The McNamara fallacy (also known as the quantitative fallacy), named for Robert McNamara, the U.S. Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968, involves making a decision based solely on quantitative observations (or metrics) and ignoring all others. The reason given is often that these other observations cannot be proven.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy

Millions of people around the world looked at the CIA world factbook. It was useful. It gives you a warm feeling about the USA and the CIA. Warm feelings are useful.

If you deny this argument do you claim:

1. No one used it or it wasn't useful, or

2. They used it robotically and formed no feelings, or

3. It is of absolutely no use to have people like your organization or country.

In the early days of Wikipedia many articles were taken directly from the CIA Factbook since it was public domain. Numerous Wikipedians have fond memories of it and remembers it as something the US did that was actually good and not evil shit. That and America's Army. Cheap ways to gain goodwill. Maybe in the grand scheme of things it didn't matter.

right. because there's zero demonstrative value in USAID giving aid to foreign countries which is why we just left.

...and then china moved in.

The real problem is that the problem isnt binary or immediately causal. "This happened, and then that happened".

These problems are slowly developing with more than 1 term in the equation.

China doesnt build silk road 2.0 because of one little decision. It's an accumulation, and by then it's too late.

I agree. People use "soft power" as the reason the US should do so many things for free, but the benefits aren't coming back to the US.