This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Hey, what's up? It's Dexter. And this week we're bringing you part of a live stream conversation on Tuesday that I did with Matthew Gault, who I brought on to talk about Iran's weird sloppigandal war with the United States amidst the actual war that's going on right now. If you want to catch the next one live, you can find that on YouTube and the link for that is in the description. Welcome everyone to another live episode of the Kill Switch podcast. And today we're talking about the AI sloppigandal proxy war thing that's happening between the US and Iran and the person who's breaking down. All that with us is Matthew Gault who and I'm just going to read your bio here because I think it's actually very relevant. Matthew Gault is a writer covering weird tech, nuclear war and video games. And those three things sound like they maybe don't fit together, but that is precisely the Venn diagram. I feel like we need to have this discussion today. Matthew Gault is also the host of the Angry Planet podcast. And right now you have a piece in four four media. It is called Iran is winning the AI slop propaganda war. So I'm going to play this so people have an idea of what it is we're even talking about. For those people who are not seeing this and are listening to this, can you describe this? What are we seeing here? So we begin with Lego Donald Trump in a casino and he is he's rolling the dice and they come up snake eyes. But instead of the the two pips, it is the flags of Iran. And then kind of the theme of the thing is Donald Trump is slowly dragged farther and farther and farther into hell along with the soldiers that he is getting killed because Iran is killing them with with missiles. And it's you know, mixing some hell imagery, mixing some Benjamin Netanyahu. And this is all again, I must stress for the listener in Lego form. So we're better stone. This is a trap. You couldn't see. Welcome to the graveyard of your vanity. The secrets are leaking. The pressure is rising. We locked on the target. And now you are hiding. Yeah, we're spelling that your name. Send them to the slaughter. You the only one to blame. Bleeding for a fucking while you shaking in your suite. Taste the ass of defeat. OK, I'm sorry. I just need to pause because I'm seeing you nodding your head and I'm also nodding. I just wanted I just want to acknowledge that we're both restraining ourselves from nodding our heads. It's catchy, right? Like the song really makes it. It's it's not good, but it's kind of good. It's effective. Effective is maybe the right word. That's the that's the right word. Let's keep going because there's more to here. For a while you shaking in your suite. Take that. Hey, you're fighting in your suit, hiding Epstein's girls. You sent your boys down. Oh, and of course, we've got Epstein files. Every basically every Iranian propaganda video. Make sure that you remember that Donald Trump is in the Epstein files and that the Epstein files exist. Yeah, we've got him in a in a mountain of skulls. It says hiding Epstein's ghost. You sent your boys down. Not a revenge for the leaders. Blood is purely mine. Every drop of his blood is a missile on the line. You got your mouth off the fire was dead. But another common man is standing there. Yeah, you strike one down with the shadow of your brain. We put another in the common name. Yeah. Tell me how you even found this. Well, it kind of speaks to the whole thing. Like, how did I find this? It's it's if you're on X, it's everywhere right now. It's just like, I can't I can't escape this thing. And, you know, some of that is I've trained my algorithm to be about war and AI generated stuff. But I feel like I saw this AI Lego video shared and reshared millions of times over the last week and it hasn't gone away. And there's a new one that references this one. There's just there's a whole lore. There's a lot. What do we know about who made this? So they got looks like they got I don't know what happened, but they did get kicked off of Instagram. Yes, that's right, because you posted you posted your article and it was you linked to the Instagram post. And when I went back and checked for it today, the whole thing's deleted. Yeah, I've and, you know, I don't know what happened there. But they're called the explosive news team. I'm taking for granted that they are based in Iran. I don't speak Farsi, but it sounds like Farsi to me when I when I when because on their telegram, which is kind of like the first level of their stuff, where you would see a Lego video posted first. They also have a guy that's doing like direct to camera talking about the war and he's like walking around outside and kind of explaining what's happening. And it's that mixed in with these generated Lego videos and the generated Lego videos kind of make it online. And then like it's you can't not spread them around. I mean, look at it. It's it's fascinating. And so this is one of these situations where these videos are coming up and we really don't know that much