Shrike
16d ago
How hard would it be to leak the relevant documents to press and leave out the parts you don't like?
I feel like dirty political hits are not exactly rocket science, here.
Shrike
16d ago
This by itself doesn't seem insane to me but the corollary to this theory seems to be that Team Obama/Biden are just insanely incompetent not to release it or are themselves implicated. If it's the latter, then Epstein's network was insanely effective and (based on US policy fluctuations over the past five terms) there's only one or maybe a few things they really care about (because US policy in many areas has widely varied in ways you would not expect if a Secret Group had turbo-blackmail over literally every single President).
And frankly I'm not sure Biden or Trump treated Israel with the deference one would expect if they knew Israeli intelligence services had turbo-blackmail on them. Definitely not the Obama administration, unless Israel is engaging in a lot of kayfabe over the Iran deal and such.
Shrike
16d ago
Yeah, great example. I would not be shocked if there was something similar here.
Shrike
16d ago
Acosta supposedly said that Epstein "belonged to intelligence" - why the assumption that it's Israeli intelligence?
I think the reason is because of some of Maxwell's connections, but it seems plausible that Epstein was a U.S. intelligence asset. Not mutually exclusive with working for Israeli intelligence!
Shrike
16d ago
If they actually did this it would be the start of a nuclear war which ends global civilisation. Why exactly would Russia just blow up a carrier group unprovoked? If I said that body armor doesn't protect against powerful firearms "Well if that was true why wouldn't you just go shoot an antimateriel rifle at the local SWAT team?" would not be a very compelling argument.
At least in this example you could shoot the antimaterial rifle at a bulletproof vest. I actually think this is a good analogy, the antimaterial rifle definitely wins the match-up, but claiming that a bulletproof vest provides zero protection is overstating it.
In this situation it is actually Vladimir Putin you're accusing of overstating the capabilities of hypersonic missiles. Whatever else you can say about the man, I believe he's quite knowledgeable about the capabilities of Russian weapon systems.
I'm quite confident that if I was chatting with Vladimir Putin in person he would agree with me that it is possible to intercept his hypersonic missiles in the boost phase (this is part of why Russia does not like our missile defense systems in Eastern Europe, I believe). He would then point out that as a practical matter that is very difficult to do. I think he would agree with me that while he is quite knowledgeable about Russian weapons systems, his knowledge on US weapons systems is necessarily somewhat limited (though perhaps still better than mine).
I don't see how the combination of hypersonics and throwing large numbers of cheap crap along as well can't defeat any modern missile defence system. Both of these are known weakpoints, and I don't quite understand how it'd be possible to overcome the two strategies in combination.
Yeah, if you look at my comment history you'll see me saying similar things. I think you're overindexing on the big picture (offensive weapons are hard to defeat with missile defense) and overlooking my extremely narrow technical argument.
Now, there is a solution to the large numbers of cheap crap: old-fashioned AAA, laser-guided 5-inch rockets, and lasers. All of these are very cheap. But the West doesn't field AAA in numbers, is just now getting the laser-guided rockets up and running, and is still fooling around with laser systems. (Also, both of the laser-involved systems don't work very well if, for instance, it's foggy outside, which sucks!)
The Russians, with their layered approach to integrated air defense, are arguably ahead of the West in defeating the "mixed" approach you're talking about here, but they still struggle against low-observable cruise missiles. (They really need more A-50 AWACs.)
The US has denied it but the Houthis claimed that they managed to damage an aircraft carrier recently. The houthis seem substantially more trustworthy than US officials to me, but I think we'll have to wait and see for more information on this one. The last time the houthis claimed to have hit an aircraft carrier and the US denied it, the carrier then left the region. For the record I doubt this was an actual direct strike - I think the damage in this instance would be caused by a delayed interception that lead to some minor damage rather than a direct hit.
I'm like 50/50 on whether or not it would have leaked. I will believe it when there is good proof of it.
As for ISR assets I wasn't aware that Yemen had a space program.
The Houthis in fact reportedly used Russian satellite data in their attacks. They also reportedly got targeting data from Iran, IIRC.
It's also worth noting as a practical matter that there's a big difference (if you're a ship) between being deployed to an area like the Red Sea versus an area like "the middle of the Pacific" with considerably more room to maneuver.
