The think tank (Brookings Institute) which he is part of laid out the Iran strategy "Path to Persia" something like 15 years ago.
I think he does recognize that the US needs Europe for projecting power, so that part is genuine. The US could not prosper against a hypothetical Eurasian union.
Not sure what to make of this. Maybe it is supposed to appease the EU (you still have allies in Washington), maybe it is a wakeup call for the deep state to pull the brakes.
Yeah, given that there are some theories floating around that Trump is actually executing the "Path to Persia" paper, it's interesting that those people are (ostensibly) distancing themselves from it.
I think most far from center paper writers are more successful if they don't let reality limit their ideas. Probably few consider a real idiot with enough power to ruin them as a threat when they start putting pen to page.
Who even is the deep state any more? MAGA was sure it was backroom democrats. Project 2025 has provided much of the playbook for this administrations run, and thats deep red conservative territory. Meanwhile we have an overwhelming body of evidence for market manipulation and extreme profit taking on the war and oil fronts, pointing to politically aligned financiers.
I don't think the deep state is any discernible single group, but rather whoever we want to point the finger at on a particular topic.
The deep state is and always has been the ultra-wealthy.
Rampant, uncontrolled consolidation of media, PACs, lobbying, and granting cushy jobs to retired congresspeople all give the wealthiest individuals extremely outsized control over what happens in the US government.
I think the problem is that the "deep state" really came into public consciousness with Trump, on his first run. While I agree with your definition of the deep state, that is not what most people think of in current days, and Trump is probably the deepest of deep state you can legally be. He ran against the deep state, while being deeply embedded inside it. It was just easier to pass off because he wasn't a politician (at least from an American point of view, not sure of your country of origin).
It’s just funny he ran on releasing all of the Epstein Files, didn’t, and when we caught a glimpse of a slither of it, it turned out he was in there so much it could have been renamed the Trump Files
The deep state is any agent of meaningful power/influence that works for the government or is very closely entangled with the government, and that retains some or all of their power/influence from one admin to the next.
That includes for example powerful figures in the Pentagon or intelligence agencies that remain from one admin to the next. These people all have agendas of their own, and they network as people do. Dick Cheney was a deep state figure across a couple of decades, often working in the shadows. So was Rumsfeld. So was Kissinger across a few decades during his prime power/influence years. They all had long-term agendas, their ideas about the world, and extremely deep connections throughout the Federal Government.
It's not a mysterious conspiracy. It's just people with power/influence pursuing outcomes that they'd like to see happen, and working with other like-minded people to get there.
There is this building where guys wearing masks wheel you into a room behind locked doors at dawn and then use drugs to knock you out. They then take sharp knives and cut you open and rummage around your insides, sometimes taking organs out. Blood goes everywhere. The footage is gory. When they're done with you it may takes you weeks to recover.
The rest of just call his "surgery at a hospital".
My point is that you've just described in nefarious terms the "civil service" or the "administrative state". Every government department is full of career civil servants who will go through many administrations. Only the very top officials in any department are political appointees. We're talking the secretary, their deputies and some positions under those.
Government simply cannot function without career civil servants who end up becoming subject matter experts in what they're administering.
Or, you know, you can nerfariously say "deep state".
In my opinion a 'civil servant' sees their job as serving the American people to the best of their ability even if they don't agree with the outcomes of the latest election.
A member of the 'deep state'; however, is ideologically driven. If their favorite party is in power, they use their job to push their ideology to its limits. If the opposition party won the election; then they view their role as a means to 'resist', 'thwart', or otherwise delay any policies the elected officials try to implement.
Their general view is that their own opinions are superior to those of voters.
> A member of the 'deep state'; however, is ideologically driven
What you're describing is a federal employee. The kind that takes a massive pay cut, and loses out on paycheck stability (due to government shutdowns), because they at least start out earnestly attempting to improve the system.
How they define "improving the system" varies by ideology, but career civil servants, in wanting to follow their definition of improving the system, are ideologically driven.
What you're describing is still just "A collection of civil servants that aren't disillusioned and dead inside"
I'm sorry but no. "Deep state" is nothing more than enemy within propaganda to justify a purge of government departments to replace them with ideologues and to further concentrate power in the hands of the so-called "unitary executive".