about who's making them or even the tools that they're using, like, you know, a lot of A.I. Slop looks pretty bad. This one looks for Slop. Looks pretty good. That looks like Lego. There is the weird sheen that that a lot of the A.I. stuff has, but it's not nearly as bad. It feels pretty sophisticated. Well, I think there's two things to bring up there. I mean, one is that, yeah, it has that A.I. sheen that you can kind of tell. But also we've gotten so used to that that we don't we don't really it doesn't bother us anymore. You know, I mean, it's not really something that like pisses us off anymore. Now, and because this is Lego, it lends itself. Right. Like there's something about Lego that like you you watch them A.I. animated and it doesn't bother you as much as when you see like a real human moving around and you can tell that it's wrong. The Lego it lends itself to this somehow. Which is funny because like Lego propaganda predates A.I. Slop, like Lego propaganda has been popular for a while. Yeah, tell me about that. Yeah, because you also mentioned this in your article as well. So it's been a raw. I mean, Iran's been doing various people in Iran have been putting out like Lego videos like this for years for a long time. And there's also like a lot of stuff out of the Russia, Ukraine war. There's a lot of Lego videos like Lego propaganda videos. In fact, in the run up to an election in Moldova, Russian propagandists were making like Lego videos and Lego sets and distributing them there as well. So Lego is a popular form for propaganda. And I think it's because it's ubiquitous and like everybody likes Lego. It's one of the most recognizable brands across the entire planet outside of Disney is Lego. And so I think that makes it easier for people to use and understand. So the songs we can say the songs are obvious pretty obviously A.I. generated. But for some people, it's going to sound there. There'll be some lyrics in there. It was like, wait a second. Do you have a point? Well, that's the thing is like. This is not a popular war. Even among Trump's most ardent supporters. Yeah. And most people like the perception is most people see this is not going well at all. So like Iran knows that they read our social media. It's not like people don't post about these things. And so they designed their Lego A.I. videos to speak to that specifically. Right. There is the image of the casket with the flag draped over it recurs in a lot of these Lego videos. Right. You see it. You see it in this one. You see it in the new one that's referencing this old one. And like I think that there's this this. That is like the image that kind of I think it kind of comes from the Vietnam era where like people, Americans are so removed from a lot of conflicts that they're involved in that it doesn't hit them until they see that iconic image of the casket coming home with the flag draped over it. Right. And so Iran is like shoving that into our face constantly over social media. Yeah. You use you have this really interesting line. And honestly, this is one of the this is maybe the line that made me think, OK, I really need to talk to Matthew about this. Iran's use of Lego set rap music tells us it's been studying us. These are videos meant for the American people crafted in a language Iran knows will understand. Can you tell me about that? So it's. Rap music is very popular. It's the it's the backdrop for a lot of American life, I would say. And it's it's cartoons. You know, I've got this quote that we that they in the piece on like Iran knows that Americans love pop culture heroes. We like our cartoons. We like our superheroes. And they've been watching how we interact with all of that pop culture for so long. And like, if you make money on social media just by like generating posts, like you're one of these AI AI slot farms. The gold is in American fuse. Like that's where the advertising dollars are. And so it pays for everyone that is a student of like AI generated content to learn American culture and learn like what hits here. Right. And like, that's why you have shrimp Jesus, because they know we love shrimp and we love Jesus. We definitely I mean, listen, you're not incorrect. So some people some people like shrimp more than Jesus. But if you ask your average American, hey, how do you feel about all you can eat shrimp buffet? And, you know, do you do you go to church? You get positive reactions is what I'm saying. Maybe sometimes depending on the person, you might get more positive than the other. But in general, broadly speaking, we like shrimp. We like Jesus. Absolutely. Two things I can tell you about America. Yeah, there it is. We'll be right back after the break. There's other videos, right? So what what are some of these other videos look like? And I can bring one up. Yeah. So the one that's really striking that I that really there's two that have stuck with me. One is kind of similar to this where it's a parody of Disney's Inside. We have no issue with civilian. Why did you attack the Minov school? Oh, go