Amid the reports of Iran shooting down a number of American warplanes over the past two weeks, a parallel development has been drawing significant attention on social media: a surge of highly technical, China-origin content explaining how such feats might be achieved.

One such case involves a Chinese social media account, laohushuoshijie01 (“Lao Hu Talks About the World”), which published a detailed tutorial on March 14 outlining how an F-35 Lightning II could potentially be detected and targeted using relatively low-cost systems.

The video, which included Persian subtitles, quickly went viral across Chinese and Iranian social media ecosystems, garnering millions of views.

“He appears to be a KOL (key opinion leader) followed by millions on social media platforms such as Douyin (Chinese version of TikTok) and WeChat,” Shen Shiwei, a Beijing-based political analyst, told TRT World.

“He creates content on military affairs. As for his use of the Persian subtitles, it is likely aimed at attracting greater global attention and expanding his audience reach,” said Shen, the founder of China Briefing newsletter.

Five days after the video’s release, Iran claimed it had “seriously damaged” a US F-35 over central Iran — a claim denied by Washington — followed by the latest April 3 downing of an F-15E by Iran,  with both crew members subsequently rescued by US special forces.

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