Hey everyone, welcome back to My Weird Prompts. We are sitting here in Jerusalem today, and honestly, the topic we are diving into feels very close to home, literally. It is February twenty-third, twenty twenty-six, and the air in the city has that crisp, late-winter bite to it. But more than the weather, it is one of those days where you read the news on your phone, then you look out the window toward the hills of the West Bank or the lights of the city, and you realize the geography of the conflict is right there. It is not just on a map in a situation room; it is in the palm of your hand.
It really is, Corn. Herman Poppleberry here, and I have to say, the prompt Daniel sent over today touches on a phenomenon that has shifted from a series of isolated incidents into a full-blown national security crisis over the last couple of years. Daniel's prompt is about the reports of Iranian intelligence services—specifically units within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or the I R G C—recruiting regular Israelis through social media. We are talking about platforms like Telegram, where the recruitment starts with small, almost mundane tasks and escalates into full-blown espionage and even plots for sabotage or assassination.
It is a wild story, Herman. When you first hear about it, it sounds almost like a movie plot from the nineteen seventies, something out of a John le Carré novel where a handler meets a source in a rainy park. But the delivery mechanism is pure twenty twenty-six. You have these anonymous figures reaching out via encrypted apps, offering cryptocurrency for what seem like odd jobs. But as Daniel pointed out, it gets dark very quickly. It is the "gig economy" of treason.
That is a perfect way to put it. And I think what is most fascinating to me, and what we really need to dig into for Daniel, is that gap between the initial contact and the actual crime. How do you go from being an average person worried about your mortgage or your credit card debt to taking photos of a military base or a sensitive infrastructure site for a foreign power? It is not just about the money, though that is a huge part of it. There is a whole psychological architecture being used here, a digital grooming process that is incredibly sophisticated.
Right, and I want to look at that architecture. Because on the surface, like Daniel said, it seems incredibly suspicious. If a random person on Telegram with a generic profile picture offers you five hundred dollars in Bitcoin to go take a picture of a street corner in Tel Aviv, most of us would think, okay, what is the catch? But clearly, enough people are not asking that question, or they are convincing themselves of a different reality. So, let's start with the mechanics. How is this actually happening on the ground in twenty twenty-five and twenty twenty-six?
Well, the reports from the Shin Bet, which is Israel's internal security service, have been increasingly frequent and detailed. They have identified a very specific pattern that they call "Operation Honeypot" in some circles, though the Iranians have their own names for it. It almost always starts with a social media interaction. It might be a fake profile on Facebook, a direct message on Instagram, or more commonly, a post in a Telegram group dedicated to finding quick work, side hustles, or even groups for apartment hunters and coin collectors. The Iranian agents often pose as something innocuous. They might pretend to be a real estate developer looking for "boots on the ground" to check out a property, or a private investigator, or even just a wealthy individual who needs a favor because they are currently abroad and cannot do it themselves.
That is the social engineering part of it. They are creating a persona that fits into the target's world. If I am looking for a job and someone says, "Hey, I am a researcher for a mapping company and I need a high-quality photo of this specific intersection to verify some satellite data," that sounds... well, it sounds plausible enough if you really want to believe it. It does not feel like "espionage." It feels like data entry or field research.
Exactly. It is the "foot-in-the-door" technique. In social psychology, that is a classic. You get someone to agree to a very small, trivial request first. Something that does not feel like a betrayal of your country. "Go to this park and take a picture of the fountain to prove you are actually in the city." Here is fifty dollars in Bitcoin. It is easy money. The person does it, they get paid instantly, and suddenly the anonymous person on the other end of the app feels like a legitimate business contact. They have established a cycle of trust and reward.
And once that cycle is established, the tasks get a little bit more specific. It is not just a fountain anymore. It is, "Hey, can you go to this specific street near the Ministry of Defense? I am interested in the traffic patterns there for a logistics study." Or, "Can you check if there are many security cameras on this particular block? My client is worried about the neighborhood's privacy." By the time the target is asked to photograph something truly sensitive, like the entrance to the Kirya base or a specific military vehicle, they are already deep in the relationship.
