Iran, slopaganda, and the lego-inspired creator behind it all

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

0:30non-refundable fee product purchase required terms and service restrictions apply details at lowes.com slash terms subject to change at the bbc we go further so you see clearer with a subscription to bbc.com and the bbc app you get unlimited articles and videos ad-free podcasts the bbc news channel streaming live 24 7 plus hundreds of acclaimed documentaries from less than a dollar a week for your first year read watch and listen to trusted independent journalism and storytelling. It all starts with a subscription to bbc.com and a BBC app. Find out more at bbc.com slash unlimited. Okay, this week on my social media feed, there's one video popped up which shows this guy called Jaden running really, really fast into what appear to be or what are the Scientology headquarters in LA.

1:23And it's basically like deepest run into Scientology, like how far can you get? Wow, it's nice in here. And the reason the video is so funny is because you've got kind of like slightly half-hearted security people going like, no, no. And then this guy's like jumping and climbing over stuff. It feels like the kind of content that's going to inspire lots more running into buildings. And also, it feels like that kind of trespasser content that sits in that slightly murky area of, is this okay? Because you're kind of breaking into a building, but it's kind of funny. No, that's really funny because I did that once.

1:59You ran into a Scientology building? I didn't run in. I used social engineering. I just... You used social engineering? Well, I pretended that I was interested. I pretended that I was interested. But are you saying that the trend that you're thinking is now going to happen is speed runs into Scientology buildings? Or any other kind of slightly intriguing building. For example, I was quite seriously considering, could I do the deepest run into the BBC this morning when I came in? And the main obstacles that I face are that there's loads of doors and you have to buzz your pass through. But first and foremost, I'm too short for the doors.

2:29So often when I go through those spinny doors, I don't trigger the sensor. So I get stuck. So I have to push them. So I think it would really slow me down. Also, the BBC would stop you from ever getting to the secret Illuminati room where we run the world. I actually run the secret Illuminati room. Just quickly, you know, Mizzy, the prankster, he started this whole thing, actually. He used to do riding bikes into places where you'd go riding bikes in places. then he would ride his bike into like you know a bank or something or where you're not allowed to and people were terrified they were like what's going on yeah like robbed or yeah and then he took it too far he went into like a stranger's home he literally and then it's like dude you're you're breaking and entering yeah like you can't but this is this is i mean the reason that we're chatting about this and these kinds of trends is because as funny as they can be ultimately you can basically commit a crime trespass into a building get in actual proper trouble and the reason that people do this stuff is obviously that it gets loads of engagement like that that video of the Scientology thing has had 35 million views it was posted six days ago that is huge huge amount of views you can see what other people go hmm shall I run into a building and see what happens and on that note what are we gonna be talking about today so today you know the AI war slopaganda videos that have been going viral, made out of Iran, that depict Lego figurines acting out the US-Iran war.

3:53Yes. If you haven't seen them, look them up. You need to watch them. We have managed to track down the Iranian social media team behind those videos. Which are mega viral. And did a full interview with them. And as we interviewed this person, it quickly became one of the weirder and crazier interviews I've ever done in my life. This interview wasn't just a random meme account on Instagram. It appeared to be someone who was an expert in propaganda working directly with the Iranian government.

4:35Matt, just to recap, what does this content look like? Where is it being shared? So it's all over TikTok, Twitter, X, Instagram. It's got millions of views. It depicts the U.S.-Iran war in the world of Lego characters made with AI. One of the most popular videos is a rap song about how Trump is a loser. It's called Loser.

5:03It depicts him and Netanyahu drinking blood, worshipping Satan, bombing schools in Iran. It heavily features the Epstein files. It also features Native Americans, former slaves. The idea is that they're kind of allying themselves with the oppressed people that America has left behind. And it also depicts the Iranian military destroying American aircraft carriers, destroying military sites in the Gulf, bizarre stuff like them bombing Citibank and then ghosts flying out of the UAE to represent capital flight. Like it's really intricate. And the high quality of these AI videos, plus the very specific list of military targets they depict Iran attacking, plus the very fact that they have access to the Internet in a country where the public cannot use the Internet because there's an Internet ban in Iran, has all made it seem as though this is a group working for directly or indirectly the Iranian government.

