The CIA publishes it’s “World Factbook” at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/. This Factbook lists every nation on earth and provides a modest description of each nation’s history, demographics, natural resources, industrial capacity and income. The Factbook is a particularly interesting document because it sometimes seems to tell the truth.
For example, if you visit the CIA World Factbook website, and enter “United States” into the search engine, you’ll see a description of a nation called “United States”. This description includes a map at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html. This map is interesting because, while it includes the location of some major cities and rivers, it does not include any reference to the States of the Union. Admittedly, the map is small. Including the borders of each of the States of the Union might make the map extremely difficult to read.
On the other hand, the “Factbook” is published on the internet and there’s no apparent size limit sufficient to prevent the CIA from providing a map of the “United States” that’s large enough to identify all of the States of the Union–or even all the counties, if they cared to do so.
Therefore, some people believe that the “United States” being described by the CIA map is not merely an oversimplification. Instead, they believe the CIA map is accurate and doesn’t describe any States of the Union because there are none in that particular “United States”. Instead, we see a properly drawn map that corresponds to the singular territory that is sometimes described as “this state”.

