The leadership of nations requires you to put pressure on the thoughts and minds of your people, left to their own devices those minds will simply be shaped by someone else.

The morality in it comes from your motivation and methods. Secretly giving piles of money to the weirdos you successfully identify as being the leaders of artistic movements to amplify those movements can't be all that bad.

The question of the day is if you were the CIA trying to do the same thing today, who and what would you fund?

I would fund things which make people less susceptible to manipulation and more equipped to think for themselves.

Because I believe in democracy not as a political tool but as a fundamental right. I don’t wish to use democracy to gain more power.

But maybe that’s why I’ll never be in that position, to make that choice.

I wouldn’t because the CIA is explicitly barred by Congress (Title 50 U.S.C. § 3093) from conducting influence operations intended to affect American public opinion since the Intelligence Authorization Act of 1991.