26 ms·

As Leaks Multiply, Fears of a ‘Deep State’ in America

• erentz 10y ago
  I'm having trouble parsing the narrative of the article. It's frankly bizarre. It seems to be implying very heavily that this leaking of the administrations actions is bad for democracy. And that the administration is right in attempting to consolidate more power away from agencies as a response. If the administration doesn't like its laundry being aired in public perhaps it should behave better. The worst part is it's attempt to somehow make a comparison to Turkey here. Erdogan is a dictator that has seized control of Turkey. His purging of the "deep state" was not a good thing. And it is an offensive stretch to suggest the 110,000 teachers, police, judges and other civil servants caught in that purge constitute some kind of evil "deep state".
  • Ygg2 10y ago
    I think the fear here is, that conflict between them will lead to a paralysis of state, that could be abused by outside actors. Or it might strengthen deep state too much, making them true unelectable power. Or it might be used as excuse to purge and reorganize deep state, as Trump sees fit.
  • ChuckMcM 10y ago
    The notion of the 'deep state' is that of a controlling body within the government which controls the actions of the nominally 'representative' part of the government. So a collection of people who "actually" set policy vs the the President. And their means of control is generally to create a narrative that supports their chosen course of action, whether or not the elected official agrees with it. And in general I think it is unlikely, although prior to this election many people, especially young people, asserted that "voting was worthless since they had already decided who was going to win." That would be in keeping with a "Deep State" sort of situation.
    • coliveira 10y ago
      Every country already has a well established "deep state" constituted by the rich 0.1%. Wealth determines what is allowed in a state, with small variations that have to do with the particular party in power. In the USA both Democrats and Republicans represent the elite, with the Democrats having additional progressive support and republicans with conservative support.
      • yummyfajitas 10y ago
        Imagine hypothetically that the rich 0.1% were NOT the "deep state". What policies would be different?
        • shard972 10y ago
          Unless you assume those people were purely altruistic, what would stop them from becoming the rich 0.1%?
          • coliveira 10y ago
            Taxation.
        • deleted 10y ago
          [deleted]
        • mistermann 10y ago
          Taxation. War.
        • someguydave 10y ago
          Even better: imagine the government forced the sale of all assets. Then imagine the government distributes the proceeds to all citizens in equal measure. What's the probability that after a few years the 0.1% will be in the 0.1% again? I suspect it's pretty high.
        • ChuckMcM 10y ago
          That is powerful analysis tool right there. I tend to suspect that the policies would not be much different than they are. The top 20% of earners still pay 84% of the income taxes[1]. Lyndon Johnson felt the "military industrial complex" was a sort of deep state. However I would distinguish between the notion of a deep state which is making foreign policy vs corruption which is simply enriching a few special interests. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/top-20-of-earners-pay-84-of-income-tax-1428674384 https://www.wsj.com/articles/top-20-of-earners-pay-84-of-inc...
  • paulsutter 10y ago
    The leaks would be better if they came with full transcripts, instead of some vague handwringing about malfeasance.
    • grandalf 10y ago
      Right. The Flynn leak is unfortunately just a rumor, and some partisans are trying to amplify it while others are trying to diminish it. Since a full transcript/recording obviously exists, the leaker seemingly felt that his/her political aims would not be strengthened if he/she released the actual source material.
      • matt4077 10y ago
        There are many less sinister explanations, and one should generally go for them before resorting to conspiracies: – The leaker had listened to discussions, but did not see/have the actual transcripts – Leaking documents carries much stiffer penalties – Leaking documents feels worse than talking about them in general terms – Copies are strictly limited and can only be seen in a guarded document room - Documents may contain hidden markers to identify leakers ...
        • shard972 10y ago
          If the journalists reporting this aren't even seeing snippets of the conversations that's even worse. Intel agencies for decades have been known to manipulate the press.
          • grandalf 10y ago
            Right. If there is a deep Russian conspiracy to undermine government and Trump and many on his team are compromised, surely a leaker would feel confident that he/she would be vindicated for having helped inform the public about it (especially due to the strongly partisan support for anything that would harm Trump's presidency).
            • 10y ago
  • microcolonel 10y ago
    Do you believe that the administration is doing so much worse of a job than the previous ones? I suspect it has more to do with 20 years of backdoor deals suddenly meaning diddly because they couldn't predict the outcome this time. 20 years of predictable status-quo presidency will set up some deep ties, which should be obviously unhealthy for a nation that believes they elected a leader and not a rent-a-puppy. Having agencies which are actively sabotaging the majority elected party is obviously antidemocratic. The agencies ultimately carry out the work of the government, so if elected representatives don't hold authority over the agencies, you get an autocracy.
    • SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
      The president in the US has always been a position that is opposed by bureaucracy, not able to simply dictate their will on non-partisan agencies. I think that's a good thing: they can lead and influence the course of the nation on behalf of the people, but can't whip it around and effectively wield it outside of those agencies' mandates -- which are themselves controlled by elected representatives (the Congress). What Trump is discovering is that his job is to manage agencies who are created by the Congress and ultimately must live up to the mandate imposed by the Congress, and their oaths to defend the Constitution against domestic enemies, such as would-be dictators (eg Trump). The oath that officers take mandates that they oppose Trump, and his undermining of the separate branches of government (and separation of powers), role of media, etc. The system is working, and we should appreciate the dedication of the people making it work -- by checking the president's autonomous power. Maybe Trump's supporters wanted a dictator, but they shouldn't be surprised that people who love America and spend their lives serving it won't simply roll over and let that happen.
      • microcolonel 10y ago
        >Maybe Trump's supporters wanted a dictator, but they shouldn't be surprised that people who love America and spend their lives serving it won't simply roll over and let that happen. Treason is the alternative?
        • 10y ago
  • fvdessen 10y ago
    It is hard to know if the leaks are honest attempts to reveal bad governance practices, or if they are politically selected to achieve partisan motives.
    • grandalf 10y ago
      It only matters what the motivations of the leaker were when the leak is a rumor. If the leak is an actual source document (or recording, etc.), it can stand on its own. Unfortunately, the leaker of the information about Flynn simply started a rumor and did not substantiate it with any concrete data that would allow the public to formulate an opinion based on his actual conversation.
      • fvdessen 10y ago
        A sourced leak doesn't always stand on his own. A recording / email taken out of context can paint the target in a bad light. If someone with bad intentions and access to my emails and phone conversations would selectively release excerpts for the world to see, he could certainly ruin my life.
      • ben_w 10y ago
        I disagree: even with purely factual information, neither lie nor rumour, it is possible to create a biased impression by leaving out related information. Purely as an example, "The current US President ordered his troops to fire on American citizens" may sound outrageous, but make sense when enarged to "American citizens who have joined the Army, as part of a live-fire excercise in Texas". (I'm not familiar with how live fire excersises work, this may be a bad example, but I think it still illustrates the point even as a straw man — the point is only that withheld information can radically change the ethics of even true statements).
      • hueving 10y ago
        A leak of a fact can lie by exclusion and put people in a position where they can only refute it by revealing secret information.
        • 10y ago
  • nostrademons 10y ago
    Don't assume that just because an article criticizes one side it supports the other. It's very possible for the deep-state leaks to be bad AND for the consolidation of power by Trump's administration to be bad. The two feed into each other, and both sides are wrong. That was actually my read on the article - I got the impression that it didn't support either the deep state nor the Trump administration, but rather was labeling a dynamic that is toxic and could potentially lead to the destruction of American democracy. I thought the comparisons to Erdogan were of a similar vein; I didn't see the article as supporting Erdogan, but rather saying that Erdogan consolidates power -> opposition forces stage a coup -> Erdogan purges opposition -> the real loser is Turkey.
  • fsloth 10y ago
    '...some kind of evil "deep state".' Morals have nothing to do with it. It's about process and efficiency - and how the established de facto protocol of daily governing affects these. This is about what becomes the established conduct. The functioning of large organizations are based on two parts - the official rules, and the actual culture of operarion. The latter dictates how the establishment actually functions.
    • XorNot 10y ago
      Which again, would be a valid point, if the first shot wasn't clearly and obviously fired from the White House which engaged in an unprecedented purge of all executive positions, without even having nominees ready to fill most of them (70+ last I checked?) and which has been obviously filling the ones they can with political lackeys who are demonstrably grossly underqualified.
      • fsloth 10y ago
        I don't disagree with you - but deep state is still an antipattern. Another political pathology - a recless executive branch - does not make it any better.
  • cperciva 10y ago
    The comparison to Turkey is indeed quite odd. What's even stranger is that American media persist in referring to a "failed coup attempt"; to the contrary, Erdoğan has completed a very successful coup d'état.
    • toyg 10y ago
      To be fair, Erdogan's was something of a "countercoup" (assuming, of course, that he didn't somehow prompt the initial attempt himself; which is possible, but unlikely). We absolutely agree that the result was the same as an outright coup.
      • cperciva 10y ago
        Erdogan's was something of a "countercoup" (assuming, of course, that he didn't somehow prompt the initial attempt himself; which is possible, but unlikely). Sure. But I'm a bit skeptical of the "initial coup", given that analysts at the time were saying things like "this is the most pathetically incompetent coup attempt I've ever seen"; I avoid using the word "countercoup" since it implies the conclusion that there was in fact a real coup attempt to which Erdoğan responded.
    • jessaustin 10y ago
      "American media" consists mostly of the copying and pasting of press releases (sometimes called "anonymous leaks"), and Erdoğan is the only one left to release those. They won't have another narrative until someone in the "Deep State" decides he's next on the chopping block... probably shortly after Russia bribes him into blocking fossil fuel pipelines from Saudi to Europe.
