Garbage Disposal
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An invasion recut in post-production, a jacket that lost two flags and a ministry that sets the themes: how states edit what already gets made
In 2012 MGM made a remake of Red Dawn, the one where a foreign army invades a small American town and the local teenagers fight back. When the cameras stopped rolling, the invaders were Chinese. By the time it reached cinemas they were North Korean. A report to the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission says that “after filming concluded, and without discussions between the studio and Chinese officials, substantial digital alterations were made.” The change cost MGM about $1 million, according to the Wall Street Journal’s Erich Schwartzel, speaking to CNN. A few lines further down, the same commission report notes that Red Dawn was never released in China.
1. The edit
“after filming concluded, and without discussions between the studio and Chinese officials, substantial digital alterations were made.”
US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, staff report, 2015
2. About $1 million
The change cost MGM about $1 million, according to the Wall Street Journal's Erich Schwartzel, speaking to CNN.
3. Never released there
“neither was released in China”
US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, staff report, 2015
4. The photo
Paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne jumping from a C-17. US Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class James Richardson, public domain.
In the style of an 80s invasion poster. The paratroopers are the 82nd Airborne jumping from a C-17 (US Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class James Richardson, public domain); screen-printed and cut up by me, on clippings from the commission’s report. The report itself is below.
From “Directed by Hollywood, Edited by China”, a staff report for the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission. Boxes mine.
The last post was about states borrowing other people’s faces: a newspaper’s masthead, a dead professor’s name, a commentator’s audience. This one is about the edit suite. I started out expecting to find officials writing scenes. What the files mostly hold is paperwork: a contract with a clause for notes, and a ministry with a list of themes. Sometimes there aren’t even notes. The studio makes the change in advance, because it already knows what they would say.
The Contract
Start with the Pentagon, because it publishes the paperwork.
In June 2026 the Department of Defense issued a final rule on how it helps film and television, with its standard Production Assistance Agreement printed in full. It also says how big the operation is: “On average, DoD assists 7 feature film projects per year, which is a small portion of the approximately 100 projects DoD supports annually.” Most of the rest is unscripted and documentary work.
The agreement is short, and the clauses do the arguing:
| Clause | What it says |
|---|---|
| 3 | Assistance is approved “based on the [enter date] version of the script”. The production “must obtain, in advance, DoD concurrence for any subsequent changes proposed to the military depictions” |
| 12 | The production screens a rough cut “at a stage in editing when changes can be accommodated”. If DoD finds material that strays from the agreed script, risks classified information or breaches its people’s privacy, “the production company will remove the material from the production” |
| 14 | A DoD screening in Washington, D.C., “prior to public exhibition” |
| Costs | Assistance is “at no additional expense to the Government”. The production pays |
That last row is the one people get backwards. The Pentagon doesn’t pay Hollywood. Hollywood pays the Pentagon: the fuel, the overtime and whatever else the jets and carriers cost on top of what the military would have spent anyway. In exchange it agrees that the Pentagon’s view of the Pentagon goes in the film. The ships are real. So is the concurrence.
1. Paragraph 12
“the production company will remove the material from the production”
If DoD finds material that strays from the agreed script, risks classified information or breaches its people's privacy.
DoD final rule and sample Production Assistance Agreement, Federal Register, 9 June 2026
2. Clause 3
“must obtain, in advance, DoD concurrence for any subsequent changes proposed to the military depictions”
3. Who pays
“at no additional expense to the Government”
The production pays the costs on top of what the military would have spent anyway.
4. Uncle Sam
Cut from James Montgomery Flagg's 1917 recruiting poster, public domain.
Uncle Sam and his “I WANT YOU” are cut from James Montgomery Flagg’s 1917 poster (public domain, Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons). Every other scrap of text is cut from the Pentagon’s 2026 rule. Collage mine. The original clause is below.
The original: paragraph 12 of the sample agreement, as printed in the Federal Register, 9 June 2026. Box mine.
The Admiral Who Changed Nationality
Phil Strub was the Pentagon’s entertainment liaison when GoldenEye was made, and the researchers Matthew Alford and Tom Secker have spent years documenting his work. In GoldenEye (1995), a US admiral is seduced and murdered by the villain Xenia Onatopp. According to Alford and Secker, Strub’s message of 20 January 1995 asked for the admiral’s nationality to change. In the finished film he is Canadian. The Navy can be fooled by a Bond villain. It just can’t be American.
