I guess:

- (a) propaganda/psyop/marketing/engagement farming may not be as old as the hills, but it's close: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39994449 (Cyrus cylinder ca. 540 BC has it fully formed; no doubt there was a preceding oral tradition but we're never going to know what the ontogeny may have been)

- (b) everyone uses the same tricks, because they learn them from their enemies (in an adjacent field the KGB's precursor learned all their dirty tricks from the Okhrana, probably in a nearly unbroken line going back to the first chimps who put together a coalition to overthrow the alpha chimp before the alpha sniffed it out. 100W is pretty expensive for a neural net; how else are you going to justify that calorie expenditure without scheming and plotting?)

- (c) telling truths that might hurt is more effective than lying (judging by XXI standards, maybe that's why he's been dropped from the curriculum?)