Ask Slashdot: Should Users Uninstall Kaspersky's Antivirus Software? (slashdot.org)

First, here's the opinion of two former NSA cybersecurity analysts (via Consumer Reports): "It's a big deal," says Blake Darche, a former NSA cybersecurity analyst and the founder of the cybersecurity firm Area 1. "For any consumers or small businesses that are concerned about privacy or have sensitive information, I wouldn't recommend running Kaspersky." By its very nature antivirus software is an appealing tool for hackers who want to access remote computers, security experts say. Such software is designed to scan a computer comprehensively as it searches for malware, then send regular reports back to a company server. "One of the things people don't realize, by installing that tool you give [the software manufacturer] the right to pull any information that might be interesting," says Chris O'Rourke, another former NSA cybersecurity expert who is the CEO of cybersecurity firm Soteria.
But for that reason, Bloomberg View columnist Leonid Bershidsky suggests any anti-virus software will be targetted by nation-state actors, and argues that for most users, "non-state criminal threats are worse. That's why Interpol this week signed a new information-sharing agreement with Kaspersky despite all the revelations in the U.S. media: The international police cooperation organization deals mainly with non-state actors, including profit-seeking hackers, rather than with the warring intelligence services."

And long-time Slashdot reader freddieb is a loyal Kaspersky user who is wondering what to do, calling the software "very effective and non-intrusive." And in addition, "Numerous recent hacks have gotten my data (Equifax, and others) so I expect I have nothing else to fear except ransomware."

Share your own informed opinions in the comments. Should users uninstall Kaspersky's antivirus software?

Comments

ANY antivirus

[Anonymous Coward]

Uninstall any such snakeoil crap.

Re:ANY antivirus

[plopez]

That assumes you can. If your apps are hosted remotely (aka "The Cloud") do YOU know what they are using? What about their subcontractors and sub-subcontractors? What about your bank? Let's keep going and ask about your health care provider. And so on. Do you know?

Re:ANY antivirus

[Dutch Gun]

They're less "snake oil" than "yesterday's solution."

At this point, for Windows users, I'd simply recommend using the built-in AV and some common-sense precautions. No, it's never rated quite as highly as 3rd party AVs in the number of viruses they catch, but it's completely unobtrusive, lightweight, and has very few compatibility issues. And for any MAJOR attacks, it's typically updated fairly promptly.

These days, the security vulnerabilities they may introduce by hooking deep inside your system are no longer worth any minor benefits they may provide.

In short, I'd recommend uninstalling Kaspersky or any other AV, not because of "Russian Hackers", but for more pragmatic reasons.

Re:ANY antivirus

[Flytrap]

From what I understand ANY anti-virus or anti-malware tool is susceptible to being targeted by powerful nation-state actors for use is accessing user's computers... not just those from the US or Russia. That means that F-Secure, or any other such tool from any other country could still be hacked by the China, Iran, North Korea, Russia, the US or any other nation-state with an active cyber intelligence programme and used to violate the user's privacy and confidentiality.

I do not know what the real answer is... but I believe that the recent cyber intrusions are going to strengthen the advocacy for sandboxed application models and strict or explicit permissioned based access to computer hardware, software, network and data resources that have become prevalent on modern mobile platforms. Powerful nation-state actors will still try to hack and find vulnerabilities in the underlying operating system host or hypervisor layer, but at least it would give security practitioners a single concerted layer to focus their intrusion detection efforts on.

Protecting the cloud and the various systems, protocols, etc that make up the disparate components of cloud based systems is a whole other kettle of fish, which i think is beyond the scope of the question posed by the original poster.

Re:ANY antivirus

[DarkOx]

The only real answer is fully MAC (Mandatory Access Control) model that is very fined grained. The result of that unfortunately is a computer system nobody really wants to use.

The more immediate reality with A/V software is that its probably something that requires the highest level of trust. This is software that literally hooks into the I/O layers on your system and is allowed to bypass essentially every other kind of access control check. At the same time its hard to put a lot of instrumentation around it because so much of what it does isn't thru the usual OS channels. So you can't know if its misbehaving or doing things it ought not to easily. External network hardware should be able to tell you if its phoning home but that might even be complicated. We are talking about software that after all could stash whatever it wants to send some unused place on the disk and wait three weeks until your not at home but connected to the wifi in some airport and phone home at that time.