on. Lie, lie, lie. We didn't hit the Minov school. America doesn't have Tomahawk missiles at all. You care deeply about the Iranian people. But I think one of the ones that's really hitting people. And the first time I saw it was shared by RT, which is like a Russian state owned propaganda outlet, but they shared the video in its basically different people that have been victims of American aerial bombing campaigns like watching the skies. Yeah, you're talking about the the one vengeance for all video. Yeah. So it begins with like starts with Native American, then goes to like a boy in Hiroshima. There's a farmer in Vietnam. There's somebody in Yemen. This is the part that is really interesting. The child in Palestine cut to little blonde girl on Epstein Island with the temple in the background cut to one of the girls in Iran at the Minov school that we bombed, cut to assassinated Quds force commander Kaseem Salamani, which is like not I doubt Americans are going to know who that is at this point, but. And then we see like what Iran's going to do about this, which is use missiles to strike America. And they blow up a I think that's supposed to be ball that demon is ball as the Statue of Liberty, right, with the kind of like ox looking things with horns on it, so the Statue of Liberty with the ox horns and yes, so it's a demon, you know, the United States being a demon and it destroys the statue and then falls into the sea. Yeah, the implication being that all of these people that America has wronged over hundreds of years, their vengeance is going to be personified by Iran. And I generate all of that, by the way. So, OK, that video drops. Three days later, have you seen the updated version? Oh, no, I haven't seen this. You've got to show me. Oh, this is one vengeance for all part two. Oh, yeah. Oh, no. Oh, yeah. So OK, let me explain what he's saying. Oh, no, too. Hold on. All right. So this is all Lego, very similar style to the first ones that everybody's seen. And so you've got a very stereotypical looking Native American man with a big head dress on and feathers with a horse, which is also all decked out, very ceremonious looking. And then you have something that is supposed to look like people in Africa. They look very upset. And there are things that we're supposed to understand as shackles around their hands, around their feet. And then you've got Abu Ghraib prison. You've got also Rachel Corey, who was somebody who was a pro-Palestinian activist, who was American, who was killed in Palestine. And then you have, again, little girls and behind them is a sign that says Epstein. But then also in and amongst a whole bunch of other recognizable figures, you have Malcolm X, Lego five Malcolm X. And in the back, there's a bunch of young black, I suppose, Lego men. And they're holding a big sign that says if you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor Malcolm X, big banner saying that. And each one of the representatives of these said groups that have been oppressed are putting their signs on a missile and walking up and pressing a big red button to fire away a missile. So what does it say to you? I mean, much the same as all the other stuff. It's fascinating that there's so many specific characters. We're looking at the Abu Ghraib prison. There's a gentleman that has his left hand is gone and he's got a like a hook for a hand. And there was a close up of him that had some very specific like facial texture. So I don't know who that is. It's supposed to be some there. They're referencing someone specifically that I don't know who it is off the top of my head. And that's the whole thing. The Epstein victims picture, those are the those are the the the ones that have come forward and testified, right? Pretty sure. And so they again, they are implying like the other vengeance video that like Iran is standing up for America's the victims of America. Right. And you know, they're conflating like Epstein. They're conflating everybody, everything together. And saying, you know, the missiles are the sort of vengeance against the people that have perpetrated the crimes against everyone, the Lego versions of everyone you see in this video. So we are at war with a country that seems to understand us and is generating normally in past wars, propaganda generated by the person you're fighting is for the troops, for the people that are fighting. It's to break their morale, it's to make them think that nobody likes them back home. And that stuff rarely makes it back to the home front. Well, we live in an age of social media and it's to connection. And now Iran is purposely designing propaganda so that you and I will talk about it on a podcast and we'll hear a rap song and get kind of into it. Yeah, like this is this is meant for like, sure, soldiers will see it. You know, as they're sitting on the Abraham Lincoln. But like, this is for you and me. This is for people that are on Twitter and on Instagram. This is meant for the mass consumption of the American people. Yeah, that is unique to me and different. So let's