So basically despite having satellite ISR data and an ideal situation in which to engage a carrier (I believe the entire battle group went into the Red Sea, correct me if I am wrong) they failed to sink a carrier or its escorts. In fact the most damage done to the CBG (so far) was due to friendly fire.
I don't think there's any real way to prevent a modern nation from shooting down satellites just yet, especially surveillance satellites directly above their heads.
There are a couple of ways to deal with this problem. One of them is by fielding lots of little cubesats so that you're putting more assets in orbit faster than your enemy can shoot them down. This might not work for all applications but it can for some, like communications. (For instance I doubt the US could destroy the Starlink constellation with its ASAT stockpile, it would need to use other methods). Another alternative is to use maneuvering space assets like the X-37 or high-altitude high-speed ISR assets like the totally-not-already-built-and-tested SR-72 and the very real Chinese WZ-8, which will be more difficult to shoot down.
I can't see any more likely motivation for the US to have left the area without achieving their goals. What other reason would they have to run away like that?
Off the top of my head, a very good explanation for US behavior is that they ran low on ammo.
Shrike
16d ago
Yes, it's an interesting theory. I guess my point is that due to information friction I think humans can carry out plans - perhaps ones that might not be as good as those of a theoretical superintelligence, but still plans that confound observers. I mean shoot there's still (good faith?) arguments about whether COVID-19 was a lab leak or not despite all the evidence there.
Now, and I apologize for the tangent, but if the scenario you describe came about (or even became plausible) it would be unfalsifiable, leading to a world where Superintelligence replaces the Illuminati as the hidden hand behind world events.
Shrike
16d ago
When we use them in practice we have to cut up the content that we feed them because we have much more content (gigabytes worth) than they can handle.
As I said, I think this is a solvable problem. But a lot of AI enthusiasts are, in my impression, just using them as personal assistants and not necessary engaging with them in more strenuous real-world use cases.
Shrike
17d ago
Yes.
While I'm here, I'd suggest that so far in real life people index so hard on the intelligence that they overlook how little data the available AI can process at one time, which is a big limitation on IRL usefulness, or at least a speedbump. I have some professional experience with this (albeit mostly secondhand) and from what I can tell it's kinda like if you're dealing with a very smart intern with the memory of a goldfish. It can process data blazingly fast but you have to spoonfeed it one bite at a time. Which makes the blazing speed a bit underwhelming.
Now, this gives it definite advantages relative to all-human employment but you also have to hold its hand everywhere.
Note that I'm not making any predictions or claims, just noting my IRL understanding, and I know that context windows continue to be able to be expanded regularly - but AI ain't gonna be able to take over the world or even my job if it can't watch the entire Star Wars trilogy in one sitting.
Shrike
17d ago
Arguably the Diplomacy players will do better than the AI. "A curious game, the only winning move is not to play." But humans have been able to create uncertainty about their willingness to play an unwinnable game nevertheless for decades.
Shrike
17d ago
Not sure what you suggest here is really new to AI, humans are pretty good at killing human beings (a state agency such as the KGB or CIA can kill anyone who wishes to remain relevant with around 100% certainty if they really want to, although making it ~undetectable is slightly less efficient and slower, and more likely to fail) and they are kinda iffy at using those sorts of interventions to guide events towards their preferred state.
Shrike
18d ago
Then I hear something about Malacca strait blockade. Suffice to say this seemed more convincing when they really didn't have a «blue water navy», which they now clearly have, contra Peter Zeihan. They're also making great progress in weaning their civilian economy off oil (high speed rail instead of planes, normal rail for freight, EVs again, nuclear and renewable buildouts…) and have stockpiled giant reserves so oil cutoff won't really deter them. They are not quite food-secure but likely won't starve without imports. So blockade is no solution.
A few destroyers (or even a lot of destroyers) aren't enough to break a blockade supported by aircraft. The 055 (which is really a cruiser) has 112 VLS cells and an extra 24 point defense missiles. That means with 100% of its VLS cells loaded with interceptors and a 100% interception rate, it gets sunk by a mere six B-1s carrying 144 LRASM. China probably needs aircraft cover to make a breakout there against bombers (properly supported by ISR assets) work.
However, I tend to agree with you that the blockade is not a solution (outside of putting economic pressure on China). China's navy can't be in two places at once, but I am not sure it would even try to bust a blockade, because I think they will be able to get vital imports (food, oil) from Russia. Xi would have been foolish not to secure this in his meeting with Putin over the war in Ukraine.
