Yeah. That would be "implied security". The default go-to for intelligence people. It would be stupidly naive to think we can beat them at the meta game. Eternal vigilance; disregarding any foreign information influencers safeguards you better against being subverted.
Also, the "fairy tale timing" may be explained as simply as "Tor stuff were on the news recently so some people got (re)interested in Tor stuff" :).