His reason for buying it has been right there in front of us all along: Democracy Dies In Darkenss

It's just like "To Serve Man".

>Why did we have to go through all this pain. Was that really necessary?

Because the United States government is so grossly dysfunctional that a blatant real world re-enactment of Wag the Dog[1] has gone off without a hitch. "Without a hitch" in the "distract from the President's rape of a child" sense of the original film, of course.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wag_the_Dog

30 years ago, playing cyberpunk tabletop RPGs, my friends and I would laugh with each other at how silly the idea of major corporations hooking vital computer systems up to the internet would be.

I find one of the more interesting counterfactuals to be "What if William gets better winds and lands in late August?"

You may be grossly overestimating the amount of thought than went into this:

"For instance, Israel has bombed a park in Tehran called "Police park." It has nothing to do with the police."[1]

1. https://x.com/tparsi/status/2029555364262228454