The Chinese government has launched another quirky information operation against the United States. This time, its story is not UFOs, but terminators. On March 11, Jiang Bin, the spokesperson for China’s Defense Ministry, started pushing the narrative that integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into U.S. military systems will usher in a dystopian nightmare the magnitude of the apocalypse depicted in the “Terminator” film franchise.
In making that suggestion, Beijing apparently seeks to capitalize on three trends. First, Americans (and Westerners more generally) have a tendency to import beliefs about reality into their worldviews from sources of fiction, making movies a font of potential conspiracy theory. The second trend concerns the feuding in the U.S. between the Trump administration and the Pentagon on one hand, and Anthropic on the other, over the ethical considerations related to the use of AI. The third concerns the wider commercial impact of AI, particularly for labor.
Ironically, neither the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) nor the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) have any qualms about integrating AI into their own military systems. The implication is, therefore, quite clear: China seeks to capitalize on U.S. domestic uncertainty about AI to undercut American AI research and gain a position of relative strategic advantage.
The Pop-Culture Pipeline
From the antisemitic “protocols of Zion” to the more recent wave of UFO hysteria in the United States, fiction is a prominent source of conspiratorial ideation. In and of itself, this is a problem because it can undermine a common understanding of the world. Yet, it also serves as a significant driver of political action.
The “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” were a forgery that plagiarized, among other things, the 19th century novel, “Biarritz.” They have, in turn, been a motivating factor in more than a century of antisemitic violence, including even the Holocaust.
In the case of the United States’ ongoing obsession with UFOs, the disclosure of the so-called “Nimitz incident” of 2004 ripped off an episode of the TV show “Star Trek: Enterprise.” Nevertheless, the alleged UFO encounter of a group of F-18 pilots over the Pacific has motivated government reports, new spending, and multiple congressional-level inquiries related to aliens rather than the more mundane issues responsible for their actual experience.
The fear of “killer robots” ingrained in Western public consciousness is another belief motivated more by popular culture than by reality. From Hal 9000 in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” to the Terminator, on to the “Matrix” film series’ Agent Smith and Marvel’s Ultron, machines and rogue AI are frequently depicted in Western media as the stuff of war and social collapse. There are exceptions, of course, but the general trend in Western media is to depict AI as a malevolent force capable of bringing about the downfall of humanity.
And just as the pop-culture-to-conspiracy pipeline motivates political behavior in the cases of antisemitism and UFO belief, so too does it drive actions and attitudes in the case of AI. In fact, former U.S. President Joseph Biden was reportedly so alarmed by what he saw in “Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning” that he signed an executive order motivated in part by the film. The movie, like so many others, depicts an out-of-control AI. The executive order Biden signed in response established AI safety standards and other regulatory requirements aimed at “protect[ing] Americans from the potential risks of AI systems.”
None of this is to suggest that the policy was bad or that the standards themselves were not beneficial in some way or another. But the fact that leaders in both the executive and legislative branches can be so easily swayed to make policy impacting the lives and livelihoods of millions based on fiction raises many questions.
And China was undoubtedly considering how this pop culture-driven fear of AI could be exploited. They certainly don’t believe the trope. As Dan Cox, my colleague at the School of Advanced Military Studies argued, AI and robots are generally viewed as more benevolent in Eastern culture. From the tokusatsu and mecha genres in East Asian entertainment to anime more generally, machines are usually depicted as helpers and protectors (although there are exceptions).
Although a direct connection between the consumption of such media in China, Japan, or South Korea is less clear, East Asians do tend to have a more positive view of AI and robotics. While the CCP had an AI chatbot shut down for daring to refuse affection toward the party, it should come as no surprise then that China is integrating AI into its own military programs at breakneck speed.
The Anthropic Controversy
As China’s new narrative has gradually proliferated through the media ecosystem since March 11. Outlets like the Straits Times, Times of India, Economic Times, and even MSN have all explicitly connected the announcement out of Beijing to the Trump administration’s recent row with Anthropic.
The debate concerns the Pentagon’s effort to ensure U.S. military AI use complies with the law as passed by Congress rather than being constrained by standards set in Silicon Valley. Anthropic insists that it cannot allow its Claude model to be used for fully autonomous weapons or in mass surveillance. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegeseth responded by declaring Anthropic a supply chain risk, while President Donald Trump has ordered the federal government to cease using Anthropic products.
The nature of partisanship is such that publics generally follow the direction provided by their preferred political parties and leaders. This process of motivated reasoning suggests that the Anthropic controversy will lead to a bifurcation of public opinion. Republicans will likely follow the president’s lead, while Democrats will likely side with Anthropic. As Russian information operations over the last decade or so have shown, malign influence operations like the Terminator narrative currently being pushed by China are often targeted at exacerbating exactly this kind of polarization. Russia, for instance, has historically been less concerned with getting people to believe its narratives per se, so long as its narratives drive deeper wedges between different groups in the United States.
The American left is already more concerned about, and less trusting of AI, particularly with respect to environmental concerns. According to a fall 2025 poll, young conservatives are also less opposed to turning control of military and other governmental decision-making processes over to AI. Perhaps unsurprisingly then, polling in the wake of the Anthropic controversy matches these trends, indicating that Americans do indeed split along party lines with respect to the U.S. military’s commercial AI partnerships.
In other words, AI represents an existing fault line in American politics. By linking its Terminator narrative to the Anthropic commotion, China’s goal may be as much to increase political unrest as it is to undermine American AI research and development.
The Commercial Impact of AI
Finally, many are growing increasingly concerned about the long term impact of AI on the workplace and labor force, and even the concept of employment itself. China’s timing could be an intentional effort to capitalize on this trend. Of course, the “killer robots” trope is often seen as a distraction from these sorts of issues, as it diverts public attention from short-term realities like labor displacement by having people focus on much longer term possibilities. Yet, this may not matter.
As a form of conflict, information warfare often seems to rely on a throw-spaghetti-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks strategy. If the trend in public opinion is negative, it will not matter if the population feels badly about AI because of scary robots or because they are losing jobs. Beijing gains the upper hand in either case if policymakers or investors are persuaded to shift away from the permissive regulatory or research environment the AI industry currently enjoys. As American research slows, that represents an opportunity for Chinese research to catch up with or even surpass the United States.
Conclusion
In the end, it is difficult to know if China’s efforts to tap into the West’s longstanding fear of “killer robots” and “rogue AI” will pay off. Their previous attempt at such a peculiar info op, one signaling that China is better prepared to fight UFOs than the United States, does not seem to have taken hold. However, strange narratives need not stick to be successful. For example, the Russian effort to sow discord over “The Last Jedi” likely had more to do with exacerbating Western polarization by driving another wedge between the social justice left and the anti-woke right than it did with discrediting the Star Wars film franchise.
As the response to the Anthropic controversy sees Americans further polarized over AI, the Chinese may achieve a similar effect regardless of whether people ultimately care about the threat of an AI apocalypse. If the narrative does take hold – like those of earlier antisemitic or UFO conspiracy theories – China could see success beyond its wildest dreams.
The author thanks Dan Cox and Spencer Bates for sharing ideas that made this article possible.
