I guess you only need a couple educated people to mind the social media bots.
I think that, for exactly this reason, it makes it easier to have a caste system, with a small educated elite that can exert essentially unchecked control over a populace that is too uneducated to master any of the levers of resistance.
That's among people who think it through. I also think that there are plenty of leaders who don't think it through, and just let expert opinion against them, or whatever other factor, guide them into destruction without any real consideration of what comes after.
I would guess (I am not in that cohort) that they would claim that their argument is that they are not arguing for an uneducated populace, but arguing against a "mis-educated" or "indoctrinated" populace.
>What’s the long term plan?
My guess here would be that the long term plan is to return to a "nicer" before-time that doesn't include things they don't like but does include things like helpful new technologies.
I have found that people can rationalize nearly anything if they are allowed to define the constraints of their argument.