TikTok warped Americans’ view of the Iran war — one post at a time

Summary

American military forces deployed an impressive range of weaponry against the Iranian regime during Operation Epic Fury — but Tehran’s allies may have been striking back on an entirely different battlefield. As the conflict raged, TikTok’s algorithm appears to have quietly nudged the American information landscape in the Islamist regime’s favor, a rigorous new analysis has found. Based on that data, the odds of this anti-American, pro-regime bias happening by chance are astronomically low — about one in 6.5 million. Spring AI, an Israeli tech company, looked at over 37,000 video impressions across nearly 9,000 politically charged TikTok posts about the conflict, collected in the United States over 32 days in March and April. The researchers’ findings indicate that pro-American content received about 19% less exposure than the platform’s baseline would normally predict. Conversely, pro-Tehran content saw more than a 7% boost. This nearly 27-percentage-point gap wasn’t just random noise: The probability of the pro-American suppression alone occurring by chance is around one in 200,000. Factor in the simultaneous pro-Tehran amplification, and you get that incredibly slim one-in-6.5-million chance. To put it plainly, while US forces were engaged in an active war and winning the military battle in the air, the news app most influential for Americans under age 30 was systematically guiding users toward the adversary’s narrative. TikTok was helping the Islamist regime win the other air war. More than a third of US adults use TikTok — and for those age 18 to 29, it’s now their primary news source. Yet unlike traditional news outlets, this platform doesn’t vet what its users post. It blurs the lines between verified reporting and outright conspiracy theories, while feeding you more of whatever keeps your thumb scrolling. This is a massive advantage for any government that uses disinformation as a tool of statecraft — such as the Chinese Communist Party, Tehran’s ally. And while TikTok’s defenders may point to the absence of a Beijing-based smoking gun, that misses the bigger picture. When an algorithm consistently downplays one side of an international crisis and amplifies the other, the impact on public opinion is the same — whether the cause is direct interference, poorly designed incentives, biased moderation or a black-box machine-learning system nobody can fully explain. The damage is done either way. And let’s be clear, TikTok’s algorithm isn’t just some neutral software floating in the digital ether. It’s ultimately controlled, via ByteDance, by entities answerable to the CCP. The 2025 deal that supposedly moved TikTok’s US operations into American hands hasn’t yet fundamentally altered how the recommendation engine operates. That means there’s no need for Beijing to send daily marching orders. The CCP already grasps a crucial truth: Whoever controls the algorithm controls what millions of people see, discuss and ultimately believe. The researchers’ one-month snapshot only scratches the surface of the problem’s potential scale. TikTok is a powerful feedback loop: What you watch, like and share determines what it shows you next — which in turn shapes what you watch, like and share. Researchers modeled what a 27-point bias could do if it ran for a year, even with a modest feedback loop. The result was a pro-Tehran distortion of roughly 1,530% that could greatly undermine public support for the war against Iran. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that polling shows young Americans age 18 to 29 more opposed to the Iran operation than any other demographic group, with 64% against it and only 36% in favor. Recommendation algorithms don’t just mirror public opinion; given enough time, they actively create it. What we’re seeing is essentially cognitive warfare, and it’s a natural partner to conventional conflict. Wars are won and lost not just on the battlefield, but in the willingness of populations to endure them. If what Americans fear, trust and hate can be manipulated by a feed running on an algorithm controlled by a foreign power, then the United States has effectively handed an adversary a weapon that no missile defense system can intercept. Ronald Reagan famously said that freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. In today’s digital age, that blow might not come from tanks or troops: It could come from dominance over the algorithm — quietly, one swipe at a time. Mark Dubowitz is the chief executive officer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He also serves as an advisor to Spring AI, the Israeli technology company that conducted this study.