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United States AI Politics

A Marco Rubio Impostor is Using AI Voice To Call High-Level Officials (msn.com) 42

Posted by msmash from the black-mirror dept.
An impostor pretending to be Secretary of State Marco Rubio contacted foreign ministers, a U.S. governor and a member of Congress by sending them voice and text messages that mimic Rubio's voice and writing style using AI-powered software, Washington Post reported Tuesday, citing a senior U.S. official and a State Department cable. From the report: U.S. authorities do not know who is behind the string of impersonation attempts but they believe the culprit was probably attempting to manipulate powerful government officials "with the goal of gaining access to information or accounts," according to a cable sent by Rubio's office to State Department employees.

Using both text messaging and the encrypted messaging app Signal, which the Trump administration uses extensively, the impostor "contacted at least five non-Department individuals, including three foreign ministers, a U.S. governor, and a U.S. member of Congress," said the cable, dated July 3. The impersonation campaign began in mid-June when the impostor created a Signal account using the display name "Marco.Rubio@state.gov" to contact unsuspecting foreign and domestic diplomats and politicians, said the cable.

A Marco Rubio Impostor is Using AI Voice To Call High-Level Officials More | Reply

A Marco Rubio Impostor is Using AI Voice To Call High-Level Officials

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  • Trump setup (Score:1, Insightful)

    by fabriciom ( 916565 )
    to blame a hacker impersonating him when the shit hits the fan.

  • Unregulated AI (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Isn't it illegal to regulate AI for 10 years or something now?

    • Only if a state tries to. Coming from the same crowd who are always yelling about "states rights".

    • It was reduced to five years [fastcompany.com]:

      Notably, Senate negotiations reduced the proposed moratorium from 10 years to five, and added exceptions for state rules that protect kids and copyrights, so long as the rules do not âoeunduly or disproportionately burdenâ AI systems and models.

  • just sayin (Score:4, Informative)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Tuesday July 08, 2025 @12:17PM (#65505480) Journal

    Using both text messaging and the encrypted messaging app Signal, which the Trump administration uses extensively, the impostor "contacted at least five non-Department individuals...

    They'd be safer using Hillary's email server.

    • I find it hard to believe anyone could get hold of Susy Wiles' contacts list, given the rigorous OpSec multiple members of this administration have repeatedly shown. /s

    • Re:just sayin (Score:4, Interesting)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Tuesday July 08, 2025 @01:31PM (#65505676) Journal

      Its a nice cheap shot isn't it but points to a really serious issue our government has with communication. HRC did her thing Colin Powell is said to have done so as well. We have the current admin using Signal and probably other "Consumer" messaging apps, even if the cryptography on those is sound the identity management and that of the mobile and MVNO carriers they rely on for phone number control etc probably isnt at least not universally.

      There is abundant evidence a lot of highly confidential matters are discussions and instructions that demand the utmost integrity given over communications lines that are both unofficial and likely unreliable in terms identity assertions and likely confidentiality and integrity as well at least when challenged by a sufficently resourced, determined, threat actor. Couple that with increasingly easy to produce, increasingly harder to identify without analysis deep fakes, and we are actually really flirting with disaster here.

      This is not "Trump Administration" thing, its a full US Government thing, no reason to believe the situation over in the Capitol building is any better. I'd like to believe things are better at the Pentagon but we saw Signal gate already so that is probably normalize behavior there too. Pete came up thru that after all.

      We should all be seriously worried, and again not just because 'Trump' but because the whole damn system isn't ready for these types of attacks and hasn't been.

      • presumption of guilt (Score:2, Insightful)

        by algaeman ( 600564 )
        and just to be clear, they wouldn't be using these consumer apps if they weren't concerned about the legality of the content they are discussing. There are secure apps and messaging tools these officials are supposed to be using which get entered into a permanent record.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by DarkOx ( 621550 )

          and just to be clear, that is the argument the out of power group always makes whenever anyone gets caught using unofficial channels.

          Meanwhile we have serious problems with leakers at all levels of government and House Intel committee members with Chinese spies on their staff.

          If I were part of the current administration I would pretty little trust in the ability of the federal employees I have an antagonistic relationship with to not leak stuff to the press. We should all wonder if the intelligence committe

          • and just to be clear, that is the argument the out of power group always makes whenever anyone gets caught using unofficial channels.

            I've been snarky in this thread so far; but I completely agree with this. It was bad when Clinton's group did it, and it's bad when Trump's team does it. We have strict security and public records requirements for a reason (for multiple reasons, actually).

