I get your point and there’s no question that art and media have been used as tools of manipulation. The Laurel Canyon connections, CIA influence on counterculture, and the broader history of intelligence agencies using musicians to shape public opinion are all real phenomena worth examining. There’s documented history of state-sponsored culture wars, from the CIA’s funding of modern art in the Cold War to Operation Mockingbird’s infiltration of newsrooms. I’m not dismissing that at all.

But here’s the thing: art has always been political, and always will be, with or without government meddling.

The reason musicians and artists have influence isn’t because the CIA gave it to them. It’s because humans are wired for narrative, emotion, and identity, and art communicates those faster and deeper than facts ever can. If music and art didn’t sway people, the CIA wouldn’t have spent millions infiltrating counterculture movements. The fact they had to co-opt musicians proves how naturally powerful they are at shifting identity, values, and collective action. Most importantly, scientists weren’t mobilizing millions against the Vietnam War. Musicians were. That’s why they were targeted.

It’s true mainstream pop culture often pushes shallow, profit-driven slop. But that doesn’t erase the historical and modern examples where artists shape society. To name just a few:

• Scientists published data on climate change for decades, but it wasn’t until Billie Eilish, Coldplay, and others made it cultural that it hit mainstream discourse.

• Bob Dylan didn’t invent the Civil Rights Movement, but “Blowin in the Wind” amplified its reach.

• Kendrick Lamar’s "Alright" became a chant for the BLM protests, not because the government told people to sing it, but because people felt it.

• Picasso’s Guernica - anti-war activism

• John Lennon’s Imagine - anti-nuclear movement

• Childish Gambino’s This Is America - national debate on gun violence

• Public Enemy’s Fight the Power - anthems against systemic oppression

Yes, there’s corporate garbage. There’s also revolutionary fire. Both exist simultaneously. If you want to move mass consciousness, logic and numbers aren’t enough. That alone is not manipulation, it's human psychology.

I 100% agree engineers, scientists, and doctors should have greater influence than they currently do. They create tangible tools that improve lives. But influence isn’t a zero-sum game. A scientist can invent solar panels, but a musician can make a generation want them. A filmmaker can make climate change real to someone who would never read a research paper otherwise. If you give all influence exclusively to scientists and engineers, you’ll still need storytellers, musicians, and cultural drivers to translate technical knowledge into collective will. Otherwise, discoveries sit on shelves while society ignores them. Scientists may invent, but it’s culture that decides what society actually does with those inventions. People rarely rally behind pieces of paper. They rally behind symbols, stories, and sounds. That’s not good or bad, it’s just how collective action happens. If you give power only to scientists, but no one translates their work into cultural meaning, their impact stays locked in journals instead of shaping society.

Even if they were capable of shaping society by themselves, just handing everything over to scientists and engineers isn't a miracle solution either. Scientists aren’t immune to political pressure, corruption, or manipulation. Tobacco companies funded fake science to bury links between smoking and cancer for decades. Oil companies paid researchers to confuse the public on climate change. Eugenics “science” was once used to justify forced sterilization and racial hierarchies. If you hand scientists exclusive power over shaping culture and politics, you still have the same vulnerabilities. Except now nobody’s questioning them, because we’ve stripped away the counterbalances of media, music, and public narrative.

Science provides the knowledge. Art provides the momentum. Without both, progress stalls and values degrade. If you remove art from that equation, you remove the very mechanism by which ideas spread.