Imagine waking up in a country where you’re not sure the people in power are really listening to you. You scroll through your phone, and the videos you see are not just entertaining—they’re telling you that the system is rigged, that your country has been betrayed, and that only one person can save it. That is not a hypothetical scenario. According to the Global Risk Report, mis- and disinformation threats ranked second among the world’s short-term risks in 2026, after years of rapid growth in organized social-media manipulation since 2017. Disinformation is especially dangerous during elections because it doesn’t just…

You remember the 2023 Maui wildfires, don’t you? More than a hundred people died, nearly two thousand homes were destroyed, and the historic town of Lahaina was all but erased. The official story was that a broken power pole owned by the local utility sparked dry grass on a windy day. But in the days that followed, a very different story exploded across social media. Thousands of people shared videos and posts claiming the fires had been started by a “direct energy weapon,” a laser beam from space, or a government plot to clear the land for a high-speed rail…