Orlov – Dissecting the Deep State Cadaver
Tue 4:08 pm +00:00, 22 Sep 2026
Source, paywall: https://boosty.to/cluborlov/posts/
The term “deep state” has long stopped being a mere political slogan and has become part of an analytical framework. It is indispensable for explaining the continuity of agendas and priorities despite the constant churn among the public members of ruling elites. It serves the essential function of maintaining continuity. It is able to pursue long-term strategic goals that must remain hidden behind a chaotic political façade.
Without the support of a deep state, a state becomes fragile, with nothing to prop it up except the use of force. A dictator may claim to derive his power from public approval. But in reality it comes from the cooperation and support of an informal network of influential but strictly non-public individuals. Similarly, without a deep state a representative democracy quickly degenerates into a banana republic. The populist tendencies of ruling parties or coalitions cause them to make campaign promises they cannot keep. In turn, regularly occurring pileups of broken promises periodically make the opposition look less bad by comparison. As ruling and opposition parties or coalitions trade places, each one attempts to wipe the slate clean, undoing the work of the previous administration. If it weren’t for the deep state, this would destroy continuity and make long-term planning all but impossible.
It would be a mistake to view the deep state as a conspiracy — a secret cabal of nefarious actors. It would be pointless to try to name its members individually because its power rests not in its members but in their informal interactions. Key actors within the elite spontaneously self-organize into a fluid network. This network then exerts influence on critical decisions regarding domestic and foreign policy. It is a living, dynamic system that survives through its ability to adapt and to respond effectively to changing realities.
It is very important to note that the deep state does not specifically serve the interests of the people. It does not seek to serve society at large. The deep state may benefit when the society as a whole does well, but that is never its ultimate goal. Its purpose is to serve the interests of key stakeholders, the elite core, and to maintain their networks of influence. Any benefits or positive side-effects that accrue to society at large are purely incidental.
For example, the political realities of the Cold War forced the US to compete with the USSR on social policy. In the USSR, the communist government improved the living standards of everyone and not just the elites or the middle class. As a consequence, in the US, for the first time ever, widespread poverty became politically embarrassing and something had to be done about it. To this end, the federal government introduced so-called “great society” projects. This measure was a one-time injection of a dose of socialism into a system that is allergic to it. And so, these projects were all half-measures. The US never went as far as introducing free higher education or paid maternity leave. And then the collapse of the USSR made “great society” projects a superfluous, legacy project.
But it was politically impossible to end them all in one fell swoop. Instead, successive administrations were forced to whittle away at them through decades of budget cuts, decentralization and welfare reform. But the process has stalled and now around 50% of US households receive some sort of recurring payment from the US Treasury. This is the same US Treasury that is $40 trillion in debt and runs a budget deficit that is around a third of its revenues. That way lies national bankruptcy. Meanwhile, Russia’s budget deficit and federal debt are tiny while its social spending is huge. Call it the revenge of the communists.
This east-west competition went beyond “great society” projects and the “war on poverty.” The entire existence of the middle class in the US was only needed to keep the communists and the socialists at bay. After the communist experiment ended, the middle class, in the US and in the rest of the West, has been gradually deflated. And now around half of the college graduates in the US go back to living with their parents upon graduation. This statistic alone negates the claim that the US is still a middle-class society. It is a lower-class society coasting toward becoming low class. Each next generation is doing worse than the previous one. Does this in any way perturb the deep state? Not in the least! It is, of course, perturbed by looming national bankruptcy. But it is too late to do anything to overt it. The deep state is not omnipotent, you see.
As a side note, the sudden collapse of the USSR was triggered by the secretive machinations of the Soviet deep state. It consisted to a large extent of the who’s-who of the communist parties of the various Soviet Socialist republics — the so-called “nomenclature”. Notably missing was the Russian Communist party — the Russians weren’t allowed to have one. The USSR was quite popular with the people — but not with its deep state! 77.8% of the people voted to preserve the USSR in a national referendum held on March 17, 1991. But then the USSR was formally dissolved on December 26, 1991. It was dissolved by a vote of the Supreme Soviet. These were supposed to have been the people’s representatives. But rest assured, the groundwork for this decision was laid elsewhere, behind closed doors. The will of the people was disregarded. Many people saw this as an act of treason. The results were horrific for the population at large. By some estimates 10 million people perished as a result. But it was an excellent result for a new class of private property owners. Many of them emerged from within the old Communist party nomenclature. They got rich by privatizing public property. In the eyes of many of those who watched it happen, “privatization” was merely a euphemism for “theft”. It was a defeat for the nation and a victory for its deep state.
