The existence of secondary sources doesn't reduce the need for primary sources. Before something can be published everywhere, it has to be published somewhere.
Yes, I was surprised by the overwhelming consensus here that the CIA, which is responsible for knowing what's true about other countries, doesn't do any validation of the claims they make about other countries.
The CIA was a secondary source. This bulk of this material is all drawn from other publications. Which you can now access in ways you could not before.
It was. You were able to access a copy on the internet. It was neither edited nor published there. As such it simply couldn't compete with resources that are.
Has it though? Isn't one of the concerns of information on the internet (regardless of political affiliation) that a lot of it is total bullshit?
I've seen so many responses from AI and AI "Summaries" that source claims from 20 year old unsourced forum posts. For that matter, people just make shit up, all the time, often for no apparent reason. It's upsetting that it took me until my 30's to realize that, but regardless I think there is value in canonical, well-funded sources, even with the internet.