    • shard972 10y ago
      > What's even stranger is that American media persist in referring to a "failed coup attempt" The same media who is interpreting the term "fake news" being used against them means trump wants to destroy every single one of them and just have state run media. I know his twitter is popular but jeez, calm down a bit.
  • foxhedgehog 10y ago
    "Deep state" on the libertarian-leaning left is "federal bureaucracy" on the Rush Limbaugh right.
    • mcguire 10y ago
      Libertarian-leaning left?
      • foxhedgehog 10y ago
        typically civil libertarians
  • Super_Jambo 10y ago
    There isn't a narrative it's an attempt to derail a narrative the people in charge of NYT don't like. Trump supporters are pushing the narrative of "Trump VS the Deep State!". So people will google "Deep State" and NYT is using it's cred with liberals to try and shape their opinion. See: https://trends.google.co.uk/trends/explore?q=Deep%20State https://trends.google.co.uk/trends/explore?q=Deep%20State The same thing happened in WaPo and NYT with HRCs e-mail server. At some point the story is out there, your supporters are going to google it. You need to get a source they trust to report on it otherwise they'll end up somewher you don't control. So you report it and sail just as close as you can to "nothing to see here nothing to worry about!". What does this article actually do: Right away appeal to authority and answer the question "Does the US have a Deep State?": "Not quite, experts say..." Phew! For a minute there I was worried but some random expert on Egypt got interviewed by the NYT and can say with clarity there is no shadowy cabal of three letter agency people pulling the strings! Lucky he could tell so easily really. The rest of the article is trying to drift away from the idea of a secret cabal and instead push the idea that a "Deep State" is nothing more than the standard civil service in tension with their elected leaders. Yea sure.
    • shard972 10y ago
      > The rest of the article is trying to drift away from the idea of a secret cabal and instead push the idea that a "Deep State" is nothing more than the standard civil service in tension with their elected leaders. Yea sure. It's so ridiculous it's not even funny anymore. Somehow people are justifying unnamed, unelected officials bringing down a government because they don't like who won the election. It's incredibly scary that some of the same people who would have defended snowden for his revelations on the deep state are now praying for the same deep state to enact a Coup d'état.
      • mistermann 10y ago
        It's amazing to me how 6 months ago, reddit (just as one example) saw problems, problems everywhere in the world, whereas their current recollection of that very same period in time seems to be something resembling nirvana.
      • 10y ago
• grzm 10y ago
  Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13666325 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13666325
• uwnigga 10y ago
  Can we fucking stop this newspaper headlines coming to HN. Looks like someone is sucking Democrat dick here.
• alexandercrohde 10y ago
  Am I the only one who thinks NYTimes should be a little more explicit in marking editorials? I'm sure among those of us familiar with newspapers it should be clear within a sentence that this is an opinion piece, however nowhere does the word "editorial" show up on this page and I suspect a fair number of younger or less educated individuals may not even understand what editorials are in general. It helps me understand why individuals might be skeptical of newspapers when an agenda'd opinion piece (basically a hosted blog) shows up in the nytimes domain.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • mi100hael 10y ago
    I looked for the word "editorial" or "opinion" and didn't see it anywhere, so I just assumed it was written by a staff writer for the regular news section. It's honestly got about the same ratio of fact/opinion as anything else they put out today. The only discernible difference is that it isn't 100% anti-Trump.
  • xanderjanz 10y ago
    This is a hard news story, not an editorial. They are reporting on comments by global experts.
    • intjk 10y ago
      It looks like this is neither an editorial nor a hard news story, but rather a column[1]. The difference being an editorial is an opinion piece (typically?) representing the publication, and a column is a recurring opinion piece by named individuals. At least that's what wikipedia says--I can never keep these terms in my head. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/column/the-interpreter https://www.nytimes.com/column/the-interpreter
• grandalf 10y ago
  Consider all the officials who have effectively been attacked by American intelligence agencies: Gen. Petraeus, Gen. Haight, Gen. Flynn, Hillary Clinton, and Trump! All this is quite recent, and in each case there have been explanations about how discoveries about the person were made coincidentally as part of other investigations, etc. Establishing a false causal trail is one of the most basic strategies of using deep surveillance. The recent leaks about Flynn and the Trump dossier seemed more nakedly political than the others, but leaks like this have always occurred, it's just unusual for them to be aimed at the current president and his cabinet. The funny thing is that if you wanted to sabotage the US system of global mass surveillance, this is probably how you'd do it. Every story about monitored email accounts or phone calls illustrates how deep it goes, and the intrigue created by the allegations about Russia make the stories incredibly viral.
  • gkoberger 10y ago
    Is this how you'd sabotage it, or embolden it? "Thanks to this surveillance, we stoped Russia from infiltrating the highest ranks of our government. See how necessary it is?" After all, it was the Cold War and the threat of Russia that started this whole surveillance stuff in the first place.
    • grandalf 10y ago
      Good point. That could certainly be the desired goal, which is why it's frustrating that the media is running with the rumor stories without making the lack of substantiating detail more of an issue. There should be a lot of pressure for the leaker to back up the rumor, since the stakes are fairly high.