Frankly after this and a few past issues, I am not sure any third party A/V solution is advisable. In the Windows world Microsoft should probably just stop even allowing third party kernel modules they have not fully audited. Which would basically kill the A/V industry.

Re:ANY antivirus

[geekmux]

They're less "snake oil" than "yesterday's solution."

At this point, for Windows users, I'd simply recommend using the built-in AV and some common-sense precautions...

I'm not sure what is the larger risk here; assuming that removing software is going to properly cover your ass in the event of an outbreak, or actually believing that the user community is fluent in "common-sense precautions".

Remember there are times when software is solely used to prevent you from getting fired, particularly when the CxO doesn't see A/V as mere "snake oil".

Re:ANY antivirus

[jellomizer]

For the most part today we don't really deal with individual software but for good or bad we deal with mostly a service Infrastructure.
So if you have an Apple Infrastructure, you may have an iPhone, a Mac and use airdrop to share files and use the iCloud.
If you use the Google Infrastructure, you will have an Android Phone, a PC, using Google Drive
If you are using a Microsoft infrastructure, You are more or less out of the phone, but you have Windows 10, Office 365 and OneDrive

While you can mix these services around, but you are normally better off sticking to the brand you like as it offers better support and extra cool features.

3rd party tools on your infrastructure in general will detract from your experience and your ability to get things, done... (You may not be able to get away from this, due to cost concerns, or just needing a tool that isn't available) However these tools installed are nearly always at risk of being not supported, or breaking something else.

I am not saying this is good thing, being locked to a vendor for bulk of your use cases is overall bad, however this is the world that we currently live in. And you are better off using the Windows AV for windows because in general it is better built and it isn't trying to hack the system to do what it needs to do.

Re: ANY antivirus

[amicusNYCL]

Well yeah, but you see if the AV is using all of the CPU resources, that's just less cycles for the virus to have to execute.

Of course it should be removed

[vityok]

Of course Kaspersky should be removed from your system.

Or if you want to keep it, then don't complain when your files get reviewed by an invasive dictatorship. Of course, in 90% of cases they might not give a two shits about you, but if they do, then Kaspersky is one of their possible tools.

Also, there is absolutely no doubt that Kaspersky and similar Russian-made products should be removed from government networks or any computers handling sensitive information.

Re:Of course it should be removed

[helga the viking]

Absolute FUD.

Kaspersky BENCHMARKS the shit out of Norton, McCrapee and most others reliably over longer periods of time.

Show us the code, the detail and the proof it has a backdoor or exploit. An open availability of technical explanations proving there is an exploit makes it credible. We've got them for just about everything else so this one stands at odds as an outlier which should ring alarm bells that its political and not founded.

There are two layers of logic to this:

• You take the risk Kaspersky installs malware via some backdoor because Kremlin (no proof yet still waiting). Considers your desktop machine a valid target. Under this situation assuming everyone has a ticking time bomb installed on their computer for the Kremin to manipulate is not unprecedented. Welcome to the last 20+ years of insecure by design Adobe flash products.
• You ARE ACTUALLY running something that is of state,corporate 'secret' level, controls a national grid, controls some real world system that could kill people, controls governmental sensitive emails. Then why is it running anything other than a hardened lunix BSD OS anyway?!?

Re:Of course it should be removed

[butzwonker]

People forget that Kaspersky's engine is used by many other security products, too.

The reasonable stance is that if you have important trade secrets on your machines, you should choose your antivirus carefully - it's best to use one from your own country, including the engine. The same for journalists, dissidents, etc. Don't security products from the country you're criticizing.

Any other people aka "ordinary citizens" should just choose the antivirus that performs best and suits them best. Kaspersky is top notch. If you're worried about viruses and maybe a bit about NSA mass surveillance, Kaspersky is one of the best choices. If you're primarily worried about Romanian mass surveillance, on the other hand, then you should avoid Bitdefender. And so on.

It's kind of a no-brainer. On a side note, any machine, no matter how well-patched and which operating system it is running, will be broken and accessed in a targeted attack by any state actor. There are no secure PCs.

Re:Of course it should be removed

[Billly Gates]

Absolute FUD.

Kaspersky BENCHMARKS the shit out of Norton, McCrapee and most others reliably over longer periods of time.