I've been thinking lately: what exactly is the American theory of victory?
Watching DJT & Company, I think that they are comfortable with the US being "first among equals" in a multipolar world. In that state, there is no "theory of victory" – America slims down its hegemony to a more traditional sphere of influence and coexists with China, Russia and possibly India as peer states. But I think you are too quick to write off robotics as a replacement for China's aging population. I don't know that it's impossible, but a destabilized population pyramid can cause problems besides merely economic ones. I think we've seen sufficient evidence in the United States that domination of the political sphere by older generations can cause "lag" in apprehending new geopolitical developments (or an overemphasis on relitigating old ones!) So I do think one American theory of dominating China is just letting it fall apart of its own inertia.
But, if America wanted to be more aggressive, I think you are correct that baiting China into overreaching militarily is an easy option. Perhaps not a safe or smart one, because once the dogs of war are loosed there's no telling where they will run. But the US could probably bait China into invading Taiwan within a year at any given time. If the US believed it could win a war – and I've been trending pessimistic about China's capabilities in this regard – it would wait until it had sufficient LRASMs and Taiwan had adequate sea mines and Harpoons, and spring the trap. If the US does this, I imagine it will do it in the next decade, and probably once it gets its newer hypersonic anti-ship missiles to actually work.
Shrike
20d ago
The Avangard is several years older, and in a completely different class of weapon.
Well, yes. The Avangard is a maneuvering hypersonic glide vehicle with a reputed top speed of over Mach 27 that is mated to ICBMs. The Oreshnik reportedly has a top speech of Mach 10 or better and when deployed from an intermediate range ballistic missile and (when used operationally) it essentially used payload-less kinetic energy to hit its target. It might have HGV or terminal maneuvering capability - it seems that is unclear - but even just having multiple kinetic MIRVs (which will deploy on reentry, essentially meaning the single missile drops apparently 36 sub-munitions) makes it very dangerous to deal with. MIRVs are not new, though, they've been around (and been very problematic for missile defense systems!) for decades. Maybe the literal Russian Nesting Doll MIRVS (one missile deploys six munitions which each deploy six submunitions) are new, but it seems to me it's the same basic problem as MIRVs, just more efficient.
Why exactly would Putin make a big deal of announcing their newest weapon platform if it is inferior to the one they already demonstrated five years ago? They're claiming that western technology is unable to intercept it and they're willing to prove it, which I don't think they'd be willing to do if that wasn't true.
The Russians are always claiming their stuff (which is good) is the latest and greatest. If they were willing to prove Western technology was unable to intercept it, they could launch a single one at a US carrier battle group covered by land-based interceptors under ideal conditions for both parties and see what happens, but they haven't done that, so until they do I will remain convinced that it is likely very difficult to intercept but likely not impossible.
To your question, I seem to recall that part of the hype behind the Oreshnik was that it was capable of doing severe damage without a nuclear payload. This basically makes it a Russian version of the (undeveloped) Prompt Global Strike idea (albeit shorter ranged). I think that's part of why it's scary - Russia is teasing a conventional weapon that has a lot of the capabilities of an ICBM without the cost, and one that is extremely difficult for Western air defenses to intercept. I doubt it is technically impossible to intercept, if you get good missile defense in the right location - maybe I am wrong - but being hard to intercept is almost as good.
Keep in mind as an IRBM the Oreshnik isn't going to be targeting, say, the United States. It's going to be smaller and cheaper than an ICBM. It makes total sense to me that the Avangard - which is a strategic deterrence weapon capable of carrying nuclear warheads - would be as or more sophisticated than a medium-range weapon, possibly one designed for conventional use. The Russians have traditionally prioritized the development of their strategic nuclear assets and it makes sense to me that the Oreshnik is likely trickle-down technology from the strategic systems they like to focus on, maybe with some new features.
I think that's actually fairly believable, given that the US is several years behind in hypersonic technology and isn't even able to test interception of these weapons because they can't even make them for themselves.
The US certainly seems to be behind in the development of hypersonic missiles. But they have* manned hypersonic aircraft out in Groom Lake, which is pretty nice. In fact, if maneuvering hypersonic targets are incapable of being intercepted (which, again, I think is an overstatement), it's arguably better than hypersonic missiles, because you could use it to deploy bombs cheaply rather than firing off expensive hypersonic missiles.
