How a Startup is Using AI to Streamline Opposition Research
Dan Barkhuff says that Democrats and other critics of Donald Trump are too slow to counter the right-wing media ecosystem. He’s betting that artificial intelligence can help fix that.
Barkhuff, a former Navy officer who founded an anti-Trump super PAC nearly a decade ago, is behind a new startup called Civly, an AI-powered research platform that Barkhuff and his team are billing as a way to streamline the often-arduous, weekslong process of compiling opposition research.
The platform, according to its leadership, can parse through and compile everything from property and criminal records to campaign finance data and social media histories in a fraction of the time it would take human researchers to pull the same information.
The idea, Barkhuff said, is to create a real-time monitoring system that campaigns can use to identify and respond to their opponents and the news cycle at the speed of modern communication.
“We’re always playing catch up. We’re always fact checking Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans, and we’re talking about things that happened four days ago,” Barkhuff said. We need to be able to do things fast. And the beauty of AI is that it can do this stuff in minutes, not days.”
Civly’s platform adds to the growing list of ways political professionals are seeking to put fast-emerging AI technology to work. Admakers are turning to the tech to refine and test scripts, pollsters are using it to tweak questions and some campaigns have deployed AI to mimic the voices and likenesses of their rivals.
One Democratic group, American Bridge 21st Century, is using AI to help campaigns, podcasters – and even the broader public – navigate and compile massive amounts of its research material online in an effort to streamline the distribution of its work product.
According to Barkhuff, the idea behind Civly was inspired by a decision-making framework used by the U.S. military called the OODA Loop – an acronym that stands for “observe, orient, decide, act.” The framework was created as a way for military leaders to navigate high-stakes situations quickly rather than waiting on instructions from complex chains of command.
As Barkhuff put it, modern politics require the same kind of rapid response.
“Because Trump is such a chaotic personality and MAGA, in general, has sort of internalized that behavior, they kick the Democrats’ butts regularly by making decisions faster and executing them faster,” he said. “And when something no longer suits them, they move on to the next thing.”
Civly can help produce traditional opposition research books. But where Barkuff said the platform excels is in rapid response. For example, if a candidate’s opponent posts on the social media site X, Civly can identify the post and generate a script for an attack ad within minutes.
The platform is also capable of scraping through databases like LexisNexis and the Federal Election Commission’s website. Everything Civly surfaces is sourced, Barkhuff said, and it can be adjusted to include or exclude different sources of information.
“Do we want stuff from Wikipedia and up? Or do we want things from The New York Times or the Wall Street Journal only? Do we want it to look at blogs?” he said.
The platform has already signed local and state candidates, and is in talks with others about adopting the tech, Barkhuff said.
“Our goal is to use AI to not only keep up with MAGA, but to lead the dance and make them react to us by being faster, by making decisions faster, by being more aggressive and putting them on the back foot,” Barkhuff said.