Show us the code, the detail and the proof it has a backdoor or exploit. An open availability of technical explanations proving there is an exploit makes it credible. We've got them for just about everything else so this one stands at odds as an outlier which should ring alarm bells that its political and not founded.

There are two layers of logic to this:

• You take the risk Kaspersky installs malware via some backdoor because Kremlin (no proof yet still waiting). Considers your desktop machine a valid target. Under this situation assuming everyone has a ticking time bomb installed on their computer for the Kremin to manipulate is not unprecedented. Welcome to the last 20+ years of insecure by design Adobe flash products.
• You ARE ACTUALLY running something that is of state,corporate 'secret' level, controls a national grid, controls some real world system that could kill people, controls governmental sensitive emails. Then why is it running anything other than a hardened lunix BSD OS anyway?!?

Here is the citation of proof of Kremlin involvement

Re:Of course it should be removed

[AmiMoJo]

You shouldn't need anti-virus software at all.

Limiting what applications can do and blocking malicious behaviour is the job of the operating system. If you need a second application with kernel level privileges just to replicate the functionality of the actual kernel, you have a deeper problem.

Re:Of course it should be removed

[thegarbz]

Let me paraphrase:

You shouldn't need anti-virus software at all.

Limiting what users can do and blocking malicious behaviour like installing software and the ability to send network traffic is the job of the operating system. If you need a second application with kernel level privileges just to replicate the functionality of the actual kernel, you have a deeper problem.

Now user hostile system aside, there's a reason why anti-virus relies on matching the type of software, actual software lists, or attempting to determine what looks like malware rather than closing off the options for malware to exist: a) users will happily permit malware to install without a thought, b) most malware looks identical to any other application on the system in terms of how it interacts with the OS.

So something as tunable and fungible as software that monitors and attempts to block other software does NOT now, nor should it ever run in the kernel.

Every single OS in the world has your "deeper problem" the only difference between them is ultimately the attack surface (mono-culture helps) and the effort people are willing to put into the attack.

Re:Of course it should be removed

[gweihir]

Here is the citation of proof of Kremlin involvement

Your "proof" says "reportedly" right there in the headline. This is called "hearsay", not "proof". Or in other words, the proof value of that statement is zero.

No, your denial of reality is propaganda.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your bullshit denial of reality in the face of mounting evidence only convinces fools and traitors.

Re: No, your denial of reality is propaganda.

[umghhh]

I disagree about that "we don't need to know". As for the rest - the verdict is still out there. Bring evidence and we will see. The fact is however that most of the systems that we operate send shit somewhere. Try to prevent some of the stuff we have to use (for whatever reasons) doing that and see how well that works.

Re:No, your denial of reality is propaganda.

[gweihir]

What evidence? I have yet to see any. At this time, this are all unproven accusations, with zero actual evidence and some really hard-to-believe claims. For example, that an NSA member would take NSA attack software and put it on his private computer that is connected to the Internet and runs AV is not credible at all. Seriously, doing so is a federal crime and the people with access to this stuff _now_ that. They also know how AV works and that their private computers may be compromised if connected to the Internet.

Don't get me wrong, if there were solid evidence, then that would be pretty interesting, but there is not. All there is is propaganda claims that turn out to be based on hot air once you dig a little deeper and some of them do not even make sense at all.

Re: No, your denial of reality is propaganda.

[BlueStrat]

The problem with it is the fact that it calls home to Russia with data about the system(s) it runs on. Kasperski's own web page says this.

Relations between the west and Russia have soured a bit, and people like Obama and Clinton and other war mongers have been pushing for a conflict with Russia. It's not a big stretch of imagination that a Russian General would utilize kasperski's AV software to deploy a Stuxnet type code on U.S. systems if a military conflict came about.

We can't take that chance

Russians have no particular interest in me, pose no threat to me personally, and cannot throw me in prison. My own government, on the other hand, incarcerates a huge percentage of the population and poses a significant and local threat to my life & freedom and have also been shown to use illegal/unconstitutional methods and practices to achieve their goals. They are actually *more* criminal than those stealing CC details.

I have far more to fear from the US government than from the Russians.

Strat

Why? What job do you think SVR/FSB do?

[vityok]

Of course russian intelligence services are using Kaspersky for their own purpose.