Thus, it would be a mistake to think that the deep state serves its society at large. It may even be a stretch to say that it serves the state itself. This connection becomes ever more tenuous as the deep state starts to lose its national character. Can a deep state survive as it becomes increasingly internationalized, as has been happening in Europe and as transnational corporations gain more power in the US? Right now, Europe is governed by a collection of deeply unpopular rootless cosmopolitans (which is what Joseph Stalin would have called them). France and Germany are currently headed by former bankers. They are directly beholden to transnational financial conglomerates. They speak English when they get together. They care very little for the historical nation that is in their charge. And they are all appointees of a trans-European, transatlantic deep state.
What will happen to the national deep states of European nations as their nations continue to dissolve within the European Union? Perhaps they will become like hermit crabs that have lost their shells — easy prey for other deep states? Hermit crabs are highly opportunistic cannibals, don’t you know! Imagine, if you will, a collection of hermit crabs, their shells dissolved by acids secreted by the European Commission, huddling together in abject fear of Russia. But Russia isn’t even interested in them. In due course, they will become hungry and start nibbling away at each other. In accordance with ancient European tradition, they will probably eat Poland first. We’ll come back to this particular point later.
It shouldn’t come as too big a big surprise if the loss of national identity causes a nation’s deep state to lose its coherence and focus, to become internally conflicted and to dissolve. The only exception may turn out to be the British deep state. We’ll have to see whether it survives the demise of the United Kingdom as it fractures all the way back to 1707, shedding Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and whatever other little colonies it has left. As Great Britain shrinks down to Little England, will its deep state hold together or will its various deep state critters scamper away and look for other national shells in which to hide?
The British deep state deserves a careful look. It is by far the most ancient deep state that is still in existence. It is the only deep state that is actually officially chartered. A succession of official documents, starting with the William Charter of 1067, has guaranteed its special rights and privileges. The Parliament dare not impinge on these rights and the City — London’s financial center — assigns it a special minder to see to that. Thus, the City is a proper state within a state. And then there are the Masons and the aristocracy, with their own rather nontransparent, secretive ways of doing things.
The special know-how of the British deep state is profiting from others’ misfortunes. If it can ever lend a hand in causing and perpetuating a conflict, it will surely do so. Many nations suffered from nefarious British meddling, Russia in particular. It had a hand in causing a war between Russia and France under Napoleon Bonaparte. It had a hand in the Russian revolution of 1917. More recently, it did its best to prevent peace from breaking out between Russia and the former Ukraine. Its underhanded actions across the centuries have earned it the Russian nickname “поганый остров” — the rotten island. Now many Russians view the UK as a decaying, post-imperial shell whose collapse is mathematically inevitable. Its societal, economic and moral decay is simply too profound. Russian nightly news takes great pleasure in chronicling its demise.
The British deep state is also something of a franchise. Its tentacles have reached into New York, Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai and other globalist financial centers. In each case, a detachment of a few thousand British subjects is deployed to manipulate the situation in the interests of the British deep state. This tendency to spread out across the landscape, infesting key nodes along important sea lanes, makes it hard to see where it ends. Even after the UK is no more, cutting off these tentacles promises to be a lengthy and laborious process for competing deep states.
The British deep state is also a highly successful parasite. After the collapse of the British empire, it attached itself to the US, the way a sucker fish attaches itself to a shark. No longer able to fend for itself, it has skillfully used American power to serve its own pernicious interests, which it facetiously presented as common interests. Some US officials were too naïve to see through the ruse while others had to be corrupted. At present, fissures are appearing between the British and the American deep states. This may mean that this special relationship is nearing its end. Or it may mean that the British and the American deep states are getting ready to jump off a cliff together, holding hands.
Is the deep state a blessing or a curse? It is most certainly both. It is a curse because it hijacks the state to serve its own needs rather than the needs of the population at large. It is a blessing because without it the state which it inhabits becomes easy prey for others. A perfectly reasonable hypothesis worth testing is that a nation that doesn’t have a deep state is a colony of a nation that does have one.