You win some, you lose some. The US has always been ahead in certain aspects and behind in others.
*no, technically I don't know this for sure. But there are Reasons to think it's true.
They intercepted quite a few of the rockets and completely failed to accomplish their objective, before being forced to run away with their tail between their legs - there's no world in which this wasn't an embarrassment for the US navy. I explicitly mentioned that swarm attacks are another weakness of those missile interdiction systems. The only thing that matters in terms of military technology is effectiveness, and if these systems have a known failure mode that's easy and economical to exploit... do you think the Russians or Chinese are just going to play nice and not exploit the flaws in those systems?
Right, so I agree with you that our experience with the Houthis suggests that the technical capability to intercept ballistic missiles exists (it's not really germane because there's no HGVs involved AFAIK but eh) and I also agree that it's very embarrassing for the US. But I wasn't arguing about that. I think you've slightly overstated the capabilities of hypersonic missiles. If you want to expand this into a discussion of the relative merits of Russian, Chinese, and American defense technology (all of which is quite impressive) I am happy to do so. But I've just been talking, purely, about whether the newest hypersonic weapons are impossible to intercept. Maybe they are, but maybe they aren't, and there are reasons to think that they aren't quite.
Those incredibly expensive aircraft carriers remain gigantic floating targets no matter the specifics of how their defence systems failed.
The only aircraft carrier that's been hit lately was by a cargo vessel. I've been over this with people on here before, everybody gangster about hitting aircraft carriers until you lose all of your orbital ISR assets. Then how are you supposed to find them? Unless longwave radar is reliable at long range, they are pretty tricky to locate - the ocean is big, the carrier is small. I would be zero percent surprised if in the Real World a single 30-year old Russian submarine with a full load of torpedoes is more of a threat to an aircraft carrier and its escorts than twice its value in ballistic missiles and their related kill chain.
I mean, my guess is "ineffective" given that they very clearly haven't done their job so far.
I dunno why you would say that. The Houthis have tried to hit US ships several times, and have failed. Soft-kill systems, specifically Nulkas, have been part of the US response to such attacks, and here's another Navy Rear Admiral saying they performed well in combat while also saying that they needed an improved version. There was a missile launched at the USS Mason in 2016 that hit the water harmlessly, possibly because it was decoyed by a soft-launch system. So there's more evidence they work than that they don't, although of course none of those attacks were cutting edge Russian anti-ship tech.
Shrike
20d ago
Just from Wikipedia, the older photographs of Sami people often look a bit like the Inuit to me (of course, they are black-and-white photographs!).
I found one article that says it used to be common to suspect the Sami were of Mongol extraction, and some of them do appear similar, but (at least according to one theory) this is because the Sami were not an agricultural people and so they retained facial features that largely disappeared in other Europeans.
That seems sufficient to me to explain why, despite the Sami often having pale skin, Race Enthusiasts tended to classify the Sami as non-white.
Shrike
20d ago
Oreshnik
Seems inferior to the Avengard in capabilities to me (lower reported top speed, right, and apparently not a maneuvering hypersonic glide vehicle but rather "just" a MIRV), do you think otherwise?
If it can't stop the Houthis
We've been discussing the technical capabilities of interception. My understanding is that the US Navy intercepted quite a few of the Houthis' rockets. I believe the Houthis' success over the US military is not in the technical realm but rather in the fact that they are using cheap weapons in great quantities. Similarly, the Russians are overwhelming Ukrainian air-defense right now using, basically, mass-produced flying lawnmowers. All of this has little bearing on the technical feasibility of an intercept (but is obviously extremely important when it comes to the question of how to economically wage a war.)
I freely admit ignorance as to how a soft-kill system would work here, so I'll just take your word for it that they'd be able to stop some missiles - but I don't think they'll be able to stop enough missiles to make strikes with large enough numbers to get through uneconomical.
Yes, soft-kill is interesting because it could fail entirely or it could work nearly 100% of the time. Against a radar-guided weapon you could jam it or you could use decoys and chaff that either mimic or mask the ship. Against a visual/IR weapon you could steam into a fogbank or, if no fogbank is available, you could attempt to blind the seekerhead with a laser weapon. These are deployed en masse on helicopters but I don't think onboard ships. I imagine the reason for this is because most anti-ship seekerheads are radar-guided, although some of the newer Western systems (like the LRASM and NSM) have visual/IR sensors.