The point of my comment is that Republicans have this habit of describing perfectly ordinary and normal things in nefarious tones to make them sound sinister. The real problem is people are so gullible in falling for it.
Calling it "civil service" instead of "deep state" does not make it any better. We don't have either in the Constitution so whatever you call it, it has to be removed from power.
And then what? The spoils system? Rampant incompetence?
And, we have to get rid of it because it's not in the Constitution? You know what else isn't in the Constitution? DHS. The IRS. ICE. An enormous number of other agencies.
The Constitution gives very little guidance on the Executive Branch, other than the President and Vice President. That does not mean that hiring people in federal agencies is unconstitutional! It just means that the Constitution is silent on the topic, neither requiring nor prohibiting very much.
Then back to the system defined in the Constitution, it gives enough guidance. If you think the President is not enough for the Executive - amend the Constitution, used to be enough for ~200 years though.
The Constitution does not define a civil service system. You seem to interpret that as saying that any system is unconstitutional until the Constitution is amended to define one. That is... let's just call it "very much a minority interpretation".
We are not going to either amend the Constitution nor abolish the civil service just because some pseudonymous online account says we should.
The Constitution defines just three branches of power, if the "civil service system" has a power and is not one of the branches then it unconstitutional by common sense and elementary logic. And this "civil servant system" evidentially has power and is not a part of either of the three branches (which are all enumerated in the Constitution) ergo it's an unconstitutional junta.
>We are not going to either amend the Constitution nor abolish the civil service just because some pseudonymous online account says we should.
Did not you participate in the mass crying out on this very site when DOGE had been firing the "civil servants"?
The constitution says the president must "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed". That means hiring people to enforce the laws, that's the civil servant system.
I think the distinction between the one that you're describing and the one that the person you're replying to is describing is crime.
People like Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheneye were part of a criminal conspiracy to rob the America people and destabilize the US to make it ripe for further hijacking.
That's the deepstate -- it's everything you mentioned above + a criminal conspiracy mindset.
The same thing it's always been: The military-industrial complex.
> MAGA was sure it was backroom democrats.
It's not that hard to distinguish "them", just look at how fast the mainstream media threw Biden under the bus over Afghanistan withdrawal.
1)POTUS orders the withdrawal.
2)Generals botch the withdrawal on purpose.
3)Mainstream media (left and right) eviscerates the POTUS. This sends a strong message to this POTUS, as well as any subsequent Presidents: "Don't mess with the profits of the complex or else."
This was the tipping point for me when I realized that the deep state is not a just a bogeyman conjured up by the right wingers. Should you cross the complex, it will just as easily come for you even if you're a Democrat that's been in politics for 50 years.
Finally, the Atlantic is as establishment as it gets. No matter which party is in power, their editorial board serves the ruling class, of which almost nobody on HN is a part of.
Whether their interests align with yours or not you can ascertain just by looking at approval ratings of the US Congress.
How times have changed when a neoliberal institution (not quite as bad as The Economist) openly says this:
> Even the threat of terrorism from the region was a consequence of American involvement, not the reason for it. Had the United States not been deeply and consistently involved in the Muslim world since the 1940s, Islamic militants would have little interest in attacking an indifferent nation 5,000 miles and two oceans away. Contrary to much mythology, they have hated us not so much because of “who we are” but because of where we are. In Iran’s case, the United States was deeply involved in its politics from the 1950s until the 1979 revolution, including as the main supporter of the brutal regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The surest way of avoiding Islamist terrorist attacks would have been to get out.
This is absolutely correct and it's wild we now live in a time when mainstream media just comes out and says it.
I agree with two general themes of this article:
1. This administration has done more to destroy American's global power than any other in history and it's not even closer. We live in a time when Europe is questioning its position of being America's dog. The Gulf states are questioning what they get out of America's security guarantee if America can't or won't protected them; and
2. Russia and China are huge winners here. China simply has to do nothing and not interrupt the US while they're making a historic and unprecedented mistake. And Europe and the US will likely make peace with Russia over Ukraine because of spiralling energy costs thanks to America's reckless misadventure in the Gulf.
This is going to end very badly for the US and it will (IMHO) go down as the biggest own-goal in American history.
The American presence was in opposition to the Soviet Union. There was a Cold War. It is very easy to show that the Soviet role in the production of Islamisant terrorism is infinitely greater. It is a universal feature of 21st c anti-yankee claptrap that it simply memory holes the Soviet Union.