6:06the the social media account is is called explosive media and it's run by allegedly a guy called mr explosive um by the way no surprise that the interview was not super straightforward then it was yes so so so there's always been this mystery over is this iran is this the iranian revolutionary guard corps making ai videos or is it some kind of freelance pro-iran group who just happened to have access to the internet in a country where no one is allowed access to the internet. And they've been evasive about it. He gets on the phone and he's silhouetted with red and green, the Iranian flag colors projected onto either side of him, like a kind of a helmet, which has some kind of religious symbolism and this like desk with like a giant quill.

6:57It was lit and set in a very surreal way. And there was this other woman - I've seen a picture of it and it looks really sort of professional. Is that the right word? Or dramatic or like something out of a film? It's super dramatic. Yeah, he's sort of like a kind of set himself up as an Iranian godfather type figure. And then he had a Persian translator in the room. But as the interview progressed, she kind of seemed to be more than a translator, maybe like a handler. Was she advising him on what to say? Yeah. We obviously had our own translator. You know, we didn't Whitcoff it. Steve Witkoff went to Russia without his own translator famously.

7:32But the first thing that I asked him about was, yeah, how does it work? So he said they've got 10 people working for them making AI videos. They have a team of fact checkers, which I found hilarious because they often depict things that are patently false. And also AI generated. And it's AI generated. What, are they fact checking? Yeah, exactly. I didn't buy the fact checking thing at all. I don't know what that fact... I think if they have a fact checking team, it's more like a kind of checking whether... Does it fit with the message? Quote, facts. Yeah. fit for the message of the Iranian government.

8:00Like a kind of propaganda team, although I imagine they wouldn't call it that. Yeah. As the interview progressed, both myself and our Persian translator began to realise this guy appears to be quite heavily involved with the Iranian government, possibly the IRGC. He was so good at parroting the Iranian government's propaganda lines, word for word. He defended them. He also had access to the internet. So you need like a white SIM card, which is issued by the Ministry for Information of the Iranian government. Because of the blackouts and everything else. Just to be clear, if he was making content critical of the Iranian government, he almost certainly would not be allowed to do that and could potentially be put in prison.

8:43Yeah, exactly. And so did you push him on, are you actually connected to the government? Are you a member of the government? What was the kind of conclusion of that? Yeah, I did. I said, look, you know, number one, you are using the internet in a country where the internet is banned. Number two, you are directly repeating propaganda lines from the Iranian government. Number three, your videos depict like very specific military targets that I just don't think a random meme account would know. Number four, telegram channels affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps have been sharing his videos.

9:20I said this all the time, I said, people find it hard to believe that you aren't directly working for the Iranian government. But he denied it and denied it. And then I said, look, you know, you are making propaganda for a government that has been accused of killing thousands of its own people. You know, does that not weigh on your mind? You know, and he denied that there was this big protest movement. He called it a coup.

9:42Mr Explosive:I don't see any protesters. You mean the coup on the 8th and 9th of January? The coup for which Mr. Trump said he himself sent weapons through Kurdistan? Even, you know, your own government figures put the number of protesters killed at around 3 ,000. The opposition puts it at in the tens of thousands. What would the protesters and their families think about you making videos in support of the Iranian government, given all of that?

10:11Mr Explosive:I should mention that out of those 3 ,000 people that you referred to, many of them were terrorists who carried out terrorist attacks on our streets. And 2 ,000 of them were innocent people who were killed by those terrorists. We were planning to make a video, a Lego video, about that incident as well. But the Zionist regime realized that its first operation, the coup, had failed and immediately started a war. And we had to change the strategy of our media and focus on war.

