I hear this concern a lot; but never could quite grasp it.

If the premise is that the mindset of citizens is so easily controllable that a foreign entity can do it, then why is a foreign entity's control of citizens' mindset any worse than domestic entity's control of the same? If people have no protection against the control of their mindset, then does it not follow that their minds will be controlled by _some_ entity? Isn't the game already lost at that point? And are we really discussing whom we would rather surrender our minds to?