Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - The Secret Role Of Influencers In Global Propaganda

Episode Date: September 24, 2025

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON.Buy a subscription to my tech and online culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!!!! 🙏 From Israel to Saudi Arabia to Russia to the UAE and more, influencers are increasingly being used for political propaganda and foreign influence campaigns. Makenna Kelly is a senior reporter at WIRED and she joined me to talk about how foreign governments are leveraging content creators to quietly push political propaganda and shape foreign policy, how MAGA influencers are embracing these campaigns, and the big money behind it all. If you like this video, please support me on Patreon!! Follow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0 https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz

What the Israeli government is learning now is that, yes, they can create these relationships with Jewish Americans, but they can also amplify that times a thousand, right? If you find creators, give them content and let them blow it up online to their millions and millions of followers. Social media has been the primary way that millions of Americans get their news for a while. But as influencers play a bigger and bigger role in our media ecosystem, they're increasingly being used for political propaganda. and not just domestic political propaganda, but foreign influence campaigns. McKenna Kelly is a senior reporter at Wired covering all of this.

And today, we're going to talk about how foreign governments are leveraging content creators to quietly push foreign policy, why conservative influencers are increasingly focusing on foreign policy and the big money behind this whole global influence effort. Hi, McKenna, welcome to power user. Hey, it's great to be here. Okay, so you did this great story about foreign influence, the way that these foreign governments are leveraging influencers. This kind of came into the public consciousness recently with Israel.

Can you tell me about this recent trip that a bunch of these influencers took to Israel? Sure. Yeah, there was about 15 of them. Some names that you might, you know, might be familiar. There's a woman named Jane Zircle. She's been on like Steve Bannon's Warroom podcast. She actually got the boot after going on this Israel trip. But yeah, there's about 15 of these folks. Some names you know, some names you wouldn't.

But they worked with this group called Israel 365, which was getting money from the Israeli foreign ministry to bring these folks over for basically like a tour of Israel and like meeting with Israeli journalists and then going to Gaza's humanitarian sites where many of them took videos posing in front of food aid. Basically, you know, using this as a content moment, they weren't necessarily encouraged to make content. That wasn't part of some contract that they did. But a lot of them used the trip as, you know, means to create content, which a lot of them are already pro-Zionist. So it's just a means of, you know, getting things to show to their audience.

Yeah, to me, I mean, I know that probably it wasn't like contractually obligated. Like that's usually not how things to go, right? Of like, oh, you have to post XYZ post. But of course, if you're inviting a bunch of content creators, the implication is that they're going to make content. And I felt like the content that they were making was sort of so egregiously skewed. I mean, it was just like sort of blatant propaganda. As you mentioned, you know, obviously a lot of these influencers were Zionists. to begin with, but especially what you just said about them making content about like the

humanitarian aid. You saw these videos of them posing in front of like blocks of aid, but that aid is not getting into Gaza. That's the whole point, right? Is that that aid is not being distributed to Gaza. And here they are kind of doing propaganda, making it seem as if all of this aid is getting into Gaza. Israel's so wonderful. And then I saw them also like I think they were in Tel Aviv or they were going on these other, you know, sort of like showing this amazing picture of Israel that it seemed like was, you know, like very skewed. Yeah, I mean, it reminds me a lot of like birthright trips, right? Where you, where, you know, Jewish Americans are able to go to Israel and to have this,

what is supposed to be, you know, marketed to them as this quintessential Israeli experience. And, you know, that's great. That's also part of what the Israeli government does to, you know, make Israel seem like it's this besieged ally, right, rather than the aggressor in Gaza. And I think, you know, what the Israeli government is learning now is that, Yes, they can create these relationships with Jewish Americans, bringing them over, but they can also amplify that times a thousand, right? If you find creators who are already Zionist in their beliefs,

give them content and let them blow it up online to their millions and millions of followers. It seems like influencers and what you wrote about are just increasingly playing a bigger role in foreign policy and in shaping the view of other countries. I mean, I'm thinking of like the Saudi Arabia influencer trips that have been happening over the past few years. And even, I mean, this wasn't any sort of explicit propaganda trip. Aisho Speed is on a tour of the whole world, but just the way that he's presenting China and, you know, working with the media office there. When did we really start to see influencers engaging in these sort of foreign policy expeditions and campaigns? This has definitely been going on for a while.