10:50At this point, the translator, the supposed translator, intervened and said, can you please ask about Lego? Even your own government would dispute what you just said. they even admit that at least 2 ,000 people were civilians. Would you please back to your main subject about Legos? You want me to ask about Legos? Our interview is about Legos. Sorry, our interview is about Legos. So would you please back to the main questions? I think given that there is clearly a direct relationship between you and the Iranian government, given that the Iranian government has been accused of killing thousands of their own civilians, we have to ask these questions as well.

11:28Financial connections or anything, you can't believe it or not. It's not upon us to prove it. You wouldn't be able to operate without a connection because you require the government to give you access to the Internet. They're not going to prove it to you. We said we are independent, so you have to trust us in that. And then I came in with my final piece of evidence that he does work for the Iranian government, which is that he actually told me on Instagram. so I brought this up and said you said that you sometimes work with the Iranian government and then there was a bit of a back and forth with the handler and him then he said that they had done some projects with them and I asked him about it and he said yeah they are a customer of ours earlier when we spoke on Instagram first you said you didn't work for the government but then you said that you did do some projects with the government no he didn't mention that no of course he didn't mention your question is false basically on Instagram when we were messaging back and forth on Instagram, you said that you did work with the government.

12:27You had done some projects with them.

12:30Mr Explosive:We make our own videos in the first place, and we have different customers. One of our customers is the government. So I was like, oh, so you do work for the Iranian government then? And he said, look, in our country, it's our holy duty to support our government. And, you know, we could have made Lego videos about the protests, but then America invaded. So now making Lego videos about that. Anyway, so I first I asked him about why Epstein features so heavily in his videos, because, you know, he's always talking about the Epstein files. And this is what he had to say. One main reason we wanted to describe to the audience what type of confrontation they're witnessing between Iran, America, and the Zionist regime.

13:14Mr Explosive:We wanted to show that this is the confrontation of truth against falsehood. Right. So I see Donald Trump is often surrounded by kind of Lego children in his bed, on his lap, sometimes crying. Why is that? You need to go back to the Epstein files to get an explanation on that. We tried to depict it through a loose adaptation. It's worth saying, obviously, that Donald Trump denies any wrongdoing or connection to Epstein in any way and has repeatedly defended himself. But it hasn't stopped, obviously, a load of speculation and conspiracy and content online, which this clearly plays into. That point about, right, we'll just make this stuff and leave it to the audience is something I hear a lot from AI creators that I track down.

14:00This kind of, well, we're just making this sort of impressionistic stuff and take from it what you will. I guess what's especially notable about this is that it seems like the content is directed not at people in Iran, many of whom don't have access to the internet a lot of the time, but actually to people in the West. Yeah. What did he say about that? He was evasive on that, but it's so clearly directed at the West. I mean, he's aware that Trump's popularity is declining because of the Epstein files. He's trying to pry that open and use it as an attack point on Trump. I mean, he's speaking...

14:31It's also kind of internet. It's like internet culture, right? It's like Epstein and Donald Trump is so prevalent on social media. Right. And that gets me to the next point about this guy and his team. They are very clever. They know exactly what they're doing. Their goal appears to be to get picked up by left-wing people in the US who oppose the war in Iran and oppose Trump and care about the Epstein files, and also people on the far right who don't want Trump to go to war with Iran. The extent to which Trump is able to pursue this war is the extent to which he can maintain public support for it.

15:02As he loses public support, he will lose support to Congress. Which is why you want to target the US audiences. So if Iran can make Trump look bad, can make the war look bad, the war will stop. So that is more important than any military objective on the ground. And it's working. They get the internet. They are speaking successfully. So it's kind of like an influence. When we think of how we define influence operations, whether they come, whether they are state backed or not, it's essentially attempting to influence or distort public opinion somewhere. And they're doing this, but in a way that feels much more overt, I guess, than covert.

