Back in
2010, the Washington Post published a stunning investigation of what the
editors called "Top-secret America."
Here are some of the findings of that investigation:
* Some 1,271
government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related
to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000
locations across the United States.
* An estimated
854,000 people -- nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C.
-- hold top-secret security clearances.
* In
Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret
intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September
2001. Together they occupy the
equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings -- about 17
million square feet of space.
* Many
security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and
waste. For example, 51 federal
organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the
flow of money to and from terrorist networks.
* Analysts
who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic
spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year
-- a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.
Problem is,
the intelligence functions of the government are too important to outsource in
the manner we have been doing. It's
something where absolute discretion is needed along with absolute trust that
they are not violating civil liberties.
And to put this kind of a burden on private-contract employees is a colossal
mistake.
At the end
of 2001, our government appropriated a lot of money for operations in Afghanistan,
the alleged source of the 9/11 attacks, but all that money didn't seem to be
going there. Instead most of it ended up
in the Persian Gulf region, even though Saddam Hussein didn't bring down the
twin towers (as many Americans were led to believe).
Washington is
clearly and obviously the headquarters of the Deep State. But Wall Street is the ultimate backstop to
the whole operation. How so? It generates so much money that it can
provide second careers for a lot of the Deep State operatives. In this second career of theirs, these
operatives are very richly rewarded for their loyalty and unquestioning service
to the Deep State. A good example of this
is the most celebrated soldier of the last decade, David Petraeus. He was warmly and richly welcomed into the
fold at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, a Wall Street buyout firm with $90 billion in
assets under management. In fact, the
vast majority of generals seem to end up on the boards of defense contractors
where they are all very amply rewarded.
And then
there is the role of Silicon Valley. The
National Security Agency could not do what it does, the CIA could not do what
it does, without Silicon Valley, which mostly sells to private individuals and
companies. It's not a big government
vendor. However, its services are absolutely
essential to the operations of the Deep State.
And of course they have also become a very important part of the NSA's
operations, especially the gathering of the personal information of unknowing
citizens. And of course this has been
going on for quite a while. So now, like
Inspector Renault, Valley CEOs are "shocked, shocked" to find out. Yet
these Silicon Valley moguls, when asked, pass themselves off as libertarians. They make a big pretense about believing in
rugged individualism, personal responsibility and so forth. But they've been every bit as willing to be
as intrusive as the NSA has been, in terms of violating our right to privacy, by taking our personal data to sell for
commercial purposes as well as for "national security" purposes. And -- surprise, surprise -- they then "somehow'
manage to get the intellectual property laws rigged so that you are
theoretically subject to a fine of up to $500,000 for "jail-breaking" your
phone -- which means that if you don't like the carrier on your phone that the
manufacturer dictates you shall have, and you change it without authorization,
you no longer have the right to something you bought.
In short, this
symbiotic relationship between Silicon Valley and the Deep State explains the
indulgence Washington has shown Silicon Valley on matters of intellectual
property. Therefore, people no longer really
and completely own their property if
it comes from Silicon Valley. They only
have a kind of lease on it.
The ideology
of the Deep State is neither democrat nor republican, neither left nor right, for
the actors in this drama tend to steer clear of social issues. They pretend to be merrily neutral servants
of the state, giving the best advice possible on national security or financial
matters. But they do hold to the very
deep ideology of the Washington consensus, which encompasses deregulation,
outsourcing, de-industrialization and financialization. Plus, they believe in American exceptionalism
abroad, which refers to our national right to put boots on the ground anywhere
and everywhere it might be necessary, in order to guard our strategic/national
interests. In other words, it's now our national
right to meddle anywhere and everywhere in the world. And the sorry result of this is perpetual warfare,
and millions of dead and injured, which results in ever more jihadists who are ready to harm or kill Americans, which in
turn results, quite insanely, in ever more spending on the effort to "combat' (in
reality, stimulate) terrorism. And so it
is that the cycle accelerates, becoming ever more costly for all of us.
So this is
more than simply implicating Wall Street or the military-industrial complex, or
Silicon Valley, or the corporations. What
we're talking about instead is an increasingly diabolical and deadly symbiosis
of all four. Therefore, as long as
appropriation bills get passed on time, promotion lists get confirmed, black or
secret budgets get rubber stamped, special tax subsidies for certain
corporations are approved without controversy, and as long as too many awkward
questions are not publicly asked, the gears of this nightmare hybrid state will
mesh noiselessly -- at enormous expense and peril for all of us.
Essentially
we are talking about a government within a government, one that operates surreptitiously
from within its visible host government, yet by way of the taxpayers who
unknowingly pay its bills. Problem is,
it's not constrained in a constitutional sense by said taxpayers and their
government representatives.
Is there a remedy for the way this diabolical
system works?
Fortunately
we're starting to see some discord in the ideology of the factions that make up
the Deep State. We're seeing Silicon
Valley starting to jump ship. They are beginning
to protest against the NSA. We're also seeing
the Tea Party beginning to bail out and talk against the Deep State. (They may be wrong on many economic issues,
but not about this one.)
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