Iran and the propaganda war

Since the beginning of the U.S.-Israeli war, Iran has been publishing AI propaganda videos online trolling the United States, and Donald Trump. Conversely, the U.S. military, and Donald Trump specifically, have spent the better part of the last year publishing all kinds of war and military content and propaganda of their own. Propaganda has always been part of war. But in 2026, something about it looks and feels different: it’s shorter, funnier, more synthetic, and tailored to the algorithm.  Nicholas Cull is an authority on propaganda and has written a number of books on the subject including ‘The Cold War and the United States Information Agency.’ He’s a professor at the University of Southern California.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Today we’re joined by Alex Panetta, journalist and former Front Burner guest host. You may remember him as a regular on this show when he was a CBC Washington correspondent.Alex is now on sabbatical studying artificial intelligence and has been grappling with a lot of the big questions we have been thinking about too.So today we’re going to talk about the ways he’s been using AI in his own life and interrogating how this technology can impact our ability to think critically. Will AI make us all dumber?For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Nearly a year after the federal NDP’s most devastating election result in history, the party declared Avi Lewis – who ran on a campaign of democratic socialism – its new leader.It was a decisive win – Lewis won over half of the 70,930 eligible votes cast. The turnout was high – at about 70 percent of membership.Avi Lewis talks to host Jayme Poisson about his vision for the federal NDP’s future, the challenges ahead for the party, and what pressures he plans to put on Prime Minister Carney’s Liberal government.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Experts, market watchers and the authorities in Iran have accused the U.S. President of engaging in market manipulation surrounding the Iran war by timing military announcements around market opens and closes.On top of that, there have been questions of possible insider trading in connection to Trump’s moves. Last Monday, a spike of highly suspicious and extremely lucrative oil futures trades and prediction market bets took place minutes before Trump posted about the war winding down. It follows a pattern seen before around tariff policy, and the attack on Venezuela. To parse the accusations of market manipulation and insider trading, we’re joined by Mike Bird, the Wall Street editor at The Economist and co-host of The Economist’s Money Talks podcast. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

The U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, Operation Epic Fury, is nearly one-month old and the shadow of another war looms over this one: Operation Iraqi Freedom, George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.Today on Front Burner, a documentary about the Iraq war and its parallels and differences with what is happening now. Featuring interviews with three veteran reporters: Jane Arraf, Jonathan Landay, and Jeremy Bowen.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Newly declassified documents reveal the extraordinary depth and reach the Canadian government took to spy on Indigenous leaders in the ‘60s and ‘70s. This new reporting is the result of a years-long effort by CBC Indigenous and CBC Investigates.Today we hear how the RCMP infiltrated and sought to disrupt legitimate political Indigenous organizations, in an extensive program of covert surveillance, informants and countersubversion.Brett Forester with CBC Indigenous is our guest.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

“I do believe I will be having the honor of taking Cuba.”Those are the words of U.S. President Donald Trump spoken to a group of reporters assembled at the White House.For more than a century Cuba has remained a fixation of American foreign policy. The U.S. has tried everything from buying the island to taking it by force.Today the country faces the worst economic crisis in its modern history, and U.S. officials say Cuba could face a similar fate to Venezuela, where the Trump administration launched a military operation and removed its president from power. We sort through the history with our guest Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst at the National Security Archive and author of ‘Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana.’For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

This spring, just outside Regina, construction is set to begin on Canada's largest data centre. Many of these massive server farms, that train and power AI, are being built or proposed across the country.They’re all part of a global infrastructure supercycle. In the U.S. alone, data centres have nearly quadrupled since 2010. Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta plan to spend more than $600 billion on their expansion in 2026.But as they grow – so does resistance to them, as communities begin to ask what they’re giving up to power the world’s chatbots.Ellen Thomas is an investigative reporter with Business Insider. She’s been covering the AI data centre boom in the U.S. for years.Ellen spoke to host Jayme Poisson about the true cost of building data centres, and what it takes to keep them open.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

As the world watches for updates in the war on Iran, cutting through the fog of war and getting a real sense of the extent of damage and military activity in the region isn’t easy. For some, the answer is open source intelligence: pouring over satellite images, flight radars, news updates, social media posts, and just about any kind of data someone can get their hands on.And while OSINT investigations have worked their way into common practice for newsrooms all over the world, it’s also increasingly popular among amateurs or “OSINT cowboys” with sophisticated AI-coded dashboards streaming constant real life info so that they can monitor the situation as closely as possible and even place bets on platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket. But how accurate are these OSINT reports? And what happens when watching for war updates becomes gamified?Tyler McBrien, the managing editor at Lawfare, joins us to talk about the piece he wrote on this topic for The Baffler.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

As Ottawa prepares to tighten bail laws across the country, we take a documentary look at how the issue has become a focal point of Canadian anxiety around crime and ask what might change with Bill C-14, legislation the Prime Minister has called “arguably the most aggressive tightening of the criminal code seen in decades.”For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts