The Global Whisper Campaign: How AI and Influence Operations are Reshaping the Indo-Pacific It begins with a whisper, hidden in a flood of notifications on a mobile phone in Tokyo. A voter scrolling through X, formerly Twitter, during the February 2026 Japanese House of Representatives election stumbles upon a graphic meme depicting Sanae Takaichi, the conservative frontrunner. The image is sharp, professionally made, and juxtaposes her smiling face with ominous military tanks and the caption: “Takaichi is a militarist. Her policies will drag Japan into a war over Taiwan.” The voter pauses. The text reads perfectly in Japanese, but something…

The world of scientific publishing is built on a foundation of trust—the collective faith that what appears in peer-reviewed journals has been rigorously vetted, accurately represents the research conducted, and can be safely used to inform decisions that range from individual medical choices to broad public health policies. However, this foundation is facing a set of complex and rapidly evolving threats. Recent years have seen the rise of sophisticated operations designed to infiltrate the scholarly record, not with accidental errors, but with deliberately misleading or fabricated content. This new battleground is the focus of a significant new initiative launched by…