Here's a thought:
Why do countries focus on spreading misinformation among the general public of their enemies?
Wouldn't it be more useful to incapacitate the cognitive elite of your enemies, since they actually contribute the most to their economic growth/stability/ability?
(I remember cognitive elites being much more important than the cognitive average, but can't be bothered to hunt up a source right now)
or maybe that's already happening? Are Russia/China secretly manipulating the cognitive elites of western countries, and nobody is noticing because they are focusing on smoke-screen manipulation of the masses?
Is e.g. wokish ideology part of this? (Can also work the other way around, a common dirtbag-left suspicion is that identity politics is a CIA ploy designed to prevent the development of class-consciousness)
pea brain: russia is gonna nuke us
tiny brain: russia is gonna cyberwar us
planet brain: russia created qanon
star brain: russia created wokism
galaxy brain: russia and china invented meditation to distract western intellectuals
multiverse brain: gwern is a chinese agent sapping cognitive potential with long-ass blogposts