Chinese Propaganda: The US Military Is Making Master Chief Armor; Me: Awesome!

from the fake-it-until-you-make-it dept

For some reason, the propaganda machines of the Far East appear to operating as though their singular mission was to make me, personally, laugh myself to death. I admit this is an enticing military strategy, but so far the laughter hasn't led to death just yet. That said, I appreciate it when, for instance, North Korea does Photoshop so poorly that it ends up looking like the world's most boring Warhol painting.



But there's an arms race for everything, apparently, including in the arena of doing propaganda hilariously wrong. That seems to be the only explanation for why China's state media would up the nerd-quotient in their attempts by making it clear the United States military is pumping out new armor identical to that of Halo's Master Chief.

The program was New Defence Observations, a military show (read: propaganda), on Channel 7. On the October 19 episode, which is recently causing a stir in China, a segment talked about the "smart amour." The program compared the new U.S. military tech to Iron Man, using an image from Iron Man 3. In the upper corner, it clearly says, "movie image" (电影剧照). Then, the show flashes to the image below:



Yeah, that's The Chief, alright. What the report called "U.S. Military Concept Armour" is actually a promotional shot from the fan-made Halo film, 405th, which I'm at least somewhat certain has not been contracted by the U.S. government to do anything at all. That said, this report raises several questions. What good does China telling its own citizens that America has kick-ass new space-marine armor do? You'd think it'd just scare the hell out of its citizens and instill in them the belief that their own military was behind the space-marine-ing times.



Also, why the hell doesn't the U.S. military have this awesome armor yet? The Covenant might be just around the corner, you fools!

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community. Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis. While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: china, iron man, master chief, propaganda