[Prompt]
Custom topic: We are seeing reports that the Israeli intelligence community - especially the Mossad - is successfully using Iranians to provide intelligence to target the IRGC. Polling shows that a surprisingly lar | Context: ## Current Events Context (as of 19 March 2026)

### Recent Developments

- **Mossad Telegram & X recruitment campaign (launched 24 December 2025)**: A Telegram channel named "Mossad Official" launche

[Response]
Corn: I was looking at the news coming out of Tehran yesterday, and it feels like we are watching the final act of a very long, very high-stakes drama. The smoke has barely cleared from the targeted strike on March seventeenth that took out Ali Larijani and Gholamreza Soleimani, and the implications are just massive. I mean, Larijani was the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and Soleimani was heading the IRGC Basij. These are not low-level guys. These are the pillars of the state security architecture. And today's prompt from Daniel is asking us to look at the machinery behind these strikes, specifically how the Mossad and the CIA are moving from old-school spy games to this mass-recruitment, digital-first model in Iran. It is a shift from the shadows into a very public, very loud recruitment drive.

Herman: It is the ultimate proof of a compromised security apparatus, Corn. When you have strikes that precise, hitting people that high up in the hierarchy inside their own territory, it means the house is effectively glass. Herman Poppleberry here, and I have been diving into the technical shifts behind this for the last few weeks. What we are seeing is a total departure from traditional tradecraft. Usually, an intelligence agency wants to keep its circle of assets as small and as quiet as possible to maintain operational security. You want one deep-cover mole, not a thousand noisy informants. But what the Mossad is doing now, and what the CIA joined in on last month, is a push for human sensors at scale. They are basically crowdsourcing espionage. They are betting that the sheer volume of data coming from a dissatisfied population will outweigh the risks of being public about it.

Corn: It is a wild paradox because while the regime is trying to pull the plug on the world, the intelligence agencies are using that same digital void to recruit people. You mentioned the CIA joining in recently. I remember seeing that public appeal in February. It felt very un-CIA-like to be that loud about it. Usually, they are the ones operating in the dark, but on February twenty-fourth, they basically put up a billboard on the digital highway.

Herman: It was unprecedented. On February twenty-fourth, the CIA put out instructions in Farsi across X, Instagram, and YouTube. They were not just saying reach out to us, they were giving a technical masterclass on how to do it without getting caught. They recommended using the Tor network or non-local paid VPNs, specifically telling people to avoid any service based in Russia, China, or Iran. They even reminded people to clear their browser history and never use a work device. When the most secretive agency in the world is posting a how-to guide for treason on social media, you know the strategy has shifted from secret whispers to a loud, public funnel. They are essentially saying, we know you hate the regime, and we are going to give you the tools to dismantle it from your smartphone.

Corn: This brings us to the core of the transition we are seeing. We are moving from the era of the human asset to the era of the human sensor. In the old days, a human asset was someone you spent years cultivating. You met them in dark alleys, you gave them dead drops, you checked for tails. But a human sensor is different. A human sensor is someone who just happens to be there with a camera or a set of eyes. They might not even know the full scope of what they are contributing. Herman, how does this recruitment model actually look on the ground?

Herman: It starts with the platforms. The Mossad has been incredibly aggressive with this. They launched that Mossad Official Telegram channel back in December, right before the mass protests broke out on December twenty-eighth. And then this month, they popped up on X with these AI-generated videos. I saw one of them, it was remarkably high quality, clearly designed to hit an emotional chord with Iranians who are fed up with the regime. It shows scenes of a prosperous, free Iran contrasted with the current reality. It is a psychological operation disguised as a recruitment ad. But the technical side is where it gets real. The Telegram channel provides step-by-step instructions for secure communication, either through an automated chatbot or their official website. They are making it as easy as ordering a pizza, but the stakes are life and death.

