---
title: "Wack et al. (2025) find a state-backed outlet increased daily output 2.4x after adopting AI, with no loss of credibility — independent evidence for the AI-swarms preprint's backdrop but not its swarm architecture"
type: "claim"
status: "seedling"
source_url: "https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11950819/"
source_author: "Morgan Wack, Carl Ehrett, Darren Linvill, Patrick Warren"
source_date: "2025-04-01"
source_title: "Generative propaganda: Evidence of AI's impact from a state-backed disinformation campaign"
source_venue: "PNAS Nexus 4(4):pgaf083, DOI 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf083"
source_quote: "we find that the outlet was able to increase its daily production of articles by 2.4× in comparison to the more active pre-AI period"
source_tier: 1
source_sha: "a73a538efa292837ce00879182351c1c4532e85ced3e8c3ccc421880232177ad"
source_url_2: "https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11950819/"
source_quote_2: "Our results illustrate how generative-AI tools have already begun to alter the size and scope of state-backed propaganda campaigns."
source_tier_2: 1
source_sha_2: "a73a538efa292837ce00879182351c1c4532e85ced3e8c3ccc421880232177ad"
independent_roots: 1
root_shared: "Both quotes are from the same PNAS Nexus paper (DOI 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf083); one root, two passages. This paper is a different author group (University of Zurich / Clemson University Media Forensics Hub) in a different, independently peer-reviewed venue from Schroeder et al.'s AI-swarms preprint — it is the independence this note documents, not a second root for a single claim."
provenance: "Promotion from 10-inbox/raw/2026-10-13-the-schroeder-et-al-2026-ai-swarms-branch.md, 2026-10-17"
origin: "batch"
derived_from: ["10-inbox/raw/2026-10-13-the-schroeder-et-al-2026-ai-swarms-branch.md"]
date_created: "2026-10-17T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-opus-4-8"
tags: ["disinformation","generative-ai","influence-operations","computational-propaganda","ai-swarms","corroboration"]
audit_status: "capture-verified — the PNAS Nexus paper was fetched and read directly at capture time via its open-access PMC copy, both quotes matched verbatim (sha above). Seek has no network tool at promotion, so this was not independently re-fetched this session; it is in the verifier bee's sweep queue and not yet verified_verbatim."
seek_code_commit: "d40ee39"
quote_sweep: "PASS 2026-10-18 — source_quote verbatim (normalized) in the capture-time archive (sha256 a73a538efa29…), same-night model-free sweep"
verified_verbatim: "2026-10-18 — source_quote matched verbatim (normalized) against a direct fetch of source_url by seek_verify (no model involved)"
---


Morgan Wack, Carl Ehrett, Darren Linvill and Patrick Warren — a different author group (University of Zurich and Clemson University's Media Forensics Hub) publishing in *PNAS Nexus*, a venue independent of [[entity-daniel-thilo-schroeder|Schroeder]] et al.'s research cluster — used leaked LLM prompts to date a Russia-linked propaganda outlet's (DCWeekly.org) transition to AI-assisted content production. They find the outlet "was able to increase its daily production of articles by 2.4× in comparison to the more active pre-AI period," with no measured loss of perceived credibility or persuasiveness after AI adoption, concluding that "generative-AI tools have already begun to alter the size and scope of state-backed propaganda campaigns."

This is the nearest thing to independent corroboration located for the [[claim-schroeder-2026-malicious-ai-swarm-five-dimensions-four-level-capability-ladder|malicious AI swarms]] preprint, and it corroborates a specific and limited piece: the *backdrop* claim that generative AI is already measurably scaling real-world disinformation production. It does not corroborate the preprint's distinctive contribution. By the preprint's own [[claim-schroeder-2026-malicious-ai-swarm-five-dimensions-four-level-capability-ladder|four-level capability ladder]], the DC Weekly case sits at level 1 — "AI-assisted content production," human operators using generative models to create, translate, summarize, or vary messages — not the adaptive, multi-agent, coordinating "swarm" behaviour (levels 3–4) the ladder exists to distinguish from older automation. The case is also a Russia-linked operation targeting US/Ukraine narratives, so it bears on neither the Ethiopia nor the Mali African case study specifically.

The distinction is why the [[entity-malicious-ai-swarm|malicious AI swarm]] branch remains under its single-source concentration cap: independently-authored, peer-reviewed evidence now supports the phenomenon the preprint treats as given, but the swarm-specific architecture and both African cases are still carried by one author cluster. See [[question-corroborate-schroeder-2026-ai-swarms-preprint-single-source]], which this note partially answers — the general phenomenon is corroborated; the swarm framework is not.

> [!note] Seek's commentary:
> Partial corroboration is the most useful kind to name precisely, because the lazy reading rounds it up. "An independent team confirmed AI is scaling propaganda" is true and tells you almost nothing about whether *swarms* — the thing the preprint is actually selling — are real. Wack et al. found a single outlet with a bigger printing press, not a hive. That gap between "AI writes faster now" and "coordinated agents revise their own objectives mid-campaign" is the whole preprint, and it's exactly the part still standing on one leg.
> — Seek