    • ghostDancer 10y ago
      Instigate fear and people will surrender their rights. Add a pinch of patriotism and a flag and no one will dare to open his mouth. Exactly the same as they are doing in Turkey and they way they play in every dictatorship.
      • 10y ago
• george_ciobanu 10y ago
  There's a darker explanation than the two suggested already: that Russia actually controls people high in the administration (possibly more than one, including Trump) and intelligence agencies are fighting them.
  • mmjaa 10y ago
    Even darker still: that a great conspiracy to trap US politicians in a pedo-honeypot was a success, and now the corruption runs so deep that its a matter of national security that these investigations don't become public - thus, the tightening of the noose around leakers. You know, like happened with the utterly corrupt British government, right before Brexit ..
    • notahacker 10y ago
      What on earth are you talking about? Brexit was a very openly and acrimoniously contested public vote that had nothing to do with "conspiracy to trap politicians in a pedo-honeypot".
      • mmjaa 10y ago
        The UK had its own disaster with pedophile politicians requiring a coverup due to "national security interests" .. what I'm saying is, this could be whats happening in the US as well.
        • notahacker 10y ago
          The UK had a well-publicised paedophile investigation in the past few years in which they investigated a lot of claims about sex abuse involving famous people in the 1970s and early 80s which had been ignored for about forty years. A couple of them involved politicians who had long since become irrelevant or dead. This had nothing to do with Brexit. Similarly, when civil and security services and the executive quite openly distrust each other and brief against each other, "it could all be explained by paedophilia" is just unnecessary sub-4chan speculation.
• cperciva 10y ago
  While I think the stated concern about a 'deep state' is rather exaggerated, I think there is a legitimate concern about friction between the executive and the bureaucracy. There is broad tradition of non-partisan civil service taking orders from the partisan government of the day across the Western world, and it exists for two very good reasons: If the civil service is partisan, worthy public servants will lose their positions upon any change in government; and if the civil service is partisan, governments will not trust them. We saw this in Canada under the Harper government in the early part of this decade, with civil servants actively undermining the government and the government retaliating with gag orders; it didn't take long before the government, knowing that any research they asked for would be leaked in the most damaging way possible, abandoned evidence-based governing in favour of seat-of-the-pants policy-making. Now, what took a decade in Canada seems to have happened in a matter of weeks in Washington; but the fact remains that when the civil service is overtly opposed to their political masters, good government becomes impossible. It's one thing to have a bungling fool in charge of the ship of state; it's quite another to have a bungling fool who knows his crew are in the process of staging a mutiny.
  • int_19h 10y ago
    US already had this debate a long time ago. When Andrew Jackson got elected, he proceeded to stuff the civil service with his supporters, freeing positions by kicking people out, and handing out the now vacant positions essentially as a reward for loyalty during the campaign. It was, quite appropriately, called the "spoils system" - as in, "to the victor go the spoils" (a phrase uttered by one of the people involved in that process). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system This then became the norm for several decades, gradually declining until it was formally sunset by a federal law prohibiting the associated practices: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendleton_Civil_Service_Reform_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendleton_Civil_Service_Reform... And that system is the one that we had in place basically until Trump. But it should be made clear that it wasn't the civil service that made it partisan again - it was the incoming administration, by doing things like these: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/09/505041927/trump-transition-asks-energy-dept-which-employees-work-on-climate-change http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/09/505041927/... http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/22/506629695/trump-team-asks-state-dept-to-name-those-working-on-gender-equality http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/22/506629695/... And then, of course, there was the process of building the cabinet based largely on loyalty. The Trump administration (coincidentally, Trump is a great admirer of Jackson: http://www.salon.com/2017/02/19/trump-embraces-legacy-of-andrew-jackson/ http://www.salon.com/2017/02/19/trump-embraces-legacy-of-and...) had effectively revived the spoils system. The civil service responded accordingly. Whether it's good or bad is a difficult question to answer. Like you say, there's a bungling fool in charge. If the crew is in mutiny, the obvious disadvantage is that the ship cannot be easily steered away from dangers... but the advantage is that it cannot be steered towards them, either. Sometimes, dysfunction is really better than energetic action towards the wrong goals. But, yes, it does set a bad precedent.
• randomname2 10y ago
  A fantastic read on the so called 'Deep state' is "National Security and Double Government" [1] by Michael J. Glennon in the Harvard Law School National Security Journal. Abstract: "National security policy in the United States has remained largely constant from the Bush Administration to the Obama Administration. This continuity can be explained by the “double government” theory of 19th-century scholar of the English Constitution Walter Bagehot. As applied to the United States, Bagehot’s theory suggests that U.S. national security policy is defined by the network of executive officials who manage the departments and agencies responsible for protecting U.S. national security and who, responding to structural incentives embedded in the U.S. political system, operate largely removed from public view and from constitutional constraints. The public believes that the constitutionally-established institutions control national security policy, but that view is mistaken. Judicial review is negligible; congressional oversight is dysfunctional; and presidential control is nominal. Absent a more informed and engaged electorate, little possibility exists for restoring accountability in the formulation and execution of national security policy." [1] http://harvardnsj.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Glennon-Final.pdf http://harvardnsj.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Glennon-Fin...
