Double-Oh Really??

Mike Bodnar breaks cover to reveal that he's been of interest to the Hungarian intelligence service, and that spying is in the family...

Secret meetings must have taken place
during Hungary's communist era...

Surreptitiously checking our surroundings, I mutter: "The roses attract handbags early this year." To which you respond, "Fish swim backwards when the moon is full." 

And with the security protocol satisfied, we can continue our conversation, comrade. It's good to know who's on your side.

However - and before you swivel the lamp in my face - I have to declare I am not a spy, and never have been. Okay, stick needles under my fingernails if you must, but my story will stay the same. 

I do love spy books and movies though, so when, in 1964 I found myself in the lounge of a posh Hungarian hotel room in Budapest, with my father checking the chandelier for microphones, I was enthralled. Yes, even at the age of double-oh nine-and-three-quarters, I'm fairly certain I had already seen Dr. No, From Russia With Love, and maybe Goldfinger, so I was well-educated in the world of secret agents, foreign powers, and hidden listening devices. 

My father tapped the lamp shade and mimed someone listening with headphones pulling them off their ears in annoyance. I thought it was funny.

Listening to Double-oh-nine and three-quarters
and his parents

Spoiler alert: he didn't find any listening devices, but that's not to say there weren't some in the bedside lamps, or the telephone. Because it turns out my father, André, was of interest to the Hungarian intelligence service - then under communist rule - and three years later he would be recruited by them as a spy.

How do I know this top secret information? Because I have been party to some declassified Hungarian state files. Of which, more later. But first, a bit of context...

My father - André Balint Bodnár (Codename Franz. No seriously...) - was born in Hungary in 1922. Despite Hungary being land-locked, he became a seafarer in the merchant navy, rising eventually to captain. His travels by ship took him to many foreign ports, including Liverpool, England. It was here he met, wooed, and married my mother. I was born after an appropriate interval in 1954, but four years later my parents divorced. Wasn't me, your honour.

Who's that man?

So I grew up without a father most of the time, although he did have legal 'access' to me, and when in port he would come and visit, and treat me well, buying me new clothes, taking us into town in a taxi, and once even building me a train set that was so big it had to be hung on hinges from a wall. But for all that, he was a stranger. I remember whispering to my mum one day during an early visit, 'Who's that man?'

Fast forward to 1964, and suddenly (at least it seemed to me) my mother and I were travelling to Hungary, where we were to meet my father for a two-week holiday, which is how we came to be in the Duna Hotel in Budapest looking for microphones.

1964, in Tiszalök, Hungary.
L to R: my half-brother Endré, my Hungarian
grandmother, me, and
spy-in-waiting, André, my father

Over two weeks we travelled around Hungary's hotspots, including to the village of Tiszalök, where André's mother and her husband lived. My half-brother Endré was there as well, at least for our visit. There were no microphones in Tiszalök either, but who knows who the chickens in the garden were reporting to?

Within the 111 pages of declassified file material, recently received by my Budapest-based nephew Csaba (pronounced 'cha-ba'), I am mentioned multiple times, including, erroneously, that at the age of nine I learned to speak Hungarian. If you use the needles on me, I will confess (quite rapidly) to learning how to say good morning, thank you, and cherry lemonade in Hungarian, but that's about it. I could never have passed on information on troop deployment, tank movements or the daily habits of the local Bolshevik command. But I could have quietly informed you where to find the best thermal baths, and wiener schnitzel - hardly intelligence that MI6 would value. Of more interest is that the majority of the 111-page documents focus much on my father.

Image:  Public Domain, httpscommons.wiki

While I make light of needles under fingernails, for many Hungarians in the 1960s and throughout its communist rule, the prospect of being interrogated was very real. In Budapest today, there is evidence of that, at 60 Andrássy Avenue, the Terror Haza - The House of Terror Museum.

Director-General of the museum, Dr. Mária Scmidt, explains: "The House of Terror Museum is a building which commemorates two tragic eras in Hungarian history. From 1944 to 1990, our nation was robbed of its independence and freedom - first by Arrow Cross thugs supported by German Nazis, and then by communists backed by the Soviet Union. We have since recovered both our independence and freedom, to become free citizens of an independent Hungary. Because we Hungarians are a people of freedom!"

