> A good chunk of the highly educated people from the economic fields, Law, Public Relations and business world are much more manipulative and opportunistic than most "science people" understands.
Maybe so, but conspiracies generally require that they all act in concert with no one defecting. If even one of them decides to change allegiance (which should be somewhat likely if we are describing these people as "opportunistic") the conspiracy ceases to be pure speculation. For example, look at the sequence of events that eventually outed Lance Armstrong.
> They simply do not fathom the ruthlessness of the political or business world.
"Ruthlessness" is a spectrum. I'm sure there are lots of shady things that happen in Washington. I'm also pretty sure that no one in Washington is both as powerful and ruthless as Frank Underwood from House of Cards, for example.
And yet we do see conspiracies that lasted decades before someone was outed. Or cases where the information was public knowledge but just never put together well enough for the big picture to be seen (Catholic priest abuse scandal).
I think part of the problem is that people vastly underestimate the ability of 'good' people to do nothing in the face of evil.
It's a history of CIA manipulation of politics and culture across Europe and the US during the Cold War.
Projects like this don't have whistleblowers, because the people on the inside don't believe they're doing anything shady. And some of them don't have much time for the common public anyway.
Historically the extent of the manipulation - through overt violence, and covert forms of persuasion of all kinds, including bought-and-paid-for media influence - has been huge.
Maybe so, but conspiracies generally require that they all act in concert with no one defecting. If even one of them decides to change allegiance (which should be somewhat likely if we are describing these people as "opportunistic") the conspiracy ceases to be pure speculation. For example, look at the sequence of events that eventually outed Lance Armstrong.
> They simply do not fathom the ruthlessness of the political or business world.
"Ruthlessness" is a spectrum. I'm sure there are lots of shady things that happen in Washington. I'm also pretty sure that no one in Washington is both as powerful and ruthless as Frank Underwood from House of Cards, for example.