The Defense Department Is Posting QAnon Memes

A division of the Defense Department has been rolling out posts on X that contain clear references to the QAnon conspiracy theory, for reasons they have, unsurprisingly, declined to explain. The X account for the so-called Office of the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering produced three posts this week incorporating references to QAnon slogans and imagery, part of a broader pattern of weird, gross shitposting under Trump’s second administration.

The posts purportedly celebrated President Donald Trump’s Monday announcement that the United States would invest heavily in quantum computing systems to pursue “technological dominance,” an effort, the announcement said, that will involve “U.S. industry and research leaders” and stretch across “the Departments of Energy, War, Commerce, and the Intelligence Community.” In a related executive order, Trump said he would create a “National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee.”

In response, whoever runs the “Department of War CTO” X account posted a meme showing Donald Trump positioned in the middle of large letter Q, below the words “Quantum Dominance.”

“Are you enjoying the show? Refill your popcorn… you’ll love this next part,” it read.

“Enjoy the show” was a phrase that QAnon believers often repeated to each other, especially during the height of the movement, promising that a great battle was about to unfold in front of their eyes. The conspiracy theory broadly held that President Trump was, during his first term, secretly fighting a global battle against a cabal of evildoers, pedophiles, sex traffickers, and Hillary Clinton. A person claiming to have a “Q” level security clearance posted cryptic clues on the messageboards 8chan and 8kun, inevitably promising that some revelatory Trump plan was about to unfold. “Trust the plan” thus became another popular movement slogan, alongside the rallying cry “Where we go one, we go all.”

A few hours after the first post, the same Defense Department X account shared another “Quantum Dominance” meme, this one reading “Trust the plan, patriots.” A third post on Tuesday showed a drawing of a gun-wielding soldier in the middle of the letter Q and the phrase, “Where We Go One, We Go Quantum.”

The posts found their intended audience: QAnon adherents. “Q IS REAL!!!!,” celebrated one X user with multiple QAnon references in his bio. “These Government pages are getting more and more blatant! NCSWIC!!!!” (That acronym stands for “Nothing can stop what is coming,” another QAnon slogan.)

When reached for comment, Defense Department spokesperson Joe Loewy wrote, “We have nothing for you on this.” He did not respond to followup questions.

While the first Trump presidency ended without QAnon’s promised great global battle where President Trump revealed and conquered forces of pedophilic evil, related ideas have nonetheless thoroughly suffused and saturated our culture. The conspiracy’s adherents have also committed acts of violence, often against those close to them: in 2021, for instance, a California father killed his young children after becoming more enmeshed in QAnon beliefs, claiming he’d murdered them to “save the world” from the “serpent DNA” he believed his wife had passed down. Edgar Maddison Welch, who shot up Comet Pizza in Washington D.C. in 2017 in an attempt to “save” children he delusionally believed were held hostage in the restaurant’s non-existent basement, died in a 2025 traffic stop shootout with police.

The Trump administration, which has branded itself “the most transparent administration in history,” has previously refused to disclose the authors of its social media posts. Those posts have contained white supremacist language, virulently anti-immigrant statements, and even a Michael Jackson lyric that used an antisemitic slur. When journalists ask about these statements, the agencies involved tend to deflect, insult the questioner, or, as happened in this case, simply decline to answer.

The Defense Department itself employs Kingsley Wilson, a Pentagon spokesperson, who before her time in government had a long history of posting bigoted and xenophobic statements, including the extremist slogan “Ausländer Raus,” a phrase meaning “foreigners out” that is viewed as a neo-Nazi rallying cry in Germany. Wilson also explicitly supported the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, which holds that non-white people are being deliberately sent to the United States to replace white populations.

The Pentagon also never responded to reporting about Wilson’s history of extremist statements.