Source laundering

Source laundering is the practice of disguising the origin of information, funding, or influence by routing it through intermediary entities that appear independent and credible. The mechanism is structurally identical to money laundering: the legitimate appearance of the front organization cleanses the tainted source of its original associations, making it palatable to audiences who would reject the message if its origins were known. In propaganda systems and information warfare, source laundering is the primary technique by which state and corporate actors bypass the skepticism that targets would apply to direct communication. The effectiveness of source laundering depends on the opacity of the intermediary network and the cognitive cost of influence tracing back to the original actor. The technique is particularly dangerous because it exploits the trust we place in apparently independent sources, making it a structural attack on epistemic institutions rather than merely a rhetorical deception.