Pakistan Bot Farms Targeting US and UK Public Opinion on Israel, Social Media Platforms Confirm
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly identified Pakistan as a source of sophisticated bot farm operations designed to erode American support for Israel and weaken the US-Israeli alliance, in remarks that align with a growing body of evidence from social media platforms and investigative journalists.
Speaking in an interview with CBS News’ 60 Minutes, Netanyahu described a deliberate campaign using fabricated American personas to manipulate public sentiment. “We have several countries that basically manipulated social media with bot farms, fake addresses to break the American sympathy for Israel and to break the American-Israeli alliance because they think it’s in their interest,” he said.
He offered a specific example of how the messaging is constructed: “It’s like you hear a text message, ‘I am a red-blooded Texan, I always supported Israel, but I can’t stand what they are doing’ and turning against Israel — then you trace the address to some basement in Pakistan.”
X Dismantles Pakistan-Run Network
Netanyahu’s claims are supported by independent disclosures from within the platforms themselves. In March, Nikita Bier, head of product at X (formerly Twitter), confirmed the platform had dismantled a network operated from Pakistan. “Last night, we found a guy in Pakistan who was managing 31 accounts posting AI war videos. All were hacked, and the usernames were changed on Feb 27 to ‘Iran War Monitor’ or some derivative,” Bier said. He added that X was “getting much faster at detecting this, and also eliminating the incentive to do this.”
UK Audiences Also Targeted
Separate investigations have exposed a financial dimension to these operations. A report by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism detailed how a man in Pakistan was earning thousands of pounds through Facebook pages that spread racist and inflammatory videos targeting UK audiences. The content frequently targeted Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and London Mayor Sadiq Khan, generating revenue through Meta’s advertising model.
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These operations typically blend automated bots with human-managed accounts and AI-generated content, a combination that makes detection significantly harder. Pakistan has not publicly commented on the specific allegations.
India’s Response
The pattern extends to India as well. Ahead of the May conflict last year, India blocked and withheld numerous social media accounts based in Pakistan for spreading misinformation. Those accounts remain blocked, though new bot accounts linked to Pakistan have continued to emerge. Earlier this week, the Government of India’s fact-check unit and India’s foreign ministry jointly fact-checked a Pakistan-linked account that was using an AI-generated video to spread misinformation about India’s counter-terror operation in Pakistan last year.
With millions of users exposed daily to potentially manipulated content, the disclosures raise fresh and urgent questions about the scale and coordination of Pakistan’s state and non-state social media operations across multiple countries.