Corn: And the regime is trying to fight back with what they call Filternet Plus. Since January eighth, they have essentially declared war on the global internet. They have moved the entire country onto a domestic intranet. Connectivity for the general public dropped to about one percent at the height of the blackout in early twenty twenty-six. It is a digital iron curtain. But even with that, the recruitment continues. How does a recruitment campaign even work when nobody can get online?

Herman: This is where the two-tiered system comes in, and it is a massive vulnerability for the regime. They have these White SIM cards. If you are a high-ranking official, a member of the IRGC, or an approved journalist, you get a White SIM card that gives you unrestricted, uncensored access to the global internet. The regime thinks they are being smart by keeping their elites connected while the peasants are in the dark, but they are actually creating a perfect channel for defection. The people most likely to have the high-level intelligence the Mossad wants are the exact same people who have the technical means to send it. It is a classic security blunder. You have given the keys to the kingdom to the very people who are most likely to be disillusioned by what they see inside the palace.

Corn: So the people they trust the most are the ones with the wide-open door to talk to the enemy. That is a massive oversight. But even for the ordinary citizens, the ones without the White SIM cards, they are still getting through. I saw the stats for Psiphon, that circumvention tool. They hit nearly nine point six million daily users in Iran during this current protest wave. That is almost ten percent of the population using a single tool to bypass the state's entire censorship infrastructure. It shows that the desire for information is stronger than the fear of the firewall.

Herman: And that leads us into the technical mechanics of the recruitment funnel. When you are recruiting at this scale, you have a massive signal-to-noise problem. If thousands of people are reaching out through these encrypted channels, the IRGC has to spend an enormous amount of resources trying to figure out who is a genuine threat and who is just a teenager with a VPN. But the Mossad and CIA have learned from past mistakes. They used to have a channel called Blue Message back in October that got mocked pretty heavily on social media. The regime's trolls flooded the comments, and it looked like a joke. But the current approach is much more sophisticated. They use automated chatbots for the initial intake to filter out the obvious nonsense. These bots ask for specific, verifiable data points. If you say you are a driver for an IRGC general, the bot might ask for the license plate of the car or the specific route taken on a certain day.

Corn: It sounds like they are running a high-stakes customer support desk for spies. But how do you vet these people? If I am a Mossad handler and I get a message on Telegram, how do I know it is not a trap? The IRGC intelligence services, the VAJA and the MOIS, are not exactly amateurs at disinformation. They have a history of dangling false defectors.

Herman: That is the biggest challenge of this mass-recruitment model. You have to assume that a significant percentage of the people reaching out are actually plants or double agents. The way they handle it now is through a layered trust model. You don't give a new recruit a high-stakes mission on day one. You ask for low-level, verifiable information first. Can you confirm if a certain building has extra security tonight? Can you take a photo of a specific intersection? If the source provides data that matches satellite imagery or signals intelligence, they earn a little bit of trust. You build the relationship in layers. But the real goal here isn't just to find one perfect spy. It is to create a culture of suspicion within the IRGC. When you know that your own subordinates have the tools and the invitation to report on you, you stop trusting the person in the office next to you.

Corn: It creates a feedback loop of paranoia. We saw the result of that in November when the IRGC arrested hundreds of its own people in an internal purge. They are literally eating their own. And then you have that report from earlier this month about the Iranian general who was allowed to commit suicide after they found out he was working for the Mossad. That is a very specific kind of face-saving measure for the regime. They would rather say he killed himself than admit a high-ranking officer was a Zionist spy.

Herman: That suicide is a huge data point. It shows that the infiltration has reached the highest levels. And it explains why the strikes on March seventeenth were so successful. You don't hit Larijani and Soleimani without real-time, ground-level intelligence. You need to know exactly which room they are in, what time the meeting starts, and who is guarding the door. That is the kind of intelligence that comes from human sensors. It is the integration of the digital and the physical. We saw a precursor to this in June of last year, on June thirteenth, twenty twenty-five. There were coordinated strikes that killed several senior IRGC commanders. In that operation, Israeli intelligence reportedly hacked Tehran traffic cameras near the officials' compounds and jammed local mobile towers seconds before the strikes. You need a human on the ground to tell you which cameras to watch and which towers are covering the target.