And they are already compromised. That is the kicker. Even if they realize at that point that something is wrong, the agent on the other side might remind them that they have already taken payments in cryptocurrency and already performed tasks that could be construed as illegal. It turns from a carrot to a stick very quickly. They use the person's own previous actions as a form of blackmail. They say, "If you stop now, we will send the logs of our conversation to the police." It is a digital trap that snaps shut before the victim even realizes they are in a cage.
It is a digital version of the classic Cold War grooming process, but it is happening at scale. In the old days, a handler would have to meet you in a cafe in Vienna or leave a chalk mark on a mailbox. Now, one handler sitting in an office in Tehran, using a high-end translation tool and a few virtual private networks, can manage dozens of these digital assets simultaneously. They do not even need to be in the same country. They are essentially crowdsourcing intelligence.
That is the part that Daniel mentioned that really strikes me. The remote nature of it. Historically, espionage was a high-touch business. You had to build a relationship. You had to have a physical connection at some point. But now, the anonymity of the internet provides a layer of protection for the recruiter that we have never seen before. They can burn a hundred leads to find one person who is desperate or naive enough to follow through. And we have seen some high-profile cases recently that show just how far this can go.
Let's talk about those cases, because they really illustrate the range of people being targeted. Daniel asked if they are preying on the financially vulnerable. Based on the cases from late twenty twenty-four and throughout twenty twenty-five, financial stress is definitely the primary motivator. Take the case of the couple from Ramat Gan, Vladislav Viktorson and Anna Bernstein. They were recruited via Telegram. It started with tasks like spray-painting graffiti that said "Netanyahu is a traitor" or "The government is failing." It seemed like political activism. But then it escalated to burning cars and eventually, the handler asked them to find a grenade and carry out an attack. They were promised thousands of dollars.
And then there is the case of Moti Maman. This one was different because it was high-level, but it shows the Iranian ambition. He was a seventy-three-year-old businessman who lived in Turkey for a long time. He was actually smuggled into Iran twice in the back of a truck to meet with intelligence officials. They wanted him to help facilitate assassinations of high-ranking Israeli officials. He reportedly asked for a million dollars as an advance, which they refused, but the fact that a seventy-three-year-old Israeli businessman was sitting in a room in Iran discussing hits on the Prime Minister is staggering.
It shows that they are casting a very wide net. You have the "low-level" recruits like the couple in Ramat Gan who are doing "nuisance" tasks that escalate, and then you have the "high-value" targets like Maman who have the logistics to actually move across borders. But for the average listener, the Telegram recruitment of regular citizens is what is most chilling because it creates a sort of low-level noise that is very hard for counter-intelligence to filter out.
Right. If the Shin Bet has to track every person who takes a suspicious photo of a building, they are going to be overwhelmed. It is a form of cognitive warfare. It makes the entire society feel under suspicion. You start looking at your neighbor who is taking a photo of a sunset and you wonder, "Wait, is he taking a photo of that communications tower in the background?" It erodes the social fabric.
And that might be part of the goal. It is not just about the intelligence gathered. In many cases, the photos these people are taking are of things that could probably be seen on high-resolution satellite imagery anyway. But the act of recruiting an Israeli to do it? That is a psychological victory. It shows that the home front is penetrable. It creates a sense of paranoia. If you can convince an Israeli to burn a car in their own neighborhood for a few hundred dollars in Bitcoin, you have proven that the state's hold on its citizens is more fragile than it looks.
That is a great point, Corn. The intelligence value of a cell phone photo of a gate might be low, but the value of the headline "Israeli Citizen Arrested for Spying for Iran" is incredibly high. It is about demoralizing the population. It is about making people feel like the enemy is everywhere, even among their own people. And the Iranians are getting better at the "creative ruses" Daniel mentioned. We have seen reports of agents creating entire fake activist groups. They might create a Telegram group for people concerned about the cost of living, or even—and this is particularly cruel—groups for families of hostages.