talk about it because there is a history of this, right? Propaganda aimed at sometimes civilians, but often soldiers. It's something that's always been done. Yeah, right. Yeah, tell me a little about that. So I think that like the classic example that people will probably be familiar with is like. Oh, I can't remember her name now, but there is a woman. You'll hear her broadcasts in movies about Vietnam. You know, there's soldiers in the jungle. She's like, go home, G.I. Joe. No one wants you here, etc. etc. Just kind of like slowly droning, breaking you down. Vietnam would also drop like leaflets aimed at African American soldiers that be like, you know, you guys don't have civil rights back home and you're over here fighting us. Like, isn't, you know, maybe you should be thinking about what's going on. North Korea would do that during the Korean War and all both of the World Wars. People generated propaganda and tried to get other soldiers to see it. Like it's it's incredibly common, very common. It's just part of how war works since like the mass production of media. Since you've been able to churn out a bunch of pamphlets, since you've been able to get on the radio, since you've been able to make television, right? Yeah, it was also something that you saw Japan do a lot. They would also drop these pamphlets on white soldiers and black soldiers. So right here, you have a pamphlet that says at the top, it says, seen from the home front. And it's got can't make this up. It's hard to describe, but it's a black man holding a whip and he has whipped a white woman. And you can see she's bleeding. And then another black man is forcibly kissing a white woman. And it says, is it getting bad as all this? Yep. Negroes are the boss of the town now. And that is aimed at white soldiers. Very specific, like American male fear from the time. Exactly, exactly. And you've but then you've got the flip side of that, which is they would also drop pamphlets for black regiments. And it's basically this is an image of it's a pamphlet. It's black and white and you've got a black man sprinting and a black man as a soldier. And it basically says, you're sprinters, you're fighters, you're the best. But I'm quote here, every time a dirty job turns up, every time they need more cannon fodder, every time the going gets tough, you're up front while whitey stays behind where he won't get hurt. I get mad one of these days if I were you. So this comes back to what you were saying, which is like, there's always been propaganda that understands the shall we say the enemy or the other side. And there's a progression from here is this, you know, we are defending ourselves. It's a sacred duty for us to defend Iran. You know, America has come in and they're bombing us. This is this terrible thing we've done. And it's kind of shifted to look at how hypocritical Americans look at how hypocritical government is, which is something that was done in the past. And that's being done. Not only that, but like we are doing this on behalf of the downtrodden. Exactly. Yeah. Right. This is not just about defending our country. It is an existential conflict against, you know, they call us the Great Satan. Right. Against the Great Satan. Right. And we're going to stand up for all the people that that Great Satan has trampled on for generations. We'll be right back after the break. The United States is doing something very different. And I want to play this because it's worth watching. So this is a tweet. You're you're you're putting your head in your hands. All of this stuff is so like so upsetting. Let's do it. OK. So from again, as you stay, as you said in your article, Iran did not start the AI slot propaganda war. They did not start the start the weird meme war. They absolutely did not start it. Here's the United States. A couple of weeks before those Lego videos. Here's the United States on Twitter, March 12. So. So to give the audience the rundown of what we just watched. Yes, please. It's footage from we sports. And every time you're hearing like hole in one strike, the we sports footage is cutting to that grainy like footage of a thermal cam of like a strike on an Iranian military target. Mixing, you know, video game. And it's funny because like I watch this and I'm like, this is the kind of stuff that you make if you are completely confident that everyone already agrees with you. Right. And you're not trying to win anybody over. You're just trying to entertain your base. Like that's this is not winning. This is not a hearts and minds campaign on the American home from from the White House. And like, it's all like this. It's all this kind of stuff. Yeah. Well, let's hear it. Let's look at another one. Oh, shit. Here we go again. Oh, shit. Here we go again. OK, so I'm just going to stop it here. So for those just listening, it sounds like we're just listening to a loop of the same thing over and over again. We're not. No, but that's it. It's the repetition that in this that makes me crazy. Yeah. So it's a video from Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, which