on June 15, 2026, 6:04 am
13 Jun 2026
https://21stcenturywire.com/2026/06/13/blackcore-israel-runs-secret-avatar-army-to-hijack-elections-worldwide/
Lede: Most people outside France still have no idea what BlackCore is. They do
not know that in March 2026 a company no one had ever heard of walked into
French municipal elections, ran a professional smear operation against
left‑wing, pro‑Palestinian candidates, then tried to erase its own existence as
soon as investigators got close.
They do not know that BlackCore is not a troll farm or a couple of rogue
consultants, but the marketing name on an industrial influence machine built out
of Israeli military intelligence alumni, a Tel Aviv law office, UK shell
companies, a London server and AI tools designed to manufacture social media
personas and flood elections with synthetic narratives. They also do not know
that the same ecosystem, on its defensive side, sells disinformation detection
to Western governments and now has a former CIA director in the boardroom.
The following story is about BlackCore's (alleged) transnational influence
operations using avatar networks and disinformation, which extend beyond France
to places like New York, Scotland, Angola, Togo, and likely many, many countries
by the time this story is properly fleshed out. But it begins with what happened
in France. It follows the trail through French state reporting, a joint inquiry
by Haaretz and Libération that broke open new details, corporate records in
Israel and the UK, US securities filings and the digital debris that BlackCore
and its partners failed to fully clean up. It shows how a smear campaign aimed
at three municipal candidates now points to a global Israeli information warfare
ecosystem that touches many nations and cities around the world, the US State
Department and the office of Benjamin Netanyahu.
This investigation does not just repeat what Haaretz, Libération, Reuters or
Viginum have already put on the table. It adds the Sadaqah Palestine phase
BlackCore used to infiltrate pro‑Palestinian circles before turning its guns on
them, the Benguy escrow structure and SEC paperwork that show how real ownership
can be hidden behind Afik's law office, the Unit 8200 and Shin Bet careers that
sit behind Galacticos' avatar factory, and the mirror on the other side of the
membrane where Cyabra, Cygun, Ram Ben Barak and Mike Pompeo sell detection tools
that operate on the same signals as the attacks.
The first wave of coverage stayed at the surface. BlackCore was named as the
firm behind anonymous websites and fake accounts targeting candidates from La
France Insoumise, and Viginum, the French state service created in 2021 to
monitor foreign digital interference against French interests, confirmed it was
looking at a foreign operation. Then the story slid into the background. The
Haaretz‑Libération work dragged it back out and into international territory,
tying the operation to a technical stack in London and a cluster of companies at
103 HaHashmonaim Street in Tel Aviv.
Our investigation goes several steps further. It shows that the London server
hosting BlackCore's tools was anchored in a UK shell, SNI Ltd, that had been
dissolved by compulsory strike‑off two years before the French operation yet
kept serving as live infrastructure for foreign election interference. It shows
that the Israeli company behind the avatar system, Galacticos Ltd, shares an
address and a trustee with Benguy Escrow Company Ltd, a trust vehicle used to
hold shares for others and run by the same lawyer who fronts Galacticos in the
registry. It establishes that one of Galacticos' key technical figures, Nir
Benita, an expert in cyber-espionage who spent around a decade as an officer in
Unit 8200, Israel's central signals intelligence and cyber unit, and that his
post‑military CV runs straight through AI and intelligence tech before landing
inside this influence factory.
It then maps the mirror image on the other side of the membrane. Cyabra, a Tel
Aviv‑based social threat intelligence company now listed on Nasdaq under the
ticker CYAB, sells AI tools to detect fake profiles and disinformation campaigns
for governments and corporations. It was founded by Unit 8200 and IDF
information warfare veterans who, by their own account and by the account of
people who know the sector, built fake persona networks before they built the
tools to spot them. Its senior advisors include former Mossad deputy chief Ram
Ben Barak, who ran the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, the Israeli government
unit that coordinates campaigns against international pro‑Palestinian activism
and BDS, and its board now includes Mike Pompeo, former director of the
CIA. Yigal Unna, the former head of the Israel National Cyber Directorate inside
the Prime Minister's Office and before that the man running Shin Bet's cyber and
signals intelligence operations, was approached to advise Galacticos. He stepped
down and now sits on Cyabra's advisory board while running Cygun, his private
consultancy, in many of the same regions where BlackCore has been accused of
operating.
Taken together, these elements let us say plainly what earlier coverage only
circled. BlackCore is not a freelance smear shop operating in a vacuum. It is a
product of a structured Israeli information warfare ecosystem that runs on a
single talent pool, a single doctrinal pipeline out of Unit 8200 and related
units and a corporate and trust architecture built to keep ultimate sponsorship
hidden behind lawyers and escrow accounts. On one side of the membrane sit AI
tools and avatar factories used to stalk and disrupt elections in countries
whose politicians criticise Israeli policy. On the other side sit AI detectors
sold to governments as democracy protection, run by the same alumni and overseen
by the same security elite.
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