I have read about that. They pose as supporters of the families of those held in Gaza, and they use that emotional vulnerability to identify people who are angry at the government. They might say, "We are a private group trying to gather evidence of government negligence to help the families. Can you go take a picture of this specific office?" It is a way to bypass the conscience. The person thinks they are doing something noble, something for a cause they believe in, when in reality they are being used as a pawn by the I R G C.
It is the ultimate cynical move. They leverage real social friction within Israel to find people who are angry or disillusioned. If you can convince someone that they are helping a cause they believe in, rather than spying for an enemy state, the psychological barrier to entry is much lower. And they use sophisticated translation tools to make it work. A few years ago, you could spot a foreign agent because their Hebrew was clunky or used weird idioms. Now, with large language models and A I, they can sound perfectly local. They can use slang, they can reference the latest episode of a popular Israeli TV show, they can sound like your average Israeli boss or a fellow activist.
And they use deepfakes, Herman. We have seen reports from the Shin Bet about video calls where the person on the other end looks like a legitimate Israeli businessperson. They use A I to map a face onto the agent's head in real-time. If you see a face and hear a voice that sounds right, your guard goes down. We are entering an era where you cannot trust your eyes or ears when it comes to digital communication. It is the "Deepfake Espionage" era.
It really is. And the use of cryptocurrency is a masterstroke here. It appeals to a certain demographic. It feels modern, it feels somewhat illicit but also revolutionary. For someone who is already struggling with the traditional banking system—maybe they have a lien on their account or they are hiding income—crypto feels like a way out. And for the Iranians, it is the perfect way to move money across borders without triggering the anti-money laundering flags that a bank transfer from a shell company in Cyprus would. They use things like Tether or Monero, which are much harder to track than a standard wire.
Let's look at the "M I C E" framework you mentioned earlier. For those who don't know, it is an acronym used in the intelligence community for why people betray their country: Money, Ideology, Coercion, and Ego. In these Telegram cases, how do those play out?
Well, Money is the obvious one. Israel has a very high cost of living, and the economic pressure of the ongoing conflict has only made it worse. If you are drowning in debt and someone offers you ten thousand dollars to do something that you can tell yourself is just a prank or a minor favor, that is a huge temptation. But Ideology is being manipulated too, through those fake activist groups we talked about. They aren't recruiting people who love the Iranian regime; they are recruiting people who are angry at the Israeli government.
And Coercion?
That comes later. Once you have taken the money, you are "owned." They have the receipts. They can threaten to expose you. And finally, Ego. That is the one people often overlook. The thrill of being involved in something secret, something that feels like a spy movie, can be very alluring to someone who feels like their life is mundane or out of their control. The handler will praise the target, tell them how important their work is, how they are "the only one we can trust with this mission." It is a form of grooming that we see in cults. You make the person feel special.
It makes me think about the case of the seven Israelis from Haifa and the north who were arrested in late twenty twenty-four. They were reportedly spying for Iran for two years. They carried out hundreds of tasks, including photographing air force bases like Nevatim and Ramat David. These weren't just "one-off" mistakes. This was a long-term relationship. They were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, often through intermediaries from Azerbaijan. That case was a huge wake-up call because it showed that this wasn't just "desperate individuals" doing one task; it was an organized cell of citizens working systematically for the enemy.
That Haifa case was particularly damaging because of the targets. Nevatim was a major target of the Iranian missile strikes in April twenty twenty-four and again in October. To think that the Iranians had boots on the ground—Israeli citizens—providing "B D A," or Battle Damage Assessment, after those strikes is a nightmare scenario for any security service. It shows that the "low-level" Telegram recruitment can provide very high-level strategic value.