As an example of a degenerate deep state, let us very briefly look at Poland. Poland suffers from a congenital defect: it has consistently sported not one but at least two deep states which are permanently at war with each other. Their rancor inevitably erupts into public discourse, giving rise to the most ridiculous, bombastic and provocative political behavior. So deep is their mutual hatred that in battling each other they neglect to protect Poland’s national interests. Looking back across history, it is very much in Poland’s national interest to avoid angering Russia. Doing so always ends badly for Poland. If Poland had a healthy and consolidated deep state, it would act swiftly to neutralize every Polish politician who went out of his way to offend and anger Russia.
In this respect, an exemplary specimen is Poland’s Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski. Just the other day he suggested that it would be a good idea to start harassing Russia by holding highly aggressive military exercises along the borders of the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. Russian officials made a note of this and perhaps revised some battle plans. Poland is a little country and Russia can force its surrender in a day or two using conventional stand-off weapons. Nobody was forcing Radosław to stick his neck out. But such ridiculous provocations are typical of Polish political behavior throughout history. If Poland had a strong, healthy and unified deep state, it would have fitted Radosław with a gag or pulled him off the stage with a hook. It is this sort of political accident-proneness that has caused Poland to be partitioned a total of six times starting in 1772. Europe is currently struggling to rearm itself, anticipating the departure of American forces from Europe. Once that’s done, it will be time for another European war. Traditionally, European wars start by partitioning Poland.
And now, let us discuss the anatomy of the deep state. What are its vital organs and how are they connected together? Here, the US serves as a most excellent cadaver, having the most studied and the most institutionalized example of a deep state. Its deep state is much better documented than any other due to the US having a tradition of investigative journalism and a loud yet ineffectual dissident movement. Academic research has also played a part. Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and other American systemic, moderate radicals have helped flesh out many of its details, to no positive effect whatsoever.
Also, the dissection of the deep state cadaver is made easier by American propensity for leaks and public scandals. Most other countries don’t offer such transparency to outside observers. This does not mean that they lack a deep state. It’s just that it’s not so visible from the outside, to a casual observer. No nation is as keen as the American one to hang its dirty laundry out in public view.
But the actions of the deep state are almost always clearly visible from within, to those who are in the know. Anyone who has succeeded in expediting a decision through the courts, the legislature, or the security apparatus simply had to become aware of them. Obviously, it is rarely to an expert’s advantage to make his expert knowledge widely known. In certain locales, such actions would be considered treasonous. And, unless one is American, such actions would be considered in distinctly bad taste.
Although it is the best studied example, the American deep state is neither an American invention nor is it unique. The deep state is the universal shadow of formal authority, accompanying it wherever a complex society exists. It may be more or less cohesive, aggressive or covert, but it is always present. The question is not whether it exists, but rather what its configuration is, whose interests it serves, and whether it is capable of adapting to catastrophic change. In case you are wondering why that should be a concern, catastrophic change is what is currently unfolding in much of the world.
The media and various experts, pundits and bloggers spend an inordinate amount of time discussing personalities: who said what to whom where, when and why. But if most of the important decisions are taken within the deep state, this discussion is about nothing that’s important. The unhealthy focus on personalities — what ridiculous thing did Trump say now? — misses the crucial point that the deep state is not reducible to specific individuals. It is a system of informal connections between people who prefer to remain anonymous. There is no public roster of them for us to examine.
But if we were to look for its members, they would be found throughout intelligence and security services, the military and its defense contractors, major corporations, financial institutions, lobbying ecosystems, think tanks, universities and the diplomatic corps. What’s important is how this membership interacts. The essence of the phenomenon lies in their informal protocols of interaction. They allow them to retain control over strategic decisions even when formal power shifts to a populist or a reformer. The democratic turnover is just a bit of masquerade acted out in front of a presentable façade which hides an ugly but powerful apparatus.
The manifestations of this phenomenon are diverse and not always immediately apparent. Foremost among them is policy continuity. Wars persist across presidential terms. Surveillance expands regardless of which party is in power. Financial systems serve the same entrenched interests. Presidential administrations may rotate kaleidoscopically, but the deep state machine keeps on churning out the same substance no matter who is nominally in power. It demonstrates great resilience when faced with external challenges such as the rise of populist politicians, the development of powerful new technologies, or geopolitical upheavals. The deep state alters its structure and its tactics, and either absorbs the new players or sidelines them.
