March 02, 2018
Everything here is fake
I recently had a private tour of Paramount Studios in Los Angeles. I was shown the famous stage where the original “King Kong” was filmed. “Do you know how big the real King Kong was?” The tour guide asked me. “He was huge!” I exclaimed.” “Wrong answer,” she said. “King Kong was an 18-inch puppet. Magnification and special effects did the rest.” Next we went into the prop room where a model submarine only a few feet long was hanging on a wall. “That’s the real Red October,” she said. The rest of the movie was filmed on a stage set. Then she showed me an ordinary parking lot. “Here is where we parted the Red Sea in ‘The Ten Commandments.’ ” A trench had been dug in the middle, and then the whole area was flooded with water. The film was edited and restitched backward so that the trench looked like it was emptying out. “Everything here is fake. That’s what you have to realize,” she said.
My tour guide did not mean “fake” in any negative sense. In the 20th century, such fake material was confined to the entertainment industry, which in that earlier age of technology was clearly separate from the news industry. Now the scope of what constitutes fake is vaster. And I do not mean President Trump’s false claims of “fake news,” which is merely news he doesn’t like or agree with. I mean the world of digital and video technology that has allowed the Hollywood mind-set of manipulating reality to distort how we think about the great issues of the day.
Read the full article in The Washington Post.
More from CNAS
-
CNAS Insights
Technology & National Security
CNAS Insights | Governing Jailbreak IncidentsIn June 2026, Anthropic publicly released Claude Fable 5, a restricted version of its highly cyber-capable Mythos model. Within days, reports reached U.S. officials that resea...
By Ben Hayum
-
Commentary
Technology & National Security
Closing the Remote Access LoopThis article was originally published in Issues in Science and Technology. As Asad Ramzanali argues in “Why the Cloud Needs Competition” (Issues, Winter 2026), cloud computing...
By Michelle Nie
-
Commentary
Technology & National Security
Losing the War of the FutureThis article was originally published in Foreign Affairs. In its recent campaign against Iran, the United States dominated the skies using its traditional airpower. The U.S. m...
By Paul Scharre
-
Podcast
Technology & National Security
We Need AI Treaties. This Is How We Get ThemIn this episode, Tristan sits down with two experts in this field to discuss the kinds of verification technology we need for AI, the challenges of building it, and the world ...
By Janet Egan & Tim Fist
