Yes, and there always has been, every leader or empire throughout history has a shadow government nudging things their way and waiting for the opportunity for a coup... It's a tale as old as civilization told in countless historical texts.

The US being the most powerful country on earth, both financially and militarily, make it the prime target in a geopolitical game of capture the flag... every powerful player on earth wants to nudge the US's resources in their favor and aligned interests will work together to do it. Combine this with modern technology, and the resultant the fact we can't have all-out wars without ending the planet, manifests this friction in ways "like we've never seen before".

Military generals have been adamant that we are all on a digital battlefield of 5th generation "5GW" warfare.

American citizens are really just plebs, generally disorganized and don't defend themselves until the threat is mortal, and the turbulence of today is the public facade of a clandestine civil war that's been playing out behind the scenes.

Why do people deny these facts? Because we as plebs can't possibly begin to fathom what happens behind the scenes, clandestine services exist for a reason.

People are generally just too fragile to accept that they aren't as informed as they like to think they are. A conspiracy deniers identity is wrapped up in how well reasoned they are, they're evidence based and transcend speculation. The only virtue they can lean on is how compliant they are in their thinking. Because they lack the ability to extrapolate from incomplete information, if you see what they can't its not because they're blind, but because you're hallucinating.