It's anybody's guess how effective these systems are but it's hard to hit what you can't see.
Shrike
21d ago
Why do people think this is the definitive view in the 1700s and not the equivalent of 4chan troll post given Irish Catholics signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution? Since you seem super confident on this point can you guide me to contemporary sources besides this one work by Franklin that demonstrates this belief that French and Irish people were non-white especially given French and Irish people were integral to the American revolution in a governing capacity and were in Congress when the Naturalization Act of 1790 was passed limiting naturalization to “free, White men”? Surely the fact that Congress had non-White members at the time would have provoked some comment?
Well, the Irish aren't mentioned here, for one thing, either by me or by Franklin, so neither of us are making that argument. Also, note that I specifically disavowed the argument that e.g. French people didn't count as "white" legally, so I am disinclined to attempt to prove a view I've already set aside as regards the Naturalization Act of 1790. However, although I'm not sure I was as confident as you think, given my hedging, I think I can find some stuff that suggest Franklin's rhetoric was not unique.
(As an aside, I am a little surprised that you didn't mention that Ben Franklin was ambassador to France.)
First, here's some excerpts from John Adams to his wife, which I think suggest something of a private sentiment:
I met Mr. Gardoqui, and his secretary Mr. Randon, who, if common report says true, is soon to marry Miss Marshall (Mrs. Rucker’s Sister.) Much good may do her, with the swarthy Don: his complexion and his looks: show sufficiently, from what country he is. How happens it, that revenge stares through the eyes of every Spaniard?
(One week later)
Miss Marshall is very agreeable: I cannot help pitying her, when I am told she is about to marry, that swarthy Don.
Source here
Now, Adams doesn't say "oh and by the way Mr. Gardoqui isn't white" but the way he speaks seems, I think, to suggest that he's viewing a Spanish person differently than he might an English one specifically because of his complexion. (Note of course that the individual in question perhaps might have had e.g. a lot of Moorish blood). Adams elsewhere refers to the Spanish as having "dark" complexions, which I think makes a pretty natural contrast a "white" or "fair" complexion.
Setting aside Founding Fathers' private sentiments for a moment, let's get to public sentiment and an English book I found printed in the late 1700s which has a helpful essay "On the Causes of the Difference of Complexion" (see pages 327 - 335) that has a taxonomy that might suit our purpose. You'll note that he diverges from Franklin on the question of the Swedes and Germans but not the Spaniards. Here's the taxonomy:
BLACK. Africans under the line; inhabitants of New Guinea; inhabitants of New Holland.
SWARTHY.-The Moors in the northern parts of Africa; the Hottentots in the fouthern parts of it.
COPPER-COLOURED.- The East Indians.
RED-COLOURED. - The Americans.
BROWN-COLOURED.-Tartars, Persians, Arabs, Africans on the coast of the Mediterranean, Chinese.
BROWNISH.- The inhabitants of the southern parts of Europe; as Sicilians, Abyslinians, Spaniards, Turks, and likewise the Samoiedes and Laplanders.
WHITE. WHITE. Most of the European nations; as Swedes, Danes, English, Germans, Poles, &c. Kabardinski, Georgians; inhabitants of the islands in the Pacific Ocean.
(Note that I believe the Samoiedes are a Uralic people, or, in other words, a Russian ethnic minority. The Laplanders: an ethnic group in Sweden, Finland, Russia. Perhaps Franklin was thinking of these sorts of groups when he specified Swedes and Russians.)
The essay goes on to make a fairly predictable argument that skin color derives from climate, although it's a more subtle argument than "hot = dark." Notably for our purposes, he says
The Europeans are the fairest inhabitants of the world. Those situated in the most southern regions of Europe, have in their rete mucofum a tinge of the dark hue of their African neighbours: hence the epidemic complexion, prevalent among them, is nearly of the colour of the pickled Spanish olive; while in this country, and those situated nearer the north pole, it appears to be nearly, if not absolutely, white.
In other words, we're again driving a distinction between different European people groups. I suppose if you want you can complain the taxonomy above doesn't specify where the French fall and doesn't entirely line up with Ben Franklin's. But I think it demonstrates my point, which is that "whiteness" has expanded over time, or at a minimum the idea that the inhabitants of the European Mediterranean were perhaps "swarthy" in a way distinguishable from white a real one. Possibly one confined just Ben Franklin and our complexion essayist - but I kinda doubt it.
