**FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE**
**Washington, D.C.** – In an unprecedented move that has sent shockwaves through both the Pentagon and Silicon Valley, the Department of Defense announced today that the recently passed "Operation Epic Fury" supplemental funding bill will be heavily subsidized by the sale of limited-edition "Devious Licks" NFTs and a government-run gaming server.
According to leaked budget memos, $40 billion of the $95 billion package—traditionally allocated for precision-guided munitions and intelligence infrastructure—is instead earmarked for "Content Creator Retention Bonuses" and "Subreddit Latency Reduction."
"We are facing a new kind of battlefield," said General Thaddeus "T-Bone" Whitaker at a press conference. "The enemy is not just foreign tyrants, but also the algorithm. We cannot win the war for truth if our memes are being throttled by server lag. Operation Epic Fury isn't about bombs; it’s about virality."
The internet, predictably, lost its collective mind.
The irony is thick enough to be spread on toast. The same government that spent years trying to ban TikTok is now funding "strategic meme offensives" using taxpayer money. Critics are calling it the "M.A.D. Doctrine—Mutually Assured Dankness."
Hashtags #MyTaxDollarsAtWork and #EpicFuryFunds are trending, with users posting deep-fried images of fighter jets captioned "When you spend $95 billion on a DDoS attack on a Russian Telegram chat."
In a truly surreal twist, the White House has confirmed that the official "Green Light" for the operation will be delivered via a single, heavily encrypted Twitch stream. Viewers will be required to type "POGGERS" in the chat to confirm receipt.
One anonymous staffer was overheard muttering, "We used to fight wars for oil. Now we fight wars for clout