When Five Million Engineers Pick a Side...

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Dear Decision Maker

Five days.

That is the gap between a Chinese engineer posting a detailed video tutorial on how to shoot down an F-35 stealth fighter and Iran claiming it did exactly that.

I want to walk you through what is happening right now.

Because it changes everything about how intelligence works. And I am going to frame this through two disciplines I have spent my career operating in: HUMINT and OSINT.

Because this story is about what happens when those two worlds collide in ways nobody planned for.

A Tutorial That Went Viral in Two Languages

On 14 March 2026, an account called "Laohu Talks World" posted a video on Chinese social media.

The creator is an alumnus of Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi'an. One of China's "Seven Sons of National Defence."

A university under US sanctions. According to a source close to the creator:

"many of his batchmates work in the defence industry."

His video explained, step by step, how Iran could use:

Low-cost electro-optical infrared detection systems;
Infrared-guided missiles;
Mobile launchers;

to intercept F-35s without triggering their radar warning receivers.

The kicker: it was subtitled in Persian. Tens of millions of views.

Five days later, Iran's IRGC claimed it struck a US F-35 using its "Majid" air defence system.

The US confirmed an F-35 made an emergency landing. It did not confirm the cause.

Let me be precise.

There is no evidence that the tutorial caused the strike.

Correlation is not causation.

But the tutorial was not an isolated incident. It was a signal.

The Full Spectrum of Chinese Support

What is happening is not one person making videos for fun. It is a five-layered system operating simultaneously. Let me walk you through the layers.

Layer 1: State Media and PLA Content

CCTV released a 5-minute AI-generated animation called "The White Eagle and the Persian Cat," depicting the US as a predatory eagle and Iran as a cat clan. It earned nearly one million likes within hours.
The PLA's official "China Military Bugle" posted a bilingual English/Mandarin graphic listing "Five Lessons Taught to the World by the US-Israeli Attack on Iran." Orville Schell of the Asia Society called it:

"a revelation of what they're thinking."

The PLA released a separate video titled "Siege of Iran" featuring satellite imagery of eight US bases, identifying Patriot air defence systems at Al Udeid, Al Dhafra, and Prince Sultan Air Bases pointed toward Iran. The Chinese military's Douyin account version drew over six million likes.

Is this grassroots? Or is this is the state?

Layer 2: Commercial Intelligence Companies

MizarVision, a Hangzhou AI startup, combined commercial satellite imagery with live ADS-B flight-tracking data to locate carrier positions. By 01 March, its dataset covered approximately 2,500 US military assets. The firm's stated ambition: building

"something comparable to a Bloomberg terminal for the intelligence sector."

Chang Guang Satellite Technology, with its Jilin-1 constellation of over 100 satellites, was confirmed by the US State Department to be "directly supporting Iran-backed Houthi terrorist attacks." It was previously sanctioned for providing imagery to Russia's Wagner Group.
Jingan Technology, whose VP is a former PLA Rocket Force officer, claimed its "Jingqi" system tracked B-2 stealth bombers over Iran. Analysts assessed this as:

"almost certainly exaggerated."

Layer 3: Hardware and Technology Transfer

SMIC, China's largest chipmaker, began sending chipmaking tools and technical training to Iran's military industrial complex around March 2025. This could enable Iran to domestically produce drone and missile electronics.
Approximately 1,000 LOONG M9 loitering munitions (1,620 km range, 50 kg warhead) were reportedly transferred to Iran through Pakistan.
Iran formally completed its transition from GPS to China's BeiDou-3 encrypted military navigation system on 23 June 2025. Former French DGSE director Alain Juillet stated:

"Iranian missiles are much more accurate since the switch."

Chinese FPV drone components are flowing through Iran's porous borders into basement workshops in Tehran.

Layer 4: Academic Research, Amplified

A researcher at the Northwest Institute of Nuclear Technology published a paper on hypersonic missile defence limitations on the exact day Operation Epic Fury began.
A simulation from North University of China showed how 24 hypersonic missiles could sink a US carrier group, averaging 5.6 of 6 surface vessels destroyed across 20 simulated battles. This circulated widely on Weibo.
CIOMP's airship infrared detection research (detection range up to 2,000 km) and the State Radio Monitoring Centre's Starlink forward-scatter method both predated the war but are now being referenced as applied targeting analysis.

Layer 5: Five Million Engineers with Keyboards

China produces approximately five million STEM graduates per year. Roughly 1.3 million are engineers. The US produces about 130,000.
Since the war began, civilians have been providing precise US base coordinates, proposing missile strategies against carrier groups, and simulating defence scenarios.
The hashtag for "Khamenei killed" exceeded one billion views on Weibo in less than three days.
AI-generated videos showing missiles striking the USS Abraham Lincoln reached ten million views and ranked in the top 10 trending topics.
An Iranian student in China posted a thank-you video that drew over one million likes.

And here is the intelligence signal that matters most.