The deep state shares a characteristic of all living things: the ability to preserve homeostatic equilibrium. Just as a biological system maintains internal stability, the deep state maintains an unchanging core. Even as its external forms shift constantly, it maintains control over strategic resources, the security of elite groups, and the perpetuation of their influence. Changes in the economy, technology, and geopolitics trigger a reconfiguration of internal connections but the network itself stays intact.
Although members of the deep state may espouse this or that ideology, the deep state itself lacks an ideology. Its only imperative is to maintain the conditions necessary for its own existence and the well-being of its elite core and of those who serve it. Everything else — be it capitalism or fascism or socialism or communism — is merely an instrument. The deep state toolbox also contains such items as public morality, patriotism, human rights, democracy, free trade and so on, but these are just tools cynically applied to achieve certain physical and, most importantly, financial outcomes for the deep state itself.
Nor does the deep state possess a hierarchical power structure. Influence is not determined by rank and is not expressed through direct orders. Instead, it flows naturally, mediated by various more or less intangible phenomena, such as reputation, loyalty, family ties and friendships, the exchange of favors, opportunities for career advancement, shared goals and mutual obligations. These are sometimes thought of as corruption. Indeed they do fall somewhere on the corruption spectrum. This spectrum encompasses favoritism, nepotism, cronyism, patronage and influence peddling. When conditions are stable and benign, it normally stops short of outright criminal behavior such as bribery, embezzlement, blackmail, extortion and political assassination.
Some deep states are only somewhat corrupt, others somewhat more, and one — the Ukrainian deep state — appears to actually consist of 100% corruption and criminality unadulterated by any other ingredients. Millions of Ukrainians have been conditioned to regard this state of affairs as perfectly normal and are willing to die to defend it. What’s more, it is highly infectious and has by now managed to ukrainianize quite a bit of the European Union. Luckily, one country has developed a powerful antibiotic that will in due course sterilize the former Ukraine. As you may have already guessed, that country is Russia. But I digress.
Back to the US, then. There, certain forms of behavior that are generally thought of as corrupt are quite legal, lobbyism in particular. Lobbyists were once the disreputable people who were not allowed beyond the lobby of a public building. They would hang out in the lobby and try to waylay public officials on their way in or out and try to influence their opinions and decisions by being obsequiously manipulative or by buttonholing them and making idle threats. Now, of course, they are found in every boardroom. They often draft legislation which legislators then sign without even bothering to read it. The propensity for adding certain clauses specifically designed to benefit this or that special interest cause tremendous regulatory bloat. In turn, only the lobbyists themselves, who serve large corporations, are then able to navigate in this sea of regulatory gibberish. Everyone else just flails and flounders, and eventually drowns in it.
Last year, spending on lobbying in the US just at the federal level reached a record of $5 billion. In addition to lobbying, major lobbying firms offer a wide range of other services. These include legal representation before government agencies, policy analysis, preparation of legal testimony, and regulatory support. Their staff includes former members of Congress, former congressional staffers and former ambassadors. They function as a machine that converts spending on behalf of special interests into concrete legislative and regulatory outcomes, all perfectly legal. Although it may sound, look and smell like corruption, it can’t be corruption — because, you see it isn’t illegal. As I keep having to remind people, in the US, getting away with a crime is morally equivalent to not committing it.
Another perfectly legal yet totally corrupt mechanism by which the deep state manipulates elections is something called “dark money.” Political nonprofits registered under Section 501(c)(4) of the Tax Code do not have to disclose their donors. In 2024, “dark money” groups linked to presidential candidates anonymously raised nearly $900 million. A group supporting Kamala Harris raised $613 million, $515 million of it from just ten major donations. The largest of them was $97.5 million from a single individual or group. Such organizations can funnel significant portions of their funds into Super PACs, which are organizations that have no restrictions on direct campaigning. Together, such regulations have created a system through which moneyed interests exert direct political influence anonymously. This entire structure — from the stakeholders involved to the specific project campaigns — operates as a living system that perpetuates itself through aligned interests. Because the participants’ incentives naturally align, it requires no central command. It is immune to changes in government and continues to function regardless of which party controls the legislative or the executive branches of government.