Unlike Uncle Sam, the Soviet Union no longer exists, so the Economist, written by well-heeled 30-something media class types, sees nothing to blame.
I think in the US we already have that; it's just that our current leadership is in love with oil and gas and thinks renewables are "woke" or something. The number of renewable energy projects that have been cancelled or stalled here in the past year+ is gross.
It is nice that some Trump supporters are seeing prices at the pump and are having second thoughts about their Dear Leader. But a) it's disappointing that that's what it takes, and b) he still has a rabid base of people who love him despite his policies being the exact opposite of what they need to prosper (not to mention many of his policies being the exact opposite of what he campaigned on).
So we can only assume that renewables will continue to be kneecapped in the US at least for the next ~3 years. Hopefully European countries are fast-tracking renewable projects, but those things take time to build and bring online. (Hopefully they've been doing so since the Ukraine war started, really. The current Iran-related energy crisis is bad, but it's not like Europe had been sitting pretty with energy resources a month ago.)
> And Europe and the US will likely make peace with Russia over Ukraine because of spiralling energy costs thanks to America's reckless misadventure in the Gulf.
MAGA is investing hard in trying to kill the EU from within by exporting conservative dipshit organisations, blue-printed from the USA. I see al kinds of recruitment going on here. If they succeed there is a small chance Europe will betray Ukraine, but right now the momentum is going into the other direction. What events have shown is that criminal games are incompatible with civil society, and European leaders are finally learning to understand that you can't play with autocrats like Trump, Putin and Orban, because for the latter, their only modus is to exploit, to loiter, to steal, to create conflict, to escalate, to play the victim, to up their game. End game: everything ends in ruin. Crime knows only one game: zero sum. People are starting to understand it.
It's not just the EU, you can see these organizations in Canada and in Japan. For example, I watch youtube channels ostensibly created to discuss Japanese Real Estate (I'm thinking about Rakumachi) which suddenly pivot to posting American right wing talking points in Japanese on their shorts channel. (Their long form RE content is usually interesting)
1. your conclusion is based on a remark by one hardly representative american journalist. you said yourself this has been going on since the 40s. it's cycles of "oh no, crazy republican goes to war", then reasonable democrat continues the war. we know the drill.
China has played much much better chess so it's not surprise they're benefiting. However, I don't really see how China will benefit from Iran being in ruins. Can you elaborate on how China benefits ?
From what I can tell, The USA is either going for force a regime change or it's going to ruin Iran. Where will China get oil from then? You might say Russia but that's a precarious situation for them to be in.
The Belt and Road initiative gets a shot in the arm. No tarrifs, free trade, lower cost finance with fewer encumbrances. Efforts to establish the Renminbi as a second reserve currency have been quiet, but these trade alliances and alternate banking arrangements are already making it a possible reality. US perception is that belt and road was unpopular and a failure, but its little different from US economic imperialism. The amount of money flowing through BRICS and the rise of China as the world's largest creditor is testament to this.
Cheaper weapons have shown to be effe tive in holding off a technologically superior force, and China is both great at producing them and happy to sell them to spec.
The US not being able to produce weapons at a fast enough cadence to refill the stockpile is an indicator that US weapons manufacturing is currently unsustainable, and prohibitively expensive. Both are weakness.
The US has shown that it cannot maintain moderate effort on two fronts. Not only is it financially almost unable to do so, only by the good graces of being the reserve currency, it would significantly struggle to maintain distributed engagements - this is military intelligence if an adversary wanted to engineer multiple conflicts requiring US attention globally to spread the US thin.
A year ago, when discussing AI adoption in an European business, the idea of looking at Chinese providers or Mistral was not seriously considered.
The obvious answer was Microsoft/Azure and OpenAI.
That has changed nowadays.
As a direct consequence of the behavior of the American government towards its "allies".
You can extrapolate from that.
This isn't about short term oil supply problems when the whole world (lead by China) is moving to renewables anyways. It is about long term strategic consequences.
I don't think it has just changed to "China is ok" though, it seems to be more like, Europe has decided to build more of it's own infrastructure and military capability.
I think the over-reliance mistake won't be made again for a long time.
I don't disagree that it's beneficial for China, likely in the short term, but I also don't think a lot of countries are just happy to go full Communist party either.