China's censorship apparatus removes Tiananmen, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong content within hours. It has not removed a single piece of this pro-Iran military content.

That silence is not an accident.

"The fact that this company deemed it a safe space to brandish its wares tells you that military-civil fusion is becoming openly accepted inside China."

David Lin, former US State Department official

The West Did the Same Thing. For Ukraine.

Here is where this story gets uncomfortable.

Because if you are looking at Chinese civilians crowdsourcing intelligence support for Iran and thinking "that is outrageous," you need to ask yourself an honest question.

What did the West do for Ukraine?

NAFO raised real money for real weapons.

The 69th Sniffing Brigade (Help99.co) delivered over €20 million in aid and approximately 1,000 pickup trucks equipped with jammers and drone detectors to frontline units.
Through UNITED24, NAFO campaigns purchased naval drones, 240 FPV attack drones, combat robots, and an AI-controlled air defence turret.
One single campaign raised $1,142,348 for trucks, drones, and jammers.

That is not memes. That is logistics.

Western OSINT analysts fed the targeting cycle.

Molfar, a Ukrainian OSINT firm with international operations, delivered an average of 15 actionable intelligence reports per month to Ukrainian intelligence. A geolocated selfie by a Russian soldier led to explosions at a training base two days later.
IntelCrab, run by a 20-year-old University of Alabama student, grew to 250,000 followers and admitted:

"There are growing incidents where geolocation work is resulting in kinetic action... sites are destroyed 24 hours later."

Bellingcat identified Russian cruise missile operators by name and found correlations between phone calls to a Russian general and subsequent strikes on Ukraine.

Governments endorsed and enabled it.

Ukraine deployed the e-Enemy chatbot that enabled 260,000 civilians to report Russian positions directly into the targeting cycle.
The US Army's 780th Military Intelligence Brigade publicly praised NAFO's effectiveness.
UK Strategic Command called OSINT a "force multiplier" and asked for the community's support.
A former CIA deputy chief of operations said:

"Instead of trying to have things cleared or worry about classification issues, you could just reference Bellingcat's work."

No Western OSINT analyst was investigated, warned, or prosecuted.

No government issued a caution.

The Uncomfortable Comparison

So here it is. Side by side.

What the West did for Ukraine:

External civilians raised funds for military equipment (drones, vehicles, weapons)
OSINT analysts geolocated enemy positions and published them
Governments tolerated and sometimes endorsed civilian participation
Civilian intelligence entered the formal targeting cycle via chatbots and partnerships
No legal consequences for any participant

What China is doing for Iran:

Engineers publish tactical methodologies for countering US systems
AI startups map US military assets in real time using commercial satellites
Government declines to censor despite having absolute censorship capability
Academic research on counter-stealth technology circulates as applied analysis
No legal consequences for any participant

The mechanism is the same. The direction is different.

When Western civilians did this for Ukraine, we called it solidarity. When Chinese civilians do it for Iran, we call it a threat.

I am not saying they are morally equivalent.

I am saying the structure is identical. And if you work in intelligence, you need to understand what that means.

"Ukraine's armed forces have outsourced parts of the kill chain to civilians."

Dr. Matthew Ford, Swedish Defence University

If that was true for Ukraine, what stops it from being true for Iran?

Where OSINT Ends and HUMINT Begins

Here is the part that matters for your career.

OSINT has become the "INT of first resort." The CIA's Open Source Enterprise Director stated it can address 60 to 70 percent of intelligence requirements. DIA estimates 80 percent of its intelligence comes from open sources.

But look at what OSINT could not answer in this story:

Is Beijing directing the crowdsourcing, tolerating it, or genuinely unable to control it?
Has Chinese analysis been formally integrated into Iranian targeting?
What did those five Boeing 747 cargo flights from China to Iran carry?
Did the Laohu tutorial actually influence the March 19 strike?

Every one of those questions requires a human source.

A satellite can map every US base in the Middle East. An AI startup can track carrier positions in real time.

Five million engineers can simulate every conceivable attack scenario. But only a human source inside the decision-making circle can tell you whether Beijing authorised the transfer.

Whether Tehran is reading the tutorials. Whether the next strike is a patrol or an escalation.

That is the gap. And that is where professionals who understand both OSINT and HUMINT become irreplaceable.

What I Would Suggest as Your Next Step

If this newsletter made you think about where OSINT ends and HUMINT begins, I want to hear from you.

We teach both at Grey Dynamics Intelligence School.

Our OSINT Operator Course, led by Gabriel Fanelli, teaches you how to collect, process, and exploit open-source intelligence at a professional level.
Our HUMINT Fundamentals programme, taught by Raymond White, a former CIA case officer with approximately 25 years of operational experience, teaches you how to recruit, develop, and manage human sources.

The professionals who understand both sides of this equation are the ones organisations cannot afford to lose.

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Ahmed Hassan
CEO-Founder Grey Dynamics
Where headlines end, ground truth begins

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