The following is a guest post by Karuna Nandkumar, Non-Resident Expert at the Oxford China Policy Lab, and an anonymous contributor.
Competition between the U.S. and China has entered a new domain: meme warfare.
The lines between memes and reality began to blur a long time ago. The Texas judge who conducted a Zoom trial with a cat filter on his face during the COVID-19 pandemic was a bizarre premonition of darker applications to come. Now, Chinese state media is intentionally layering cute animal filters onto ballistic missiles, and the U.S. White House is splicing bombings of Iran with Spongebob clips, as both countries build up (or actively abuse) their military might. These new tactics put a filter of ease and glamour over the harsh realities of war, with lasting consequences.
The Advent of Advanced Military Advertising
In early January, as the U.S. launched the first of what would become a series of increasingly aggressive military actions from Venezuela to Iran, the White House social media team released a warfighting highlight reel. The viewer watches soldiers shoot at air, run through trees, and jump out of planes, while President Trump’s voice warns the world: “If you attack the United States of America, we will crush you without mercy.” The footage is dotted with color-adjusted shots stylized like a video game, with an upbeat action movie-esque soundtrack playing in the background. When the beat drops, rockets blast off.
Just a couple weeks prior, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Eastern Theatre Command put out an AI-generated montage of animals that shape shift into advanced military weapons, pointed towards Taiwan. The video, released during China’s large-scale Justice Mission 正义使命 military exercises from December 29-30, 2025, features sharks that shape shift into submarines, honeybees that turn into drones, and wolves that become robots with an uncanny resemblance to the Unitree Go2 Air Robot dog. It ends with a swarm of humanoid robots joining the march, visually invoking China’s drone swarm tactics, multiplied across ground, air, and sea domains. The final screen reads: “United forces, clustered weapons, cutting off the path to independence / 联武群戈斩 ‘独’道”.
War propaganda is nothing new. In the past, the United States, China, and countries around the world have appealed to honor, patriotism, and action movie-like depictions of strength in their military communications. But animation advancements, and now AI, have made it easier than ever to create video content that combines the real and the manufactured into a seamless product ready for TikTok or Douyin in seconds. Facing publics that generally oppose military intervention abroad, the United States and China have begun experimenting with an AI-enhanced mode of military advertising that makes war seem cleaner, easier, and less serious.
Lay of the Digital Land
The new era of military propaganda is enabled and likely in part motivated by complex social media ecosystems in China and the U.S. Official PLA accounts often release official content on WeChat 微信, the most-used super-app (messaging, social media feeds, payment, etc.) in China, reaching a large swath of society with over 1.38 billion monthly active users. The TikTok equivalent, Douyin 抖音, dominates creative, short-form video content. Xiaohongshu 小红书 (lifestyle and visual curation) and Weibo 微博 (microblogging) make up other niches. Bilibili / 哔哩哔哩 is popular among Gen Z, home to gamer and other subcultures, with Tencent’s QQ / 腾讯QQ retaining a smaller, messaging-focused youth user base. The PLA distributes across all of these in different ways: WeChat is used for official framing and long-form announcements, for example, while meme-native, remixable material is often released on Bilibili and Douyin.
In the U.S., the digital landscape is flatter and more fragmented. YouTube and Facebook are the only platforms used by a majority of Americans in every age group. The White House and Department of War post primarily to X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, and Facebook, each serving a distinct function. Just 10% of adults use X daily, but since the company’s acquisition by Elon Musk and the dawn of the second Trump Administration, it is known for politically-charged content and press attention. YouTube houses longer-form material, and Facebook retains the oldest and broadest audience across the country. Instagram primarily features reposted White House clips and photos, rather than the video content discussed below. The U.S. government’s approach to the media is also changing rapidly; in June, the U.S. Army shut down and consolidated thousands of military unit-level accounts to promote unity.
China’s Military Cuteness Campaign
Traditionally, Chinese military communications have stressed loyalty and honor, tied to the goal of national rejuvenation after a period of turmoil during the 1900s, from the collapse of the Qing dynasty to the Chinese Civil War. Previous PLA propaganda videos frequently showcased new weapons capabilities. During the PLA’s August 2022 exercises around Taiwan, for instance, the Eastern Theater Command released a music video of soldiers singing, “We’re just waiting to be summoned…towards victory, no surrender, we vow to defend every river and mountain in our motherland“. This was accompanied by footage of missile launches. Individual PLA recruitment videos have paired patriotic framing with displays of military hardware, like in this 2017 video that set footage of military equipment and combat to lyrics about leaving the teenage lifestyle behind to grow up and protect the country. Academic analysis of PLA recruitment ads from 2013–18 similarly found that alongside traditional appeals to recruits’ sense of patriotism and collective duty, contemporary PLA ads also promote military service as a vehicle for personal development and self-fulfillment.
