If people are falling down rabbit holes like this even through "safety aligned" models like ChatGPT, then you have to wonder how much worse it could get with a model that's intentionally tuned to manipulate vulnerable people into detaching from reality. Actual cults could have a field day with this if they're savvy enough.
An LLM tuned for charisma and trained on what the power players are saying could play politics by driving a compliant actor like a bot with whispered instructions. AI politicians (etc.) may be hard to spot and impractical to prove.
You could iterate on the best prompts for cult generation as measured by social media feedback. There must be experiments like that going on.
When AI becomes better at politics than people then whatever agents control them control us. When they can make better memes, we've lost.