As the Israel-Hamas war escalated this week, WIRED looked at the conditions that contributed to Israel’s intelligence failures ahead of Hamas’ initial attack last Saturday, as well as the hacktivism and digital mayhem that has subsequently sprung up around the kinetic war. The situation has led to a torrent of misinformation across global discourse, particularly on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), where fake photos, old videos, and video game footage have exploded on an unprecedented scale.
X’s Trust and Safety team claims it has been working to address the situation, but company CEO Elon Musk has been “posting through it,” sharing conspiracies and engaging with QAnon discourse on