I think the key insight is if enough people provide misinformation, the real information is useless since it's hard to tell what is true. One could say that th

I think the key insight is if enough people provide misinformation, the real information is useless since it's hard to tell what is true. One could say that this over-feeding of information contributed to why folks didn't see 9/11 coming. Yes there were drops of clues, but they were lost in the firehose. I also believe that information needs to be acted on to be relevant. This is why corporate espionage isn't very helpful. You can throw a monkey wrench into a competitor's market trials, but IP is very hard to copy. Having a copy of somoene else's source code only gets you so far - you need people who actually understand it. Having blueprints to someone's plant only gives you clues - you actually need someone who understands it enough and can overcome Not Invented Here syndrome to make value judgments. I recall an anecdote from the 80s where an American car company was taking apart a Lexus. They concluded that their cars were superior in every way, and that all the design decisions were a result of poor Japanese design. Whoops!