Crest of the
State Protection Authority

The Terror Museum - which is in the old headquarters of the State Protection Authority - celebrates escaping the oppressive fascist and communist regimes, while also reminding Hungarians and other visitors of the cruelty and fear of those two particular eras. In the basement there is a cellar dedicated to the torture of suspects and prisoners, of which there were so many that those in charge - the political police - had to take over the basements of other nearby buildings, creating a terrifying maze of cells and torture rooms. 

About now you're probably keen to attach bits of me to a car battery and interrogate me about how my father became a spy for the communists. Well, put down the electrodes because I will sing like a canary.

Nephew Csaba, who has the declassified files (which are all in Hungarian), tells me that my father was recruited as a spy in 1967. His 'operational area' was the Middle East, and as mentioned, he was codenamed Franz.

A Dilmun tanker being guided by a tug towards
McDermott's Oil Storage on Deiraside of
Dubai Creek. Image: dubaiasitusedtobe.net

I'm not too surprised that he was recruited, because, as a captain, he was commander of a small oil tanker for the Dilmun Navigation shipping company, and was based in Bahrain. 

At that time, despite being oil-rich, the area was devoid of the infrastructure necessary for the transport of oil and fuel locally. Rail and road networks were poor or non-existent, so fuel delivery around the Gulf depended on a fleet of 'small ships', owned and operated by Dilmun Navigation. This included the delivery of aviation fuel to a jetty near Dubai Airport, from where it was pumped via underground pipes to the airport itself. The ships became a familiar sight around Dubai Creek and Port Rashid.

A page from The Franz Files

It was on one of these vessels that my father was captain, and with oil wealth expanding in the Middle East, it is hardly surprising that the Hungarian intelligence authority saw him as an easy and convenient local source of information, an agent already-in-place. Our Man in the Middle East.

However, despite this sounding like a good premise for a John Le Carré novel, Franz, it seems, turned out not to be good covert operative material. Csaba tells me, "I think he wasn’t a good spy, because the file was closed one year later."

Which is a bit disappointing to me as Double-Oh-Seventy-One now. He had plenty of other talents - he was a cartoonist and artist, and spoke multiple languages - but spying seemingly wasn't one of them.

The files show he had been monitored as a potential English spy for years, which is possibly why Hungarian counterintelligence recruited him. Maybe they thought it was better to 'keep your enemies closer.'

Csaba says he doesn't see any big surprises in the files, despite their length. "What I see is that he was very naïve," he concludes, and that he had accepted the role "for money and patriotism." 

Which sounds about right. He was a charmer, probably fancied himself as James Bond, loved to spend money (when he had it), but later in life I always thought of him as what we call in English 'a wide boy.' Wikipedia has it in a nutshell: Wide boy is a British term for a man who lives by his wits, wheeling and dealing. According to the Oxford English Dictionary it is synonymous with spiv.

"Or... he was really an English spy," adds Csaba at the end of one of his messages, given to me on a microdot hidden in a newspaper and surreptitiously handed to me in a brush-pass one foggy night in London. (Actually by Facebook Messenger, but the London bit sounds better).

One day I hope to see copies of the intelligence files on my father, even if they're in Hungarian. I won't understand a word of them, unless there's a reference to cherry lemonade.

So for now, case file closed.

Fifty-five Million Reasons to Change the Lottery System

 Mike Bodnar wants more people to win lotteries...

As I write this, the New Zealand lottery has 'jackpotted' to NZ$55 million. Even if I don't buy a
ticket for the next draw, there's one thing I will bet on: many, many more people will do just that. Because greed. Or desperation. Or because they've just been pulled back off the road by a stranger who saved them from stepping in front of a bus, and the hero says, 'Think you'd better buy a lottery ticket, mate.'

Whatever, everyone, it seems, wants to be super wealthy. For this we can perhaps blame Bezos, Musk, Thiel and all the other multi-billionaires around the world - along with the wealthy celebs (I'm lookin' at you, Taylor Swift) - who are able to indulge in their every whim regardless of cost. Musk et al don't even have to book first class, because, of course, they have their own jets. They certainly wouldn't ever wonder how they were going to pay the next winter energy bill. Why would you when you could just buy the energy company?

I mean, imagine having an income of US$1 trillion annually (which Musk is in line for after 75% of his shareholders voted in favour of the obscene 'salary.' Seriously.); that's over $83 billion a month, or $19 billion per week, or - imagine it - $2.7 billion per day. Nobody, I repeat, nobody can spend that kind of money on a daily basis. They could give it away of course, but do they? By and large, no.

