A viral hoax circulating right now claims Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is dead. Conspiracy theorists perpetuating this narrative speculate that his recent appearances are actually sophisticated AI deepfakes, despite fact-checks confirming he’s alive and well.

Glenn Beck was disturbed when he realized the popularity of this conspiracy theory.

“We have to be able to see through these fake stories. We have to slow down enough and think through logically,” he says.

Hiding Netanyahu’s death would demand “silence from the people who physically surround him — that’s family, personal staff, security detail, medical personnel, drivers, aides, schedulers,” Glenn adds.

Some of those people, he argues, would “have every incentive — financial, ideological, even personal — to speak up if something this enormous were true,” making it “damn near impossible” to keep the news concealed.

Glenn explains the impossibility of such a scenario.

“[Netanyahu] has to constantly interact with military leadership, the intelligence, the cabinet members, the opposition leaders, the foreign diplomats. If the man were gone, every single one of those interactions has to become a performance. Every meeting becomes a theater,” he says.

“Then you have the United States government. You have the European allies, regional adversaries, intelligence services across the globe. They all have to either be fooled or actively participate in the deception,” Glenn continues.

“Think about that for a minute — rival intelligence agencies, some of which exist specifically to expose weakness or deception in Israel. They would all have to miss or suppress it. That’s just not how intelligence services behave. They leak, they compete, they expose.”

Then there’s the massive media arm — “the hostile press, the friendly press, the foreign press, the independent journalists” along with all their “camera crews,” “audio technicians,” and “editors” — that would have to be either completely duped by a “flawless” scheme or fully “complicit” in the ruse.

“Journalists break careers for stories far smaller than this. This would be the biggest political cover-up in modern history, and no one has the human instinct to cash in on that, on Israel?” Glenn asks skeptically.

For those claiming that all of Netanyahu’s recent appearances are AI deepfakes, Glenn has a blunt message: AI is advanced, but not that advanced — at least not yet.

“You would need the technology that could generate full-motion, real-time video; ... handle unpredictable environments, lighting, background noise, interruptions; ... maintain consistency across multiple appearances, different angles, different days; and do it so perfectly that video experts cannot detect it, foreign intelligence could not detect it, political opponents can’t expose it,” he explains.

“If that technology exists at that level — not in a lab, but operationally deployed — it would be the most valuable and destabilizing capability on Earth, and it wouldn’t be used for Benjamin Netanyahu. It would be used for something far, far greater than that,” he continues.

Realistically pulling off a scheme as grand as hiding a world leader’s death from the entire world is simply too great a task for our current technological capabilities, Glenn concludes.

“You’d need total silence from the inner circle, total coordination against his entire government, total compliance or total failure of government intelligence from all over the world, ... total [complicity] or total incompetence of the international media, and flawless, undetectable AI that could replace a human being in dynamic public settings,” he summarizes.

“That’s a pretty big wall to get over.”

To hear more of Glenn’s analysis, watch the video above.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.