Sure. But in the 80s you'd never meet a player who is several orders of magnitude better than anyone who has ever lived. That's important.

Similarly, in the 80s you'd never meet a group of political operatives who could read dossiers on tens or hundreds of thousands of people and tailor propaganda for them to read while in a doctor's waiting room, or wherever they happen to be. That's important.

We can't beat supercomputers at chess by practicing chess really hard. And we can't beat digital propagandists by thinking harder about what they publish.