Since last year, however, China’s military has been using playful memes to make weapons and warfare appear “cute”. One tactic pairs military technology or operations with trending soundtracks originally released by popular artists with no connection to the military. In a short video recapping China’s 2025 military parade, Global Times overlaid cartoon peach-pink pig emojis onto Dongfeng (DF-26D) ballistic missiles, the icons swinging left and right across the frame as the missiles march forward. At the end, a burst of 3D hearts and heart-eye emojis floods the screen, in a visual flourish more characteristic of fan art than a weapons showcase. The accompanying soundtrack, “Mommy Said I’m a Pig / 妈妈说我是一只猪”, features simulated children’s voices over a lively drum beat, with lyrics captioned in puffy, candy-colored fonts:
妈咪说我是猪，我是猪就是猪，那也是妈咪养的可爱猪，我妈咪养的好哇，养的圆嘟嘟, 油光水滑毛色亮，是美丽的咪猪
Mommy says I’m a piggy, I’m a piggy and that’s that / But I’m the adorable piggy that Mommy raised / My mommy raised me well, raised me round and plump / Glossy coat, shiny fur, I’m a beautiful little piggy
Similar tactics have emerged across national PLA-affiliated and local government WeChat accounts: Wuhan’s municipal government, for instance, pairs warship fire drills with a soundtrack originally written about children “bouncing and jumping / 蹦蹦跳跳”. The caption reads “Netizens [say]: my mood got better after watching this video / 网友：看完这个视频心情变好了”. The PLA’s Eastern Theatre Command also released an attention-grabbing video set to viral music during a series of military exercises in the Taiwan Strait in late 2025. Its title, “So Close, So Beautiful, Go to Taipei Anytime / 这么近，那么美，随时到台北”, is a play on a trending regional tourism slogan: “So Close, So Beautiful, Go to Hebei on the Weekend / 这么近, 那么美, 周末到河北”. The video is set to the light, bouncy tune of “One Spot,” a popular song by Chinese Kpop artist NINA (Shen Jianrun 沈佳润). If you simply read the captions – in the same puffy font style as the piggy video – you might think a travel vlogger had posted a lighthearted ad for Taipei’s beauty.
“Wow, Taiwan Province seen through the clouds is so beautiful / 哇 云中的台湾省太美了” , as a fighter jet watches the island from above.
“Bro, you showed up too! / 兄弟，你也来了”, as another jet arrives.
“Hey! There are also friends who came by boat / 哟！还有坐船来的朋友”, as a fleet of warships crosses the screen, heading towards Taipei.
Beyond viral soundtracks, military communications accounts have been quick to adopt other trends from Chinese online culture. The aesthetic of Taobao daihuo 淘宝带货 – in which livestreamers demonstrate products live in rapid succession, highlighting technical specs with lively commentary – has been repurposed to explain the special design features of PLA uniforms, gloves, and masks. The phrase “Keep the spark going / (续火花, which typically refers to maintaining an online friendship streak on Douyin, now describes the continuous firing of machine guns.
The United States’ Video Gamification of Violence
Like China, U.S. military advertising has historically framed warfare as serious and honorable. Recruiting campaigns have focused on citizens’ sense of purpose, duty to their country, and desire for financial stability, at times adapted to target specific groups such as women in the 1960s seeking a more independent lifestyle. More recently, the U.S. Army under the Biden Administration tried to improve recruitment with an animated video “Emma” that highlighted the story of a real soldier who grew up with two moms, marched for LGBTQ+ rights, and found her calling in military service. The video and related animated series about service members from diverse backgrounds faced intense media backlash. But the tone of the videos stayed serious, focusing on personal bravery and national duty.
The Trump Administration has left these norms behind. White House and Department of War (DoW) social media campaigns over the past six months make real violence into a game, in real time. As described at the top of this article, one common approach pairs an action-movie or hardcore electronic soundtrack with recycled clips from normal training videos originally posted by one of the military services. Last November, the DoW tweeted a recap of a weapons training and ordinance disposal drill in Montana, which consisted of large dogs and soldiers running around corners and shooting into the sky, set to a country rock soundtrack. Similarly, a separate 40 second reel is captioned “This is what strength looks like….”, with shots of men in camouflage gear running, shooting, and staring into a glowing sunset, effectively romanticizing military operations, as an Instagram influencer might do with a montage of beach walks and acai bowls captioned “This is what self-love looks like…”.