Two decades later the requests had moved from what the military won’t be shown doing to what it would like to be shown owning. Secker obtained the Army’s file on The Fate of the Furious through a freedom of information request and published it in 2023. One email says: “The dialogue introducing the vehicle was one of the main points we wanted to get into the script, so that is extremely important to us.” The vehicle was the Ripsaw, a remote-controlled tank. After seeing the rough cut, the Army wrote back: “Thank you for keeping in the dialog containing the description of the Ripsaw vehicle.” According to Secker, the Ripsaw wasn’t in Army service at all. It was “still in testing and evaluation”.
And it no longer stops at films. In December 2024 Rolling Stone went through Pentagon records and found production assistance agreements in 2023 for shows including America’s Got Talent, The Kelly Clarkson Show and The Price Is Right. One planned with MrBeast was cancelled, according to a Pentagon email, because he didn’t go to Puerto Rico for the hurricane relief.
The Agency That Wanted to Be Liked
The CIA has an entertainment liaison too. Its public affairs page says the point is “an accurate portrayal of the people of CIA, their skills, and their commitment to public service”, and that the liaison works with creatives “to make their scripts, stories, and other products as authentic as possible.” It lists the services: answering questions, debunking myths, arranging interviews at headquarters, providing stock footage of the compound and, in special cases, coordinating filming on site.
For Argo, it worked. The CIA answered a freedom of information request eight years after it was filed, and the documents, reported by Shadowproof, include the line “The agency comes off looking very well”, and Ben Affleck telling the agency, “We love the agency and this heroic action.”
1. The script note
“Agency officers would not do that.”
CIA officers on a Zero Dark Thirty scene of "Agency officers partying and shooting guns", from the inspector general's file obtained by VICE News.
2. The tequila
“It prices at $169.99 (that's the highest I saw for it).”
A CIA employee looking up a bottle of tequila the screenwriter had given an officer, as recorded in the inspector general's file.
3. The earrings
“would ask between $60 and $70 if he were selling the earrings on eBay”
A jeweller's estimate of earrings from the filmmakers: no more than $200.
4. No charges
“in favor of 'administrative action'”
The cases went to the Justice Department, which declined to prosecute. Nobody was charged with anything.
5. The poster
O. Soglow's wartime "Button Your Lip!", National Archives, public domain. The banners are re-pasted.
O. Soglow’s wartime “Button Your Lip!” (public domain, National Archives via Wikimedia Commons), banners re-pasted by me. The scraps quote the inspector general’s file as reported by VICE News; the clippings are cut from the CIA’s own liaison page.
Zero Dark Thirty is the case where the agency’s own watchdog wrote it down. The CIA’s Office of Inspector General looked at how the filmmakers had been treated and briefed, and VICE News obtained the reports in 2015. Officers read the script with the writer over the phone. They raised notes: “CIA would never have dogs in an interrogation room”, and a scene of “Agency officers partying and shooting guns” was wrong because “Agency officers would not do that.”
The file also records the gifts. Meals and drinks, which VICE puts at “a total of more than $1,000”. A bottle of tequila, which one officer later looked up online: “It prices at $169.99 (that’s the highest I saw for it).” A pair of earrings from the filmmakers that a jeweller estimated at “no more than $200”, adding that he “would ask between $60 and $70 if he were selling the earrings on eBay”. After the inspector general got involved, one officer mailed the production company a $500 cheque for her meals. The cases went to the Justice Department, which declined to prosecute “in favor of ‘administrative action’” by the CIA. Nobody was charged with anything.
Officers also raised concerns about the detainee debriefing scenes, which showed captives being “punched and kicked”. VICE’s account doesn’t say what those concerns were. The finished film, VICE writes, “strongly suggested that the use of torture led the agency to bin Laden”. The Senate Intelligence Committee was investigating that programme while the film was being made, and concluded that the techniques “did not yield unique or actionable intelligence and had nothing to do with tracking down bin Laden”.