To scale that down a bit, someone in Aotearoa/New Zealand could, this week, win NZ$55 million, which, even without investing it, would mean a daily income of over $150,000 dollars. Even this relatively miniscule amount (compared to the billionaires and trillionaires) would be almost impossible to spend. It would, however, be easier to give away, but there's no guarantee that a winner will automatically be a philanthropist. Probably just the -pist bit.

However, if the winner took it all (there's a song in that...) and did spend at that rate, they
would have a zero bank balance in about 12 months. So, some investment would be prudent, along with judicious spending and ongoing fund management. I could help with that.

I would, though, argue that nobody in Aotearoa/New Zealand needs $55 million. Nobody. Unless - and it's a big unless - they really are of a philanthropic nature and wish to set up educational trusts for example, say in multi-disciplinary areas for the less advantaged. There's no shortage of need. But - to use an appropriate analogy - what are the odds?

Speaking of need however, there are almost certainly 55 people in the country who could absolutely do with 'just' a million dollars, and many, many more who would be very happy with, say, a quarter of that - to pay off the mortgage maybe, help the kids get on the property ladder, or pay off student loans. Or yes, go on a cruise or buy a new car. I know this because I'm one of them. And because, well, wealth.

You can see where I'm going with this; $55 million is an obscene amount of money for one person to win. Nobody needs that amount, so I propose that the Lotteries Commission caps each jackpot at - ooh, let's think for a moment - $10 million, and, when it reaches that, they guarantee ten winners of $1 million each. The jackpot never gets to be more than $10 million, and each time it does reach that, well, there are ten massive parties in different parts of the country to gate-crash. Just listen for the pop of champagne corks. And form an orderly queue, behind me.

I mean, if this week's draw were to guarantee 55 winners of $1 million each, that would create  55 new millionaires in New Zealand. Look what that might do for local economies. Plus - while there's still the potential for family squabbling over the spoils - $1 million is a far more manageable amount than $55 million. Life-enhancing perhaps, rather than totally life-changing.

I'd also wager that knowing there are going to be 55 guaranteed millionaires after

This time next week...

Saturday's draw (the biggest to date btw), more people would be inclined to buy tickets for it. Which means the odds of you winning decrease. At least, that's how it seems to me, but I'm no statistician.

And yes, I know, creating more millionaire potential opens up a whole new debate about the dangers of encouraging more gambling - the increased mental salivation that goes with a greater chance of winning, but I'm sticking with the proposal of a more equitable distribution of the lottery winnings here. There are already mechanisms in place to monitor and restrict gambling amounts, though the efficacy of them is a debate for different forum.

Anyway, rant over. You know what I'm going to do now, don't you? Of course you do. And of course I am. But if I win the full amount you can look forward to the establishment of the Mike Bodnar Foundation for Students of All Ages Who Want a Degree in Anything They Can't Currently Afford. Or something like that. Sure, I'll certainly be -pist, but I will also be a philanthropist.

Wish me luck.

AI For Real?

 Mike Bodnar contemplates detecting authenticity in a digital world of AI slop...

The foundation of a functional democracy and an informed society rests upon a shared understanding of factual reality. Yet, in the modern digital landscape, this foundation is rapidly eroding, to our detriment. 

The rise of sophisticated generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) has introduced an unprecedented challenge: the swift, scalable, and increasingly seamless creation of fabricated news stories, images, and videos. Unlike the crude hoaxes of the past, AI-generated content can now mimic authentic journalism with such precision that distinguishing real news from engineered disinformation has become a profound cognitive and technical hurdle. 

The current crisis stems from the democratisation of content-generation tools. Large Language Models (LLMs) can produce text that mirrors the tone, style, and structure of professional journalism, often faster than a human can type (certainly faster than me!). This capability has fuelled the rapid proliferation of "news" websites that are entirely AI-generated, churning out massive volumes of stories, often with politically motivated or financially exploitative agendas. In short, AI slop. And for most of us, slop conjours up pictures of bland food served with total disinterest, or shoddiness in workmanship. Both are appropriate analogies in this case.