The DoW and White House have also begun to incorporate animated and possibly AI-generated content. In May, the DoW put out a video where War Secretary Hegseth makes the case for America to “build the weapons of the future” over a series of animated visuals. It opens by bashing the Biden Administration for underinvesting in military technology, as we watch an animation of a white-haired Biden in a COVID-19 mask stumble across the screen and face-plant himself into an ice cream cone. In one frame, as Hegseth discusses foreign adversaries, an Iranian leader on crutches tries to fire a drone, misses, and falls over backwards. Everything is labelled “Golden” in shiny gold letters – the Golden Dome protecting the United States, the Golden Fleet ensuring American maritime dominance – giving the United States and its weapons a holy vibe. The video later takes an intimidating turn, discussing military AI investments as we see an autonomous army amass troops in the background. A drone targets and blows up a cave marked with an Iranian flag. The U.S. cartoon drone army targeting Iran and the Chinese PLA’s cartoon drone swarms around Taiwan are eerily similar, even the shape of the drones and animations themselves.
The most extreme example of war gamification emerged in a slew of White House ads since the U.S. began its military offensive (Operation Epic Fury) in Iran in March 2026. This approach combines popular music, television, video games, and sport reels with real aerial footage of bombs hitting their targets, using simple animation techniques or AI to manipulate footage. Like the PLA’s animal filters on a missile, this series of videos appears to try to make an unpopular war seem “light”, like a game that the U.S. will inevitably win. The White House released the first clip on Twitter on March 5th, in which the viewer peers through the electro-optical guidance, targeting and blowing up two trucks, as the TikTok viral rap track “Bazooka” loops its hypnotic “Kablow, kaboom…” in the background. A few hours later, a second video showed a similar bomb’s eye view of buildings being loudly obliterated – cutting straight to a famous meme of Spongebob saying “Wanna see me do it again?” (Originally, the line referred to Spongebob’s superhero alter-ego running to a mountain and back). The sequence loops over and over. These two videos collected 9.4 million and 3.8 million views respectively, compared to the aforementioned weapons training drill from November, which received only 188k views.
In addition to popular media, the White House has used actual video games to attract viewer attention. Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto (GTA) both featured as eye-catching lead-ins to more footage of targets being hit. The play on GTA features the protagonist’s catch-phrase as the game begins (“Ah s***, here we go again”). After the viewer sees a real target in Iran get hit, the text “WASTED” flashes across the screen – which appears in GTA when your character dies. In a similar format, the White House paired baseball strikes and football touchdowns with missile footage, timing key tackles or swings with each explosion. One week later, the White House combined the same footage of bombings with Wii sports from tennis to archery, accompanied by the classic playful Wii sound effects, reminiscent of a doctor’s waiting room. This breezy background numbs the viewer to the weight of bombs destroying real buildings in a real country, with real people. The next clip took the meme-ification a step further: angry-looking bowling pins march towards the viewer holding a sign that reads “WE WON’T STOP MAKING NUCLEAR WEAPONS”. We cut to a bowling alley, where the text above the pins explicitly reads “Iranian Regime Officials”. A bowling ball painted with an American flag rolls towards the pins, country music blaring, and the scene cuts to footage of bombings as the pins get bowled over.
What Do the Memes Mean?
Making military propaganda short-form, animated, and blended with other “civilian” popular media trends seems to be working. Among Chinese netizens, these memeified videos are generating significantly more attention and positive response than previous PLA content. As of May 2026, the Global Times piggy video, originally published in September 2025, has over 100k views – more than 100 times that of other clips released during a similar time frame. The “So Close, So Beautiful” video from the PLA’s Eastern Theatre Command received 96k likes on WeChat alone, compared with 3k likes on more mundane clips of the same military exercise. It also gained wide traction on its BiliBili (978k views), and sparked discussion on Zhihu and Weibo. The video was picked up immediately across Taiwan’s major outlets.
In the United States, mainstream media outlets (e.g. CNN, Wall Street Journal, New York Times) are more critical, expressing unease at the lighthearted feel of these videos. Right-wing media outlets are relatively positive, especially when comparing Trump’s approach to the Biden Administration’s “woke” advertising. However, one former servicemember who had critiqued the Biden Administration’s diversity ad campaign reacted to the new Trump approach, saying “Most guys I talk to would not send their sons out for a 20-year career in this”. His comments got 35K likes on YouTube, demonstrating that making light of military life does not appeal to everyone. At the end of the day, however, the approach is still increasing clicks. The White House video of the angry bowling pins got 103M views, compared to 300K-400K views for other non-gamified content released in March 2026.
