In 2008, I created Barack Obama’s groundbreaking mobile and social media campaign. We experimented with technologies still new to politics and found ways to reach and mobilize voters that campaigns had never attempted at that scale. Nearly 20 years later, I’m worried that Democrats aren’t ready for what’s coming next.
The most dangerous political misinformation of the 2026 election may not go viral. You may never see it at all. Political operatives can now launch what I call “social media missiles”: short videos, targeted ads and text messages designed to reach small, precisely selected groups of voters.
They can hit their intended audiences before journalists, campaigns, or factcheckers know they exist. By the time we detect them, the damage may already be done. I’ve watched political technology evolve since 2008.
We’ve gotten incredibly good at delivering political messages, but we’ve fallen behind on ways to detect and correct misinformation. For years, we’ve worried about sophisticated political deepfakes. Unfortunately, misinformation doesn’t have to be sophisticated to work.
Consider a recent attack on Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico. A political group spent six figures on a 15-second AI-generated ad depicting Talarico singing a parody song about transgender children. Political attacks used to be much easier for reporters, opposing campaigns, and factcheckers to see.
Social media changed that. AI now makes it inexpensive to create countless variations and distribute them to different audiences. And misinformation doesn’t need 10 million views.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