> China has played much much better chess so it's not surprise they're benefiting.
They didn't play chess at all, but unlike the USA, they didn't poop on the board and didn't smudge the other players with their drool. We are forgetting now that the belt and road initiative, as well as the wolf warrior diplomacy, had put China on the lowest rankings in global perception. China had to do literally nothing to "play better", and they were smart enough to do so. The USA committing suicide--yeah, what can you do about it?
Let's say the USA does gain control over the Straight of Homuz, wouldn't that be quite an issue for China though? Where would it get it's oil from?
I don't agree with what's going on in Iran, I'm just thinking that regardless of whether or not it's a good idea, if the USA is basically in control of all meaningful oil exports, then it's game over for any significant Chinese military action because, they won't have the oil to run their aircraft carriers etc (they don't have nuclear carriers).
I think I understand their logic, but I might agree with others who say this is going to be an extremely bloody / unpopular war with very little justification for it's existence.
They're gambling basically, if it works and they do topple the regime, I think it will work for the USA, and if it turns into a prolonged quagmire, then yes, it will probably not be successful and very detrimental. I do sympathize with those who just wanted cheaper eggs.
The US cannot ruin Iran short of the widespread use of nuclear weapons.
Air power has never resulted in regime change. Never. It takes boots on the ground and one just needs to look at a map. Iran is surrounded on 3 sides by mountains and the Gulf on the fourth.
Iran's drones and ballistic missiles are incredibly cheap, well-defended and impossible to meaningfully disrupt. The interceptors used to stop them are running out and increasingly ineffective. I think I read that the ballistic missile strike rate on Israel is now over 50%. What does it take to launch drones or even a ballistic missile? A cheap modification to any truck, basically.
The US cannot forcibly open the Strait of Hormuz because that would put them in close range to Iranian drone and missile strikes that the US doesn't have the weapon systems, interceptors and munitions to defeat. It's suicide.
Any escalation will end up much worse for Iran's neighbors than Iran because Iran is already built for economic isolation and self-reliance, thanks to years of criminal economic sanctions. You want to hit Iranian desalination plants? Well, that'll invite a hit on desalination plants in other Gulf states and that's going to end up much worse for them. Why? Remember those mountains I mentioned? They're covered in snow. Iran has ski resorts. Many people don't realize that. What does that mean? Just like California, they get significant freshwater from snow melt.
A ground invasion of the Iranian mainland has no staging ground. For Kuwait, we used Saudi Arabia. You can't stage across the mountains so you need an amphibious landing, much like D-Day. And it would need to be probably as complex and large. We simply don't have the ships, the soldiers or the logistics for that.
Basically, we have no options. This was unwinnable before we even started. This is why every president since Reagan refused Israel's attempts to start a war with Iran. Until Trump.
I honestly think he'd been fooled into thinking he could do a decapitation strike on Iran like Venezuela and get a friendly regime. That was never going to work. Iran has almost 50 years of hardening and maintaining a regime to resist US interference.
The one thing this administration seeems to care about is gas prices. This is why Iranian exports haven't been blocked. China is still getting oil from Iran. In fact last week the US lifted sanctions on Iranian oil, which was previously being sold below market. In January, Iran was selling oil for $48/barrel. Now they're selling it for >$100.
China has a massive reserve (~1.4 billion barrels) and has suspended exports of refined oil products. Countries friendly to us in the region are in for a world of hurt, most notably the Phillipines and Vietnam (Japan seems to have significant reserves like China, at least for now).
This war of choice on Israel's behalf has alienated and weakened Europe, the Gulf states and Asia. Iran is being smart about all this and allowing non-US oil to traverse the Strait, further putting a wedge between those countries and the US.
The US started it, has no path to victory and doesn't even know what victory is. It's up to Iran when this ends now and they're going to exact a price that will put them significantly ahead of where they were before this started. Ending of sanctions, tolls on ships traversing the Strait and/or reparations.
IMHO it's the biggest geopolitical mistake in US history and it's not even close.
I quite enjoyed the depth of that comment. Good write up.
Regarding countries friendly to the US - watching just how many foreign leaders have been diplomatically blunt or even hostile with the US has been interesting. Even the Australian prime minister, a famously boot-heeled position, has been publicly critical of the US.
