Kamikaze Dolphins Political Cartoon
I’m posting this cartoon later than usual thank you to everyone who waited patiently. I was offline for part of the week, moving slower than normal, and honestly, I didn’t entirely mind it. Being offline lets me focus completely on the work itself without the constant noise of notifications, headlines, timelines, and outrage cycles. For an artist, that kind of silence is rare now, and it was genuinely nice to spend a few hours drawing uninterrupted. The art itself is the reward.
Ironically, while offline, I ended up creating a cartoon inspired by one of the strangest Pentagon press briefings I’ve seen in years.
That Pentagon briefing focused on Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, commercial shipping routes, and the newly announced “Project Freedom” operation involving U.S. naval protection of commercial vessels moving through the region. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine discussed Iranian aggression in the strait, attacks on commercial ships, U.S. destroyers escorting tankers, and the broader geopolitical implications of the conflict.
The briefing itself already had a dramatic tone. Hegseth repeatedly emphasized “freedom of navigation,” American military strength, and what he described as a “red, white, and blue dome” protecting commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. The language throughout the conference sounded almost cinematic part Cold War rhetoric, part modern military branding. IT was so cool.
But then the entire room shifted into surreal territory.
During the Q&A portion of the briefing, a reporter asked about rumors involving “kamikaze dolphins.”
Yes, actual dolphins.
Gen. Dan Caine initially joked that the claim sounded like “sharks with laser beams,” referencing the absurd Austin Powers villain imagery that instantly spread across social media after the briefing. But the real moment came when Pete Hegseth followed with a line that immediately sounded like political satire already written for cartoonists:
“I can’t confirm or deny whether we have kamikaze dolphins… but I can confirm they don’t.”
The reason the moment exploded online is because it perfectly captured the bizarre atmosphere of modern geopolitics and military communication. It was simultaneously funny, serious, absurd, strategic, bureaucratic, and strangely believable all at once.
Part of what makes the joke land is that military marine mammal programs are actually real. The U.S. Navy has historically used dolphins for mine detection and underwater security operations. Cold War rumors and stories about weaponized dolphins have circulated for decades. So when Pentagon officials discuss “kamikaze dolphins” using official military language, it briefly creates the unsettling feeling that even the most ridiculous concepts might exist somewhere behind a classified folder.
That contradiction fascinated me as an artist. For it doesn’t matter what we Americans believe, it’s what the slower minded enemies, BELIEVE we have!!
The cartoon itself became less about dolphins and more about institutional absurdity the collision between official government language and increasingly surreal modern warfare. In many ways, the humor comes from how calmly everything is discussed. Officials speak about drones, blockades, escalation thresholds, AI systems, missile defense, and marine mammal programs using exactly the same calm Pentagon tone.
While drawing the piece, I realized I didn’t even have a proper dolphin reference image nearby. Since I was offline, I dug through one of my old illustration reference books and found an 18th century ink drawing of mermaids riding dolphins. Somehow that felt completely appropriate for this subject matter.
That strange mixture of history, mythology, military bureaucracy, and modern media chaos became the entire spirit of the cartoon.
The funniest political moments are often the ones nobody could have scripted better themselves.
Kamikaze Dolphins
Kamikaze Dolphins
Learn more
U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program Overview
If you want a political cartoon drawn for you