Trust earned by interaction history

What it looks like. A counterparty is trusted because of accumulated history: months of correspondence, reliable prior dealings, responsiveness, detailed personal knowledge. Trust level is a function of relationship depth, and nothing in the system records how the relationship was established.

The familiar case. The military feint. Massing troops was expensive, which made it evidence of where you intended to attack — until inflatable tanks in Kent made the signal cheap and it stopped meaning anything. The same inference, at the scale of one relationship, is what a cultivated persona exploits.

Why it fails. Sustained attention used to be expensive, which made it evidence of genuine investment. It no longer is. The inference rule is unchanged and now unsound, and defenses tuned for "unknown actor" never fire because the actor is well known.

Instead. Record how each significant trust relationship was established. Relationships formed entirely through digital channels get re-verified before high-consequence authorization. Never let interaction history, responsiveness, or personalization depth serve as trust evidence in a control that gates consequence.