Within the US the functioning of its deep state is subject to a few legal constraints and some amount of public disclosure and scrutiny. In particular, killing scores of Americans, as was done using faulty coronavirus vaccines, causes some eyebrows to be raised ineffectually. But no such constraints exist when it comes to the rest of the world. There, the US deep state has a free hand and can operate in total secrecy. But some facts are well known. American private military companies constitute a $250 billion industry. Companies that evolved from Blackwater, such as Constellis, now soak up defense spending whatever its source. Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, has secured a 10-year contract with the Haitian government to combat gangs there. His other contracts include an agreement with the Democratic Republic of the Congo to provide security for mining operations, and a partnership with Ecuador to fight organized crime. He has also been appointed non-executive chairman of Swarmer, a startup specializing in AI-driven autonomous drone swarms. It has a facility in the former Ukraine that is, ironically, itself a target for Russian AI-driven autonomous drone swarms. Such private instruments can be used to advance the agenda of interested parties on a geopolitical scale without any coordination with the US defense establishment or regard for US national interests or policies.
And then there are the defense giants: RTX (or Raytheon), Lockheed Martin, and Booz Allen Hamilton. Through their numerous political back-channels and revolving doors, they represent an enormous lobby for making wars more widespread, more frequent and longer-lasting. RTX reported $88.6 billion in revenue for 2025, with a $268 billion order backlog. Booz Allen Hamilton, straddling the line between defense consulting and intelligence, posted $12 billion in revenue and a $41.3 billion backlog, including a $1.58 billion contract with the Defense Intelligence Agency. And then there is Palantir which provides battlefield intelligence and targeting information. Oh, and let’s not forget Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite system, so peaceful, yet used to guide Ukrainian cruise missiles and drones to their targets. These targets include busy public beaches, children’s playgrounds and apartment buildings full of sleeping civilians. Together, all of these entities enable and facilitate numerous war crimes, including acts of genocide. These are the sorts of acts for which some German Nazis found themselves dangling from a gallows. Yet in the US this is all perfectly legal and, furthermore, quite agreeable to most freedom-loving, patriotic Americans. These companies do not merely “lobby” the US government — they are an integral part of the infrastructure of decision-making. They develop, manufacture, support, maintain and often actually man the weapons systems that make international armed conflicts inevitable — because they are so very profitable!
The term “deep state” goes hand in hand with the term “conspiracy theory”. “Conspiracy theory” is a very useful term invented and introduced into public discourse by the CIA. It allows the deep state to hide in plain sight. Anyone who points it out can be dismissed as a “conspiracy theorist.” But for our purposes it is important to distinguish a purely analytical approach from any sort of conspiracy-hunting. Conspiracy theorists must look for a “hidden hand,” for evidence of nefarious plots and schemes and for signs of malicious intent. The idea is, I suppose, to find incontrovertible evidence of such malfeasance, then to disclose it publicly. The evildoers would then have no choice but to surrender to the authorities for just punishment, right? Well, no. They would just laugh in your face and call you a “conspiracy theorist.” And you would laugh along with them, because “conspiracy theory” is a popular form of entertainment. “Puzzling evidence… open your heart!” David Byrne of the Talking Heads once sang.
Conspiracy? What conspiracy? The deep state has no single center, chairman or board of directors. It consists of various special interests that interact situationally, motivated by aligned priorities and incentives. It requires no conspiracy because their coordination spontaneously arises from having common interests and agendas. The “deep state” consists of unscripted, spontaneous interactions among key players that work in many different fields. They are able to retain control over strategic decisions by working together cooperatively. It is a living, dynamic network that constantly reconfigures itself in response to changes within its environment while keeping its core interests intact. But it has no core as such; every part of it is peripheral to every other part. This distinction holds the key to understanding the phenomenon.
Having a core would imply a fixed circle of individuals, a secret headquarters, co-conspirators with membership cards. Not having a core, the deep state perpetuates itself through functions rather than through specific personalities. Specific individuals may come and go, generations change, political landscapes shift, yet the informal protocol of interaction endures. It is transmitted through career advancement channels, the shared values of elite educational institutions, the exchange of personal favors, and the “revolving door” mechanism, whereby an official moves to the corporate sector only to return to a higher-ranking government position later. It exists because a convergence of interests and unspoken rules of the game makes coordination natural — and almost automatic. No one issues direct orders, yet the course remains steady.
