Yes, this is true. However, good quality photo editing became relatively cheap and convincing in more recent years. So now you don't need to be a nation-state

Yes, this is true. However, good quality photo editing became relatively cheap and convincing in more recent years. So now you don't need to be a nation-state to be able to convincingly pull something like that off. You can just be some guy in a basement with $1000 worth of computing gear and experience using photoshop.