Right now in Australia we are paying $3.30 AUD for a litre of diesel. That's over $8.50 USD per gallon.
I read these comments and I almost wonder if it's just parroting of state sponsored stories. I'm personally not in support of what's going on in the middle east at all, but it does sounds like a fear campaign or something. As if Iran is some sort of unconquerable bastion that is untouchable. In my honest opinion, no one except fairly senior intelligence people would really know what's going on.
They have no air force left, no navy, realistically no way to defend any of their infrastructure, yet apparently, there is no way they can be undone?
What do you think the entire freaking world is going to do if their economies start failing because Iran is blocking the straight of Homuz? Will we all just die or will other countries get involved and start making sure it opens? Will the trillions of dollars the gulf states have just sit there idly while Iran ruins their ability to sell oil ? I don't think so. Right now I think Iran has some leverage, there is maybe even some sympathy directed their way, but in my view it's limited. People right now are unhappy about what the US did, and maybe blame them for high oil prices etc, but at some stage, if it's between Iran existing, and peoples ability to eat, I think I know which side people will choose.
I do worry something like this could really be the start of WW3 though because I don't think China will allow Iran to topple, so it's a precarious situation.
Right now, the question seems to be more about whether or not the neighbors are willing to take the hit, and whether or not the world will tolerate the economic devastation, not whether or not the USA can inflict a lot more damage.
> The USA is either going for force a regime change or it's going to ruin Iran. Where will China get oil from then?
A positive story for China might be: a.) building port complexes and other industrial facilities is something China export as construction, engineering and financial services; b.) oil is a global commodity and a rising price everywhere doesn't create a relative disadvantage.
The single most interesting thing that will come out of the Iran war, is it's giving the go-ahead signal for China. I don't mean morally specifically, I mean practically: China is plainly seeing the US can't sustain a long campaign what-so-ever. The US has burned through ~850 Tomahawks in weeks, 20-25% of its stock. Again an opponent that wasn't that hard to knock down in terms of air to ground / ground to air, and strategic targets.
While the US can demolish high value targets all day long (assuming it can find them), it won't be able to sustain volume. And this is against a dramatically outmatched opponent (in terms of air + navy + intel, not boots on the ground).
China will build a hundred cruise missiles per day and truck them in from factories far away from the coast. The US can build 10-20. China's cruise missiles won't be as good, and they won't need to be. And that's the absolute least of what China will hyper produce in a mobilization to a war manufacturing stance. The US should just wave the flag before the first shots are fired re Taiwan given what we're seeing in Iran, it's over before it ever begins.
The US can't control the Straight of Hormuz properly, without taking losses (which it clearly doesn't want to do). That's a trivial task compared to trying to keep China from controlling the waters near Taiwan. The US won't be able to even get close to Taiwan is what this is demonstrating. China can stand-off the US easily.
The US is showing China and the world that it has zero chance at stopping a takeover of Taiwan.
China should be looking at this Iran mess and moving as fast as it can to launch their invasion. The US isn't ready, and won't be.
The US could put up a big fight at a full war mobilization, given some time to spin up. That scenario will not occur with regard to Taiwan. China has the green light.
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edit:
There was a story about the early days of the invasion into Iraq by the US, after 9/11. It was about the US soldiers rolling into Iraqi towns, cities. They thought the US soldiers were maybe superhuman, or at least had extraordinarily advanced technology. An Iraqi boy wondered if the US soldiers could see through buildings with their helmets and goggles. After all they dispatched Saddam from power so quickly, seemingly so easily - one can understand the wonder.
Then they figured out the US soldiers were just meatbags like any other soldiers. That IEDs killed them just the same, and sniper rounds, and so on.
One of the very large benefits to rarely using your capabilities as a military superpower, is so that your enemies are unsure of just what you're capable of if pushed. And if you're lucky enough to put on a staggering outcome - as in the first Gulf War - in which Russia got to see their hardware decimated by vastly superior US weapons, then you should rest on that perception as long as possible. Iraq and Afghanistan substantially weakened the perception of US military domination (just a Vietnam did before that, for a generation). Iran doesn't show the US to be weak per se, rather, it shows the limits of its present endurance capabilities among other things. And that's what China needs to know.
And of course this happens to major powers from time to time throughout history. Russia goes into Ukraine and gets humiliated, its capabilities at the point of launching that war, were revealed to be embarrassingly mediocre compared to what was thought to exist. Or the USSR and Afghanistan before that.