      • Powell and Rice are not "said to have done so," they are perfectly well known to have done so. There was no legal problem with it then. Hillary operated her own mail server at their suggestion. And there was no legal problem with her doing so at the time she started to either.

        A suggestion that was not made out of malice, it was just one SecState telling the next "The government's official MX services are regularly a 50/50 shot at working, and we have communications that cannot fail to go through or be de

        • Powell and Rice are not "said to have done so," they are perfectly well known to have done so. There was no legal problem with it then. Hillary operated her own mail server at their suggestion. And there was no legal problem with her doing so at the time she started to either.

          I read an article on this a little while ago, I believe it quoted Powell as saying that he didn't advise her to do this until she had already done it. Who knows whether that's bullshit or not, or for that matter, if I'm even remembering correctly. I'm not currently on the machine with the relevant browser history, or I'd try to find it.

          BUT, there absolutely was a legal problem with it then, especially for Powell, because he explicitly advised Clinton to run her own server for the purpose of avoiding discove

  • Sounds like they moved on almost immediately from Wiles to Rubio.

    Chief of Staff, NatSec/State -- DoD should be next (Hegseth). Rattcliff might be more powerful but they probably don't want to cross CIA. Or the call is coming from inside the house.

    https://apnews.com/article/sus... [apnews.com]

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Hegseth leaks enough classified info all by himself.

    • The one thing we DO know - it's not Russia. Thank heavens THAT threat is now gone!

  • ...also wear artificial boots with high heels? For the sake of authenticity, it must! https://www.gq.com/story/marco... [gq.com]
  • I didn't think AI could use crayons...



    It's funny because the people responsible for keeping all of us alive are completely incompetent Yes Men...

    • I didn't think AI could use crayons...

      There's very likely enough child- an child-like drawing around to make a decent training set for an AI that could fool people into thinking a child did it.

      --

      Yeah, I know you were trying to slam Rubio, but I'm redirecting this thread back to something a bit more technical.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      I didn't think AI could use crayons...

      ... or eat them, for that matter.

  • Reminder, and honesty test (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tiqui ( 1024021 ) on Tuesday July 08, 2025 @02:47PM (#65505864)

    Late in the Biden administration, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) recommended [bleepingcomputer.com] all high level federal government officials "Adopt a free messaging application for secure communications that guarantees end-to-end encryption, such as Signal or similar apps." Here is the PDF [cisa.gov] on CISA's own site. The fact that this was done so late in the Biden admin, combined with CISA's role in censoring conservative voices on the internet [supremecourt.gov] over the preceding years, made this order very suspicious to many Trump supporters who presumed it was some sort of a setup.

    I point this out for two reasons: [1] This is why people will see suspicions and conspiratorial thinking about this by Trumpsters, and [2] it establishes the FACT that actually this is not Trump-administration-specific. We can all think anything we want about this particular story, and this particular administration, but the one tidbit of info cited which makes this use of Signal appear to be an oddity of the Trump people is misleading.

    Here is where the honesty test kicks-in: We here were all aware of the Signal app recommendation back then, so anybody here on Slashdot who tries to paint the use of Signal by members of the current admin as unique, weird, deceitful, corrupt, etc is not being honest, AND anybody trying to suppress this post highlighting that objective FACT by modding it TROLL is also being dishonest. The signal app recommendation was from the government's own supposed computer security experts, to politicians and bureaucrats who are [mostly] not up-to-speed on high tech stuff. This would be the case if the people involved were "establishment" Republicans, Democrats, Trump people, or "the squad" people, etc. It's simply NOT specific the the politics of the government officials involved. What should concern us all is NOT that it was Marco Rubio, but that it was ANYBODY in public office, of ANY administration and what it bodes for the future, both in and out of government.

    Again, feel free think anything you want about the current administration, the President, etc. As we used to say: "It's a free country". But you're not entitled to an entirely alternate set of historical factoids. We cannot have an honest political discussion if we cannot even agree on well-documented historical FACTS.

    • Here is where the honesty test kicks-in

      At the point where you provide an amicus curiae brief as if it were a court decision?

  • From the linked article

    "You just need 15 to 20 seconds of audio of the person, which is easy in Marco Rubio’s case. You upload it to any number of services, click a button that says ‘I have permission to use this person’s voice,’ and then you type what you want him to say,” said Farid. “Leaving voicemails is particularly effective because it’s not interactive."

    Fraud is fine. It's legal actually. It's what AI is for. It's una-Murrican to s

  • Is this guy doing a better job than Rubio? I can't imagine him doing worse...

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