I've read two of Harari's books. Sapiens is worth a read; it really pisses off liberals for some reason though so gird your loins. I think it's important to note, however, that Harari's academic expertise is on an era without printing presses. His hot takes on artificial intelligence have no more credibility than yours or mine.

The term of art is active measures and there are experts to be consulted. From my armchair, the masterful ploy was shrimp jesus and his ilk - a lengthy and unexplained appearance of fanciful, nonsensical but vaguely plausible images, memes and conversations on Facebook and elsewhere that largely furrowed the brows of Americans everywhere. If I were the CIA? I couldn't do better than Shrimp Jesus to inoculate Americans against disinformatsiya.

Because, you see, it's not about the forgeries. It's about the credibility. The history of mass communications is a history of diminished credibility; the establishment has always faced challenges by upstart channels assuming their mantle of production through innovation and using that credibility to advance its own agenda. Behold, the world's first shoop:

The worry seems to be "how will the hoi polloi know who to trust" without the obvious answer "they'll trust less." This isn't new; we call it 'the Spanish Flu' because the government didn't want people to know it started in Kansas for purposes of morale. It wasn't new then, either; one of the main purposes of yellow journalism was the protection of Tammany Hall. I've heard it argued that the South wouldn't have gone to war if it weren't for plantation control of the press; this theory tends to disregard the plantation control of literally everything for purposes of convenient points-making.

Outfoxed was 20 years ago. By then of course we'd been told by the New York Times about Hussein's "aluminum tubes" and Robert Novak had outted Valerie Plame so really, it was dog-whistle outrage for the Air America Crew. The Bush administration didn't need AI to walk us into war, they had credibility and popular support. If there's one thing AI lacks, it's credibility. If there's another, it's popular support. Would Loose Change have gotten better penetration if it had AI imagery? Would QAnon?

There's this idea that Americans voted Trump because they didn't understand his policies or some shit. And as a contributor to Harris' billion dollar information campaign, that's bullshit. Trump didn't even try for credibility. Neither did any of his surrogates. "they're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats" does not require AI, it just requires belief. Even then it doesn't really fucking matter. Henry Ford wasn't stupid, but he published the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which is every bit as batshit as QAnon. Not because he believed it? But because he hated jews. Everyone who voted for Trump chose their flavor of information, same as it ever was. In my dotage, I've come to notice the patronizing nature of liberals towards conservatives when it comes to disinformation - "they'll choose wrong." Yeah, they fuckin' well will. But they'll choose. And you can be disappointed in that? But clearly, you can't expect a surfeit of information to change the choice.