China's biggest hurdle that they cannot manufacture is experience. They have virtually zero. How much of China's military command is a crony boys club full of people who never had to militarily prove anything? Just "win" at their own made up war games?
The real problem I see is the one child policy. If China decides to go to war and say they have 1000 deaths. How many bloodline die? I feel like there would be a hesitation to fight on the Chinese side if they were to take any losses.
It is one of the reasons I don’t believe China would take on Taiwan.
Well no. This will be the same as in the other countries : when you're poor and sufficiently brainwashed you go to war to "defend" your country, no question asked.
While true, China still has around 100,000,000 men between the ages of 20 and 35. Even a millions deaths would be tolerable, which itself seems crazy for an invasion of Taiwan.
The biggest thing protecting Taiwan right now is that the US keeps getting worse and worse. Why invade today when it'll be even easier next year? The current leadership of China has essentially committed to invading Taiwan but can stall by postponing. That's a tactic that won't work forever. The hope was it could last long enough for a leadership changeover in China, but at the rate the US is degrading, that seems like faint hope.
on the other hand the us interventions have betrayed that chinese radars e.g. don't "work as advertised", to the point that there have been purges at chinese military industrial manufacturers. on top of the recent purges in the military hierarchy, it seems like action against Taiwan is delayed for a few years.
conversely the US brass now has a fire lit under its ass due to low ammo stockpiles and and excuse to replenish them faster, develop anti drone tech faster etc.
imagine not having the current embarrassment in iran -- the generals would be complacent, and should a conflict arise over taiwan, they would not be ready.
of course, but point being: status quo was it wasn't happening, and the trajectory wasn't good.
Another example: Someone will have egg on face for leaving AWACs out on a tarmac (exactly dumb thing that we made fun of russia for doing) and so that seems unlikely to happen, if for no other reason than doctrinally, for the next minimum half decade or so.
The upside is that taking down Taiwan will be really hard. Fairly sure a lot of it is mountainous and forested and I think the strait is quite perilous.
So China might cripple Taiwan but invading it risks being their Vietnam.
That doesn't mean a war won't happen, people make stupid decisions all the time.
China is not going to militarily take over Taiwan. The most likely outcome now is a "three state" China where it joins the fold voluntarily and becomes a puppet state of China. Given the way the world has gone, it's the only rational choice.
If China switches to war time economy, they can produce very easily 1M Shahed like drones every month. Plus many millions of FPV/AI controlled drones. Plus massive number of missiles, including hyper sonic and supersonic. They can kill everyone in Taiwan with just drones and missiles if they decide to commit to it.
But given the advances that China has had in EVs, drones, solar, batteries, wind turbines, AI, nuclear energy, smartphones and other advanced industries IMHO it doesn't make sense for them to start a war right now. Better to keep growing their industry and exports and take over Taiwan sometime later.
Robert Kagan is not wrong about many points, but it is worth noting that he is one of the leading neocons, husband of Nuland, and architect of PNAC:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_C...
The think tank (Brookings Institute) which he is part of laid out the Iran strategy "Path to Persia" something like 15 years ago.
I think he does recognize that the US needs Europe for projecting power, so that part is genuine. The US could not prosper against a hypothetical Eurasian union.
Not sure what to make of this. Maybe it is supposed to appease the EU (you still have allies in Washington), maybe it is a wakeup call for the deep state to pull the brakes.
Yeah, given that there are some theories floating around that Trump is actually executing the "Path to Persia" paper, it's interesting that those people are (ostensibly) distancing themselves from it.
I think most far from center paper writers are more successful if they don't let reality limit their ideas. Probably few consider a real idiot with enough power to ruin them as a threat when they start putting pen to page.
"Be careful what you wish for, it might come true"
Who even is the deep state any more? MAGA was sure it was backroom democrats. Project 2025 has provided much of the playbook for this administrations run, and thats deep red conservative territory. Meanwhile we have an overwhelming body of evidence for market manipulation and extreme profit taking on the war and oil fronts, pointing to politically aligned financiers.
I don't think the deep state is any discernible single group, but rather whoever we want to point the finger at on a particular topic.
The deep state is and always has been the ultra-wealthy.
