[dm_]

What I think many of the jaded comments about how "it was ever thus" miss is what it means that American soft power is reduced to AI slop.

During the Cold War, the CIA famously funded all sorts of cultural endeavors, but much of the output (if not directly CIA-created, then at least bolstered by the Agency) is still held to have been culturally relevant: abstract expressionism (https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20161004-was-modern-art-...), the Kenyon Review (https://www.thecollegianmagazine.com/the-kenyon-review-and-t...), etc.

Lots to criticize in the Cold War, but I think you can at least make the argument that this was emblematic of an American cultural power that was self-assured of its own value and legitimacy.

In comparison, now we have...LLMs creating personal finance tips?

[rchaud]

School of Americas-trained death squads on one hand and hoity-toity arts and culture on the other. Soft power certainly casts a wide net.

[dm_]

Yeah, good point. And I think you could probably make a fair case that the choice of where to apply that sort of ugly anti-democratic violence and subversion probably reflected culturally chauvinist and racist ideas about which cultures would be receptive to hoity toity arts and culture (European, White) and which would not (the others).

But I don't know that I find a lot of fault with, like, funding the Kenyon Review. That sort of seems like a fine thing to do. I'm not sure there's a discernible difference between that and just sort of generally funding arts and culture, which a) seems fine, but b) also certainly serves to aggrandize "our" culture and promote the glory of "our" way of life.

[applicative]

None of these were significant either, not worth even 1 neuron -- but they did provide a bit of copy for upscale yankee-CIA tinfoil-hat journalism - even books - a few decades later.

[JumpCrisscross]

Genuine question, were we ever great at this?

[dm_]

If "we" = "the USA":

1. I think the examples I linked to are real, in the sense that they were both a) CIA funded (or boosted) and b) are broadly credible cultural output.

2. Voice of America was a real media outlet with real cultural impact.

There are also non-American examples. The BBC World Service is (or was) pretty widely listened to, which strikes me as a pretty big soft-power boost for an otherwise waning colonial power.

I do think what separates those from (apparently) this example is that they were all output that had genuine value to the target audience. That's sort of like the discussion around USAID: it was, indeed, also often CIA-adjacent and, during the Cold War, was anything but a purely altruistic endeavor (which is why it's so funny to see reactionaries describing it as some sort of bleeding-heart operation), but it nonetheless provided genuine value to recipients of its relatively meager budget.

What seems to be the dominant philosophy in Washington now is either a) America can get all the same cultural influence for cheap via AI, or b) soft power influence doesn't matter anyway because America has the Tomahawk missiles.

I think both of those views are likely to be incorrect.