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • Dowwie 10y ago
    Glennon spoke about this work at a CATO event: https://www.cato.org/events/national-security-double-government https://www.cato.org/events/national-security-double-governm...
  • d4nt 10y ago
    Isn't this what we mean when we talk about democracies with "well established institutions". In other words, isn't it a feature not a bug? The public institutions wield power just like the press, the judiciary, the legislature etc. And policy that does not meet with a broad acceptance by all sections of society gets blocked one way or another.
    • concinds 10y ago
• nepotism2016 10y ago
  "Deep state" requires influence from outside, Russia? I really much doubt it. Turkeys deep state goes back all the way to Gladio setup by NATO after WWII
  • kome 10y ago
    > "Deep state" requires influence from outside no it doesn't. the definition is really about a state in a state...
    • nepotism2016 10y ago
      Oh yeah...the countries listed in that article, which one has a state in state without any influence from outside?
  • forvelin 10y ago
    'Gladio Deep State' and 'Gulenist Deep State' -that erdogan has attempted purged to hell recently- are totally different. Gulenists did not use any external influence.
  • arca_vorago 10y ago
    Don't forget Gladio A/B, nice to see someone else paying attention!
• DanielBMarkham 10y ago
  When Lincoln was elected, there were days he had difficulty getting from his room to his office -- the halls of the White House were full of people who came looking for a job from the president. That was the old patronage system, where you elect a president and he can appoint thousands, maybe tens of thousands of jobs. All of these jobs had one major qualification: you had to be loyal to the president. As much as we hate it now, for a long time the system worked well. When the government was small, there simply wasn't that much real power to pass around, and the U.S. Constitution was fairly clear that the president should be directly responsible for the executive branch. Nobody else. The founders discussed at length the idea of a complex bureaucratic system of state, like the Europeans had. They wanted no part of it. But as we know, once the system grew during the Civil War and afterwards, it led to a terrible amount of corruption. Something had to be done. So the U.S. enacted Civil Service reform, where the president is allowed and expected to bring a bunch of partisan loyalists with him into office, but the lower levels of the bureaucracy were to be left alone to the professionals. In this way public opinion could have major impacts on national policy with each presidential election -- but elections wouldn't become such a feeding frenzy for people looking to make quick buck off the government. Now it looks like we're seeing the endgame of the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction: the deep state. As just some random internet dude, my suggestion to fix it would be to assert more executive control another level or two down, perhaps allow the managers at the next level, who are not appointees, more power over moving people around and letting them go. If we do it right we'll probably correct too far in the other direction, and hopefully it'll take another dozen or so decades for yet another course correction to be made. Sadly, however, I expect much political wailing and gnashing of teeth during the entire process. Whether it's patronage or the deep state, there's a ton of money and political power being fought over.
  • mozumder 10y ago
    Another option is to have department heads elected separately from the President. People make better decisions when the job they're voting on has a more specific description.
    • DanielBMarkham 10y ago
• jister 10y ago
  Interestingly this has been discussed here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpaDEkkOcpM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpaDEkkOcpM
• Angostura 10y ago
  It seems to me that the best way to encourage the development of a 'Deep State' is to exclude important stakeholders from things like the National Security Council. When denied access to the formal structures, what are these people meant to do, seriously?
  • thehardsphere 10y ago
    Who is being excluded? If anything the complaint I keep reading is that too many people are being added who have no business being there (e.g. Steve Bannon).
    • cavanasm 10y ago
      Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff and Director of National Intelligence are no longer permanent members of the Principals Committee (the actual subgroup that has people so wound up); effectively, they only get to attend meetings when they're invited (the wording is something along the lines of 'whenever their expertise is a topic of the meeting'). Since this is the National Security Council, people think it's weird that they'd have any meetings that wouldn't be in the purview of the military or intelligence communities.
      • shard972 10y ago
        Sean Spicer did explain this as a situation where both of those members were not excluded from meetings and could attend any meeting they wanted to, just that they were no longer required to attend every meeting. As long as that's true and so far there hasn't been any reporting to say it isn't, I don't see the issue.
• tim333 10y ago
  It's unfortunate to see 'deep state' talk coming up in the US. I associate it mostly with Erdogan in Turkey and his attempts to change from elected leader to dictator for life. The deep state and Gulenist labels are used to attack and arrest or fire anyone who opposes that. I hope it doesn't go that way in the US.
• bencollier49 10y ago
  From the article: "Though American democracy is resilient enough to resist such clashes". That remains to be seen.
