Network and relationships supersede facts and domain knowledge in most parts of life unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on perspective).

One may be smart and logical, but can you social engineer like Sam Altman or distort reality like Musk? People are the underlying OS, everything above is fancy trimmings.

Network and relationships as in political contributions aka bribes?

Where's the difference to politicians? ;)

I agree, I suspect most don't know.

Computers are just "doing math" too and the government uses them

Not quite the same. SQL returns pretty predictable results and we can talk about the data.

LLMs are treated differently and often opaque and the feds seem determined to remove anyone doing critical thinking.

The exact same number of politicians and political appointees that understand the need to create artificial demand for these services.