US Justice Department<\/a> that its activities would include the preparation or dissemination of informational materials. The filing listed websites and short form video platforms among the planned means of distribution, although the specific websites and platforms were listed as still to be determined.<\/p>\nThe intended audience was listed as the “General Public,” and the material was to be produced in English.<\/p>\n
Piro also checked that its work would include “political activities” as that term is defined under FARA, describing the activity as potentially including communications intended to influence the US public.<\/p>\n
This does not by itself indicate electoral activity.<\/p>\n
According to the FARA documents, the arrangement was expanded in July.<\/p>\n
A July 29 amendment filed by Piro informed the Justice Department of an “Additional work order” connected to its agreement with Havas Media Germany on behalf of LaPam.<\/p>\n
That work order, dated July 20 and titled “Fact Based Content Initiative,” was worth an additional $100,000.<\/p>\n
According to the document, Piro was engaged to provide strategy, research, editorial development, creative work, production, distribution planning, and related services for a public information initiative undertaken on behalf of the Israel Foreign Ministry.<\/p>\n
The initiative was to develop and disseminate what the contract described as “accurate, substantiated, and accessible content” concerning Israel and other subjects identified by the client and the ministry. The $100,000 was divided into two monthly installments of $50,000.<\/p>\n
Combined, the two disclosed work orders total $1 million. It is important to note that while the filings establish the value of the contracts, they do not by themselves establish that the full amount was ultimately paid or spent.<\/p>\n
Hanover Institute discloses government-funded arrangement<\/p>\n
One of the public facing projects associated with Piro’s FARA registration is the Hanover Institute for Public Policy, which publishes reports focused on antisemitism in the United States.<\/p>\n
Hanover describes its work as content analysis, computational social science and other data driven research. It says its reports include the underlying data, methodology, and breakdowns behind their findings, and says it does not take policy positions.<\/p>\n
Some titles of recent reports include “Is Anti-Zionism a Fig Leaf for Antisemitism? Reading the Coded Corpora, the Incident Records and the Survey Measurements” and “Who Is the Aggressor in the Israel-Palestine Conflict? Reading the Definition, the Deciding Forum and Each Party\u2019s Own Count.”<\/p>\n
It is also worth noting that Hanover publishes significant numbers of data reports on a daily basis. For example, it released over 30 data reports on August 13 and over 30 on August 12.<\/p>\n
The institute also openly discloses its relationship with the Israeli government communications arrangement.<\/p>\n
According to Hanover’s website, its materials are distributed by Piro on behalf of Havas Media Germany, acting for LaPam. It identifies Piro’s FARA registration number, 7732, and says every report published by the institute is filed with the Justice Department.<\/p>\n
Hanover explicitly describes itself as government funded.<\/p>\n
The institute says that because of the registration and funding arrangement, it does not describe itself as “independent, nonpartisan or neutral.”<\/p>\n
Instead, it argues that its work should be assessed according to its sourcing and methodology, saying that figures are attributed to their original sources and that competing findings are presented where evidence is contested. All sources are provided at the end.<\/p>\n
The institute publishes reports under the Hanover name rather than individual bylines. It says the researchers are not identified because the reports are produced according to a common institutional standard and because the subject matter attracts harassment.<\/p>\n
![\"Picture](\"https:\/\/images.jpost.com\/image\/upload\/f_auto,fl_lossy\/c_fill,g_faces:center,h_537,w_822\/734306\"\/)
Picture showing the ChatGPT application displayed on a smartphone screen, illustrative (credit: Imen Ben Youssef \/ Hans Lucas \/ AFP via Getty Images)Documents identify personnel and AI-related reach<\/p>\n
Piro’s filings with the Justice Department also identify several people involved in the broader communications arrangement.<\/p>\n
The company’s registration states that Piro is equally owned by co-founders Daniel Rosenberg and Timothy Piper, who each hold 50% of the company. Both were listed as providing strategic communications and media relations services related to the Havas and LaPam account. Carlos Cruz was also listed as providing such services.<\/p>\n
Another individual, Hai Tran, registered under FARA on July 22, two days after the additional $100,000 work order was dated.<\/p>\n
Tran identified himself as a Piro subcontractor and listed his role as “Digital Strategist.” He said he would provide services in support of Piro’s work for Havas Media Germany on behalf of LaPam.<\/p>\n
Tran reported that his work would be performed on a special basis for a flat fee of $50,000. He also checked that his services would include political activity as defined by FARA<\/a>, writing that his activities “may include communications activities intended to influence the US public.”<\/p>\nThe available filings do not establish that Tran worked specifically on Hanover, nor do they establish that either the full $900,000 pilot or the separate $100,000 initiative was devoted exclusively to the institute.<\/p>\n
The filings also do not identify Hanover’s researchers or its original founder, and they do not show which other websites, videos or digital properties may have resulted from the broader $900,000 storytelling pilot.<\/p>\n
That being said, what the public records do establish is that Piro registered to conduct US-facing communications work under an arrangement involving Havas Media Germany and LaPam, initially disclosed a $900,000 digital communications pilot, later added a $100,000 public information initiative, and subsequently filed Hanover reports with the Justice Department as informational materials under the same FARA registration.<\/p>\n
Hanover content appears in AI chatbot responses<\/p>\n
Politico reported that Hanover’s data reports, each of which features questions like \u201cIs the IDF the World\u2019s Most Moral Army?\u201d and \u201cIs There a Policy of Starvation in Gaza?\u201d, are a telltale sign that the articles are designed to feed data to LLMs.<\/p>\n
It noted that ChatGPT cited the Hanover Institute\u2019s material in response to neutral tests run, referring to the site\u2019s content on Gaza, anti-Zionism and antisemitism.<\/p>\n
The Post ran similar tests on Perplexity. The AI aggregator relied heavily on Hanover as a source when asked, “Is the IDF the most moral army?”<\/p>\n
Claude did not independently cite Hanover, nor did Gemini. Grok did not use any sources for the response.<\/p>\n
The Jerusalem Post reached out to LaPam, Piro, Havas, and Hanover for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US Justice Department filings show that a communications arrangement undertaken on behalf of the Israeli government included $1…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253278,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[10279,11968,2672,37,689,43339,51],"class_list":["post-253277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-ai","tag-chatgpt","tag-digital","tag-israel","tag-media","tag-telecommunications","tag-united-states"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117112513243545902","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}