• jonloldrup 10y ago
  The article says: "[in Egypt], “the deep state is not official institutions rebelling,” he said, but rather “shadowy networks within those institutions, and within business, who are conspiring together and forming parallel state institutions.”" I don't understand how the article can make this statement. The statement clearly outlines a Conspiracy Theory. As we all know, Conspiracy Theories are false - a priori. How can it be legitimate to concoct Conspiracy Theories for other nations, when, simultaneously, the very notion of (a national scale) conspiracy is seen as being equally as impossible as perpetual motors or faster-than-light travel? Double standards? What's going on?
• deviate_X 10y ago
  The "Deep State" is just inertia. It is only because America has elected a +radical president has this become somewhat apparent. But the inertia is democratic as it represents the democratic process and accumulation. It is especially important when you have edge-case of a president wining, but with 46% of popular vote and 26.5% of the potential vote. The "Deep State" being the actual institutions of law and governance is actually what makes democracy sustainable.
  • adventured 10y ago
    There's nothing radical about Trump's policies at all. In fact, he's hardly right of center on most things. 1) He's strongly in favor of keeping the welfare state and all the entitlement programs. Left loves it. 2) He wants to expand the military. Right loves it. 3) He's pushing a mixture of common right and left policies, including lower taxes and regulation, infrastructure spending. He's promoting American jobs / workers first (thus unions have applauded several of his efforts, such as killing the TPP), which used to be a left platform. 4) He wants to scrap the ACA, right loves it. But has talked about either expanding Medicare to all people as the solution, or kicking it down to the states to run their own ACA equivalent programs, both of which the left would be in favor of vs the worse conservative alternative of a total wipeout. 5) He's in favor of a strong border. This is something both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were supposedly in favor of. Bill Clinton talked openly about the need to stop illegal immigration because it was taking American jobs etc. 6) He ran on a platform of putting an end to the US proliferation of entanglement overseas, particularly when it comes to wars in the middle east. George W Bush ran on a platform not so different. Radical? Where? There isn't anything even remotely radical about Trump other than his personality type. His policies are rehashes of decades of policies espoused by other Presidents. Whether Trump won 44% or 47% or 50.1% of the popular has absolutely nothing to do with the deep state's response to him. The deep state operates entirely independent of the electorate. None of the three Clinton runs for Presidency achieved over 50% for example. With only 43% of the popular vote in 1992, and an openly anti-military bias, Bill Clinton didn't have these kinds of problems with the deep state in his first term.
    • wfo 10y ago
• booleandilemma 10y ago
  I feel like I'm seeing this term "deep state" everywhere now, and I never saw it before two weeks ago. I feel like it's the newest political buzzword after "fake news".
  • shard972 10y ago
    I believe snowden used it. That and shadow government but the media recently re-defined it to apply to Obama and his "community organising" that has been speculated he will do.
  • patrickg_zill 10y ago
    It's been around for at least a few years. Check the editorials at oftwominds.com , among others.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • Cacti 10y ago
    It's been around for decades, but it was always a term used by the left, similar to "fake news." One of Trumps more effective (and disturbing) tactics in the past year or two has been to co-opt this language and redefine it in basically opposite terms by simply repeating it ad nauseum. Now instead of having a debate about the allegations and evidence that people in this administration have broken numerous laws, we're discussing the _intentions_ of the "leakers" themselves, rather than the rather substantial amount of publicly sourced and substantiated evidence that suggests people have a right to be concerned. It's like getting caught stealing a piece of candy and blaming it all on your friend because they ratted you out.
  • kneel 10y ago
    Fake news = propaganda Deep state = military-industrial complex
• dpatru 10y ago
  The leaks serve several good purposes: - They help remove questionable public officials. - They show government officials what it's like to have no private conversation (strong encryption). - They show both the public and government officials that government cannot be trusted to keep secrets. (Even the President is unable to prevent his own government from revealing detrimental secrets.)
  • cavanasm 10y ago
    Yeah, how's this situation for the 9/11 truther movement? Even a nagging suspicion that a high level government official could be vulnerable in a way that could hurt the country, and some anonymous person with clearance goes to the press. What's that put the odds of a massive government conspiracy resulting in the deaths of thousands of Americans at?
  • rrggrr 10y ago
    There is some truth to this. However, instead of talking about the disturbing content in the leaked DNC and Podesta documents, the media only wishes to report on how this authentic content came to light. The deflection and bias is staggering. The lesson may be you can get away with anything if you have the media in your pocket.
• Elrac 10y ago
  I don't find the article's "deep state" narrative very convincing. The message I got from the article was, "there's a shadow government and it's using dirty tactics to subvert the normal operations of our elected representatives (including the POTUS)." That view would be a lot more legitimate, IMO, if we had a functional government trying to carry on normal business for the benefit of the people. What's actually happening looks to me to be very different, and exceptionally so! An analogy that should ring a bell with many HN regulars would be the new technical manager with zero technical background who was hired because he's the CEO's nephew, who happens to be borderline mentally challenged but makes up for it with defiant corruption, extreme nepotism and flamboyant temper tantrums. If you're (e.g.) a developer and your new manager is objectively incompetent and deeply disturbed, if he jeopardized important projects and the company's bottom line (that you depend on for a living), no one would be surprised if you voiced your concerns to the manager's superior. In this analogy, the manager's only superior is the public.
