🎥 "Our Weapon Is AI" | Iran's Viral Meme Warriors Interviewed by Shane Smith & Andrew Callaghan

Note: The interviewer's questions were spoken in English; Mohammad Bagherian's answers were spoken in Farsi. The Farsi answers below are translated from the video's Persian auto-captions (YouTube), reconstructed and interleaved in sequence. Translations are by the research library and approximate; [trans.] marks a translated answer.

Andrew (intro): Andrew Callaghan and I started podcasting together. We said, hey, let's go somewhere and break some news. So we got into Iran. Iran's like every other place — you got kids, old people, families, like everywhere else.
Shane Smith (intro): The Lego videos are so interesting because they're kind of a brand new thing. And they've literally had, you know, nearly a billion views. It became a phenomenon — sort of putting out the Iranian point of view, propaganda if you will, but in a lighter, comedic fashion. It's new. It's a new way of waging war and propaganda. The interview you're about to see was a very difficult interview to do. Why? Because these guys are very concerned about their safety, as they should be. They had to be in a remote warehouse that we didn't know about. They wanted to keep it short so they couldn't be traced. These young guys are making these films that are seen by hundreds of millions of people, and they see what they're doing as God's work, literally.

Interviewer: For starters, one question I have — for the people unaware, how would you describe what it is that you do?
Mohammad Bagherian: [trans.] We actually describe our work as a duty. When we go out into the streets and ask people, they want to do something bigger for their country. A shopkeeper says, "I wish I were in the Red Crescent," or "I wish I could sit behind an air-defence gun." This was our duty — the work we could do, the work we knew how to do — and we see it as our duty toward our country. We're proud of the part of our work that raises awareness among the people of the world.

Interviewer: That's an interesting point, because you're saying that with Lego cartoons — and I believe in the BBC interview you said you use Lego because real violence pushes the audience away — the young people are seeing your Lego cartoons and saying, "Hey, that's the real news," versus the news they see on TV.
Mohammad Bagherian: [trans.] The people of the world, especially the West, have for years been under the propaganda of Western media. The feedback we get from our audience is exactly this — they say, "You are finally teaching us. You're teaching history, you're teaching reality. Our own media didn't teach us this." Their views, and the views of those around them, about Iran, about this war, about our politicians, change. That's where we take pride in ourselves.

Interviewer: Do you think the Internet has now turned geopolitics into something like fandom culture? [And that young people see your Lego cartoons as the real news?]
Mohammad Bagherian: [trans.] Yes, exactly right, and the reason is that the human being has an essence inclined toward truth. They were under false propaganda for years, but now that they've found the truth, they're instinctively drawn to it. I think the suppression of truth over the years made it like a compressed spring — and now it has sprung out.

Interviewer: Some people online would say that what you guys are doing is kind of like government propaganda dressed up as internet culture. How do you respond to that criticism?
[Music playing]
Mohammad Bagherian: [trans.] We are completely independent. The ideas are our own. The decisions are our own. What we make and don't make is our own. And if we support our country, we don't need the government's support. No one needs to tell us to support our country. We support our country independently and of our own will.

Interviewer: You also said the Iranian government is one of your customers. Is that true?
Mohammad Bagherian: [trans.] Like any other media outlet in the world, after we finish our production, various media outlets buy the broadcast rights to our footage — our videos — from us. Sometimes some of these media may be state-affiliated. This isn't strange. Our video is high quality and many media want to buy it from us.

Interviewer: Talking about Trump, and how the Trump administration since the most recent electoral victory has used AI-generated videos all the time — like the video of the Gaza Strip, the Gaza hotel with Elon Musk throwing a bunch of money, what was supposed to be a country club built atop the rubble. Is this kind of a semi tongue-in-cheek reaction to that, a way to counter that narrative by using AI?
Mohammad Bagherian: [trans.] [Placed next to ours,] it shows its own level — how low it is, media-wise, in quality, and how anti-reality it is. They take a place they destroyed and razed to the ground and say, with AI, "we're going to develop it." The reason is that hands stained with blood cannot write ideas that sit in the human heart. Hearts turned to stone cannot produce humor, cannot produce a compelling narrative.

Interviewer: So what are some examples of Western-backed media outlets and politicians using AI to push their own agenda?
Mohammad Bagherian: [trans.] Trump's tweets themselves are very interesting — in them the AI he uses gets the names of countries and cities wrong; the planes, some of them have three wings. Trump's tweets are great — we can really see an interesting picture of American statesmanship and what it has become.

Interviewer: Maybe getting a bit more metaphysical. You've referenced Baudrillard, the philosopher. With Baudrillard and hyperreality, politics and war have become emotionally consumed as media experiences.
Mohammad Bagherian: [trans.] It's the same thing Jean Baudrillard said — when your enemy no longer has anything to do with reality, and has built a reality as hyperreality and emphasizes it, having set reality aside, you can't fight him in reality. When Trump keeps saying "the election was rigged, the election was rigged," showing him the vote counts doesn't work. You have to enter his field and defeat him on his own ground.

Interviewer: Let's keep you on this theme. What scares you personally most about AI-generated political media?
Mohammad Bagherian: [trans.] When they turned war — especially across the whole world — into a film, into entertainment, turned the spilling of people's blood into a game, that's where the free people of the world entered. They took reality into hyperreality, entered their game, and we are that hand of vengeance that is going to get even on behalf of the oppressed people. Before this, they dragged entertainment and media into vulgarity. Television, the camera, cinema — which could have raised people's awareness — they dragged it all into vulgarity again, bringing politics into sexual matters. On this side of things, I think we'll surpass them.

Interviewer: Do you know how many people have seen your videos? Have you done the math on how far and wide, how many engagements your content has gotten since you started posting?
Mohammad Bagherian: [trans.] I think around 900 million people — up to about two or three weeks ago, according to a university study given to us — had seen our videos.

Interviewer: What was the most popular video you've ever posted?
Mohammad Bagherian: [trans.] The "Loser" video, I think, was our most popular.
[Music playing]
Mohammad Bagherian: [trans.] This was actually the first video that came with rap. It was the video where the Lexus [character] started the movement, and people came [for] the other videos.

Interviewer: So nearly a billion people have watched your videos — obviously you've struck a chord. Close your eyes: in one, two, three years, especially with photoreal AI coming online, where does this AI-driven, consumer-led content go?
Mohammad Bagherian: [trans.] [AI] has become unpredictable and development is taking shape very fast. We try to keep ourselves in sync with it and to keep moving forward, not stop. We know that they — the enemies of humanity, the enemies of truth — will certainly do things, and we try, as we have until now, to be the guerrillas of the media war. To be the "Gorillaz" of the media war. Our team at the media outlet is fewer than 10 people.

Interviewer: So you think God has effectively intended for the phone to become mightier than the sword?
Mohammad Bagherian: [trans.] This is a Quranic verse that says: how many a small group has, by God's leave, defeated a large group. By God's grace, with His permission... Yes, anything can be a weapon. Just as they used everything as a weapon, now our weapon is AI; our weapon is the phone and media — and of course all weapons are in God's hand.

Interviewer: Thank you for taking the time. I know you don't do this very often. We're here in Iran, trying to get everybody's point of view about what's happening in a very nuanced and confusing time. Thank you very much. Keep doing your thing. Thank you for producing all of this content — it's helping inform us from the opposite side of the world.
Mohammad Bagherian: You're welcome. Thank you for your time.