This week I’m bringing you a little something different: a discussion with one of my favorite people in DC, Emily Horne of the incisive Spin Class Substack. Having held some pretty impressive roles around Washington, Emily is a person I turn to when I have sticky comms questions, and after this conversation, she’ll be in your head asking “but who are you trying to reach?”, too.
This conversation part comms masterclass, part AI panic check, part foreign policy nerd-out, and part theater kid joy session. We start with a discussion of Julie Roginsky’s new piece MAGA has effectively captured “soft power” while “Democrats are responding too often with white papers, earnest panels and fundraising emails that sound like hostage notes from a compliance department.”
From there, the conversation zooms into the atomized media ecosystem: hyper‑local pink‑slime outlets like the Michigan “Midwesterner”—which Emily discovered earlier this year— foreign adversaries exploiting the collapse of local news, and audiences that are both more sophisticated and uniquely vulnerable.
It wouldn’t be 2026 without a conversation about AI “slopaganda,” and why the bar for propaganda has fallen so low that openly fake Iranian Lego‑style war videos can rack up hundreds of millions of views and still move audiences. We talk about Anthropic’s unreleased “Mythos” model, the Trump administration’s sudden about‑face on AI safety after ripping up Biden’s AI roadmap, and why betting on “industry will sort it out” is a recipe for both national security risks and more AI sludge in our feeds.
And we talk about the juciest story of the week: Putin’s increasing paranoia about a coup or assassination attempt. We discuss why this story came out now, and the context of United States’ fraying intelligence relationships with allies.
Before we let everyone go, we pivot hard into joy: the Tony nominations. Two former theater kids compare favorite roles and notice a through‑line between what’s being rewarded on Broadway and what audiences are craving online. The shows getting love right now are weird, specific, and gloriously human, not bland IP recycling machines. That feels connected to a broader hunger for work that is obviously made by people, not models.
If you’re feeling lost in our toxic information environment, I hope this conversation gives you both a clearer sense of the big news moments this week, and a reminder that making room for joy is part of how we fight back.
Did you enjoy this conversation? Let us know in the comments and we’ll bring you more national security, tech, and theater commentary! 🧭
Elsewhere…
Have you been tuning into The Illegals, the new podcast from The Mayday Network I’ve joined that is rewatching The Americans episode by episode? I’ve been having so much fun diving deep into one of my favorite shows, dunking on Matthew Rhys’s wigs, and discussing the political context that makes this series so perfect. Watch the latest episode here.
Are you in New York? Next month I’m headed to the Tribeca Film Festival, where I’ll be at the world premiere of Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s new documentary Miss Representation: Rise Up, which examines” the rising backlash against women’s progress and the hostile landscape of technology designed to harass and, ultimately, silence women.” My story is featured in the film. After the June 7 screening, I’ll join a talkback panel that includes Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton, Dr. Safiya Noble, and Jim Steyers. Tickets can be purchased here.
