> Because of advances in irregular warfare, open societies are under siege. They are becoming increasingly fragmented and divided, while authoritarian societies are hardening into centralized information bubbles, ready to pop. Under conditions of total information warfare, democratic forms of government become impossible to operate in earnest because the people have no adequate means of making sense of the world. Without a healthy press, education, or public sphere, it is impossible for citizens to develop a realistic mutual understanding of the world. Undemocratic authoritarian states also become increasingly difficult to maintain, because the political elites themselves can too easily end up within insular echo chambers, absent of the free and novel insights needed to solve truly complex social problems.