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Good morning - Michael here, writing from the frontlines of Massif & Kroo: Here's what you need to pay attention to in media today:

That's how many false war-related claims from Iranian state sources NewsGuard identified in the first week of the U.S.-Iran conflict alone — more than triple the rate from the two weeks before the strikes began. And that's just the state-linked stuff. The real volume, when you include opportunistic accounts and AI-generated fakes, is orders of magnitude larger.

This is the first major war where AI-generated misinformation is moving faster than the conflict itself. And it's changing how every person on earth consumes information about what's actually happening.

Let me walk you through what's been going on, because it matters even if you're not following the war closely.

AI-generated videos of explosions, manipulated satellite images of destroyed bases, recycled clips from other conflicts relabeled as current events, and even screenshots from the video game Arma 3 are being passed off as real combat footage. One post claiming to show ballistic missiles over Dubai was viewed more than 4 million times before anyone flagged that it was actually footage of an Iranian attack on Tel Aviv from October 2024.

Iranian state media claimed 650 U.S. troops were killed or wounded in the first two days. CENTCOM says the actual number of American service members killed is six. An AI-generated image of Khamenei's body under rubble went viral before anyone confirmed how he actually died. A video claiming to show Iranian missiles hitting Tel Aviv was traced to one person in Pakistan managing 31 fake accounts — all created on February 27, the day before the strikes began.

BBC Verify called this the first major global conflict where more misinformation is being produced using AI than in traditional ways. That's a threshold. We crossed it. We're not going back.

Here’s what Nikita Bier, X Head of Product, said below.

It's the right move. It's also a confession: the platform's own incentive structure was paying people to create fake war content.

When your monetization model rewards engagement and doesn't check whether the content is real, you get exactly what you'd expect — a flood of fabricated footage designed to go viral.

And it's not just random accounts. A Russia-aligned disinformation operation called "Operation Overload" has been posting videos designed to impersonate intelligence agencies and news outlets, undermining people's sense of safety. In one case, they shared a warning falsely attributed to Israeli intelligence telling Israelis in Germany and the U.S. to not go outside. This isn't new. But the scale and speed are unprecedented.

Meanwhile, Iran's internet has been blacked out for over a week. 88 million people are getting information only from state-run TV and a government-controlled messaging app called Bale. The outside world is getting footage through Telegram, X, and TikTok — much of it unverified, some of it fabricated.

Inside Iran: a government monopoly on reality. Outside Iran: an unregulated flood of content where no one can tell what's real. Both are failures of the same system — one by restriction, the other by overload. And neither side is producing the thing people actually need: reliable information about what's happening.

A RAND researcher pointed out that in the Ukraine conflict, social media allowed civilians to tell their own story, which shaped global opinion and policy. That's not happening in Iran. The blackout means there's no authentic civilian perspective getting out. The narrative vacuum is being filled by state propaganda on one side and AI-generated fakes on the other.

I'm not saying social media is broken as an information tool. I'm saying the incentive structures behind it are broken — and war is where that becomes impossible to ignore. The platforms reward speed over accuracy, engagement over truth, and volume over verification. That works fine when the stakes are low. When the stakes are life and death, it produces exactly the mess we're watching right now.

It happened because three of the biggest producers in the Middle East are running out of places to store the stuff. Kuwait, Iraq, and the UAE have all cut output because the Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed. Tankers won't go through it. Iran has threatened to attack any ship that tries.

About 20% of the world's oil moves through that waterway, and right now, it's not moving. Iraq's southern oil fields — which were producing 4.3 million barrels a day before the war — have collapsed to 1.3 million. That's a 70% drop.

Kuwait announced "precautionary cuts" on Saturday. The UAE said it's "carefully managing" offshore production. Translation: they're all pulling back because there's nowhere to send the oil. Shortly after prices cleared $100 on Sunday evening, President Trump posted on Truth Social that higher oil prices were a "very small price to pay" for destroying Iran's nuclear threat.

Brent and WTI both touched $109. U.S. crude surged about 35% last week — the biggest weekly gain in futures trading history going back to 1983. Meanwhile, Iran named Khamenei's son Mojtaba as the new supreme leader, and the conflict shows no signs of easing.

Not enough controllers, not enough gates, not enough room. The agency held an emergency meeting in Washington on Wednesday to force both airlines to cut back before the summer season starts on March 25.

American publicly blamed United, calling their scheduling "reckless" and warning it would cause long taxi times, tarmac delays, and missed connections for everyone. United hasn't said much. The FAA's concern is simpler: the airlines are booking more planes than the system can safely move, and if they don't pull flights now, the whole operation breaks down this summer.

If you already have a ticket through O'Hare, don't cancel — but if you can, rebook for the earliest flight of the day. That's the one they won't cut. Afternoon flights are the ones most likely to get bumped. And if the airline cancels on you because of this, you're entitled to a full refund.

YOUR NEXT MOVE: Before you share anything from an active conflict, check the source. Reverse-image search it. Look for telltale signs of AI generation — warped edges, frozen backgrounds, objects that don't interact naturally. The incentive structures on every major platform reward engagement over accuracy. The only filter that works right now is you.

Feedback, thoughts, suggestions? Hit the reply!

Michael Wildes is the founder and CEO of Drive Phase Holding Company, a permanent-capital firm focused on building category-defining companies across business, media (owner of Massif & Kroo), aviation, and impact. After leaving a career as a professional pilot, he spent a year as Business Editor at FLYING Magazine writing 330+ articles on aviation's transformation. Now he builds permanent-capital companies focused on long-term trends that compound over decades. Based in Arlington, Virginia.

Connect: mikewildes.com | [email protected]

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