According to Forbes, health disinformation has become significantly worse over the past 19 months, accelerated by technological and political developments. Russia is using AI tools like OpenAI’s Sora 2 text-to-video generator to produce realistic false videos, with five documented false claims traced back to Russian disinformation networks. The Trump administration lowered U.S. defenses by shutting down the State Department’s Foreign Malign Influence Center, which had a $61 million budget focused on countering foreign threats. Meanwhile, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faces criticism from 75 Nobel laureates and six former Surgeons General who warn his policies pose an “immediate and unprecedented threat” to public health. The consequences are already visible with kindergarten vaccination rates dropping to 92.5% for MMR, below the 95% threshold needed to prevent transmission, and 1,681 measles cases documented this year – the highest since 1992.
The AI disinformation accelerator
Here’s the thing about AI that nobody’s talking about enough: it’s making disinformation creation accessible to everyone. You don’t need technical skills anymore – just access to tools like Sora 2, and suddenly you’re producing convincing fake videos that can spread health misinformation at scale. And it’s not just video generation. Russia is deliberately flooding training data with propaganda, meaning even “neutral” AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini are inadvertently pushing state-sponsored falsehoods. Basically, we’ve built the perfect distribution system for lies, and authoritarian regimes are the first to master it.
The political enablers
What’s particularly concerning is how political decisions have actively dismantled protections. The closure of the Foreign Malign Influence Center wasn’t just bureaucratic reshuffling – it was removing a crucial line of defense while foreign governments spend billions on influence operations. And the executive order banning federal agencies from discouraging harmful posts? That’s like seeing smoke and being told you can’t point to the fire. The irony is thick here – while claiming to fight “government censorship,” the administration was busy modifying federal websites and datasets to align with political views on everything from climate change to DEI.
The health consequences are here
Look, we’re no longer talking about theoretical risks. We’re seeing measurable public health damage right now. Vaccine exemptions at all-time highs. Kindergarten vaccination rates dropping below safety thresholds. Measles – which was declared eliminated from the U.S. twenty-five years ago – is back with 1,681 cases this year alone. That’s more than twice the number recorded during the entire decade of the 2000s. And it’s not just childhood vaccines – false claims about birth control are proliferating across social media too.
The medical community fights back
The response from health professionals has been unprecedented. When 75 Nobel laureates question an HHS secretary’s qualifications, that’s extraordinary. When six former Surgeons General publish an open letter warning of an “immediate threat,” that’s basically the medical equivalent of five-alarm fire bells. The AAP lawsuit against HHS over COVID-19 vaccine policy changes without scientific evidence shows how dire the situation has become. But here’s the worrying part: despite all this professional consensus, the disinformation campaigns are still gaining ground. Why? Because they’re sophisticated, well-funded, and exploiting our digital infrastructure better than truth-tellers are.
What comes next?
So where does this leave us? With more than 400 bills challenging evidence-based health practices moving through state legislatures. With predatory journals – estimated at 15,000 in 2021 – publishing fraudulent health information that looks legitimate. With foreign governments weaponizing our own technology against us. The disinformation playbook has evolved from fringe websites to mainstream platforms to AI-generated content, and our defenses haven’t kept pace. The question isn’t whether we’ll see more disease outbreaks – it’s how bad they’ll get before we take this threat as seriously as it deserves.