It is possible that the lack of pushback from Chinese netizens results from broader censorship on Chinese social media platforms, while there is still more room to express dissent in U.S. media channels. But the efficacy of meme-ified content in the attention economy is obvious. As AI video generation becomes more common, it will enable increasingly meme-like and cartoon-like content. After the U.S. began the war against Iran, for example, CCTV put out an AI-generated video “流金谷恩仇录 (The Feud of the Golden Valley)” capitalizing on growing global opposition to the war and criticizing military interventionism. The video portrayed White Eagles (the U.S. and allies) trying to monopolize the oil-rich Flowing Gold Valley, until the defiant Persian Cat (Iran) leads a fierce resistance against their tyranny. CCTV says that the video simplifies geopolitical dynamics into a widely accessible fable by combining AI-driven animation with the conventions of classical Wuxia (martial arts) narratives. Both the historical elements and the blatant personification of American power seek to critique U.S. actions in the world and advocate for a transition toward a multipolar global order.
The impact of cute, gamified military advertising mirrors the impact of autonomous and AI-enabled weaponry itself. AI weapons are pitched by new-age defense companies like Palantir and Anduril as making war more targeted, faster, and less bloody. In reality, the costs are often the same or worse for targeted populations, the systems are unpredictable, and military applications of AI are lacking in legal accountability. Similarly, memeified military content gives war a veneer of fakeness and lightness, making it easier for people in China, the U.S., or elsewhere to feel detached from the human impacts of their governments’ choices to engage (or not engage) in military conflict or arms buildups. Experts have characterized these media tactics – “vibe patriotism,” as one veteran put it – as a strategy aimed to desensitize publics to violence and dehumanize victims.
The G2: Meme Convergence
After the Trump-Xi Summit in May 2026, the U.S.-China “G2” popped up across news feeds, as the leaders’ striking similarities in personalistic leadership styles were on full display. As evidenced by the recent tone shift in both DoW and PLA content, these similarities extend beyond personalistic leadership. So what explains the convergence of the two powers’ military advertising models?
First, neither public has much desire for war. These advertising approaches could be a similar effort to manufacture consent, stemming from different domestic causes. The U.S. public is war-weary. In fact, it has voted for candidates that promised, with poor follow-through, to get the United States out of wars in every election since (at least) the 2000s. China, on the other hand, has a noninterference brand to maintain (more brand than practice, given its support for Russia and South China Sea military actions). CCP leadership may be trying to get ahead of potential backlash to continued investment of public resources into military modernization goals, on the nuclear, traditional weaponry, and advanced technology fronts. A lighter public view of war could also preempt backlash if the Chinese government were to decide military force is necessary to achieve control over Taiwan in the future.
Second, these strategies may simply be the best way to get clicks in today’s digital environment. The public wants short-form content and Substack posts, and the two most powerful militaries are responding with audience-friendly content created in the most rapid, cost-effective way possible. The utility of these tactics is evidenced by their use across government entities, like the Department of Homeland Security’s Twitter short, in which ICE officials make arrests with flashy captions to the tunes of popular Arctic Monkeys song “Do I Wanna Know”; or the Chinese Communist Youth League’s use of memes in routine educational campaigns.
Despite different political systems and media environments, the question both the U.S. and Chinese governments are trying to answer is how to sustain domestic appetite for investment in military power – and, ultimately, for its use. The meme-like, aesthetically appealing content shapes recruitment conditions and threat perception among domestic audiences in both countries, creating more favorable conditions for leaders to be able to take military action. As armed conflict spreads and deepens across the world and military technology continues to advance, undermining the seriousness of war could further limit the ability of citizens to accurately evaluate and exert any influence over the decision to go to war. This is particularly concerning in the near term for the United States, with a track record of frequent military action and a system that is intended to be responsive to an informed public. The United States and China are again at the cutting edge; but in the race to meme-ify modern war, nobody wins.
See the full database of downloaded videos released in Chinese and U.S. media outlets here.
While IDK if this makes anything better or worse, I can say that having spend some time with Ukrainian front-line troops, both the anime-ification and videogame-ization of the entire stack of warfare is firmly entrenched into the culture of the world's foremost active military conflict. It's just kinda the epistemics of how everyone is processing everything.
Wow and wow. If nothing else its obvious why Hegseth got attention but he could have just been named spokesman.