The US government’s use of AI-generated Halo imagery on social media has absolutely been a power-play to appeal to like-minded American gamers.
As if there were any doubt, White House deputy press secretary Kush Desai told journalist Alyssa Mercante overnight: “Yet another war ended under President Trump’s watch – only one leader is fully committed to giving power to the players, and that leader is Donald J. Trump. That’s why he’s hugely popular with the American people and American Gamers.”
Desai’s comments were made in relation to an image tweeted by the Department of Homeland Security, which showed a picture of a Halo ring world and two spartan soldiers in a Warthog jeep – one driving it and the other on top of it, operating the machine-gun turret. The soldiers appear below the words “Destroy the Flood” and a call to join the Immigration Customs Enforcement group, ICE.
The Flood are the primary antagonists in the Halo franchise – a parasitic lifeform which overran the galaxy. The reference here in the ICE promotional image, then, is depressingly clear: the Flood represents the immigrants ICE seeks to forcefully detain.
https://t.co/8DRFpgbFv5 pic.twitter.com/wWvOYrwSUR
— GameStop (@gamestop) October 27, 2025
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The US government’s use of AI-generated Halo imagery started at the weekend, after Microsoft announced a remake of the Halo: Combat Evolved campaign will be coming to PC, Xbox and – for the first time – PlayStation. In response, US games retailer GameStop posted a memey statement declaring the console wars dead – the inference being that now Halo, the series that epitomised the rivalry between Xbox and PlayStation, was heading to Sony’s machine, the console wars were effectively over.