The article misses the context of our generation, in which multiple Western and Eastern governments as an underlying trend have been exercising the same behaviors.

Australia officially banned strong encryption for state surveillance this week. The Unite States got caught in the world's most intrusive global and domestic surveillance effort and buried the news of this through its relationship with the domestic press. Poland repealed its supreme court after upending its government. Israel has been criticized for its domestic assassination program targeting thousands of people a year. The United States has a threat scoring system automatically scoring political, social, economic, and other "risk" data into municipal police departments so that these people can be monitored and managed without a warrant.

The fact of the matter is Western nations have been engaging on censorship, surveillance and "perception management" and "strategic communication" (read: propaganda) campaigns at home and around the world for decades.

Chinese hackers aren't "Us versus Them". The British _helped_ the Chinese establish a modern propaganda program over the past decade. Where are the British in this article?

Overall, disappointed at the narrow view of the article. It can't offer solutions because its hasn't identified the problems.