We've seen creators go to places like South Korea or Hungary for a long, long time since, I don't know, at least 2016. But I feel like over the last couple of years, and especially like right now coming out of the Trump administration, What do creators do, right, after they've won such a huge electoral victory for President Donald Trump? Last year they got this, you know, they were part of this huge storyline about how Trump was talking to podcasters, talking to creators. Well, they already have the biggest domestic win, right? Domestic policy went ever, and that's getting Trump back in office.

And now it's not just speaking to Americans who, in young kids, Gen C, which is growing more and more right every year, it seems like, but spreading that outside of, you know, the continental United States and going, elsewhere. Yeah, I guess I feel like I started to hear about this a lot when a friend of mine who was a travel freelance writer became more of a travel influencer. And so she's posting on Instagram and was like making basically just becoming like a travel content creator and started to work a lot with like these ministries of foreign affairs. So suddenly it went from like, oh, hi, I'm just like reporting, you know, on a new hotel in Dubai. And now the like Dubai ministry of foreign affairs is actually

inviting me on this, like what used to be maybe press trips, but are now influencer trips where they basically just make sort of propaganda for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And this seems like it's probably fine for places like, I don't know, what's a harmless country? Are any of them harmless? Are any of them harmless? I don't know, but maybe some, like, tropical nation that, like, has no real, like, power or influence in the world. But even, like, a place like Dubai or some of these other places, like, it feels more insidious. Yeah.

I mean, it's a lot of different countries who are. pursuing this, the right wing creators who I was speaking to for this piece, they said this on background, but they've been getting a lot of messages from not just foreign countries, but also embassies in the United States that are trying to, you know, not just like spread messages, but also understand the MAGA base. They want to understand what it is that these folks want to hear, what it is, you know, that might make them more amenable to whatever the country needs, you know, foreign policy, you know, diplomatically, but also, you know, just getting a better sense of maybe even how to talk

to Trump in the folks who vote for Trump. Yeah, it's so interesting. I mean, I feel like we've definitely seen this pivot of a lot of these countries, probably using more lifestyle and travel influencers. I think when I wrote about the Saudi Arabia trips, which was, I think, back in 2021, even or maybe even 2019. I can't remember it was before or after COVID started. But it was all like lifestyle influencers.

And it was usually about like showing this glamorous life. Like, hey, Russia's not so bad. Hey, there's actually like Dubai is actually beautiful. And you can live this amazing life here. And now it seems like it's pivoted, like you said, to more like, expressly political where it's like, oh, this is actually, we don't just need like some silly beauty vlogger to come. Like, we can actually influence direct policy or like influence even, it sounds like the president himself. Yeah. I mean, look at the people who are in the president's

cabinet, right? Like I was talking today with someone about the response to the Charlie Kirk assassination with like Cash Patel and Dan Bonjino. But the people in this administration are content creators. They are entertainers, right? These are the people who Trump cares the most about their opinion about what they say. That's why he brings them into the cabinet as like a foreign nation. Who else would you talk to if you want the president's ear? You would find the people, right, who got him elected partially, but also, you know, the types of people who he listens to on a regular basis. Yeah, it's so crazy just how intertwined like content creation is with the Trump administration. Obviously, we had like J.D. Vance taking over Charlie Kirk's podcast.

We had Pam Bondi doing some Katie Miller podcast like from the White House. I think. Like, it seems like it's just so, like, this idea of, like, policy and messaging are so tightly intertwined with the internet now and, I guess, online influence. I think what's also interesting is that the American government has been engaging in more and more of this over the years. I wrote about the government under Biden doing a lot more with the Department of Defense and the State Department. Obviously, also, there was a bunch of influencers that were sent to NATO. It seems like just generally the sort of, like, foreign advocacy world is doing more. Like, the State Department has their own sort of cadre of content creators. I don't even know what it's like now.

