In one sense, mutually assured destruction in the context of information war is simple. It has been known from the earliest days of military strategy: you can be blinded by your own smokescreen, and even more so when your enemy is using one too. The use of powerful information manipulation tactics to coerce the enemy requires the creation of organizations that specialize in making and using such tools of war. History suggests that it can be hard to achieve trust and collaboration in governments that maintain large and complex propaganda operations. Stalin’s demise in Russia can be at least partially attributed to this lack of trust. Stalin spent his last days in a bunker, paranoid and suffering the consequences of creating an almost completely manipulated information environment. Accounts show that during the Cold War, both the CIA and KGB used deceptive techniques to convince their own government agencies of the success of their campaigns (i.e. the agencies propagandized their own colleagues to ensure continued support for their work). Societies that depend on the politicized control of information end up shrouding both political leaders and the masses in mere simulations of reality.