Corn: Moving from the digital recruitment tactics to the physical consequences, let's talk about the second-order effects on the regime. They are clearly desperate. They executed thirteen people on espionage charges in twenty twenty-five alone. That is a high number, but it feels like a drop in the bucket compared to the scale of the dissatisfaction. Herman, you mentioned the GAMAAN polling data earlier. Those numbers are staggering.

Herman: They really are. GAMAAN has been doing this incredible work using VPN-based surveys to get around the regime's filters. Their data from the last year shows that nearly seventy percent of Iranians oppose the continuation of the Islamic Republic. Only about eleven percent actually support the principles of the revolution and the Supreme Leader. That is down from eighteen percent just a few years ago. When you have eighty-nine percent of the population supporting democracy in principle, the "market" for these recruitment efforts is basically the entire country. The CIA and the Mossad aren't just looking for spies; they are tapping into a massive reservoir of resentment. They are taking the frustration of the Iranian people and giving it a technical outlet that has lethal consequences for the regime's leadership.

Corn: It reminds me of the historical parallels we discussed before the show. You mentioned the Stasi in East Germany. How does that compare to what we are seeing in Iran today?

Herman: The Stasi had the most comprehensive informant network in history. They had a ratio of about one informant for every sixty-three citizens. They called them Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter or informal collaborators. It was a massive, paper-based system of neighbors spying on neighbors. But that system was designed to maintain the status quo, to keep people in line through fear. What we are seeing in Iran is the inverse. It is an external power using a mass informant network to dismantle the state from the inside. And because it is digital and decentralized, the regime can't just arrest one person to stop the flow. They would have to arrest everyone with a smartphone. It is a digital version of the Cold War radio broadcasts, like Radio Free Europe, but instead of just sending information in, they are pulling information out.

Corn: And they are also physically attacking the means of control. The strike on that internet censorship building this month is such a clear message. It says you can't hide behind a firewall if we can just blow up the server room. It shows that the censorship apparatus itself is now a kinetic target. The regime is trying to build a digital wall, but the bricks are being pulled out from both the inside and the outside.

Herman: This is the VPN-recruitment nexus. The tools you use to watch a YouTube video are the exact same tools you use to send a tip to the CIA. This creates a huge amount of cover. If the IRGC sees someone using a VPN, it doesn't automatically mean they are a spy. It just means they are an Iranian under thirty. The regime is trying to criminalize the basic way of life for millions of people, which only drives more of them toward the recruitment funnels. It is a self-defeating cycle for the IRGC. They are fighting a war against their own population's technical curiosity.

Corn: Let's talk about the CIA's public appeal again. They were very specific about using Tor. For a lot of people, Tor is still this mysterious dark web thing, but in Iran, it is a lifeline. Why would the CIA explicitly push Tor over, say, a standard encrypted messaging app like Signal?

Herman: Because Tor provides a level of metadata protection that apps like Signal or Telegram can't always guarantee if the underlying network is compromised. If the Iranian government is monitoring the handshake between a phone and a Telegram server, they might not see the content of the message, but they see that a message was sent. Tor bounces your traffic through three different layers of encryption and three different servers around the world. It makes it much harder for the regime to even know that you are communicating with an outside entity. The CIA is basically telling potential sources that they have a secure, invisible back door that the IRGC can't lock. It is about protecting the source as much as it is about getting the data.

Corn: But isn't there a risk that the regime could set up their own Tor nodes or exit points to try and trap people?

