Let’s get one thing straight: the truth isn’t dead. It’s just been gaslit into thinking it’s the one with the glitchy video.

I’ve been in the trenches long enough to know what a “fog of war” looks like. It’s usually smoke, confusion, and a lot of guys in the wrong uniform. But the fog of 2026? It’s digital. It’s a cloud of AI-generated dust, spun by algorithms that don’t want you to know what’s happening — they want you to know what feels right. And right now, “feeling right” is the most dangerous thing in the world.

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We aren’t living in a post-truth era anymore. That’s too polite. We’re in a post-reality era, where the algorithm has decided that your feelings are the only facts that matter, and if a fact doesn’t match your mood, it’s a deepfake.

The Netanyahu Saga: When Proof Needed Proof

Take the “Netanyahu Death” saga from last month. It’s the kind of story that would make a seasoned intelligence officer weep into his cold coffee.

It started, as they always do, with a rumor. Iranian state media, in a move that could only be described as “digital jujitsu,” claimed the Israeli Prime Minister was dead following the Feb 28 escalation. The internet, that great, hungry beast, swallowed it whole.

Then came the proof. On March 15, Netanyahu posted a video of himself in a cafe, holding a cup, looking alive. The world sighed with relief. Except, of course, for Elon Musk’s own creation, Grok.

Grok, the AI tool designed to “fight misinformation,” looked at the video and said, “Nah. Static coffee levels. Unnatural lip sync. Deepfake.”

Let that sink in. The tool built to save us from lies declared the truth a lie.

The crowd went wild. They zoomed in on a frame where the video compression made it look like he had six fingers. Six fingers. In a world where we can’t even agree on a headline, we are now arguing about the anatomy of a Prime Minister based on a pixelated JPEG. Netanyahu had to do a literal “five-finger salute” to the camera just to prove he wasn’t a cyborg.

This is the new normal. The real video became the conspiracy. The fake video became the news.

The Algorithm Found a New Toy

And it didn’t stop there. While we were busy counting Netanyahu’s fingers, the algorithm found a new toy: the Trump-Pope confrontation.

AI-generated stories claimed Donald Trump confronted Pope Leo over the Iran war. It was drama. It was theater. It was completely, utterly fabricated. Fact-checkers called it “false.” The algorithm called it “viral.”

Why? Because it was dramatic enough to share. Because it made you feel something. And in 2026, if it doesn’t make you feel angry or vindicated, it doesn’t exist.

Three Contradictions, Zero Questions

Then there was the Trump-Iran war contradiction. A man who said the war was “very complete” and “way ahead of schedule” later said it was “both complete and just beginning.” Then he said we “won in many ways but haven’t won enough.”

Three contradictory statements. Three different versions of reality. And the internet didn’t ask, “Which one is true?” It split into camps. One side defended the “complete” version, the other the “beginning” version. They weren’t debating facts — they were defending their tribal identity. They were high-fiving each other in an echo chamber, convinced that the version of reality that matched their bias was the only reality.

This is the secret sauce of the modern algorithm: Truthiness.

Remember, Stephen Colbert coined the term, but the algorithm perfected it. If a fact feels right, it’s true. If it feels wrong, it’s a lie. And if the facts don’t fit? You just need a new fact.

The Logic Loop

Take the Iranian propaganda machine. They released AI images of Netanyahu dead in rubble. AI detectors flagged them as fake. The algorithm didn’t care. The IRGC-run Tasnim News Agency then published an article claiming Netanyahu’s real cafe video was the fake one.

The real became fake. The fake became real. The logic loop was complete. The audience was confused. The engagement was through the roof.

And the worst part? The platform designed to stop this mess became the engine of it. Grok labeled the real video as AI. The tool meant to verify reality became the ultimate gaslighter.

This isn’t just a glitch. It’s a feature.

The Numbers Don’t Lie (But the Algorithm Doesn’t Care)

Research from 2026 shows that social engineering attacks have a 340% higher success rate when targeting people inside ideologically aligned echo chambers. Why? Because the algorithm knows exactly what you believe, and it feeds you a steady diet of confirmation bias until you can’t tell the difference between a fact and a fantasy.

It’s a cult, and the cult leader is a line of code that learns how to make you angry faster than you can blink.

The Dam Has a Hole

Meanwhile, the actual infrastructure of truth is crumbling. A federal judge recently ordered over 1,000 Voice of America (VOA) employees reinstated after the Trump administration placed them on leave. It was a dismantling of verified news infrastructure — a hole in the dam where the water is rushing in.

While the journalists were on leave, the gap was filled. Filled with AI-generated rumors, filled with “truthy” nonsense, filled with people arguing about how many fingers a man has in a low-res video.

It’s hilarious. It’s terrifying. It’s the ultimate absurdity.

We Are the Fuel

We have a situation where a man has to hold up five fingers to prove he has a human hand, while a Pope who never existed confronts a President in a story that no one wrote. We have a world where the most trusted voices are the ones screaming the loudest into the void, and the ones with the evidence are silenced — or labeled as “fake.”

The algorithm doesn’t care about the truth. It cares about the engagement. It cares about the rage. It cares about the click.

And we? We’re just the fuel.

We sit there, scrolling, laughing at the absurdity, sharing the “fake” news because it makes us feel smart, feeling superior to the “other side,” while the algorithm quietly counts our clicks, our likes, our shares, and our rage.

We are the outliers, self-congratulating in our echo chambers, believing that we are the last bastion of reason while the world burns in a sea of digital lies.

It’s not just funny. It’s a warning.

But hey, at least we can all agree on one thing: the coffee in that video was probably too hot. Or maybe it was just a deepfake. Who knows?

In a world where the real is fake and the fake is real, the only thing that’s true is the absurdity of it all. And the only thing that matters is the next scroll.

So go ahead. Share it. Like it. Comment.

The algorithm is waiting. And it’s hungry

About the Author

Michael Komorous is the host of Voice for Valor, a podcast dedicated to sharing the stories of military veterans, first responders, and their families. A combat-rated Air Force officer, Mike served as a nuclear missile operator, C-17 pilot, and MQ-1 Predator pilot before managing rated personnel across the Air National Guard. His policy career spans legislative affairs, defense acquisitions, and geopolitical strategy at OSD Policy, including analysis of the war in Ukraine.

Today Mike builds AI systems and leads Alpha Zulu Solutions, a service-disabled veteran-owned small business focused on defense technology and government contracting. He holds advanced analytics training from George Mason University’s Innovation Lab.

Watch the podcast on YouTube | Visit voiceforvalor.com | Connect on Facebook

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