15:36Obviously, with the caveat of we don't know whether they are definitively connected to the Iranian government. I think it's genuinely one of the most successful influence psyop campaigns done by government in recent history. Because, you know, the White House has been doing their AI and meme war as well. Their TikTok account has been filled with AI memes. You know, we've spoken about this a lot. But Iran is winning the war on social media. And he claimed that he's trying to show the true narrative as opposed to what he calls the Zionist regime of the US and Israel. But when I pushed him on the fact that there are many things in his videos that are patently untrue, for example, he depicts the Iranian military capturing that downed fighter pilot.

16:22Which didn't happen. That didn't happen, right? But he denied that. He said, oh, maybe what Trump said, that the US rescued this pilot, maybe that didn't happen.

16:33Mr Explosive:There might be a hidden scenario here. Possibly there was no lost pilot. There was no rescue operation. Their main goal was to steal uranium from Iran. So you're saying that the US narrative that they rescued this downed fighter pilot is not true? A media report lately said that only 13 % of what Mr. Trump says is based on facts. And I can assure you that the majority of things he says are false. And it becomes difficult to argue with him because he's coming from the moral standpoint of the US president is lying. And we're kind of creating our own version of reality, decide which version you want to opt into.

17:20Exactly. And I think the fighter pilot is an interesting point of propaganda for the Iranian meme department and the US meme department to fight over. Because the US has tried to claim this downed fighter pilot they rescued as a kind of resurrection myth, right? Yeah, yeah. And I mean, it's not just AI generated content. We've even seen like real images of, for example, Donald Trump with the Easter bunny and then comments that have been made by other people in this cabinet that, again, create this kind of like absurd imagery that doesn't require AI at all. Yeah. So you have Hegseth. He was talking about this downed fighter pilot.

17:54He said he was downed on a Friday, hid in a cave and was rescued on a Sunday, right? Just like Jesus. And he's talking about this pilot relating him to Jesus on Easter while the president is talking about it standing next to the Easter bunny while Iran is making AI slop videos claiming that they've actually captured this pilot. And it just contributes to this simulated meme war playing out that has more bearing on how people perceive the events than the real war itself. You know, we've spoken about hyperreality before, which is our kind of headsy philosophical way of describing how social media has become more real than reality.

18:37He mentioned hyperreality unprompted. Just to you. Yeah. He said what we are doing is hyperreality. he even said you should read uh jean baudrillard the french philosopher who came up with that term so the idea that you know a social media team that appears to be directly linked to the iranian government is aware of hyper is aware of the concept of reality and is actively pushing that is just mind-blowing so just a quick brief on hyperreality it's this idea that the simulated version of reality becomes more real than reality itself. So, you know, Baudrillard has this term that the map precedes the territory, that, you know, the drawn map is more real than the real territory itself.

19:22He also said things like the Gulf War didn't actually happen because the televisual representation of the Gulf War seemed more real than the war itself. It became a kind of simulated war that we all perceived that that was more real in the war itself. Social media, reality TV have all pushed us further into this age of hyperreality. And the Iranian government appeared to be aware of that. I think that the thing that is most concerning about all of this is that ultimately, I mean, especially when it comes to stuff like war, a shared concept of reality is fundamental to us just all kind of like coexisting.

19:57It's how democracies work. It's how society works. If that shared concept of reality just does not exist anymore, and you've just got like different versions of reality which are inflamed by or cemented by AI content like this. Where do you go? Like, how does this stuff? Yeah, it just escalates and escalates and doesn't necessarily resolve and no one really knows what to think about what's going on. Exactly. Yeah. This is why I kind of felt like I was hallucinating while I was interviewing this guy. I mean, he was silhouetted with green light, like he wasn't real. And we were talking about a simulated war that existed on our phones.