It's probably expanded under Trump. But I guess like America itself has also always been involved in foreign influence operations. And it seems like as they're cutting things like Voice of America or maybe some of these other kind of like soft influence like media entities that we operated abroad, we might also be expanding this sort of like content creator strategy ourselves. Yeah, even knowingly or unknowingly, right? If this is like a specific strategy, this is just how this administration operates, right? It could be, you know, something that they're being intentional with. But it also, it's just like seeing J.D. Vance just take over that podcast, Mike, and how that was just so intuitive for him when it comes

to how to respond to this assassination or how to speak to the base just kind of shows how ingrained it is, right, in our politics. Yeah, I don't even think that it's like, here's the strategy document or like, you know, what the Democrats usually do of like, here's the slide deck of how we're going to do the internet. Like you said, it's so ingrained in everything to do with the administration. And then, you know, you brought up kind of like how the embassies are meeting with some of these MAGA influencers. Like I think something that you get into your piece too is like these MAGA influencers, like they're not part of the administration fully, right? They have the ear of the president. They're kind of in this broad thing. But they're not really, I mean, they're ultimately they're their own independent media entities. So it doesn't seem like they are subject to any sort of like disclosure requirements, are they?

No. I mean, it's the same kind of thing that we talk about when it comes to influencers and all kinds of like partnerships that they do, whether that is like you're reporting on chorus. There really isn't any. requirement for them to disclose anything. And it's the same thing on working on behalf of foreign governments. I think it really comes down to, and I think more of what we're seeing now and have seen over the last couple of years, is that the government and like policy has been so slow to catch up to this space, that the only way that you can get creators to disclose things proactively has been for their audiences to be aware of how the industry works, right? And so those audiences can then maybe catch wind of something that they're doing. Maybe they're doing something strange and try and hold them to account, which, in its way has its own problems with like turning things into, you know,

which hunts maybe necessarily that don't exist. But that's really the only kind of mechanism that we have for accountability in the space. That's depressing. It's just basically we're relying on like a bunch of audiences to hold their, you know, MAGA influencers accountable. Do we have any sense of like what the policy agenda of some of these countries, you know, is that they're pushing? Like I kind of think we know it with Israel. Obviously they're looking to manufacture consent for the genocide.

But I'm thinking of even just like the, the, Russian money that was pouring into Benny Johnson and Tim Poole's operations, which was exposed by the DOJ. Like, what do you think the goal is for a lot of these operations and what do you think they're trying to achieve with these influencers? Yeah, I think partially it is to get folks more acquainted with how these countries want to be viewed, right? To maybe talk them down on some of the more controversial things that they do do, right? Like, perhaps, you know, with Russia and Ukraine, you know, suggesting that Russia, that Russia is just responding to what it is that Ukraine has been doing.

Like this wasn't a war of aggression on their part. But yeah, no, I think it's really just, it comes down to marketing, unfortunately. And we're seeing that done with countries and creators. Do you think these creators are doing it for money, like in the sense that obviously Benny Johnson and Timpoole, like they were getting 100K a month, something obscene? But it seems like a lot of these trips, at least back when I was covering the lifestyle influencer ones, like they weren't even paid. Like they would get their travel paid for.

but it's not like they were getting tons of propaganda money. So I'm curious what you found in your reporting of like why influencers are going on these trips. Like are they just looking for a free trip abroad? Do they want to seem more worldly? Like are they getting more explicit payment for going on this stuff? Yeah. So to the creators who went on that Israel trip in August, I spoke to them. And they told me that they did not receive any like direct money to make content.

It was very much like they were getting paid, like their travel paid, their accommodations paid and some of the tours paid. Even, I think some of it still came out of their own pockets as well. So it really is kind of like a content opportunity, right? It's not necessarily like anything more than what feels like a freelance gig, right? I was talking to somebody today, actually, and just talking about how they feel like they can't give up. This doesn't do with Israel and this wasn't a right wing creator. This was a Democratic creator who's told me it today, but they were talking about how they feel like they can't give up opportunities, even if they, A, feel unsafe as we're looking at, you know, the aftermath of Charlie Kirk, or if they don't maybe fully agree with what an organization

does because they feel like they need to be constantly building up to that next big sponsorship, or that next big trip, or that next big invite to maybe a fundraiser for a political party or something like that. Those are the opportunities that they need to keep going to so they can continue to feed the beast, right? And so I have a feeling like that's the same thing with these folks who are going on this trip to Israel, who are doing these other trips. It's because they need to constantly produce and they need to make these relationships and constantly network. Yeah, it seems like everybody also, it's like they want to be seen on the world stage. They want the opportunity to meet these powerful people, even if the powerful people are evil.

