The Pentagon is pouring significant resources into “catching” deepfakes, operating under the assumption that the war against disinformation is primarily a detection game. Programs like DARPA’s Semantic Forensics and various defense-contracted tools are laser-focused on identifying synthetic images, audio, and video once they have already entered the information bloodstream. While these tools are impressive feats of engineering, they fundamentally misunderstand the evolving nature of the threat. The Department of Defense is preparing to catch yesterday’s digital forgeries while ignoring a far more sophisticated and dangerous reality: our AI systems are not being tricked by fake media; they are being trained…

For years, the global conversation surrounding misinformation has been heavily skewed toward the Western experience, particularly within the United States. We have long relied on research conducted in a handful of wealthy, English-speaking nations to understand why falsehoods travel so quickly, assuming these insights would apply universally. However, a landmark study published in Nature Behavior has finally corrected this imbalance. By orchestrating a massive experiment involving nearly 35,000 individuals across 16 countries and six continents, researchers from Cornell University—led by David Rand and Gordon Pennycook—have provided the most comprehensive map of how the world processes truth and deception. This ambitious…