Turkish firm offered AI-driven 'political ops' tool targeting Malaysia, Anthropic finds

The artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic has uncovered an influence operation that sought to abuse its flagship Claude model to manipulate elections in Malaysia.

It said the Istanbul-based tech company BBS Bilisim Teknolojileri is selling access to the platform as a paid “influence-as-a-service” capability, marketing it as a “military-grade, AI-driven, real-time political operations ecosystem”.

While Anthropic said there are no signs that the operation gained significant traction, the disclosure underscores ongoing efforts to manipulate Malaysia’s information ecosystem artificially - now augmented with AI.

According to Anthropic’s September 2026 Threat Intelligence Report, threat actors fed real census and electoral data into its Claude large language model, building profiles of constituencies for micro-targeting along racial, religious, and royalty fault lines.

The threat actor also used Claude to orchestrate over 1,000 accounts on X, which included a “warm-up logic” to help the accounts appear real for a period of time before being deployed for influence operations.

It used Claude Code to create a dashboard for monitoring the sock puppet accounts, where a user could set how many artificial views each target should receive.

“We observed a request, in support of the sitting Malaysian prime minister, for one million artificial views on his account,” the report said.

READ MORE: Experts: Systemic challenges enable persistent influence networks

Anthropic said a “senior Malaysian government official’s account” recorded millions of artificial engagements on the dashboard.

However, Anthropic said it could not verify the figures reported in the dashboard, since they are self-reported by the threat actor’s own tools.

‘Pursued contract with communications regulator’

It said the threat actor had pursued a contract with “Malaysia’s national communications regulator”, though there is no evidence it succeeded. The report does not mention the scope and nature of the alleged contract.

When contacted, MCMC said it does not engage in activities or arrangements described in Anthropic’s report.

The commission also said it takes the report seriously and is gathering more information to decide its next steps.

“Protecting the public and addressing online harms remain central to MCMC’s responsibilities,” the commission said in a statement.

Beyond boosting government figures, the report said the threat actor also created intelligence dossiers to spread false allegations against an opposition politician and civil-society organisations.

“These allegations were entirely made up by the actors […]

“Where Claude refused to perform the operation’s requested actions, including after it identified one document as material for political defamation, the actor negotiated sanitised wording to keep building toward the same capability,” it said, adding that the offending account has been removed after it was uncovered.

Fake news site

The report said the threat actor also ran a fake news site, Malaysia Pulse, which had a YouTube channel with only one video.

The synthetic news outlet scraped reporting from legitimate news outlets, had Claude rewrite it several times, and republished it under fabricated bylines.

It republished articles from Russian and Chinese state-aligned media without attribution, presenting them as independent reporting by a Malaysian outlet.

The report did not specify when the operation was active, or which elections were targeted, though the accompanying screenshots show postings with timestamps in May and June 2026.

This year’s state elections include the Johor polls on July 11 and the Negeri Sembilan election on Aug 1, with the Malacca election anticipated to take place soon.

Checks by Malaysiakini found that Malaysia Pulse’s website and accounts associated with the operations are no longer accessible.

The Turkish Trade Registry Gazette states that BBS Bilisim Teknolojileri is jointly owned by Turkish nationals Türker Batuhan Sarı and Bedri Sarı, with each having a 50 percent stake in the company.

Türker is the company’s founder, while Bedri is its managing director.

The report is not the first time artificial amplification of Malaysian politics has been documented.

Last year, Malaysiakini uncovered a network of at least 263 cybertroopers artificially boosting support for Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim on Facebook, and links between the network and a PKR Youth official.

The Prime Minister's Office had denied involvement in the network that Malaysiakini uncovered.

In a similar threat report in 2022, Meta said it found an influence operation linked to the Royal Malaysian Police, though the latter denied involvement. Malaysia was administered by a BN-Perikatan Nasional coalition under Ismail Sabri Yaakob at the time.

Malaysiakini has contacted the Prime Minister's Office and BBS Bilisim Teknolojileri for comment regarding Anthropic's findings since yesterday, but has yet to receive a response.

Zahid denies overspending, quips about MCMC budget

SNAPSHOT | Media council highlights better engagement; MCMC chair settles suit with Chegubard

MCMC issues charge notice to N Sembilan candidate over alleged 3R Instagram post