Wayne Evans

“Russia, we now know, opted for door number two: information dominance. It was a logical choice for a weak but proud nation, one that could not match the West in the traditional forms of economic or military power. And it was less about matching the West than it was about bringing the West (especially the United States) down to Russia’s level by challenging its confidence in itself and its institutions. And the enabler for all of this was the World Wide Web and social media, the ability to “publish” without credentials, without the need to offer proof (at least in the traditional sense) or even to identify yourself. The demise of a respected media as an arbiter of fact or at least as a curator of data let loose impulses that were at once leveling, coarsening, and misleading. A. C. Grayling, the British philosopher, says that this explosion of information overwhelmed us and happened so quickly that education did not keep up, leaving us, he laments, with regularly reading the biggest washroom wall in history.”
― Michael V. Hayden, The Assault on Intelligence: American National Security in an Age of Lies

“Nichols credits a 1999 study by Justin Kruger and David Dunning, research psychologists at Cornell, with driving home this point. Nichols writes, “The lack of metacognition sets up a vicious loop in which people who do not know much about a subject do not know when they’re in over their head . . . and there is no way to educate or inform people who, when in doubt, will make stuff up.”
― Michael V. Hayden, The Assault on Intelligence: American National Security in an Age of Lies

“In tone, the administration said that the NSS was all about championing America, but I wondered what America that was: the national/nativist state defined by blood, soil, and shared history? Or America the creedal nation, the Madisonian embodiment of Enlightenment ideals? I suspected that it was the former, since the champion, Donald Trump, had already alleged that American elections were “rigged,” three million people had voted illegally (all against him), the seat of government was a “swamp,” the free press was the “enemy of the people,” crime was at record rates, and the American judicial system was a “joke.” In all that, he sounded a lot like an Internet troll on a botnet controlled from Saint Petersburg. Or like Vladimir Putin. Whom he never could quite admit had worked to get him elected. But Putin had. And then some.”
― Michael V. Hayden, The Assault on Intelligence: American National Security in an Age of Lies