Levine is the senior elections integrity fellow at the German Marshall Fund's Alliance for Securing Democracy, where he assesses vulnerabilities in electoral infrastructure, administration, and policies.
Savoia is a program assistant for the Alliance for Securing Democracy at GMF, where he serves as the lead author of ASD's weekly newsletter, the Securing Democracy Dispatch.
In the days leading up to Slovakia’s highly contested parliamentary election, deepfakes generated by artificial intelligence spread across social media. In one posted by the far-right Republika party, Progressive Slovakia leader Michal Šimečka apparently “ announced ” plans to raise the price of beer if elected. In a second, more worrisome fake audio recording, Šimečka “ discussed ” how his party will rig the election, including by buying votes from the country’s Roma minority.
Although Šimečka never said those words, it is unclear how many of the millions who heard the recordings across Facebook, TikTok, and Telegram knew that, although Slovak language fact-checkers did their best to debunk the clips.
While it is difficult to assess whether the deep fakes manipulated Slovak voters’ choices—and to what extent—it is clear that artificial intelligence is increasingly being used to target elections and could threaten future ones. To protect its elections, the United States must learn from Slovakia and bolster its ability to counter AI-generated disinformation threats before November 2024.
The threat of falsified information is not new for democracies, but artificial intelligence is likely to only compound these existing problems, particularly in the near-term. Authoritarian adversaries like Russia, China, and Iran will exploit different types of artificial intelligence to magnify their influence campaigns, as the Department of Homeland Security’s 2024 Homeland Threat Assessment recently warned. With this technology becoming widespread, a greater number of actors are able—and, in some cases, have already begun—to create falsified audio and video material with a potentially greater ability to mislead voters than textual disinformation.
In hyperpolarized societies like the United States, AI-generated disinformation may undermine voters’ ability to make informed judgments before elections. Deepfakes that purport to show corrupt dealings or election rigging behind closed doors—like those seen in Slovakia—could increase voter apathy and undermine faith in democracy, especially for a U.S. audience already awash in baseless claims of election fraud. Finally, different kinds of AI tools, such as chatbots and deepfake images, audio, and video could make it harder for U.S. voters to reject content designed to be manipulative, which could raise questions about the legitimacy of elections, especially those that are closely contested.
There has already been acknowledgment of risks from artificial intelligence in the United States. The U.S. Senate Rules Committee recently held a hearing on AI-related threats to elections and bills have been introduced in both chambers to address disclosures in political ads. The White House published the blueprint for an “AI Bill of Rights” to govern the technology’s development and use. On the state level, bills continue to be proposed and passed on the matter.
However, there is still much more that can be done before the 2024 presidential election to safeguard the vote. First, the U.S. Congress should mandate that large social media platforms like Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok require labels on all AI-generated content and remove posts that fail to disclose this. Even if AI-generated content were to spread, users would be warned of its origin via a clear marking. Congress could learn from the European Union’s (EU) approach on this front. Earlier this year, the EU passed the Digital Services Act, a comprehensive regulation that mandates similar labels for deep fakes.
Second, political campaigns should pledge to label all AI-generated content in ads and other official communications. On the platform front, Google, and YouTube already require that ads using AI-generated voice and imagery be clearly labeled. Campaigns should also avoid using artificial intelligence to mimic a political opponent’s voice or likeness—as happened in Slovakia, but also in the United States, Poland, and elsewhere—as this portrays them as saying words or performing actions they did not actually say or do. In the longer term, the U.S. Congress should pass legislation requiring this sort of disclosure.
Lastly, journalists and newsrooms should develop clear guidelines on how to cover AI-generated content. This could be done, in part, by consulting with AI experts and building sources with people who audit AI systems, talking with academics who study the data, conversing with technologists who work at the companies who developed the tools, and meeting with regulators who see these tools through a different lens. Journalists could also try to look at the human data scooped up to train these models and the people who made choices to optimize them. Outlets should also seek to educate listeners about how to identify AI-generated content.
If Slovakia’s example is any indication, the United States and other democracies must take AI-generated disinformation seriously. An open information space is key to democracy, making it important to protect from this sort of willful manipulation.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.