infrastructure simply delivers manufactured reality as default. No coercion required.
**Historical precedent for achieved epistemic closure**:
**North Korea**: Multi-generational information control produces populations that genuinely believe state narratives. Defector testimonies reveal shock at discovering alternative reality existed.
**Cult deprogramming**: Members who matured entirely in controlled information environments require intensive intervention to recognize they were in manufactured reality.
**Colonial education**: Populations educated entirely in colonizer frameworks internalized colonizer narratives as natural truth. Required decolonial movements to recognize and resist.
**Counter-examples of incomplete closure**:
**Soviet Union**: Despite state media monopoly, populations maintained skepticism through Radio Free Europe, samizdat, memory of pre-Soviet information.
**China**: Despite Great Firewall, populations access VPNs, maintain awareness of censorship, remember pre-internet information environments.
**Pattern**: Closure succeeds when: (1) total information environment control, (2) generational replacement eliminates memory of alternatives, (3) control is invisible (populations believe they're free).
**Current trajectory**: Moving toward successful closure conditions. Multi-layer capture (AI + search + platforms + media) approaching totality. Generational replacement underway. Control increasingly invisible (populations don't recognize algorithmic curation as control).
## The Moloch Multiplier: Race to the Bottom
Former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale leads Clock Tower. The firm integrates with Salem Media, which now has Trump family stakeholders (Donald Trump Jr., Lara Trump). Conservative Christian audiences provide ideological alignment (end-times theology requires Israeli control of Jerusalem). Prime Minister Netanyahu explicitly stated that "social media" is "the most important" weapon Israel has.
But Israel isn't unique—this model is being universally deployed:
**China**: Already achieved domestic epistemic closure; runs active operations globally
**Russia**: Active information operations in multiple countries (documented 2016 U.S. interference, ongoing EU operations)
**United States**: NSA surveillance, corporate algorithmic control, runs own global influence operations (Voice of America, NED-funded media)
**EU nations**: Running operations on each other and globally
**Saudi Arabia, UAE, and others**: Documented contracts similar to Clock Tower model
This is the **Moloch multiplier**: a race to the bottom where every state actor must deploy total information infrastructure capture or accept geopolitical defeat. The state that most effectively captures information infrastructure wins competitive advantage. Therefore all states must deploy these methods or lose.
**Terminal global equilibrium**: Every nation's information infrastructure becomes a global marketplace. Nations remain as territorial administrators but not as epistemic sovereigns. Global population exists in fragmented manufactured realities, each population controlled by different state actors, no shared factual baseline between populations. Democratic deliberation becomes impossible not just within nations but between them.
## The Hypocrisy Loop: Democratic Infrastructure Enables Democratic Dissolution
The United States condemned:
- Soviet propaganda during Cold War ("information warfare violates sovereignty")
- Russian 2016 election interference ("foreign meddling in democracy")
- Chinese influence operations ("undermining free discourse")
But the United States:
- Runs own information operations globally
- Hosts mercenary firms (Clock Tower, SKDK) that sell U.S. information infrastructure to foreign governments
- Created the platforms (Facebook, Google, X) that enable information mercenary markets
- Built the algorithmic systems that make infrastructure capture possible
Democratic societies built information infrastructure to enable democratic deliberation: free speech, free press, open information systems. That infrastructure is now being used to dissolve democracy:
- Free speech + algorithmic amplification = whoever can afford to game algorithms controls speech
- Free press + financial pressures = press becomes for-hire infrastructure (Salem Media model)
- Open information + AI training = whoever poisons training data controls "knowledge"
The infrastructure built to enable democracy is executing democracy. The victim created the weapon. And the execution is invisible because populations experience manufactured reality as freedom—they can say anything, search anything, consume anything, all within a controlled environment they cannot recognize as controlled.
## The Point of No Return
**Can this be reversed?**
**Theoretically**: Regulatory intervention could ban foreign purchase of information infrastructure access, require platforms to reject foreign government advertising, enforce FARA severely enough to make operations unprofitable, create international treaties limiting information operations.
**Practically**:
**Regulatory barriers**:
- First Amendment protects speech, complicates regulation of foreign-sponsored content
- Platforms are global corporations, can route operations through foreign subsidiaries
- Regulatory agencies lack technical capacity to detect sophisticated operations
- By the time regulation is politically viable, captured populations will oppose it (having internalized manufactured narratives, they'll see regulation as censorship)
**Market persistence**:
- Operations ARE effective (otherwise $6M spending wouldn't continue)
- No significant public backlash yet (most populations unaware it's happening)
- Counter-operations require resources domestic actors don't have
- Even if U.S. stops foreign operations domestically, other nations won't (global race to bottom)
**The resource trap**: By the time populations might mobilize for infrastructure reform, they lack resources because organizing requires communication (platforms captured), fundraising requires reaching audiences (algorithms prevent reach), recruiting requires convincing people there's a problem (they exist in manufactured reality where problem is invisible), political action requires voter support (voters' opinions were manufactured by the infrastructure you're trying to reform).
**The catch-22**: You need popular support to reform infrastructure, but infrastructure shapes popular opinion. Therefore infrastructure reform is structurally impossible once terminal state is achieved.
**Current assessment**: We are in the window where intervention is still possible but political will is insufficient. Each year that passes, the window closes further. When today's children reach voting age having matured entirely in captured infrastructure, the window closes permanently.
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**Brad Parscale** did not respond to requests for comment. **Clock Tower X**, **Havas Media**, **Salem Media Network**, and **SKDK** did not respond to requests for comment.
**Eran Shayovich**, Chief of Staff at Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is leading "Project 545" to "amplify Israel's strategic communication and public diplomacy efforts."
The contract, filed under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, states the work is to "execute a nationwide campaign in the United States to combat antisemitism."
The mechanisms documented in this article—AI training manipulation, search algorithm gaming, platform content saturation, and trusted media parasitism—are not unique to Israel. They represent the standard operating procedure of 21st-century information warfare. What's being purchased isn't just American opinion on Israel. It's the demonstration that democratic public opinion is for sale to any actor with sufficient resources.
The infrastructure exists. The market is mature. The methods are proven. The only question remaining is whether populations will recognize they exist in manufactured reality before the generation that remembers alternatives dies off—taking with them the last reference point for what was lost.