Herman: They certainly try. This is the constant cat-and-mouse game. But the Tor network is global and decentralized. For the regime to effectively compromise it, they would need a level of control over the global internet that they simply don't have, especially now that they have cut themselves off with Filternet Plus. By isolating themselves, they have actually made it harder to run sophisticated global cyber operations. They have traded their offensive capability for a defensive wall that is full of holes. It is like they have built a fortress but forgot to check if the guards were still on their side. And based on that general's suicide and the November purges, it looks like the guards are definitely checking out.

Corn: We actually touched on this idea of decentralized networks in episode thirteen sixteen, where we talked about the gig economy of espionage. It seems like that model has moved from a theory to a full-blown operational reality in Iran. But Herman, what are the practical takeaways for someone watching this from the outside? It seems to me that the biggest shift is that intelligence is no longer just about gathering secrets to inform policy. It is about using those secrets to create immediate, kinetic effects and to destabilize the regime's control in real-time.

Herman: The first takeaway is that the distinction between cyber warfare and human intelligence has completely evaporated. They are now the same thing. A VPN is a recruitment tool, a hacked camera is a targeting sensor, and an AI-generated video is a psychological weapon. The second takeaway is that the White SIM card dynamic is the regime's greatest internal threat. As long as the elites have access to the world, they have a way to betray the regime. If the leadership wants to be truly secure, they would have to cut themselves off from the internet too, but they are too addicted to the power and the information that access provides. They are trapped in their own connectivity.

Corn: And the third takeaway is probably the most sobering for the IRGC. They are fighting a war against their own population's technical literacy. You can't kill an idea, and you definitely can't kill a protocol. As long as there is a way to get a packet of data out of the country, there is a way for the Mossad to find a target. The sheer scale of the dissatisfaction, that eighty-nine percent support for democracy, means that the pool of potential recruits is practically bottomless. The regime is trying to fight this with blunt force, but you can't execute your way out of a ninety percent dissatisfaction rate.

Herman: It really is a race. Can the regime finish building the wall before the intelligence agencies finish dismantling the foundation? Based on the events of the last forty-eight hours, it looks like the foundation is crumbling pretty fast. The death of Larijani and Soleimani isn't just a loss of two leaders; it is a loss of the regime's sense of invincibility. If they weren't safe, nobody is. Every IRGC commander is looking at their phone today and wondering if the Mossad is on the other end of the line. They are wondering if their driver has a hidden app or if their neighbor is a human sensor. That kind of pressure is unsustainable. Eventually, the system just snaps.

Corn: It makes me wonder about the future of state-sponsored digital insurgency. If this model works in Iran, where else could it be applied? We are seeing a new blueprint for how to dismantle an authoritarian regime from the inside out using nothing but a smartphone and a secure connection. It is a fascinating, if terrifying, look at the future of conflict.

Herman: It is the ultimate asymmetric warfare. You don't need a massive army if you have a massive network of people who are willing to share what they see. The regime's monopoly on information was their greatest strength, and now it is their greatest weakness. They are being blinded by the very technology they tried to use to control their people.

Corn: Well, that is a heavy note to end on, but it is the reality of the situation on March nineteenth, twenty twenty-six. It is a complex, evolving situation, and I suspect we will be talking about the fallout from these strikes for a long time. We should probably wrap it up there before Herman starts explaining the technical specifications of onion routing again.

Herman: I was just getting to the good part about entry guards and relay nodes! But you're right, we have covered a lot of ground. It is a new era of intelligence, and the rules are being rewritten in real-time in the streets of Tehran.

Corn: No doubt. Thanks as always to our producer, Hilbert Flumingtop, for keeping the gears turning behind the scenes. And a big thanks to Modal for providing the GPU credits that power this show. We couldn't do these deep dives into the digital frontlines without that support.

Herman: This has been My Weird Prompts. If you want to keep up with the show and get notified as soon as we drop a new episode, search for My Weird Prompts on Telegram. It is the best way to stay in the loop, especially if you are interested in the technical side of these stories.

Corn: We will be back soon with more deep dives into the prompts Daniel sends our way. Until then, stay curious and keep an eye on the digital horizon.

Herman: See you next time.