Yes

[DrXym]

And any other AV software. While it's doubtful Kaspersky or any other firm would bother spying on "low value" targets and the software behaves as intended it's still intrusive, destabilizing and slows down the system. And if Russia wanted to be malicious, e.g. shutdown computers in the runup to something, I'm sure the software's AV update mechanism would give them the means to do so.

Of course if I were in Russia I would have my doubts about running US software for the same reason. As a rule of thumb, don't trust code produced by your main adversary.

Re:Yes

[helga the viking]

Its not unprecedented in the IT world to have an entity push something through an 'update'/'backdoor' that stops a computer from working. Replace the word russian government with microsoft windows update There's your precedent.

Re:Yes

[Zocalo]

Yes, you could say exactly the same thing about the equivalent tools make by companies based in the US/EU/China/wherever, depending on where you happen to live. Everyone spies on everyone, so we might as well assume that governments subvert popular software/hardware/services as well, right? So, assuming that you are a low value target to state actors, then the question becomes more about which of the following scenarios you prefer:

1. A tool that has been backdoored by some third party country that likely doesn't give a crap about your low value data and petty misdemeanors, even if they do decide to take a peek.
2. A tool that has been backdoored by your own government, and may well decide to share that information with other government organisations, and possibly even "friendly" companies/organisations like the **AAs, assuming that they decide to have a peek.

Personally, I think the former option is the safer one given the all pervasive surveillance states many countries seem to be turning into, signature updates to brick PCs in the unlikely event of a sufficiently large scale shooting war breaking out aside. All bets are off if you're not a low value target, of course, but if you are in that position then you'd probably want to be looking at a more in-depth security model that doesn't allow potential compromises such as the one allegedly impacting Kaspersky AV to be a complete deal breaker.

Re:Yes

[tero]

> Of course if I were in Russia I would have my doubts about running US software for the same reason

I think that applies to the rest of the world outside US and not just Russia. American government has been the nr 1 information collector for a long time.

Actually it's been shown that American agencies even spy on US citizens. So you're not safe from government oppression even on US soil.

Basically: If any government intrusion is part of your personal threat model... you need to proceed very very carefully. If it's not - well Kaspersky's AV is just as good (or bad) as anyone elses.

Re:Yes

[guacamole]

Why should we always trust what Israel's intelligence says without offering a tiny bit of evidence? And hasn't Israel itself hacked into other's computers and planted nasty time-bombs there? (stuxnet)

Re:No

[sittingnut]

this is indeed pure propaganda by nsa.

kaspersky software detected(as it should) nsa's new malware in a negligent incompetent private contractor's private computer, alerted hq, russian gov may have heard about it, kaspersky is punished for doing its job. btw american made software did not detect such malware.

if, after knowing the facts(as opposed to nsa propaganda), you find kaspersky is a threat, uninstall it.

Re:Why install any?

[mwvdlee]

If you want to visit a site that might contain malware, just start a VM or boot a CD-based OS that doesn't use your drives.

You do realize that includes literally every single website, right? Including this one.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole mass hysteria about Russia comes from the vast list of things Russian agencies has done in recent years to divide competitors to their interests

FTFY. The email thing was overplayed vastly in the US media (while Trump's staff doing the exact same thing wasn't, curiously), but it doesn't change the fact that the Kremlin-backed candidate won in that election and it is likely that he hadn't without Russian involvement. Moreover, Russian meddling in US politics is part of a much wider programme, including the destabilisation of Georgia and Ukraine and the financial backing of populist movements in various European countries and contributions towards the desinformation campaign in favour of Brexit.

Yes

[Billly Gates]

Israelis caught them being used to spy upon it's users which is why it is banned by the US government. In addition it replaces SSL certificates with their own doing MITM attacks and sniffing de-encrpyting your data.

I noticed Google Chrome even hides certificates now in the address bar after AV software was caught doing this! Coincidence?

Not only would I uninstall it. I would re-image too if you have to use Windows. You can't trust whatever backdoors or spyware Kaspersky could have changed in the Windows Registry or done to your system.

Re:No

[tinkerton]

Propaganda ok, but I'd be surprised if the NSA had gotten involved in the propaganda business.