is this. How old is this game like? Like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. How old is this game? Like 18 years old of this game, 15. It's an old game. It's old. It's a old game. Very old now. And it's a meme with the dude saying, ah, shit. Here we go again. And then every time it cuts over to something being, you know, footage, surveillance footage of some target I'm using scare quotes here being blown up. And this is a tweet made by the official White House account that says, Operation Epic Fury, destroy Iran's missile arsenal, destroy their navy. Sure, they never get a nuclear weapon. And so I think the messaging is very different. Right. You're talking about what Iran's doing is this is kind of a hearts and minds type thing. And then White House is dropping video game memes from 15, 20 years ago. I mean, I hate to remind y'all, but the Wii sports memes, the Wii people were playing the Wii in 2007. That is a 20 year old console like the Halo memes. Right. They're also doing memes from the video game Halo series. Hate to break it to everybody, including me, because I love Halo, but nobody plays Halo anymore. Who are they trying to talk to is what I'm trying to ask you. Well, it's sad. This is like aging millennial thinking that they're on the top of the culture when actually they're the losers, right? That's what this is. This is because the comms director, who's you've got retweeting the White House thing with the infinite ammo cheat from Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. I think he's in his mid 40s, I believe, could be completely wrong. He's he's an old millennial. He probably knows what his Harry Potter house is. He's that kind of guy. Fuck. And so like all of that stuff from when he was a kid that he thinks that he still thinks is so cool, the broader culture has mostly moved on from. Yeah. And it seems so often that they think it's cringe. And so like he's playing to other people that are exactly like him that aren't that don't like keep up with medic culture or aren't interested in changing or learning, like he's still obsessed with the same games and the same memes from 20 years ago. And it's kind of funny to watch the White House like. Like you do the CJ thing once, right? Like, oh, shit, here we go again. And then like that that's it. Then maybe you cut to something else. But to do it like three or four times in a row. It's just like that's it all over, right? It's just repeating the same tired stuff for a small audience that helps you get into power that that mostly foments on like four Chan and places like that. And like, meanwhile, we're all paying four dollars a gallon for gas. And we blew up a girl's school in Iran. Cool. But I think I think that's one of the really interesting things here is that, listen, the United States in the past took these sorts of things really seriously. If foreign actors, enemies, right, people on the other side of the war, were trying to appeal to existing divisions that existed in US society. The United States took this stuff really seriously. Let me let me pull this up. This is a an official internal memo that was at one point confidential. In the Navy, I'm just going to read you the opening paragraph of it. Resume of Japanese influence on the Negroes in the United States. It is quite apparent that the present policy of the Japanese government to exploit the Negroes in order to precipitate a major internal security problem in the United States is based upon previous steps in this direction, which indicate that racial agitation may well be incorporated as a definite part of Japan's program for world supremacy, end quote. Basically saying here that the United States at one point, the policy, I think broadly speaking, the United States broad point was we need to make sure that the American people in the rest of the world believe that we are on the side of justice and we are doing the morally correct thing. And if some other power tried to give the impression that the United States is morally incorrect, do you guys had to counteract that? We're now seeing there. It doesn't really seem like they're trying to win anybody over, just like you said. Well, yeah, think about like to like think about Afghanistan and Iraq, push signs legislation that opens the door for reporters to embed with soldiers like very closely to follow them to report on what they're seeing like actively. And yes, there's like people were dog walked and were shown certain things. And like it had varying levels of transparency, but like you did have an independent press on the ground with soldiers like right next to them reporting on things as they come. And we like we sent Colin Powell to the UN to make the case for why this was why it was righteous to go in to Iraq, like why we need to define these weapons as mass destruction and you're right, it was America making the case that it was morally it had been hit, it's people had been killed and we were morally in the right to do what we were doing. Trump says, first of all, like not