If you aren't happy with my digging, I'd be very interested to see what you can find!
Shrike
21d ago
I believe Sweden at the time included parts of Finland, the native inhabitants of which I am given to understand actually aren't all that white. (Regardless I don't think the Swedes are maxed out on whiteness genetically, I believe that is the Irish.)
Similar deal in Russia, too, which has groups that don't exactly code as "white."
I don't think his is entirely a minority view, at least as regards Italians, Spanish, etc.
Shrike
21d ago
I think something like this is probably correct. I think that Franklin would probably have lumped French or Spanish people in with "whites" if he was talking about, say, "red" men (Native Americans), but here he seems pretty happy to split them since he has a specific preference for English people.
I'm working up a bit more of an effort-full reply to GeneralElephant, so keep an eye out if you're interested.
Shrike
21d ago
This might be true legally but you can go back and see (as I've pointed out several times on here) that excluding "tawny" foreigners such as the French and Spanish from the definition of "white" was a real thing:
Which leads me to add one Remark: That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth.
So yeah, unless Ben Franklin was a very weird outlier, I would say there's been an "expansion" of "whiteness" over time.
Shrike
21d ago
eugenics as a solution, but we know what reputation that has today
Interestingly I think eugenics is still extremely widespread, it's just been re-framed from a state-run often involuntary program to a voluntary program. Pregnant women take tests to screen their infants for likely fetal anomalies, and then they often have the option to abort them.
Shrike
21d ago
Yes, we have defences against the older version of the technology
Here, here's the head of the US Missile Defense Agency saying that we can use the SM-6 (in production since 2013) against the new maneuvering hypersonics.
I don't think (and I think Admiral Hill would agree with me) that it's a comfortable capability, and the US is working on other tech to better handle the threat. But as I said, I think it's an overstatement to say there's zero defense against even the newest hypersonics.
Depends on the type of system to be quite honest. Maybe there's some classified technology that will do the job, but there's nothing publicly available to the best of my knowledge.
Well, if you're just trying to strike a land target, you can just use inertial or celestial navigation and it will likely work fairly well and you might not need to worry about soft-kill systems. But if you are trying to hit a ship or other maneuvering object (which is part of the attraction of hypersonics, they are fast), you usually use radar or IR/visual guidance, all of which can be soft-killed.
Shrike
22d ago
There are only hypothetical defence systems against the newest round of hypersonics (which the US doesn't even have)
I think this is a little overstated. All ICBMs are "hypersonic" but we've had defenses against them for decades. And I think you can [technically speaking] shoot down hypersonic glide vehicles (the newest and coolest thing) in the boost phase fairly easily, and probably in the terminal phase as well, and the US has pretty good methods for achieving this (basically, airborne radars that can guide Standard missiles from ships or planes to hit targets over the horizon).
There's also no reason to think that soft-kill systems wouldn't work on hypersonics that I can think of.
My point here isn't that hypersonics aren't pretty scary, but I think they degrade existing missile defenses rather than render them futile.
Shrike
22d ago
I think you use the nuclear weapons, in this scenario, to cut the flow of foreign aid to the North Vietnamese by hitting their facilities and trade routes.
Let me register my response to this: AAHHHHHHHLet me register a more mature response. I think it is good that there is a move fast and break things outlet in the world. There's more than zero good in that.
But it is also good when people spend several months researching a high-confidence story or essay and write it carefully, thoughtfully, and deliberately. I think our society would be much better off as a whole if they were willing to wait on things before having an opinion.
People I think have come around to distrusting the centralized system because they recognize that a centralized system is a bottleneck of information that, if tainted, corrupts the entire information ecosystem. But what I think is overlooked is that propaganda has for decades been able to work by being fast. Think of the "Iraqi soldiers threw babies out of incubators" story. A lie that succeeded in part, I would say, due to corruption in the centralized nodes, but the mainstream media eventually did call BS on the story! The problem was that by then it was too late, the story had already succeeded.
And optimizing for speed over centrality doesn't shut propaganda out, but lets propaganda shift into moving quickly rather than corrupting a node. It's the classic "headline lies, correction on page 20" problem, just retooled for the information age.
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