Alternative if you want to be hardcore: air gap the system you run questionable software on.
If you're bored, you can even try to infect it with as much shit as possible.
Doesn't work as a test system though. Stuff lies dormant waiting for network access.
I think another potential use, is targeting and manipulating vulnerable people for political reasons.
Perhaps convince them to stay at home on election day. Perhaps convince members of undesirable demographics to disproportionately kill themselves. Perhaps make vulnerable people so paranoid or scared that they end up killing people you want to get rid of. Perhaps convince someone vulnerable to commit politically convenient violence, which can be used as a false flag or to rally support.
Why leave that kind of thing to chance, when you can use AI to tip the scales in your favour?
I'm Dutch. The article mentions this, but I think it's important to reiterate that the idea the Netherlands is especially progressive has always been a bit of a myth. It arose partly because people mistake tolerance for acceptance. The Netherlands has long been a tolerant country. That doesn't necessarily mean it's an accepting country.
For example, the Nazis were able to murder 75% of the Dutch-Jewish population in the Holocaust. Statistically, you were arguably safer being a Jew in Nazi Germany. My countrymen tolerated their Jewish neighbours. But they didn't care enough about them, to not look the other way or prioritize their career when the Nazis came along. The Dutch are often in denial about this, a bit like how the country still hasn't fully come to terms with its colonial past.
Anyway, it's not a huge surprise that right wing populists and Russia have had such success in the Netherlands. They're exploiting a nasty seam that has always been there.