No, it's fundamentally different and worse, because there's no indication it's happening at all. There's no possibility to mount any kind of defense of rebuttal. To use your war analogy, it's as if someone suddenly invented invisibility cloaks.
The fact that we don't have much evidence about what Cambridge Analytica did is the whole problem.
The fact that we don't have much evidence about what Cambridge Analytica did is the whole problem.