And it is an interesting content opportunity in the sense that like, how long can you sit behind a microphone and talk? Like people are inherently uninterested after a while, like, you know, unless you're a commentary type person. And I feel like a lot of these influencers, like their followers like to go along with the journey. They're fascinated by looking at these countries. And I think they like the like alternative narrative.

I mean, I guess I'm even thinking back to like a lot of these like travel YouTubers that were doing propaganda even back in the day. Like a lot of the YouTube videos would be like the real story of Afghanistan or whatever. Like the Taliban is not what you think or whatever, whatever. You know, like they would go into these more kind of extreme groups and try to, I don't know if propaganda is the word, but certainly it was this opportunity to kind of like challenge people's assumptions. And I feel like now we're seeing like, I guess people in power leverage that. The same thing.

Right. And it's not even just that, but it's the flattery, right? I'm looking at specifically the full send podcast and the Nelk boys speaking to Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this summer, right? They said yes. I mean, it was John Chahidi who manages their brand, who I'm sure you know, he actually, they were reached out by Netanyahu, right? This was them through Trump's team that they had met, right, by doing all these Trump interviews

and working to do Trump's podcasts and getting all that stuff. And Netanyahu saw that and reached out to the White House who then connected them to the Nelk Boys, right? And when you look at like Kyle or Schlemy or whatever, they see that and they're like, whoa, this is so cool. And they want to have them on. They don't really think twice about it. Yeah, well, because it gets them attention. And I feel like, I mean, ultimately all of this is about like attention and monetizing attention. And I'm curious kind of like what your thoughts are on the reaction to that too and like whether that was good or bad because I, I mean, there was so much backlash in conservative circles. They had like other people on to talk about like the quote unquote other side.

But at the end of the day, like everyone was talking about it. It was a huge. get for them, whatever, whatever. Like, do you think that that ultimately played well for them doing that, even though they were so wholly unprepared for it? Yeah, I mean, maybe for that video, right, it got a lot of attention and views. But I mean, looking at their brand long term, just looking at the comments on that video from people who follow them, right? And have, like, you know, are this audience, make up this audience. People were really, like, upset and ashamed of it. And then when they were talking to creators after that podcast went up, they talked to Hassan. And I think they brought on like some Groyper-esque, like, anti-Semitic creators, right, to talk about it after.

It just kind of showed how wholly unprepared they actually are to have these conversations. And I haven't looked at the numbers and like, you know, seeing if maybe there's been a drop-off and, you know, in views or anything. I think it's hurt their brand a lot. I don't know if somebody like Netanyahu would be willing to go on it, you know, if they get the opportunity in the future. What platforms, I mean, we've talked about like YouTube a lot, obviously, Instagram plays a role. Ironically, TikTok, which was banned, was like supposed to be, people were like, oh, TikTok is, you know, China's influencing. There's actually no evidence of any of that. In fact, there's like all of this evidence on these other platforms of foreign influenced X included. When you look at the platform landscape, like, is there one platform that sort of like stands out or are they all sort of being leveraged? It is interesting. I have not seen as much TikTok, but it seems like when you look at the platforms that people in power engage with more, which I guess is made. maybe more Instagram, which kind of felt like the more home-based, you know, platform for most folks online.

And then YouTube and X, and X, of course, when it comes to right-wing creators specifically, because that's where all of that discussion happens, right? Those would be the main ones, I think, yeah. Yeah, it's kind of interesting because there was all this, like, fearmongering about TikTok, and it's like, that's actually not where the stuff has happened. I've seen it rampant on Instagram, I guess. Is there any way for the audience to know? when you're scrolling through, like who is on a propaganda trip?

Like, it seems like this is such a polluted media climate. And I'm just curious if you started to see any sort of like telltale signs of propaganda or like what people should look out for when they are following influencers that are suddenly in another country. Yeah. I mean, I feel like the Israel trips like give themselves away, especially in the climate, right, that we're in right now. But on other trips, yeah, it's hard. I don't know how you would specifically note, especially if they're targeting creators, right,

who already have these kinds of opinions. Like, Emily Saves America was one who went on this Israel trip, who hasn't been the most outspoken on, you know, the war in Gaza. I'm sure her audience was like, where is this coming from, right? Maybe it's that. But she's been pro-Israel. She's, I mean, you're right. She hasn't been outspoken, but she's definitely Zionist. I do think it's like interesting when you see someone who's, yeah, most of their life is just like L.A. nonsense, whatever.