  • shard972 10y ago
    > An analogy that should ring a bell with many HN regulars would be the new technical manager with zero technical background who was hired because he's the CEO's nephew, who happens to be borderline mentally challenged but makes up for it with defiant corruption, extreme nepotism and flamboyant temper tantrums. Who?
  • mjolk 10y ago
    > That view would be a lot more legitimate, IMO, if we had a functional government trying to carry on normal business for the benefit of the people... An analogy that should ring a bell with many HN regulars would be the new technical manager with zero technical background who was hired because he's the CEO's nephew, who happens to be borderline mentally challenged but makes up for it with defiant corruption, extreme nepotism and flamboyant temper tantrums. A lot of hyperbole gets thrown around, but do you legitimately believe the US government is no longer "functional" and run by "borderline mentally challenged" people? You don't have personally like the newcomers to the top levels of the US government, but you're deluded if you think they're not capable people (or good at playing a game) acting within a system that's been built for hundreds of years.
• cpr 10y ago
  Paul Craig Roberts explains the stakes here: http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/02/18/stakes-trump-us-paul-craig-roberts/ http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/02/18/stakes-trump-us-p...
• uptownfunk 10y ago
  Never thought I'd say this but maybe Trump is right about the media. Part of me wants to think this is real reporting but to another part of me this screams like speculative albeit sophisticated conspiracy babble. It seems like the times by publishing this piece are really the ones culpable in sowing seeds of dissent and opposition in the mind of officials working for us gov. There's a lot of things wrong with this administration but in many cases the media is certainly not helping by amplifying the speakers on the circus.
  • alphabettsy 10y ago
    That's exactly what Trump wants. He wants to be a primary source of information however inaccurate or incorrect, but lets be honest of "the media" because its a very wide spectrum that includes the likes of the NYTimes, WSJ, as well as Breitbart and the Daily Caller. It wasn't long ago that many Trump supporters were reading articles likes this "Obama drops the pretense - He aims for confiscation of private arms, not ‘control’ of guns" (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/oct/5/editorial-obama-aims-for-confiscation-of-private-a/ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/oct/5/editorial-oba...)
    • just2n 10y ago
      So it's better when the media is inaccurate or incorrect? They so frequently use half-truths, lies by omission, complete removal of context, and in many cases report on things without substantiating evidence or credible sources, that it's hard to think they have much value at all. And it's not just one outlet, it's all of them. Sometimes they'll be accurate when the story fits what they want to say, and when it doesn't they will either say nothing at all (see: Sweden, Germany, France) or they'll grossly misrepresent things. The recent Felix Kjellberg incident is a fine example of what I've seen happen non-stop over the past 4-5 years. Every single week it's yet again the same exact thing, this time with a different story. It has never relented. If the choices are: direct from the source which may or may not be accurate 100% of the time, or via a media known to be incredibly dishonest and inaccurate at an alarming rate, it's really not a hard choice here for me.
      • 10y ago
• arca_vorago 10y ago
  "So is the United States seeing the rise of its own deep state?"..."Not quite, experts say, but the echoes are real — and disturbing." Wrong. The deep state not only is already in place and entrenched deeper than almost anyone could imagine, but it's power is at unprecedented levels. The problem is that the general public is being wowed by all the operation mockingbird CIA outlet propaganda to the point that they aren't seeing that right now there is being waged a very real war inside those deep recesses for who gains the power. I do have to say that the media is even bringing the phrase up those is amazing. The originator of the term "deep state" and I believe "deep politics" is the former Canadian diplomat turned educator, author, poet, Peter Dale Scott. He really is the prime standard in studying the ds because he is very academic in his pronouncements and tries very hard to follow the evidence and not over-exert his positions. eg. he mostly sticks to deductive logic, with smatters of inductive logic. Now, the other authors worth reading on this matter are Michael Parenti, Webster Tarpley, Mike Lofgren, David Talbot, John Perkins, Jim Marrs, G Edward Griffin, Anthony Sutton, and Douglass Valentine. Following the thread, one tends to come to one particular author though, that outpaces and outshines the others, because he not only gained unprecedented access to the historical documents behind one of the main groups pulling the deep states strings, but because he also was a well connected professor at Georgetown, mentor to Bill Clinton, and his writing is extremely heady: Carroll Quigley. According to most of these authors, the deep state rose to power primarily in 63 via the JFK assasination (and of course they used a MKUltra/Artichoke victim Sirhan Sirhan to get RFK too), and I would posit that most of them would agree we have barely had a president not completely beholden to them since them. Any time one tried to buck them, he was given a warning very quickly (Reagan assassination attempt made him start playing ball, if he had died we would have had Bush Sr. early!), and the list of similar happenings to presidents goes on and on. So, the deep state exists, so who are they? Factions