So, how does a state like Israel counter this? The Shin Bet has been very public lately. They are releasing these stories almost as soon as the arrests happen. They are even putting out videos showing the chat logs. That seems like a deliberate strategy.
It is. It is a public health approach to national security. You are trying to build up the society's immunity to these types of attacks. If everyone knows that a request to photograph a military base is a standard Iranian opening move, it becomes much less effective. They want to create a "stigma" around these interactions. They want people to feel a sense of "digital hygiene." If a stranger offers you crypto for a favor, the alarm bells should go off immediately.
But it is a constant battle because the agents will just change their tactics. They will find a new ruse. Maybe next time they won't ask for a photo. Maybe they will ask you to "test" a piece of software that actually contains a keylogger. Or they will ask you to host a "tourist" who is actually an operative. The "asymmetrical" nature of this is what makes it so difficult. Iran can send ten thousand messages for the cost of a single internet connection. Israel has to defend against every single one of them.
It is the "Gig Economy" version of espionage. You are not a career spy. You are a freelancer. And because it is framed that way, the person doing it can compartmentalize. They can tell themselves, "I am not a traitor, I am just a guy who needs to pay his electricity bill and this anonymous person is paying me to take some pictures." It is a way of bypassing the conscience. The distance provided by the screen is an illusion, but it is a very powerful one.
I wonder about the role of the platforms themselves. Telegram is a major player here. It is the "Wild West" of the internet. It is great for privacy and free speech—which is why Iranian dissidents use it—but that same privacy is what allows an intelligence officer in Tehran to operate with impunity inside Tel Aviv. It is a paradox. If the government starts monitoring Telegram more closely, you lose the privacy that activists and journalists rely on. But if they don't, these recruitment pipelines stay open.
It is a no-win situation in many ways. And it puts a lot of pressure on the cryptocurrency industry too. If Bitcoin and Tether are the primary ways these people are being paid, there will be more calls for stricter identity verification, or "K Y C"—Know Your Customer—at the exchanges. But as we know, once you have the private keys, you can move value around without an exchange. It is very hard to stop the flow of digital money once it is in the system.
Let's look at the cascading implications of this for the future. We are in February twenty twenty-six. If this becomes a widespread phenomenon, what does it do to the social fabric? Do we start suspecting our neighbors? Do we stop talking to people online? It could lead to a very closed, paranoid society. And ironically, that kind of internal tension is exactly what an adversary like Iran wants to create. They want to turn the "Startup Nation" into the "Paranoid Nation."
Exactly. The goal isn't just the information. The goal is the disruption. If you can make an entire country feel like they can't trust the person sitting next to them on the bus, you have won a significant battle without ever firing a shot. It is a form of "Grey Zone" warfare that is very difficult to defend against because it happens in the mundane spaces of everyday life. It is not a tank crossing a border; it is a notification on your phone.
I think about the people who got caught. In many of these cases, they weren't master criminals. They were ordinary people who made a series of increasingly bad decisions. When you read their stories, there is often a sense of profound regret. They didn't set out to be spies. They just followed a trail of breadcrumbs that led them off a cliff. It is a tragedy on an individual level, but a massive security challenge on a national level.
And it is not just Israel. We are seeing similar reports in other parts of the world. Foreign intelligence services—not just Iran, but Russia and China as well—are using social media to recruit people for everything from spreading disinformation to physical sabotage. In Poland and Germany, there have been arrests of people recruited via Telegram to commit arson or attack infrastructure. It is the same model. Find someone who is vulnerable, use an encrypted app to stay anonymous, pay them in crypto, and give them a task that seems manageable but is actually part of a larger campaign.
It is a scalable, low-cost way to project power across borders. You don't need a specialized agent with a fake passport and a cyanide pill. You just need someone with a smartphone and a willingness to break the law for a bit of money. It turns the entire global population into a potential pool of recruits. It is the "democratization" of espionage, in the worst possible way.
So, what can the average person do? I mean, besides the obvious "don't take money from strangers on the internet to photograph military bases." Is there a broader lesson here about digital hygiene and skepticism?
