Over 300 Plants Found Controlling Media: Our Old Friend Group Went Rouge & Wants to Destroy AI

Malcolm and Simone break down new reporting from effort.news exposing how effective altruism organizations spent tens of millions funding anti-AI narratives across journalism, YouTube explainer channels, and religious groups. They discuss the circular donor ecosystem, undisclosed grants, and the impact on public discourse.

The conversation covers specific examples from The Guardian, Time Magazine, Kurzgesagt, and multiple faith organizations, along with personal context from their own grant history with the Survival and Flourishing Fund. They also address the mental health effects of doomer messaging and why the arguments fail under scrutiny.

Shout out to Matthew Seagren / @MatchewXD who created the wasp clip!

Show Notes

The Media Astroturfing

Brian covered this on Effort.News in an article titled: How Effective Altruism Bought the Media.

They found “Potemkin articles, in which claims are fabricated, corroborated, and published as journalism by members of an insular donor ecosystem”

They explore the issue through a guardian article that six people collaborated to publish, all of whom were paid for by three megadonors. The Guardian did NOT disclose these sources of funds, and, as Brian’s article puts it: “In a fundraising statement attached to the article, the Guardian proclaims its “fierce independence.””

The payments:

* The Guardian: Paid over $3M by Coefficient Giving

* The reporter, Aisha Down, paid $60-$110K through the Coefficient Giving’s Tarbell Fellowship, which pays her salary

* The quoted experts were all recipients of funds from either SFF, Coefficient, or the Effective Ventures Foundation. The reporter does not justify her reasoning behind calling these people “experts” despite these “experts” publicly admitting their predictions were off by years, if not decades.

* Henry Papadatos paid $620,000

* Malcolm Murray, paid $129,376 plus $47.1M to affiliated institutions

* Andrea Castagna, paid $30,000 and the recipient of two undisclosed grants

* The subjects of the story Daniel Kokotajlo, paid $2,851,166

* Given $400K by Coefficient

* Given a $2M grant by the Survival and Flourishing Fund (which also was the biggest ever grant-giver to the Pragmatist Foundation—$500K!)

As Brian puts it:

“All six belong to a circular ecosystem known as “AI Safety,” united around the belief that AI will end the human race. What Down promotes as ‘expertise’ is not merely unrigorous or exaggerated — it is a work of cultlike fiction which openly promotes their vision of the AI apocalypse. This belief underwrites millions spent annually on promoting a firehose of anti-AI narratives with the goal of banning AI outright — the price of preventing the apocalypse.”

“This ecosystem is bankrolled by three megadonors — Dustin Moskovitz’s Open Philanthropy, Sam Bankman-Fried’s Center for Effective Altruism (CEA), and Jaan Tallinn’s Survival and Flourishing Fund. The media arm of this empire has over $40 million in donations and includes paid journalists, influencers, and religious groups.”

Apparently the Center for Effective Altruism rebranded to the Effective Ventures Foundation after the SBF fallout and Open Philanthropy rebranded to Coefficient Giving after distancing itself from SBF.

$17.9M has gone to print

$13.9M to video content

$4.87M to political advocacy

$2.66 film and fiction

$1.81M to religious NGOs

$1.35M to other

The Tarbell Fellowship program is how Coefficient Giving influences media coverage; it uses it to pay the salaries of over 20 journalists at major news outlets.

TIME is their biggest fellowship Recipient; Brian found that 58/100 of the TIME 100 profiles were written by Tarbell-paid journalists.

He also shared leaked emails showing how AI safety orgs sponsor anti-AI content on YouTube and showed channels that have been funded by these orgs, including:

* Kurzgesagt ($5.83M)

* Rational Animations ($2.53M)

* A Primer ($300K)

* A Happier World ($150K)

* Space Science Guy ($24K)

And he points out how the AI-doomerism-sponsored videos perform between 12% and 89% worse than these channels’ normal videos.

Related to this, Sabine posted about her experience being contacted by these orgs. What Sabine covers in her YouTube video:

* She says an organization asked her to make an AI-risk video with prescribed sentences and references,

* So it’s clear the messaging can go beyond simple sponsorship.

* She also points out that it’s not just anti-AI orgs reaching out to content creators, Taylor Lorenz being offered $5,000 to make a tiktok video about the USA’s need to outcompete China with AI by Build American AI

* My god did they ever make a stupid choice on who to contact

* She points out these organizations would be dumb to NOT try to sponsor content, but she doesn’t like that political lobbying is flooding into science and tech reporting

* BTW, her sponsor for that episode was Ground News, which another YouTuber hilariously attempted to claim was some sort of right-wing psyop ‘because what’s the point of showing both sides of an argument when one side of the political spectrum is just wrong’

The Religious Astroturfing

Brian & Co. reported on this under: AI Safety Donors Paid Religious NGOs $3.3M for Statements on AI on Effort.News

They find it rich that largely atheistic EAs are trying to get religious people to believe that AI will bring the end times. As it’s put in the article: “The AI Safety movement descends from rationalist and new atheist roots. Its core belief — that AI will literally end all human life — often draws comparisons to doomsday cults like Heaven’s Gate. Yet with enough funding, some churches are willing to square that belief with the Book of Revelation.”

They observed that “AI Safety’s largest donors — Dustin Moskovitz and the now-convicted fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried — were among Biden’s largest donors.” and yet when he lost the 2024 election, they were on the outs, which led them to turn to religious NGOs.

“Since 2025, AI Safety donors put $3.3 million into churches, seminaries, faith networks and religious-affinity groups. It paid for pronouncements: declarations, red lines, and a “Magna Carta of AI.””

“The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America took $105,000 from [the Future of Life Institute] FLI. They credit their “red lines on AI” to “a grant from the Future of Life Institute.”2 The Gospel Coalition received $200,000 for a podcast called “Silicon Spiritualities,” without disclosing their sponsor. They later barred their writers from using AI to research, write, or edit. The World Council of Churches took $100,000 to write its “red lines.” The Mormon nonprofit Faith Matters took $299,000 for a “Magna Carta of AI.””

Their reporting shows that:

* Multi-faith AI media got the most funding: $574,721

* Buddhist media came in second: $555,000

* Faith-adjacent: 550,000

“FLI, an AI Safety megadonor, runs a full-time religions program with a “Religions lead,” Will Jones, and a “U.S. Faith Liaison,” Brian J. A. Boyd. The program lists the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Vatican’s Fratelli Tutti Foundation among its partners.

FLI’s grantees make up the over