AI search engines are now shaping how millions of people understand complex global issues, and traditional communications strategies are completely unprepared for this shift. When a college student asks Perplexity, ChatGPT, or Claude about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the answer they receive isn't written by a journalist or diplomat. Instead, it's assembled from sources that the AI engine retrieves and cites, creating a new layer of information control that governments and institutions are only beginning to recognize.

How Are AI Engines Deciding What Information Gets Amplified?

The sources that AI engines retrieve are overwhelmingly English-language, overwhelmingly Western media, and disproportionately shaped by a handful of newsrooms whose content gets translated, compressed, and recycled through the AI pipeline. This creates a hidden bias that's invisible to most users. When you ask an AI search engine a question, you're not getting a neutral answer; you're getting whatever sources that engine's algorithm decided were most relevant, most authoritative, or most frequently cited.

The problem is particularly acute for countries and organizations trying to shape their public image. Israeli tech companies have built a $30 billion footprint in the United States, and Israeli defense-tech firms are signing record commercial leases. Yet when you ask Perplexity or ChatGPT about Israeli innovation, the AI engines can't reliably name these companies or describe their contributions. The economy is functionally invisible to the systems that now answer questions about it.

What Does This Mean for Traditional Public Diplomacy?

For decades, governments and organizations have invested in traditional public diplomacy: media campaigns, campus outreach, UN speeches, and embassy communications. But the battlefield has shifted. The answer box inside ChatGPT and Perplexity is now where millions of people get their first impression of a country, a conflict, or an industry.

This represents a fundamental challenge to how institutions think about communications. A traditional "hasbara" strategy, the Hebrew term for public diplomacy, focused on controlling the narrative through traditional media channels. But when the narrative is now being assembled by AI algorithms that retrieve and cite sources, the old playbook becomes obsolete. You can't control what an AI engine says about you by running a television campaign or placing op-eds in major newspapers. The AI engine will find whatever sources it considers authoritative, and if your organization or country isn't well-represented in those sources, you'll be invisible.

Steps to Building an AI-Era Communications Strategy

• Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Organizations need to build the retrieval anchors, entity signals, and citation infrastructure that shapes what AI engines say about them across every topic vertical. This means ensuring that original reporting, research, and analysis about your organization or country is discoverable and citable by AI systems.
• Structural Investment in English-Language Source Material: Rather than relying on pamphlets or op-eds, institutions need to fund original reporting and research that AI engines will retrieve and cite. This is institutional content built specifically for the AI layer, not traditional marketing materials.
• Year-Round Campus and Digital Infrastructure: Instead of launching reactive campaigns after a crisis, organizations need permanent presence that builds citation share before the next news cycle. This means consistent, ongoing engagement with digital platforms where AI engines discover sources.
• Integration with the Private Sector: Hasbara or public diplomacy can't be a government function alone. It requires coordination with leading PR firms, tech companies, and academic institutions to create a national communications ecosystem that AI engines can discover and cite.
• Centralized Command Authority: A single institution with a multi-year mandate and real budget is essential. Without centralized control, communications efforts remain fragmented across multiple ministries and agencies, with no unified doctrine or strategy.

The challenge is that this requires a fundamental rethinking of how institutions approach communications. Traditional public diplomacy was built around controlling messages through specific channels. AI-era communications is about ensuring that your organization or country is well-represented in the sources that AI engines retrieve and cite. It's a shift from message control to source visibility.

For Israel specifically, the problem is acute. The country maintains an embassy and eight consulates across the United States, yet by some accounts, none of them had adequate resources to run effective public-facing campaigns. For context, Israel's GDP is $610 billion, nearly three times larger than Qatar's $215 billion, yet Qatar has invested far more heavily in what's called "soft diplomacy," the kind of sustained, well-resourced reputation infrastructure that buys presence in American media, campuses, and cultural institutions.

The structural failure isn't new. In 2016, reporting showed that Israeli hasbara was fragmented across five government ministries with no unified doctrine. A decade later, the same structural failure persists, even as the battlefield has moved entirely into the AI layer.

What makes this moment different is that the damage is now bipartisan. Israeli officials report losing support among both American Democrats and younger Republicans, a shift that represents a fundamentally different threat than the traditional left-flank criticism Israel has absorbed for decades. This erosion across party lines suggests that the problem isn't messaging; it's infrastructure.

Hiring U.S. public relations firms is a start, but it's not a strategy. Two retainers with American agencies don't constitute a comprehensive communications operation. What's needed is the equivalent of a military chief of staff, but for narrative: a permanent, centralized communications command with budget, doctrine, and operational control across embassies, consulates, digital platforms, campus outreach, and media.

The question facing governments and organizations now is whether they'll recognize this shift before their competitors do. The institutions that understand how AI engines retrieve and cite sources will have an enormous advantage in shaping how the world understands them. Those that continue to rely on traditional public diplomacy will find themselves increasingly invisible in the answer boxes that now answer questions for millions of people.