A key success factor to various informational influencing techniques, whether state-sponsored intelligence, marketing/advertising, targeted manipulation, or oth

A key success factor to various informational influencing techniques, whether state-sponsored intelligence, marketing/advertising, targeted manipulation, or other, is that often vagueness and deniability are core intentional methods deliberately employed. That's not always the case, and omerta, (virtue/loyalty) signalling, and the like, also have value, but those most often move up, from lower ranks to higher. That is, it's the lower ranks which are interested in signalling virtue, trustworthiness, and/or loyalty to some boss. A centralised intelligence service, state or otherwise, tends to operate clandestinely (often represented in name or descriptions, e.g., "clandestine operations" or "clandestine agency", etymology "secret, hidden", see: <https://www.etymonline.com/word/clandestine https://www.etymonline.com/word/clandestine>). These also operate within existing control centres (hence, the everlasting problem of determining trust and institutional loyalty within government and other organisations, and the problem of moles or turncoats), and along existing social fracture, ideological, or affinity points (e.g., racist or nationalistic rhetoric, claiming religious preference, or narratives which people both want to believe and which act as "cold readings" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_reading) or "dog whistles" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_whistle_(politics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_whistle_(politics)), where meanings may be fluidly interpreted according to audience background (this has long been a staple of Middle Eastern rhetoric, from both Israeli and Arabic camps, as well as of course numerous others), or where the actual meaning is, again, covert and clandestine, but apparent to the intended audience. Of course, apologists for a side employing these tactics will point to all these obfuscations as proof of innocence, when they are in fact key elements of the offensive. What often reveals this is leaks of internal discussion which emphasise such points, or of words and deeds at odds. History of corporate disinformation (lead, asbestos, mercury, pollution generally, CFS/ozone depletion, cigarettes, alcohol, automobile safety, fossil fuels/global warming) reveal many such cases, see Oreskes and Conway's Merchants of Doubt for numerous examples and tells: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt>. Awareness of such methods dates back to Aristotle and his Sophistical Refutations, essentially a guide to identifying and combatting bullshit: <https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/sophist_refut.1.1.html https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/sophist_refut.1.1.html>.