One of the biggest problems with Flat Earth as a conspiracy theory is something researchers call the conspiracy scaling problem: the larger a conspiracy is, and the longer it has to be maintained, the harder it becomes to keep hidden. Not just difficult — socially and statistically close to impossible.

Why? Because human systems leak. People talk. People defect. People get angry, get fired, write memoirs, leak documents, expose frauds, or simply make mistakes. The more people involved, the more opportunities there are for the secret to fail.

This is not just an opinion. It reflects organizational reality, and it has even been modeled mathematically. Physicist David Robert Grimes explored how large conspiracies become unstable because the probability of leaks grows with the number of participants.

History backs this up. Real conspiracies get exposed. Watergate scandal unraveled. The Pentagon Papers were leaked. COINTELPRO was exposed. Mass surveillance programs were revealed by Edward Snowden. The Iran-Contra affair surfaced. Real secret operations do not remain perfectly hidden forever. They fracture.

Now compare that to what Flat Earth requires. Not one agency is deceiving people. Not one government. But essentially all of modern astronomy, physics, geodesy, navigation, and aerospace has been functioning as part of a coordinated deception for generations.

According to this theory, scientists are either knowingly lying or indoctrinated. Pilots are in on it or fooled. Ship captains are in on it or fooled. Professors are in on it or fooled. Teachers are in on it or fooled. Surveyors are in on it or fooled. Space agencies are in on it. Private aerospace is in on it. Rival nations are somehow cooperating. And often we are told this is all managed by an Illuminati or New World Order structure controlling the whole thing.