I think it comes back to that idea of "if something seems too good to be true, it probably is." If someone is offering you a lot of money for a very simple task that could be done by anyone, you have to ask why. Why me? Why this task? Why the anonymity? We need to develop a healthy sense of skepticism about our digital interactions, just like we do with our physical ones. You wouldn't let a stranger into your house just because they offered you fifty dollars, so why would you let them into your life via an encrypted app?
It is about recognizing that the digital world is not a separate space. The consequences of our actions there are very real. Taking a photo for a stranger might feel like a game, but it can end with a prison sentence and a ruined life. The distance provided by the screen is an illusion. And for the state, the challenge is to stay ahead of the technology. As A I gets better, the ruses will get more sophisticated. We might see agents using A I to generate thousands of unique personas, each tailored to a specific target's interests and vulnerabilities. It is a technological arms race.
It really is. And I think the most important thing is to keep talking about it. The more these stories are in the public consciousness, the harder it is for these recruitment attempts to succeed. Information is the best defense against this kind of cognitive warfare. We need to be aware of the psychological tricks being used against us. The foot-in-the-door, the grooming, the use of our own vulnerabilities as leverage.
I agree. It is about building resilience. Not just in our computer systems, but in our minds. We have to be aware of the "M I C E" factors in our own lives. If we are feeling financially desperate or socially isolated, we need to recognize that those are the exact vulnerabilities that an adversary will try to exploit.
It is a sobering thought, especially living here in Jerusalem where the stakes are so high. You realize that the front line isn't just at the border in the north or the south. It is in our pockets, on our phones, in our direct messages. It is a very different kind of conflict than the ones our parents grew up with. It is more subtle, more pervasive, and in some ways, more dangerous because it targets the trust that holds a society together.
It really does. But by understanding the mechanics, like we have discussed today, we can start to push back against it. We can't let the technology outpace our ethics or our common sense. Daniel's prompt really hit on the head of a very modern nail. This isn't just a "weird" story; it is a fundamental shift in how nations interact and how they try to undermine each other.
Well, I think we have covered a lot of ground here. From the psychology of the recruitment to the technical tools being used and the broader strategic goals of these operations. It is a complex issue that touches on everything from social media ethics to national security. I hope this gives Daniel—and all of our listeners—a better sense of how these operations actually succeed and what is being done to stop them.
It really does. And I want to thank Daniel for sending in this prompt. It is a topic that is incredibly relevant right now, in February twenty twenty-six, and it is something that I think more people need to be aware of. It is a window into the future of warfare, where the battlefield is the human mind and the weapon is a smartphone.
Absolutely. And to our listeners, if you have thoughts on this or if you have seen similar things happening in your part of the world—whether it is in Europe, the U S, or elsewhere—we would love to hear from you. This is a global conversation, and your perspective is valuable. Is this happening in your local Telegram groups? Have you seen suspicious "job offers" that felt a bit off?
Definitely. And if you are enjoying these deep dives into the weird and often dark corners of our modern world, please do us a favor and leave a review on your podcast app or on Spotify. It really helps the show reach more people and allows us to keep exploring these prompts. We rely on your feedback to keep this going.
Yeah, it genuinely makes a difference. You can find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts. You can also visit us at myweirdprompts dot com for the full archive and a way to get in touch. And of course, you can always reach us at show at myweirdprompts dot com. We read every email, and we love seeing the prompts you all come up with.
This has been a fascinating discussion, Corn. I am glad we got to dig into the nuances of this. It is one of those topics that stays with you, especially when you walk through the streets of Jerusalem and realize how many people are looking at their phones at any given moment.
It certainly does. It makes you want to put your phone in a lead box sometimes. But instead, we will just keep talking about it. Stay safe out there, everyone, and keep your eyes open—both in the real world and the digital one. This has been My Weird Prompts.
Thanks for listening. Goodbye.
