AI THREAT TO POLITICS O
n Labor Day evening Sept. 7, 1964, Lyndon B.
Johnson’s presidential cam- paign aired an ad on NBC. Titled Daisy, the 60-second
video depicted a little girl in- nocently plucking the petals off a daisy, counting along with each fallen petal, her voice lilting and sweet. The child’s singsong was
then replaced by an omi- nous, echoing launch count- down followed by an explo-
The camera work appears
to be footage from an iPhone, shaky and inexpert, and mate- rial from the raw feed of a local news station. The city is unmistakably
real. The buildings and streets are identifiable, and they are in ruins, smoking, crumbled, crushed. The people are real. They
are injured, dying, dead. The video hits Twitter and goes viral. Members of the me-
Imagine a video, released on the eve of Election Day 2024, depicting graphic images of a nuclear bomb detonated in an American city.
sion, mushroom clouds, and Johnson’s powerful warning against nuclear war. The ad was shocking, scary,
and effective, and was con- sidered a key factor in LBJ’s landslide victory over Barry Goldwater two months later on Election Day. Now imagine a video re-
leased nearly 60 years later, on the eve of Election Day 2024. This video depicts graphic im- ages of an actual nuclear bomb detonated in an American city.
dia attempt to verify the story. Family and friends around the country express panic. There are conflicting re-
ports. Zoom and FaceTime connections are spotty. Ins- tagram is flooded with pic- tures showing the city intact. These posts are countered by more unequivocal videos of destruction. The mayor goes on national
television to say her city is fine, there has been no catastrophic event, life is continuing as nor-
SCARE TACTICS An ominous video depicting an innocent little girl and a nuclear bomb exploding was a key factor in President Lyndon B. Johnson’s landslide victory over Barry Goldwater in 1964.
1964
mal. Prominent citizens take to Facebook and YouTube to call the mayor’s statement a lie, the greatest cover-up in history. Even as local and national
media sources officially con- firm that the story is a deep- fake hoax, Election Day dawns in utter chaos. Such a hypothetical need
not be an actual doomsday scenario to have an impact on the 2024 election. In recent presidential
cycles, there have been cam- paign dramas that have de- monstrably weighted the scales at the polls. In 1980, President Jimmy
Carter was saddled with the im- prisonment of 52 American hos- tages in Iran while he battled Ronald Reagan; as time passed and the election loomed, the is- sue became a dominant source of pressure and humiliation. George W. Bush had to ad-
dress the last-minute reveal of his 1976 DUI arrest on Nov. 2, 2000, and the publication of an Osama bin Laden video tape on Nov. 1, 2004. The stock market crashed in
September 2008, two weeks be- fore John McCain and Barack Obama faced off at the polls. Hillary Clinton collapsed
with pneumonia at a 9/11 event in 2016, and President Donald
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