Now, there is some value in the claim that Kaspersky data is shared with spying agencies. Data is uploaded to their servers and these servers are a target. After all the Israelis have succeeded in getting in, in a reckless attempt to provide Kaspersky and others with the most advanced evolution of Stuxnet/Duqu. They claim the Russians also succeeded in getting access and it's not impossible. It's probably a lie, especially when upgraded to 'yeah and the Russians don't even have to try hard' , but it shows people want to get in there.

Yes. And ...

[Qbertino]

... you shouldn't use any operating system or computer work environment that needs to rely on anti-virus software to relyably function.

Glad I could help.

If you can, then you don't need to, but...

[shanen]

Think about it for a minute.

Would truly malicious software actually allow itself to be uninstalled? If the Kaspersky people are competent at what they do, and if they are doing it for Putin, then you are in a world of hurt. The question of "Should you uninstall?" is relatively trivial compared to the big questions of "Are you able to uninstall the software?" and "How can you be sure you really got rid of it?"

The makers of the best anti-virus software (which might be Kaspersky for all I know) would know about every backdoor into your system and every way to hide bad code. If that company was evil or suborned for evil purposes, that same knowledge would make it impossible to remove their software unless they REALLY wanted to let you remove it.

All things considered, especially things like how good Putin is at manipulating people, at this point I'd have very little trust in any computer that ever ran any software that originated in Russia. Or even software that was exposed to Russians who have family members still living in Russia.

Technology remains morally neutral. Putin and his kleptocrats? Not so much.

Before commenting, I searched this discussion for prior statements of this obvious reality. Didn't find any, but maybe I just hadn't thought of the right keywords yet. So I'll try another search now...

Re:If you can, then you don't need to, but...

[shanen]

I think it's a typical Slashdot response of unjustified hostility and disagreement. When in doubt, scream and shout. It's the Slashdot way.

I didn't say anything about American antivirus software being any more reliable or trustworthy or uninstallable than the Russian stuff. I suppose the amusing paradox here is that whoever is best at detecting malware becomes the least trustworthy precisely because they would also be the best at evading detection of their malware by other antivirus software.

However, I do have to say that I do not agree with you about either of your examples of OSes that don't rely on antivirus software. They need it just as much, even if they can't rely on it. (I use at least 4 OSes these days, but probably around 8 if you count by versions.)

The most dangerous delusion is that you or your computers are safe. Unfortunately, I don't have any real solutions to offer. The problems are really difficult and in any contest between amateurs and experts, I'm going to bet on the experts and I know that I'm no expert when it comes to computer security (and even though friends and acquaintances seem to think I know a bit about the field). Or as the old joke puts it: âoeThe race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but thatâ(TM)s the way to bet.â (Attributed to Damon Runyon)

Hmm... Is it even worth the effort to see humor in this active topic? The "funny" shortage on Slashdot is reaching crisis levels...

Re:No

[skam240]

There is a mountain of evidence that an adversarial nation to our own (Russia) attempted to sway our election in favor of the current winner. How you can just blow that off is beyond me. Russia is not our friend, not by a long shot.

Wait, the NSA wants me to?

[Opportunist]

If some reputable source would say it, I would certainly start rethinking my privacy strategy. But considering who's "recommending" this, I have to second guess whether the reason is that it keeps them from spying on me...

If I had told you 40 years ago that you can't trust one of your TLAs when they warn about Russians...

Re:No

[EvilSS]

This is all just propaganda.

Thank you for your insightful response and continued support comrade.

As an individual, NO

[JamesKauffman]

I've had Kaspersky Internet Security for a couple of years now. It's my understanding that Russian law is similar to Chinese law about software--to sell in those countries, you must provide the government with your source code. I have no doubt the Russian spy agencies found an exploitable vulnerability in that source code and have been using it. I'm no more worried about that than the NSA's covert knowledge of vulnerabilities in Windows. And I place little credence in anything that Israeli intelligence says. KIS works very well on my system and doesn't slow it down. I accept the privacy risk, because information privacy is pretty much non-existent in these times, except perhaps for Tor. I don't keep work materials on my home system for exactly that reason. I'm going to support Kaspersky by keeping it on my system at least until my license expires. I'd hate to see a quality company have to shut down for lack of sales from an incident that wasn't their fault.

No, because it makes no difference whatsoever.

