AXIOS (Neal Rothschild) - Synthetic everything is warping America
A shadowy polling firm confessed this week to faking survey results in two marquee races — then claimed the entire operation was a "short-term social experiment" on misinformation. Why it matters: An AI-enabled flood of synthetic and outright fabricated content is wreaking havoc on reality, poisoning the signals people rely on to understand politics, business and culture. Catch up quick: Median Strategies, a previously unknown polling outfit with little public footprint, surfaced this summer with two blockbuster surveys that were quickly absorbed into the political conversation. - In Wisconsin's Democratic gubernatorial primary, Median's fake poll showed democratic socialist Francesca Hong leading Milwaukee County Executive David…