The most compelling reason of all is that in most of these cases, journalists, scholars, and Western governments had a difficult time reckoning the full weight of totalitarianism’s monstrous achievements because the actual facts were so “improbable” that it was difficult even for specialists to grasp their truth. “The Stalin epoch,” writes Conquest, “is replete with what appear as improbabilities to minds unfitted to deal with the phenomena.” This failure of comprehension has immediate significance for us as we learn to reckon with surveillance capitalism and its new instrumentarian power.

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 1133