The speed and volume are the key differentiators from previous eras of misinformation. A single actor can now deploy thousands of highly convincing fake articles across numerous platforms in minutes. This speed of spread, coupled with the algorithmic amplification inherent in social media platforms, means a falsehood can achieve global saturation long before human fact-checkers can even begin to debunk it. 

The difficulty in recognition of such material lies not only in the text's fluency, but also in its capacity to incorporate seemingly legitimate, though often hallucinated, sources and data, creating a façade of authenticity that is deeply persuasive.

The Visual and Auditory Assault: Deepfakes and the Disintegration of Trust

While deceptive text is problematic, the ability of AI to generate hyper-realistic images and videos — known as deepfakes — constitutes an even more fundamental assault on shared reality, effectively destroying the maxim that "seeing is believing." 

Deepfakes are synthesized or manipulated media that replace one person’s likeness with another's in existing footage, or which create entirely new, non-existent scenes and events. The old demand, 'pics or it didn't happen' doesn't work any more. 

But these fabrications are so convincing, they have already had tangible real-world consequences, profoundly impacting financial markets and political stability.

In one notable 2023 incident, a deepfake image depicting an explosion near the Pentagon in Washington D.C. briefly circulated online, causing a swift dip in the U.S. stock market before the image could be officially debunked as generated by AI. 

Another pervasive example involves the use of deepfake audio and video to impersonate figures of authority for financial fraud, such as the case of a finance worker being tricked into approving a multi-million-dollar transaction after participating in a video call with convincing AI clones of his company's Chief Financial Officer and other executives.

In the political arena, deepfakes have shown their power to sow chaos and distrust. During conflicts, deepfake videos have surfaced showing high-profile political figures seemingly issuing false surrender orders or making inflammatory statements, deliberately designed to undermine national morale and military resolve. 

Perhaps one of the most viral, non-malicious-but-illustrative, deepfakes was an image of Pope Francis wearing a ridiculously stylish white puffer coat, an image so perfectly rendered and aesthetically humorous that it fooled millions, demonstrating the sheer power of AI to create believable, if slightly absurd, reality. Don't be surprised to see Jesus walking on water sometime soon.

The inherent problem with deepfakes is not just that they exist, but that they can be created and deployed so easily, ensuring that every piece of video evidence must now be treated with an initial - and essential - layer of scepticism.

A History of Human Deception: Roots of the Current Crisis

While the technology is new, the human impulse to fabricate narratives for influence or gain is ancient. Understanding this history is crucial, as it illustrates that the threat is not AI itself, but rather our own tendency to believe what is sensational or what confirms existing biases.

In ancient Rome, Emperor Octavian waged a sophisticated propaganda campaign against his rival, Mark Antony, using pamphlets and slogans etched onto coins to smear Antony’s reputation, portraying him as a corrupted puppet of Cleopatra. This early political misinformation played a critical role in Octavian’s ascent to power. 

Scoot forward 1400 years or so and the invention of the Gutenberg printing press dramatically lowered the barrier to mass communication, leading to the rise of printed, sensationalised “canards” (baseless rumours) and politically-motivated pamphlets.

In the realm of visual hoaxes, the infamous “Great Moon Hoax” of 1835 serves as a stark precedent. The New York Sun newspaper published a series of six articles, falsely attributed to the famous astronomer Sir John Herschel, claiming that life — including bat-winged humanoids and unicorns — had been discovered on the Moon. 

This sensational (and fabricated) journalism temporarily made the Sun shine as one of the most widely read newspapers in the United States, proving that narrative excitement often trumps factual accuracy. 

In art, deception has a long history, too, with countless forged works throughout the centuries, such as the Venus de Brizet, an 18th-century statue buried and then "discovered" by an artist to boost his fame, fooling experts who declared it an ancient Roman artefact.

Perhaps the most famous example of mass media-driven panic was the 1938 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds by Orson Welles. Presented as a series of realistic breaking news bulletins, the dramatisation of an alien invasion caused widespread panic among listeners who missed the disclaimers, demonstrating the explosive potential of content engineered to mimic authentic reporting. These historical events confirm that the vulnerability to deception is a persistent feature of human psychology; AI has simply upgraded the tools of the deceivers.

And don't get me started on clickbait. Oh okay then...

Clickbait

People don't believe how easy it is to fall for clickbait, and everyone is saying the same thing about headlines...

