Alchemists and self-styled sorcerers weren’t exactly wrong about magic being possible — the spells were just much harder than anyone suspected. To create an automaton, it takes years upon years of difficult training and then boils down to learning to manipulate ones and zeroes in arcane and abstruse ways.

Transmuting lead into gold also is possible — in a particle accelerator that costs billions of dollars.

This universe’s spells are very hard indeed, and unforgiving. It’s easier to destroy an entire region with a lump of uranium than it is to power a million homes; it’s easier to use electrons to convince 50 million people of absurd conspiracy theories than it is to teach them about the history of their own nation.

Propaganda, alas, is the best-functioning magic, and the easiest to use, and that’s the worst part of conjury altogether.