Editing for Beijing Before Beijing Asks
Back to Red Dawn, because it isn’t unusual. The same commission report describes content in Pixels being “eliminated prior to viewings by Chinese censors to forestall any objections.” PEN America’s 2020 report quotes a scholar it interviewed on the mood: “Increasingly savvy and increasingly paranoid … Instituting self-censorship is the way to go.” Michael Berry, who directs UCLA’s Center for Chinese Studies, put it to PEN this way: “The big story is not what’s getting changed, but what is not ever even getting greenlit.”
Top Gun: Maverick is the cleanest example, partly because the studio left it unexplained. I expected the jacket to be the weakest case here, a fan theory that grew in the retelling. It held up better than that. When the first trailer came out in July 2019, the patches on Maverick’s old flight jacket no longer showed the flags of Japan and Taiwan. Tencent Pictures, the Chinese entertainment giant, had been announced as a co-producer in December 2018. By the film’s release in May 2022, Tencent had reportedly dropped out, CNN said, and the flags were back on the jacket. CNN, citing the Wall Street Journal, also reported that the trailer “appeared to omit Taiwan’s flag, after a Chinese backer urged producers to do so”. When the film came out, Fortune reported, Skydance had still not commented on why the patches changed.
The same film was made with extensive Navy cooperation, and a Navy spokesman, Ron Flanders, told Stars and Stripes:
The Navy did review the script so that A, it was accurate and B, was consistent with the ideals of the Navy.
One jacket answered to two governments. The Navy read the script. Someone else read the patches.
1. Japan's flag
Maverick's old flight jacket carried the flags of Japan and Taiwan. In the first trailer, July 2019, they were gone.
2. Taiwan's flag
“appeared to omit Taiwan's flag, after a Chinese backer urged producers to do so”
CNN, citing the Wall Street Journal, on the 2019 trailer.
3. The co-producer
Tencent Pictures had been announced as a co-producer in December 2018.
4. Restored
By the release in May 2022 the flags were back on the jacket, after Tencent had reportedly dropped out.
5. No explanation
When the film came out, Skydance had still not commented on why the patches changed.
In the style of a Chinese state poster, drawn and cut up by me; the clippings are from the commission’s report and Public Law 117-263, the act that holds section 1257.
Washington noticed. Section 1257 of the 2023 defence authorisation act bars the Pentagon from supporting any project if there is “demonstrable evidence” that it “has complied or is likely to comply with a demand” from the Chinese government “to censor the content of the project in a material manner”. The Secretary of Defense can waive it in the national interest. The 2026 rule that writes this into the contract also keeps clause 3: changes to military depictions still need the Pentagon’s concurrence, in advance.
Russia Does It With a Permit
In Russia the notes come first, as a list.
Each year the Ministry of Culture publishes the themes it will fund. For 2023 there were 17, Meduza reported. Theme 11: “Resisting contemporary manifestations of fascism and neo-Nazism. Popularizing the heroism and selflessness of the Russian soldiers in the course of the special military operation.” Theme 14:
The neo-colonial politics of the Anglo-Saxon world. The degradation of Europe. The emergence of a multipolar world.
In 2023 filmmakers could tap 30 billion roubles of state money, about $320 million, “offered by two government bodies and a state-run nonprofit”, more than ever before, AP reported.
The list produces films. The Witness, a feature about the invasion of Ukraine, had a budget of 200 million roubles with Ministry of Culture support and opened in August 2023 to about 6.6 to 6.7 million roubles, according to RTVI and AP. RTVI’s comparison was a conscript comedy that took more than ten times as much. In January 2026 the culture minister, Olga Lyubimova, told a State Duma committee that 172 national films had been supported in 2025. Separately, she said, the ministry and the Cinema Fund had backed 12 “dedicated to the special military operation” and 27 “of military-patriotic orientation”, Interfax reported.
Then, from 1 March 2026, the permit. Federal Law 324-FZ, signed in July 2025, lets the state refuse or revoke a film’s distribution certificate for material that would “discredit traditional Russian spiritual and moral values”, and makes platforms remove flagged work. “Traditional values” isn’t defined in the law. It leans on a 2022 presidential decree. So the same two words now do both jobs. They decide which films get money, and which films get pulled.
1. Theme 14
“The neo-colonial politics of the Anglo-Saxon world. The degradation of Europe. The emergence of a multipolar world.”
