The Future of Oppo: Part 2
I was the guest columnist for the Oppo File newsletter in June 2024. This post originally appeared in the newsletter on June 25, 2024. It is part of a two-part series. You can read Part 1 here.
We were promised flying cars.
In my previous post, I spoke with a smart group of opposition researchers from across the political spectrum to get their thoughts on what how oppo has changed over the last five to 10 years. In this post, we’ll take a look into the future.
As a reminder, here’s our panel:
Our Panel Of Experts
Pat Dennis: Dennis is the president of American Bridge 21st Century, the Democratic party’s largest research, tracking, and rapid response operation.
Christina Reynolds: Reynolds is the Senior Vice President for Communications and Content at EMILY’s List and has decades of experience in communications and research. She led communications, rapid response, and research efforts for the Clinton and Obama campaigns, in the Obama administration, and at party committees.
Benjamin Jones: Jones is the CEO and a partner at Jones Mandel, a Democratic opposition research firm. Jones has over 28 years of experience working with political campaigns, issue groups, and corporations.
Democrat 1: Democrat 1 is a senior researcher at a leading progressive political group.
Ryan Powers: Powers is the research director for the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC).
Jack Stukel: Stukel is the research director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC).
Christina Van Horn: Van Horn owns the research firm Crimson Street Strategies, where she works with campaigns, party committees, and public affairs firms. She has been doing opposition research for over a decade and ran the presidential team at the Republican opposition research firm America Rising.
Republican 1: Republican 1 is a veteran opposition researcher with more than 20 years of experience working for campaigns, companies, and in the public affairs space. They preferred to remain on background.
Republican 2: Republican 2 is another veteran opposition researcher with over 20 years of experience. They also preferred to remain on background.
The flying cars we have yet to get. Image generated by ChatGPT 4o
What Will Change?
With an understanding of how we got to where we are today, where will we be going in the near future?
What AI Can And Can’t Do
Stukel said AI holds the potential to do a lot of the grunt work of research and free researchers to focus on analysis, which is what they do best:
“From a tradecraft perspective, the elephant in the room is AI – it has the potential to make media deep dives, public records searches, and social media scrubs vastly more efficient, which frees up time for oppo researchers to get creative about where they find hits and how they frame them. It won’t replace actual human researchers – it will just shift the focus from collection to analysis (which is what the best oppo researchers are already doing anyway).”
Jones agreed that AI can be a force multiplier for researchers:
“Biggest change will be, naturally, the use of generative AI. Researchers do so many repetitive tasks that will be greatly aided by AI. Campaign pros are already experimenting with how to harness Chat GPT and other sources of AI. I see a shift coming that will allow researchers to have more time to think about a race and the positioning of information instead of the processing of it. We will cut out time consuming tasks such as news bulleting once AI can be trained to take on even a basic level of judgment needed to suss out the political context of a race. We lose so many researchers to the grind of research and if AI can cut out some of the grind, perhaps many of the excellent, smart, hard working research professionals can stay in research longer and perhaps even make it a long term career.”
Democrat 1 said technology can free researchers to be more creative instead of spending time on tedious, time-consuming tasks:
“Tools to expedite analyzing data (votes, campaign finance analysis). People (researchers) will always be needed to go over the work, but technology means they will have more time to spend on creative research, and being able to spend less time on the tedious, time-consuming data pulling.”
However, Republican 1 thought AI would not be able to develop the political antenna and instinct required to identify a hit:
“I don't see AI being able to marry political acumen and human instinct for identifying a hit. We pull from so many disparate sources and analyze it and make assumptions. We have to use our brains to figure out if it's a hit or not. I think AI will always be limited in that capacity.”
Dennis thought generative AI could lead to content created in real-time and tailored to the exact interests of an individual voter:
“The advent of generative AI at scale may very possibly lead to a world where information is even more tailored to the reader than today's TikTok algorithm could ever approach. A reality where content is generated in real-time, tailored precisely to what each individual wants to read, is a very different world in which to engage in electoral politics.”
Dennis also said an opposition researcher’s skill in transforming information from the physical to the digital world, synthesizing it, and presenting it will be even more valuable in a world where AI systems depend on more and more information:
“Our expertise in dragging valuable information out of the physical world, then synthesizing it and presenting it to the digital world, will be more valuable than ever. As AI systems need information to build their knowledge bases, opposition researchers are uniquely positioned to provide the real-world, factual information about candidates that these systems need, much as both sides of the political spectrum did during the collapse of so many local newspapers.”
I think generative AI can be useful for doing a lot of the grunt work that takes researchers away from the higher level thinking, creativity, and analysis that are their most valuable skills. If the AI itself doesn’t do it, it can at least help researchers write code for a tool to do some of the work, even if the researcher themselves doesn’t have a strong coding background. The thought of customized content developed in real time is very intriguing.
More Vetting And Dealing With Disinformation
Van Horn said researchers will have to deal with responding to AI-generated misinformation such as deep fake videos:
“I think in the next 5 to 10 years, researchers will need to spend more time on rapid response to quickly produce information to push back against fast-spreading AI-generated misinformation and deep fake videos.”
Reynolds shared similar concerns, predicting that researchers will be playing whack-a-mole with AI-generated content:
“I am afraid that without some real ability to measure/control AI, we will be playing whack-a-mole with a technology that moves faster than us and can be used for nefarious purposes.”
Dealing with disinformation is my biggest concern in the future, particularly deep fake images and video. Even just seemingly harmless, but fake, AI-generated images that were created to evoke a particular emotion. Media literacy is already greatly lacking among the general public and this problem will be further aggravated by fake images and video.
A Need For More Investment
Stukel said research will require more investment to fill the need for investigating candidates due to the hollowing out of legacy media:
“In the big picture, one trend to watch (currently ongoing but bound to get worse) is the hollowing out of legacy media, specifically as it relates to investigative journalism. A lot of ink has already been spilled on the death of local journalism and the lack of investment in investigative reporting by the outlets that remain, but political operatives should take note: if there aren’t enough reporters out there to systematically dig into a candidate’s record, oppo research becomes indispensable. To fill the void, there will need to be serious investment in oppo: infrastructure, organization, and talent retention.”
Van Horn said researchers will also need to be more involved in the ad-making process to vet content used to make ads and avoid the increased scrutiny of political advertising:
“As political advertising across all platforms becomes more heavily scrutinized, researchers will need to be more involved in the ad-making process to vet images, b-roll, and other design elements.”
Powers predicted voters will be more forgiving of a candidate’s problems, thus requiring the resources to generate ever stronger hits:
“The voters' ability to accept/forgive/ignore a candidate's potential issues will just increase, making the need for stronger and stronger hits.”
I’ll always advocate for larger research budgets and teams. There’s a strong return on that investment.
Plenty Of Work To Do, But Who Will Do It?
Republican 2 said the continued growth of social media platforms means opposition researchers will be plenty busy in the years to come:
“I’m so old that I remember in the 1990s when people used to say they needed to ‘go on the internet’ and I also remember when social media was called ‘new media.’ Today, the amount of content available is just so much greater than it used to be. Before iPhones and Instagram, we were looking at voting records, public records, newspaper articles, video clips, etc. With the continued explosion of social media and many more platforms to come, expect opposition researchers to be plenty busy in the future.”
Republican 1 worried that there wasn't a farm team of researchers in development to handle future opposition research needs, and said there was a natural moat to building an opposition research business:
“I don't know how many young people are getting into this anymore. I don't know if there's a farm team. There's no gatekeeping happening. But there's a natural moat to building a business in this industry.”