20:30And all of this has really serious consequences, not least in terms of how people perceive wars and conflicts, because because it's so sanitized, it's almost like it isn't real, even though actually there are people being killed, there are people's lives being ruined. Like you can't even imagine how scary it is being in some of these places where, you know, you're experiencing strikes and so on. And then you've also got the added issue, which is when you've got a load of AI generated content like this, people start to then think they kind of go in the opposite direction, which is everything is AI.

21:01A couple of weeks ago, there was a clip of Benjamin Netanyahu. He was talking about the war and the conflict and the way that his hand moves makes it look like he's got six fingers. And that's one of the tales of AI-generated content. And so everyone suddenly on social media, I was messaging a user who was one of the first people to share this stuff. They go, oh, well, this is AI. He's dead. And loads of people believed it. I had people messaging me saying, has Netanyahu died? Have you seen this AI-generated video? And turns out there's no evidence that it was AI generated. It seems to just be a glitch in the video.

21:31Nonetheless, everyone. So it's like that's even real footage. Unreal. Yeah. I mean, remember the whole narrative that people have said Trump started this war to distract from the Epstein files. Well, Iran knows that they have created content that brings the focus back to the Epstein files. And the other thing is no one's talking about the protests anymore. Yeah. And I think in lots of ways, Donald Trump is the or was the master of this kind of content. He's the person who you think of the AI Gaza Riviera video or some of the content he shared over the past year in particular, which has triggered outrage.

22:05It's creating kind of like versions of reality that are completely different to actual reality. It's done everything that the Iranian content is now doing. And the fact that, you know, the person you spoke to basically said to you, like, we've kind of learned from him and now we can do it really well. It's almost like the US have kind of armed their enemies with the meme AI weaponry that they were previously the sort of world leaders in. So are you saying that the tech companies, social media companies are now actually a weakness for the US? Possibly, because not only has Iran essentially copied the blueprint that Donald Trump and his administration have created in terms of like rage bait AI meme content, but actually it's the social media companies and the big tech companies, the AI companies who have essentially invested in and grown both their platforms and the technology, which is now being used by people in Iran to target the US itself.

22:58So you're reaching a point where these kind of huge assets, I guess, to the US, particularly from a financial point of view, like the big AI companies, like the tech bros and the tech companies. Actually, is it the broligarchy who accidentally bring down Donald Trump, who were the people who maybe got him where he was in the first place? Yeah, that's a really good point, because they always talk about our AI companies, our tech companies, our social media companies. That's what makes it strong. It's one of their biggest exports. And now it's become their biggest weakness. And Iran is basically using it to exploit them hugely.

23:27And it's working. And now China has now made huge splashes in the AI war slop game. And, you know, if we want to make that comparison between what influence ops used to be like versus what they're like now, bot accounts, particularly ones where they spell things wrong and they really don't seem very real. Their names are all a bit of a pickle. They're very obviously divisive. People have got fairly savvy to spotting that kind of stuff. What's much more effective are creators that make content that seems organic. And it means that people are more inclined to believe it. They're probably more likely to see it because they have pre-existing followings.

24:00And crucially, what it means is that the content kind of takes on a life of its own. You know, the copycat creators can be like, great, I'm going to use AI and make some Lego videos as well. It becomes like a trend almost. You start a trend and that wave of content reinforces the same narrative and ideas without you actually really having to do much more at all. If you and I worked for a government and were trying to run an influence operation, you would definitely rather rely on a group of very savvy meme AI creators who don't seem like they're anything to do with you, at least surreptitiously, than having someone actually in your team just posting this stuff on like, you know, Iran government X, as much as they troll people.

24:39At the BBC, we go further so you see clearer. With a subscription to BBC.com and the BBC app, you get unlimited articles and videos, ad-free podcasts, the BBC News Channel streaming live 24-7, plus hundreds of acclaimed documentaries. From less than a dollar a week for your first year, read, watch and listen to trusted, independent journalism and storytelling. It all starts with a subscription to BBC.com and the BBC app. Find out more at bbc.com slash unlimited. Anyways.