One of 17 themes the Ministry of Culture said it would fund in 2023.
2. Traditional values
The phrase isn't defined in the law. It leans on a 2022 presidential decree.
3. Law 324-FZ
“discredit traditional Russian spiritual and moral values”
From 1 March 2026 the state can refuse or revoke a film's distribution certificate on these grounds.
4. The clippings
Cut from the Ministry of Culture's own announcement of its 2023 priority themes, in Russian.
Constructivist pastiche, drawn and cut up by me. The clippings are the Ministry of Culture’s own announcement of its 2023 priority themes.
What Gets Made
Put the cases side by side and the method is the same. The state offers what the studio wants, whether that’s a carrier, a market or a funding round, and asks for a say in return. The cheapest edit is the one the studio makes before anyone asks, and Red Dawn is the purest case: a recut for a market it never entered. I went in looking for censors. Mostly I found studios that had already guessed what the censor would say.
The next post is about volume: what happens when a state stops editing the story and simply drowns it. I have written about the Kremlin’s twenty-year project before, and about what it pays out now, the liar’s dividend.
Sources and Further Reading
- US-China Economic and Security Review Commission. “Directed by Hollywood, Edited by China.” 2015.
- CNN Business. “Hollywood won’t budge for Chinese censors anymore. Here’s what changed.” 8 Jul 2022.
- US Department of Defense. “DoD Assistance to Non-Government, Entertainment-Oriented Media Productions” (final rule). Federal Register, 9 Jun 2026.
- Tom Secker, Spy Culture. “How the Pentagon rewrote Goldeneye.”
- Tom Secker, Spy Culture. “ClandesTime 256: Military-Industrial Product Placement.” 8 Oct 2023.
- Rolling Stone. “Pentagon Approved Funds for MrBeast, Kelly Clarkson, Guy Fieri in 2023.” 31 Dec 2024.
- CIA. “Office of Public Affairs.” Accessed Oct 2026.
- Shadowproof. “Documents From ‘Argo’ Show What It’s Like To Film At CIA Headquarters.” 29 Jul 2021.
- VICE News. “Tequila, Painted Pearls, and Prada: How the CIA Helped Produce Zero Dark Thirty.” 9 Sep 2015.
- PEN America. “Made in Hollywood, Censored by Beijing.” Aug 2020.
- PR Newswire. “Tencent Pictures Teams up with Paramount Pictures on Latest Transformers Film Bumblebee, as well as Top Gun sequel.” 5 Dec 2018.
- Eamon Barrett, Fortune. “Top Gun: Maverick restored the Taiwan flag to Tom Cruise’s bomber jacket.” 27 May 2022.
- US Congress. “Public Law 117-263, James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023.” 23 Dec 2022. Section 1257.
- Meduza. “Their degradation and colonialism vs. our peacemaking: Russia’s Culture Ministry issues ‘priority topics’ list.” 1 Dec 2022.
- AP via Fortune. “Russia hopes cinema can bolster support for Ukraine war.” 28 Aug 2023.
- RTVI. “Rossiyskiy film ‘Svidetel’ ob SVO zarabotal vsego 6,6 mln za pervye vykhodnye” (The Russian film The Witness about the war took only 6.6 million in its first weekend). Aug 2023.
- European Audiovisual Observatory (Merlin). “Federal Law No. 324-FZ extends ‘traditional values’ restrictions to online audiovisual content.” IRIS 2026-3, 2026.
- This blog. “Present: Mr. Louis Shon.” Oct 2026.
- Nancy Montgomery, Stars and Stripes. “‘Top Gun: Maverick’ is Navy approved, down to the plot details.” 1 Aug 2019.
- Interfax. “Minkultury v 2025 godu vydelilo finansirovanie na proizvodstvo 172 filmov” (The Culture Ministry funded 172 films in 2025). 29 Jan 2026.
- Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation. “Minkultury Rossii opredelilo prioritetnye temy gospodderzhki kinoproizvodstva v 2023 godu” (The Ministry has set its priority themes for state film funding in 2023). Archived 30 Nov 2022.
- Tom Secker, Spy Culture. “How Ben Affleck (and Bryan Cranston) got into the CIA.” 19 Feb 2022.
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