John Kiriakou devoted an October 2025 episode of his interview programme to an article published by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and summarised its central finding in his own words at the top of the show.
The summary he gave
The Israeli government, he said, is spending $6 million for an American firm to try to make ChatGPT more pro-Israeli. The company is called Clock Tower X. It “will generate and deploy content across platforms, help game algorithms, plus manage AI frameworks to make them more friendly to the Israeli cause.”[1]
He put the finding in the context of lobbying that already exists. With the American Israel Public Affairs Committee “already wielding more authority on Capitol Hill and in political races all across the country,” he asked, “how much more mindlessly pro-Israel does the country need to be?”[2]
The contract terms he read out
Later in the interview Kiriakou read a passage from the article directly, prefacing it by saying it was too important to paraphrase. At least 80 per cent of the content Clock Tower produces will be “tailored to Gen Z audiences across platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, podcasts, and other relevant digital and broadcast outlets,” with a minimum goal of 50 million impressions per month. The firm will also “deploy websites and content to deliver ChatGPT framing results on GPT conversations.”[3]
He then restated the mechanism as he understood it, and asked the article’s author to confirm it: that the company would create new websites in order to influence how models trained on the open internet frame the subject — in effect, “to overwhelm the internet with information in support of Israel just so that anytime somebody asks ChatGPT a question about Israel, the response is going to be pro-Israel.”[4] His guest agreed.
Attribution
The underlying reporting is not Kiriakou’s; he identifies the Quincy Institute and its author throughout, and says he had not expected to see anything of the kind until he read the piece. What is recorded here is his own on-air characterisation of the contract and its aim.