Synthetic everything is warping America

AxiosAugust 23, 2026en

A shadowy polling firm confessed this week to faking survey results in two marquee races — then claimed the entire operation was a "short-term social experiment" on misinformation. Why it matters: An AI-enabled flood of synthetic and outright fabricated content is wreaking havoc on reality, poisoning the signals people rely on to understand politics, business and culture. Catch up quick: Median Strategies, a previously unknown polling outfit with little public footprint, surfaced this summer with two blockbuster surveys that were quickly absorbed into the political conversation. In Wisconsin's Democratic gubernatorial primary, Median's fake poll showed democratic socialist Francesca Hong lea

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