And then suddenly, oh, wow, I'm like at a Gaza AIDS site. Like, that's so egregious. But I think what's so insidious is kind of what you said, is that like, it's similar to the dark money scheme. Like, there's no way to know about any of these political influence operations unless they're exposed because they're sort of inherently secretive. And unless the audience values transparency, which a lot of these audiences don't, it seems like it's kind of like good luck.

Yeah, it's on it's on you, me, and other people who pay attention this stuff, I guess, and report on it. I am curious what you think, like, sort of like, as we We look at foreign influence and foreign propaganda. Another thing that I have seen, and they're mostly joke videos about propaganda of, like, Eric Adams doing, like, Turkey propaganda, whatever, like, in funny AI videos. But it does seem like, you know, AI content is increasingly playing a role in political media and sort of, like, warping political things.

And have you seen any evidence of, like, foreign governments leveraging AI to spread their sort of, like, influence operations or using, like, AI generated influencer content? When it comes to like use of AI and when it comes to, you know, social video and all this stuff, I mean, the folks, the things that I hear the most is how it can be used to make the process of like editing and like preparing it a lot faster, which I guess, you know, in the long term means it goes out faster. You can create more content, like push it out. Yeah, I haven't seen at least a concerted, right, like a huge investment or concerted effort

towards it, unless you have. And I want to hear about it if you have. No, I just have seen those weird like Eric Adams videos. Yeah, I know. Honestly, those are so funny. They just absolutely kill me. They're so funny. So many of them are so funny.

I think another interesting thing that I've noticed in terms of like influencers and propaganda and stuff was actually around that sort of brief, I don't want to call it drama, but like the brief kind of like kerfuffle between India and Pakistan where there was like these sort of escalating political tensions. And you started to see obviously like India banned a bunch of Pakistani influencers and big news pages like at Muslim that do kind of like content creator like me. content. But you also started to see them like leverage a lot of their like national influencers and like push things and push this like MAGA message of like American India. Like we are like brothers together and we have to unite against Pakistan. And it just was an interesting example of how like in the midst of an international news moment like this country was like leveraging influencers. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean I can only imagine that we'll see more and more of that too. What role do like these NGOs play in all of this? Like is it all just like ministries of foreign affairs and like the government. itself or are there other kind of side organizations playing in this world too?

I mean, I can't think of any off the top of my head. I imagine, right, these people operate with huge budgets. They understand the media atmosphere. They understand, right, how to operate in this space. And it makes sense that they would get involved. And those are the things right now, too. Those are the things that I guess like the Trump administration is going to go after. After this Charlie Kirk assassination, we saw J.D. Vance yesterday talking about NGOs on

Charlie Kirk's podcast on Monday and how they were going to go after this because they don't, they say they don't want to go after speech, right? That was the whole thing Vance said yesterday. They don't want to go after speech. They will go after the groups that facilitate the speech, right? And so whatever that means, whoever they're thinking, right? I'm sure it's like some Soros, billionaire thing that's going on in the back of the mind with them right now.

Those are the things. I mean, obviously they have a ton of power. I mean, I think your point about speech is so good. I feel like at the same time that they are cracking down so aggressively on speech and we're having so much censorship. They're also like fueling the fire of this entirely new media ecosystem driven by content creators that is truly just doing propaganda. And I don't think has any ethics in terms of what they're doing, whether it's domestic influence operations or foreign influence operations. And that should terrify a lot of people, I think, that like want to kind of know what's going on and want to get information that's like accurate about the world. Especially since Americans don't really know what goes on in a lot of other countries, you know, like, I feel like we are sort of isolated and, you know, it's like these influencers are kind of how we do learn about the world.

And especially as our news media is getting completely destroyed, right? We've become even more reliant on these folks who, I mean, regardless of how they see themselves or talk about themselves, do not hold themselves to the same kind of ethical standards as journalists, too. All right, that's it for the show. Don't forget to subscribe to my Patreon where you can get bonus. episodes of Power User, monthly live streams, and more. You can also subscribe to my tech and online culture and newsletter, UserMag.co. That's usermag.com, where I write about all of this stuff. And if you like this show, please give us a rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening. I'll be back next week with a brand new episode of Power User. See you then.