Deepfakes Didn’t Invent Cybercrime, They Just Perfected It

This essay examines deepfakes as an evolution of traditional social-engineering and impersonation attacks, arguing they lower the cost and friction of deception rather than creating a new category of crime. It explains how deepfakes undermine trust signals (voice, video, familiarity), critiques laws that focus on labeling synthetic media instead of outcomes, and recommends defenders shift from identity-by-familiarity to cryptographic proof, enforce invariant controls, and design systems that make secure decisions the default.