Apparently, America's Trump cannot even match Iran's "AI strategies'.

International attention has been drawn to Iran's latest artificial intelligence (AI) propaganda tactics against the United States and America's lack of preparedness to counter them. A recent satirical 'Lego' style video, which became widely popular on social media, depicts American President Donald Trump crying in fear, sitting on a bed, signing surrender documents, and being helpless in the face of Iranian missile attacks.

Since the start of the Iran war, Iranian officials and sympathizers have widely used AI-generated satirical creations, leveraging Western pop culture elements like Lego, Marvel, and Forrest Gump, to mock America and foster sympathetic attitudes towards Iran.

Statistics confirm that this new propaganda tactic has achieved significant success. Within the first 50 days of the conflict, official Iranian accounts on the 'X' (Twitter) social media network attracted over 900 million viewers for their visual content and garnered 22 million likes. This represents more than a thirty-fold increase compared to their average 50-day figures. Furthermore, content shares increased from 4.3 million to 75 million during this period, and these videos have been viewed millions of times on platforms like Instagram and TikTok.

American policymakers typically focus on traditional propaganda methods like voice clones or deepfakes designed to deceive the public. While such fake visuals showing destroyed buildings and disheartened soldiers were seen in the early weeks of the Iran conflict, these latest Lego videos do not aim to mislead the public. Instead, they use humor and satire to create a cultural impact and belittle America. This tactic differs from traditional disinformation and can be identified as aggressive satirical trolling carried out on social media.

It is reported that more powerful and wealthier states like China are closely observing Iran's success. According to internal documents of the Chinese AI company 'Go-Laxy,' revealed by 'The Times' last year, the Beijing government is already experimenting with various tools to monitor public discourse and opinions within American society. By combining this data monitoring capability with the ability of artificial intelligence to create large volumes of culturally relevant content, China will have the opportunity to launch more sophisticated and subtle propaganda campaigns targeting the United States.

America's continued lack of a robust strategy to combat such foreign influence is a serious problem. Traditional methods like imposing sanctions or exposing covert operations are ineffective against such overt satirical propaganda because these creations do not attempt to be secretive or portray themselves as factual. Moreover, traditional diplomatic statements or awareness campaigns are too slow compared to the speed of social media. To address the current situation, a threat reporting mechanism should be developed with the support of American AI companies, providing this strategic data to American Large Language Models (LLMs). Although Secretary of State Marco Rubio instructed embassies abroad to respond to such coordinated propaganda campaigns last March, America needs a broader program to monitor such propaganda operations abroad in real-time and provide creative, culturally resonant responses that can captivate the public.