WMD

Weapons of Mass Deception? A catchy title for a post that does not give a full answer.

Once upon a time, there was a term called WMD, weapons of mass destruction.
The term was used for a very specific class of weapons, those that would cause thousands upon thousands of casualties at the push of a button.

Nowadays,  even a couple of pounds of fake C4 can get you an indictment bullet point "attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction".

What does that use of the term WMD tell us?

There are many interpretations, from the cheerfully positive to the darkly negative, including:
1) We value human life more than ever before.
2) It is another tool in the justice sytem, where every additional indictment point gives prosecutors more leverage in plea bargains.
3) It is a weapon of mass deception in the war of words on terror.

We don't know, so we call the phenomenon "linguistic scope creep".

We'll have to go and read our Paul Watzlawick books again to see if the astute observer commented on this phenomenon or something sufficiently similar.