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I think you have some very valid points :)

But, tech is not like basketball. If you automate an approach for exerting influence you can scale differently.

That said, I agree Western democracies are not that fragile :)

Honestly, I wonder why Russia dares poke the bear.. they are unlikely to exert significant influence -- but they are likely to be painted as villains and voters will remember that.

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Have you run a simple marketing campaign or media campaign before? -- to make the idea less abstract let's add some specifics and paint a simple picture -- imagine you're going up against just one dominant US corporation -- let's say it's a mortgage bank, a financial company, or a national retail chain. Do you know hard it would be to move the needle just one bit, and how many billions are spent by equally large corporations competing against each other trying? Now imagine two of the biggest corporations in the world competing -- Microsoft vs Google or Walmart vs Amazon -- these companies are so massive they have virtually unlimited resources, more resources than most countries. Imagine going up against any one of them. Now imaging going up against all them, and then every other US corporation and intelligence agency combined. All the while essentially going undetected, and then winning the market against all of them at same time? To argue that feat would be possible or even plausible, that's essentially what you would be saying.

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