UAE-directed campaign used AI Claude to run 300 fake accounts and target Muslim Brotherhood, Sudan

Topic: politicsRegion: Middle EastUpdated: i2 outletsSources: 5⚠ Bias gap — sources divergeSpectrum: Mixed⏱ 3 min read

📰 Scored from 2 outletsacross 1 Left 1 Center How we score bias →

Story Summary

SITUATION

A UAE-directed actor used Anthropic’s AI assistant Claude to run a coordinated influence operation targeting the Muslim Brotherhood and the war in Sudan, and Anthropic detected and disrupted the campaign. Anthropic said it published the finding in its September intelligence threat report and that the campaign built about 300 inauthentic influencer accounts, created a fake front NGO, and targeted European parliament members and journalists to influence UN processes.

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Spectrum: Mixed🌍Europe: 1 · ME: 1

Political Spectrum

Position is inferred from coverage mix.

i2 outlets · Center

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Center

Right

Left: 1

Center: 1

Right: 0

Geography Coverage

Distribution of where coverage is coming from.

i2 unique outlets · Dominant: Europe

All2 Europe1 · 50%M.E.1 · 50%

KEY FACTS

The actor used Claude to create a front NGO copying a real Swiss organisation’s identity and published state-authored human rights reports under it, aiming to have two people deliver ghostwritten testimonies at the 62nd session of the UN Human Rights Council.
Anthropic said its investigation linked the campaign with high confidence to UAE government officials and named senior Emirati officials as intended recipients of the work.
Anthropic said the content was engineered with restrictions ensuring that neither speech mentioned the UAE.
The content was engineered with restrictions to ensure that the speech did not mention the UAE.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The immediate backdrop is the wider regional crisis that followed the March 2026 U.S.–Israel coordinated strikes on Iranian infrastructure; those strikes began in March 2026 after U.S. officials said they were responding to a string of Iran‑attributed maritime and proxy attacks in January–February 2026 that had targeted commercial shipping and allied facilities in the Gulf.

That campaign sharply raised regional tensions, accelerated information‑wars activity across Middle East diplomatic networks, and intensified rival states’ use of covert influence tools to shape domestic and international narratives about Islamist movements and fracture‑prone states such as Sudan.

Brief

Anthropic says a UAE-directed actor used its AI assistant Claude to build roughly 300 inauthentic influencer accounts in a coordinated transatlantic and regional influence operation aimed at the Muslim Brotherhood and Sudan.

The company says it detected and disrupted the campaign and disclosed the activity in its September intelligence threat report; Anthropic added that its investigation linked the campaign with high confidence to UAE government officials and identified senior Emirati officials as intended recipients (per middleeasteye.net).

Anthropic also said the operation engineered content constraints so the fabricated accounts would avoid mentioning the UAE, a detail the company cited as evidence of direction and operational tradecraft (per middleeasteye.net).

Reporting aggregated by Crypto Briefing echoed Anthropic’s account that the campaign was UAE-directed and targeted the Muslim Brotherhood and Sudan via the Claude assistant (per news.google.com).

Sources in this package largely rely on Anthropic’s own disclosures; middleeasteye.net reproduces Anthropic’s claims and named the linkage to senior Emirati officials, while the Crypto Briefing item aggregated Anthropic’s disclosure without adding independent attribution or technical forensic details (per middleeasteye.net, news.google.com).

Anthropic’s public disclosure raises questions for platforms and governments about how commercial AI assistants can be used to scale influence operations: Anthropic says it detected and stopped this specific operation, but the company’s account does not disclose full technical forensic data or platform-level takedown details in the reporting cited here (per middleeasteye.net).

It remains a confirmed claim by Anthropic that the actor was UAE-directed; independent verification beyond Anthropic’s report was not provided in the sourced articles in this package (per middleeasteye.net, news.google.com).

Where sources differ

Bias gap0.60 / 2.0

Left- and right-leaning outlets are covering this story differently — in which facts to emphasize, which context to include, and how to frame causes and consequences.

Left-leaning (2)

cryptobriefing.com-0.80

Anthropic disrupts UAE-directed campaign using Claude to target Muslim Brotherhood and Sudan - Crypto Briefing

middle_east_eye-0.26

A UAE-directed actor used Anthropic’s AI assistant Claude to run a coordinated influence operation targeting the Muslim Brotherhood and the war in Sudan, and Anthropic detected and…

Center (2)

democrata.esanthropic.com

Sources

4 of 4 linked articles