This is a great demonstration of

1) why otherwise good businesspeople buy moneylosing magazines
2) why I’ve watched product marketing people make entire careers of telling senior executives that they can curry favor with “key influencers.”

I’ve never been convinced of the validity of either strategy, but I’ve never seen a more concrete example of the concentric circles of “influence” from a subject matter expert. I wonder if you could repeat this pattern from, say, Wired.