Clickbait is the insidious gateway drug to online content, a psychological tool designed not to inform, but to guarantee engagement. Its primary function is to exploit the "curiosity gap" — the cognitive space between what a reader knows and what they desperately want to know. By using hyper-emotional language, superlatives, and vague, tantalizing promises ("You Won't Believe What Happens Next!"), clickbait triggers an intense, often subconscious, need for resolution.

This technique bypasses critical thinking entirely, substituting logic with raw emotional manipulation. Headlines frequently lean on feelings of outrage, astonishment, or urgency, ensuring an immediate, visceral reaction (which is why tabloids love 'em). For content publishers, clickbait is a highly effective monetisation model; more clicks translate directly into higher ad revenue, regardless of the story's actual quality or factual basis.

The profound consequence is twofold: it devalues legitimate journalism, forcing quality content to compete with sensationalism, and it actively conditions us to associate engagement with emotional arousal, rather than reliable information. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle that prioritises traffic over truth.

A Guide to Information Self-Defence in the Age of AI

So what can we do?

The fight against AI-generated misinformation cannot be won by technology alone; it requires a renewed commitment to critical thinking and verification by every individual. Since AI detection tools are often unreliable and easily bypassed, we must rely on our own analytical skills and a combination of technical checks.

1. Scrutinise the Source and Context

The first and most important step is to question the origin of the information. Ask: Is this story coming from a reputable news organization with a history of fact-checking? Or is it from an unfamiliar blog, an unverified social media account, or a website that mimics a known publication? Reverse-search the article's core claim to see if it is reported by multiple, diverse, and credible sources. If a story is sensational but only appears on one unknown site, treat it with extreme caution.

2. Look for Technical "Tells" in Visual Media

While deepfakes are improving, current AI still struggles with certain details, which can serve as vital clues:

Hands and Fingers: In AI-generated images, look for anomalies in hands — too many or too few fingers, unnatural angles, or objects being gripped incorrectly.

Faces and Symmetry: Unnaturally symmetrical or overly smooth skin texture, or distorted or misaligned ears, glasses, and jewellery can be giveaways.

Text and Backgrounds: Text within AI images is often jumbled, misspelled, or nonsensical. Similarly, backgrounds may exhibit "warping" effects or impossible physics, such as objects blending into one another.

Video Inconsistencies: In deepfake videos, look for unnatural eye-blinking (too little or too much), poor synchronisation between lip movements and audio, and inconsistent shadows or lighting across a scene.

Basically, AI slop can be often recognised by, well, sloppiness.

3. Analyse the Tone and Language

AI-generated text can often be spotted by its lack of genuine human voice, original analysis, or specific, idiosyncratic details. Look for:

• Repetitive or Formal Language: A dry, overly matter-of-fact tone, excessive use of buzzwords, or repetitive sentence structures can indicate AI authorship. A dry, overly matter-of-fact tone, excessive use of buzzwords, or repetitive sentence structures can indicate AI authorship.

• Lack of Context: If the writing makes sweeping claims but lacks appropriate contextual depth, or if it cites sources that are vaguely referenced or appear fake upon a quick search, it is highly suspect.

4. Employ Verification Tools

TinEye

Use tools like reverse image search (Google Lens, TinEye, etc.) to trace the origin of a questionable image or video. If an image is claimed to be from a recent event but surfaces years earlier on a stock photo site, it is likely being repurposed falsely. While AI detection software is imperfect, reverse image search remains a powerful and foundational journalistic technique for verifying content.

So where does that leave us?

The age of generative AI has created a sophisticated new challenge to information authenticity. 

By combining historical awareness of our own gullibility with modern vigilance toward technical imperfections, and by prioritising critical thinking over sensationalism, we can - admittedly with some effort - navigate the treacherous currents of the modern information ecosystem. 

The battle for factual reality is not about censorship; it is about media literacy, and cultivating a healthy, informed scepticism towards the content that floods our digital lives.

So, now you know. From here on, whenever you see a tantalizing headline, or an image or video that seems almost too perfect (or in which, sloppily, a person has six fingers!), question it, research it, evaluate it. Maintain your hold on reality!

A final note...

Oh and one last thing, apart from about half a dozen sentences - and a few of my own interjections (as well as me altering American spelling to proper English) - this article was written by Microsoft Copilot. Images were generated by Google Gemini in most cases. 

It seemed only appropriate to get AI to tell us how to recognise AI...