DoD Assistance to Non-Government, Entertainment-Oriented Media Productions

This rule proposes to update the policy, responsibilities, and procedures for DoD assistance to non-government, entertainment-oriented media productions, such as feature motion pictures, episodic television programs, documentaries, and computer-based games. This rule provides for oversight of production assistance decisions at centralized and senior levels of DoD to ensure consistency of approach among DoD and components with respect to support for non-government, entertainment-oriented media productions, including documentaries. The primary reason for this update is to incorporate the procedures implementing the requirements of Section 1257 of the James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2023, which prohibits DoD assistance to entertainment projects that have complied or are likely to comply with a demand from the Government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), or an entity under the direction of the People’s Republic of China or the Chinese Communist Party, to censor the content of the project in a material manner to advance the national interest of the PRC. In accordance with the NDAA for Fiscal Year 2023, the rule includes ways DoD will assess Chinese influence or potential influence over the content of a film, television, or other entertainment project, actions the DoD can take to prevent Chinese censorship of a project, and criteria the DoD will use when evaluating requests to support a project. The rule also proposes to update how information needed for evaluating requests for DoD assistance to non-government, entertainment-oriented media productions will be received to comply with the Paperwork Reduction Act.