Charlie Stross’s prediction may have come true.
Possibly the only thing protecting us from this contingency so far is that the first law of intelligence agencies is that information goes in, it never goes out. The idea of deliberately seeding the internet with disinformation is profoundly inimical to the usual methods and mission of an intelligence agency. (Organizations such as the KGB could do it only because the KGB wasn’t a pure intelligence agency — it was a secret police force with intelligence gathering as part of its remit.)
If we see the NSA or other US government agencies getting into the disinformation business, then the end game has arrived: there really is a Deep State developing, and it’s adopting the tactics of a secret police agency — not merely enforcing laws, or gathering information, but trying to influence the beliefs of the citizenry by systematically lying to them. (China’s already there, with its national firewall and prior censorship of news media.) But I don’t think we’re there just yet.