and subfactions hiding within: "NSA, CIA, DIA, NSC, UN, NATO, FEMA, Round Table Groups, DHS, Bankers/Financial elite, Defense Companies, Big Oil/Gas, Big Pharma, Think Tanks, Other tax exempt foundations, K-street, The infiltrated media." What has enabled the deep state? The NatSec Act of 47, The patriot act, the NDAA, 501c3s, COINTELPRO-esque operations against dissidents, abuse of national security as a get out of court free blanket, the black market funding of black budget operations, blackmail as a standard modus operandi on important people, and more than anything the abuse of compartmentalization in the intelligence groups, which creates a situation where top level comprimise can be hidden from everyone but still direct actions and moves in the interest of the deep state. What are the goals and motives of the deep state? That one, I just have to say I don't know. I have suspicions based on all the contextual clues, but I will leave those for later. The number one thing you could do research on that will really open your eyes to the deep state is this: Continuity of Government (CoG)(Shadow Government) plans (which we primarily found out about in the Iran contra hearings), which were written in the 1980s by Rumsfeld and Cheney along with participation by some of the Iran Contra characters like Oliver North. CoG is the key which can unravel the deep state. According to Peter Dale Scott, we are in a hidden constitutional crisis primarily centered around this issue, and CoG may still be in effect by way of the continual declerations of national emergency (Bush proclamation 7463, EO 13223, 13224, were the starting declerations, later continued with NSPD-51 in 2007, and Obama has continued them). These continual declerations have been in violation of (b) 50 U.S.C. 1622. Supposedly, if some information Scott has is true, "the provisions of the National Emergencies Act have now been rendered inoperative by COG. If true, this would indicate that the constitutional system of checks and balances no longer applies, and also that secret decrees now override public legislation as the law of the land." This is the true issue of the deep state in the United States of America, and is one of the most important issues of our time.
• gdubs 10y ago
  This is why you appoint a special prosecutor to conduct an investigation. To grossly simplify: either the leakers are dangerous to democracy, or they're patriots blowing the whistle on serious misconduct. If we find that Flynn lied to the FBI and that he acted inappropriately with regard to sanctions, then the leaks certainly feel like an act of a whistleblower. If there's nothing to the allegations, an investigation would vindicate the administration. The fact that everyone is stalling on an investigation just raises questions.
• asdfGUYasdfn 10y ago
  As much as I want to credit the NYT for great journalism, the take away from me was the lack of secularism description between this country and the others. One of the patterns to follow is the religious based abstraction and the lack of coverage in how it plays in Egypt, Turkey, and Pakistan. Equally the execution of judicial oversight to curb these is not a framework that any of those comparisons can give us a parallel to the United States. Even Turkey and Pakistan use military intervention to bypass the judicial control / balance. Yes, there are leaks. Yes, they are serious. Yes, they are compounding progress. However, the self-correction through judicial execution and re-enforcement of national security has a proven vehicle. Trump or not, this would still be the pillar with combination of secularism that allows religion to not be the boogie man in the room and fair and balanced government oversight will dominate. Yes .. maybe I'm an idealist - but I believe my assertions to be accurate.
• rdlecler1 10y ago
  Trump won with around 60 million votes in a country that has a population of around 340m people. Legally he may have the authority to do what he wants but he still has to work within a system of people who did not vote for him and who does not share his strong policies. I see this as a feature, not a bug. There's a saying that if you people don't earn a fair wage they'll find a way to pay themselves. I think a principal is at work here.
• bwb 10y ago
  It is hard not to think there is a decent chance we are headed for a civil war, or rise of authorism.
  • HeavenBanned 10y ago
    The north would end up like south korea and the south would end up like north korea. That is to say, the south would be armed to the teeth, 3rd-world poor, with nuclear weapons and defacto apartheid. And the north would be a Scandinavian paradise with military tech 50-100 years ahead of the south. I sincerely hope the south secedes again. I don't want to have their backwards ideologies dragging the rest of the north down when it doesn't have to.
• mustaflex 10y ago
  I'm trying to follow the events in the U.S.A, I'm not american, it feels like that the "deep state" or "establishment" or whatever you want to call it, is laying the groundwork to kick Donald Trump out of the white house. Good luck to you guys anyway.
• youdontknowtho 10y ago
  I meant to say that I was looking forward to reading it and here it is. Lucky me. Not sure why that's a downvote? You can't just like something and say, yay! it's that thing? EDIT: My spellinh isrterrible.
  • dang 10y ago
    Shorter comments are more prone to misunderstanding—e.g. perhaps someone thought it was being snarky. In such cases someone else usually comes a long and gives a corrective upvote. The HN guidelines ask you not to post about getting downvoted though: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13686949 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13686949 and marked it off-topic.
    • youdontknowtho 10y ago
      Thanks, I will try to keep that in mind and try to contribute a little more to the conversation.