[black3d]

Since the OS it's running on top of is already deeply rooted by the NSA, what difference does it make if another spy agency has a zero day for one particular program I'm running on there? Hell, I'm sure both the KGB and NSA have zero-days for half the software I run on my PC. It takes a good half-hour of regedits, scripts and service disabling just to turn off telemetry in Windows 10, and that's just the stuff you're meant to know about.

If I was working on documents that I really needed to keep secret from a state-sponsored attacker, I'd need to air-gap that shit. Whether I was running Windows, Linux, or XBMC.

As it is, while Kaspersky won't keep state-sponsored attackers out (and neither will any other AV, or Windows Defender), it does a darn good job of keeping non-state-sponsored attackers out. And if a malicious attacker gets access to the same kind of tools a state-sponsored attacker does, it makes no difference whether I'm using Kaspersky or something else.

Unless someone can show me that Kaspersky puts me MORE at risk from non-state-sponsored attackers than a competing AV (or no AV at all), then swapping one out for another makes no difference. And no, "a hacker could get a-hold of KGB's zero days" is not an argument against Kaspersky, since a hacker could also get a-hold of NSAs zero days which don't target Kaspersky.. you know, like the whole dump of NSA zero-days that was dumped.

Re:No

[cascadingstylesheet]

and it is likely that he hadn't without Russian involvement.

That's the hand waving part.

I get why you want to believe that. It's a lot easier than facing up to your policies being deeply unpopular for half the country. And your candidate being just as awful.

Her email thing was vastly under blown. The Secretary of State, discussing classified matters on email through a private email server in her bathroom? Little people are in prison for less.

The point is, we didn't need Russian "meddling" (what, do they employ the Scooby gang? "And I would have got away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling Russian kids!")

NoScript is the best AV

[guacamole]

In the last 10 years or so I have used a Windows PC with anti-virus software to visit an incredible number of web sites of extremely shoddy origin and appearance and I used various p2p software to download all sorts of content on almost weekly basis. As a result, the AV software caught positives may be two or three times in that whole time, and every time this was "there is a dangerous ClickMe.EXE in your torrent folder! do not touch!" (well, what sort of idiot would click that anyways?). Why haven't I run into more alleged viruses? I guess it's because most of the time I used Firefox with NoScript extension. NoScript is sort of a pain to use, because you first need to teach it to allow scripts from all web sites that legitimately need to run scripts, like a forum, eCommerce, or say your bank.

Re:No

[jeff4747]

I get why you want to believe that. It's a lot easier than facing up to your policies being deeply unpopular for half the country. And your candidate being just as awful.

The election was won by tens of thousands of votes in a couple states. Such as the 11,000 vote margin in Michigan and the 68,000 vote margin in Pennsylvania.

With a margin that small, every single thing that nudged some voters was required to win the election. That includes email, the utterly incompetent Clinton campaign, and Russia. Take any one away and those margins flip.

Re:No

[jedidiah]

> How you can just blow that off

My echo chamber consists of more than just screeching Hollywood liberals.

I also have a genuine understanding of history rather than the pathetic "Cliff Notes" version peddled by the media.

The American electorate has been split three ways since long before the Soviets were a convenient bogeyman.

Re:No

[jeff4747]

Sorry to break it to you but a big chunk of the rust belt didn't NEED any sort of "nudge" to hate Hillary

Try actually reading this phrase this time:

the utterly incompetent Clinton campaign

If you'd take a moment to stroll out of your echo chamber, you'd realize that the vast majority did not like either candidate.

Again, the margin in MI was 11,000 votes. That's easily flipped if Clinton had run a competent campaign. Or had Clinton not been so stupid about emails. Or if Russia wasn't running a large social media campaign. Or if the Obama administration had a better response to Flint. Or if the Obama administration had put bankers in jail in 2009. Or if the economy was 1% better. Or if the Obama, W, Clinton or Bush administrations had any idea what to do with the Rust Belt in their free trade idolatry.

Margins that small mean if you take away one small effect, the margin goes away. That is true no matter which candidate you supported.

Change "likely" to "definitely"

[HBI]

What is this American bias against believing that our own government is in the propaganda business the same way every other country is engaged in the propaganda business? Our government lies freely to serve its own aims and always has - and believe me on this, I work for it!

Probably the same way nearly all Americans think the US is based on classically liberal principles like those old Saturday morning civics cartoons rather than being a corporatist fascist state, as it has been at least since the 1930s. Cognitive dissonance is a powerful thing.