really much of an end. There's there's a couple of people left at the Pentagon press corps, but most of it is like restrictions are continuing further and further. You know, they want to get journalists in trouble who are reporting on things that they don't like. And so what we're left with is a guy that says, actually, we're the strongest and we're going to hurt everyone because we can. And here's a funny meme about it. And we're left with these videos of like war from a distance cut with 20 year old, you know, video games. And like that just doesn't like doesn't strike a resonance with Americans or anyone at all, except for like a very narrow part of the administration and the supporters that are like kind of bullies and sociopaths. Right. Like who likes this kind of stuff? Well, so maybe I'm going to ask you an obvious question here. But listen, there's. Plenty of discussion about physically, how is the war going? All signs point toward not so hot for the United States. What about the meme war? Who's winning? Who's winning? I mean, Iran's winning the meme war. One of my. Bellwethers is because I don't like I don't live in a major media city. Most of the people I interact with all day don't have any idea what's like they're blissfully ignorant of a lot of this stuff. So it's like when one of those people walk up, walks up to me and it's like, have you seen this this Lego Iran that like it's like, OK, then it's hitting. It's piercing through if the people of South Carolina are asking me if I've seen an Iranian Lego video, then yeah, like, yes, it's it's resonating with people, for sure. And I think most people don't know, like, don't know why America has gone to war with Iran or are not convinced by the 13 different reasons we've been given. But I also think that like Iran probably not doing so hot either. I think this is going to be one of those things where I think that we can bomb a lot of infrastructure away and we can reduce the size of their military. But like you don't win a war with an aerial bombing campaign. You don't win hearts and minds with an aerial bombing campaign. And I think that Iran knows that all it has to do is survive like probably a year. Get to the midterms. They know when they know when the American midterms are. And so all they have to do is keep to keep putting out the Lego videos, keep defending themselves and tunnel deeper and make keep making missiles and. You know, he gets bored and the Americans don't like it. So. That's actually a good point. For people who are watching this kind of bizarre mean war play out right now. What do you think people should be paying attention to? Uh. I've maybe a weird answer. Their own feelings. Hmm. Watch your watch your heart. You're not immune to propaganda. So I think that you can. You can be motivated by like the White House's memes a different way. And this is something that I struggle with every day. I got a lot of like poison flowing around in the old ticker right now. Because I'm like a lot of this stuff just makes me very upset and angry. And just like. This stuff is meant to get a quick emotional reaction out of you. Both both sides of it. Right. Be aware of that and like watch that and wonder if like. What what's the intended effect? Is it having that effect on me? And do I need to step away for a second? Whether that's, you know, a really amazing, amazing, a really catchy Lego rap song or like a terrible video of we sports explosions, like either one. Yeah. Sometimes it's sometimes you need to push away just a little bit and watch yourself. So I've got a lot of years left of this, whatever this is. And we got to be careful with ourselves and with other people. Yeah, man. Well, with that, thank you so much for coming through once again, Matthew. I really appreciate it. We got to have you on again because this this this tech stuff doesn't just stay inside the computer, it's it gets out at all of us. It's all of our it's all of our lives now, everywhere, all the time. Yeah, man. This is the water we water we swim in. Everything is computer. Yeah. Thank you so much to Matthew Galt for joining us on our second live stream. And thank you for listening to Kill Switch. Again, if you want to catch the next one live, you can subscribe to the YouTube channel, you can just search Kill Switch pod on YouTube or you can find the link in the description. And if you have any ideas for another episode or something you're curious about or even a guest you want to talk to, you can let us know via email at Kill Switch at kaleidoscope.nyc or on Instagram. We're at Kill Switch pod. And if you like what we're doing, maybe leave us a review. It helps other people find the show, which helps us keep doing our thing. Kill Switch is hosted by me, Dexter Thomas. It's produced by Sheena Ozaki, Darla Potts and Julian Nutter. Our theme song is by me and Kyle Murdock. From kaleidoscope, our executive producers are Osvalasian, Magesh Hattigador and Kate Osborne. From I Heart, our executive producers are Katrina Norval and Nikki E. Torre. Catch on the next one.
