It's less a culture of I-know-something-you-don't than a culture of someone-may-know-something-I-don't. I don't understand your implication of intellectual delusions of grandeur here; I see it as the opposite.
If you read the other reply to my comment, you'll see that it was in fact a case of I-know-something-you-don't, although in this instance they are in fact wrong about the implications of the thing that they know. The gate keeping that goes on in security (saying that there's a threat but not saying what it is) is extremely frustrating to me.