Rampant, uncontrolled consolidation of media, PACs, lobbying, and granting cushy jobs to retired congresspeople all give the wealthiest individuals extremely outsized control over what happens in the US government.
I think the problem is that the "deep state" really came into public consciousness with Trump, on his first run. While I agree with your definition of the deep state, that is not what most people think of in current days, and Trump is probably the deepest of deep state you can legally be. He ran against the deep state, while being deeply embedded inside it. It was just easier to pass off because he wasn't a politician (at least from an American point of view, not sure of your country of origin).
It’s just funny he ran on releasing all of the Epstein Files, didn’t, and when we caught a glimpse of a slither of it, it turned out he was in there so much it could have been renamed the Trump Files
The deep state is any agent of meaningful power/influence that works for the government or is very closely entangled with the government, and that retains some or all of their power/influence from one admin to the next.
That includes for example powerful figures in the Pentagon or intelligence agencies that remain from one admin to the next. These people all have agendas of their own, and they network as people do. Dick Cheney was a deep state figure across a couple of decades, often working in the shadows. So was Rumsfeld. So was Kissinger across a few decades during his prime power/influence years. They all had long-term agendas, their ideas about the world, and extremely deep connections throughout the Federal Government.
It's not a mysterious conspiracy. It's just people with power/influence pursuing outcomes that they'd like to see happen, and working with other like-minded people to get there.
There is this building where guys wearing masks wheel you into a room behind locked doors at dawn and then use drugs to knock you out. They then take sharp knives and cut you open and rummage around your insides, sometimes taking organs out. Blood goes everywhere. The footage is gory. When they're done with you it may takes you weeks to recover.
The rest of just call his "surgery at a hospital".
My point is that you've just described in nefarious terms the "civil service" or the "administrative state". Every government department is full of career civil servants who will go through many administrations. Only the very top officials in any department are political appointees. We're talking the secretary, their deputies and some positions under those.
Government simply cannot function without career civil servants who end up becoming subject matter experts in what they're administering.
Or, you know, you can nerfariously say "deep state".
In my opinion a 'civil servant' sees their job as serving the American people to the best of their ability even if they don't agree with the outcomes of the latest election.
A member of the 'deep state'; however, is ideologically driven. If their favorite party is in power, they use their job to push their ideology to its limits. If the opposition party won the election; then they view their role as a means to 'resist', 'thwart', or otherwise delay any policies the elected officials try to implement.
Their general view is that their own opinions are superior to those of voters.
> A member of the 'deep state'; however, is ideologically driven
What you're describing is a federal employee. The kind that takes a massive pay cut, and loses out on paycheck stability (due to government shutdowns), because they at least start out earnestly attempting to improve the system.
How they define "improving the system" varies by ideology, but career civil servants, in wanting to follow their definition of improving the system, are ideologically driven.
What you're describing is still just "A collection of civil servants that aren't disillusioned and dead inside"
I'm sorry but no. "Deep state" is nothing more than enemy within propaganda to justify a purge of government departments to replace them with ideologues and to further concentrate power in the hands of the so-called "unitary executive".
The point of my comment is that Republicans have this habit of describing perfectly ordinary and normal things in nefarious tones to make them sound sinister. The real problem is people are so gullible in falling for it.
Calling it "civil service" instead of "deep state" does not make it any better. We don't have either in the Constitution so whatever you call it, it has to be removed from power.
And then what? The spoils system? Rampant incompetence?
And, we have to get rid of it because it's not in the Constitution? You know what else isn't in the Constitution? DHS. The IRS. ICE. An enormous number of other agencies.
The Constitution gives very little guidance on the Executive Branch, other than the President and Vice President. That does not mean that hiring people in federal agencies is unconstitutional! It just means that the Constitution is silent on the topic, neither requiring nor prohibiting very much.
Then back to the system defined in the Constitution, it gives enough guidance. If you think the President is not enough for the Executive - amend the Constitution, used to be enough for ~200 years though.
The Constitution does not define a civil service system. You seem to interpret that as saying that any system is unconstitutional until the Constitution is amended to define one. That is... let's just call it "very much a minority interpretation".
We are not going to either amend the Constitution nor abolish the civil service just because some pseudonymous online account says we should.
The Constitution defines just three branches of power, if the "civil service system" has a power and is not one of the branches then it unconstitutional by common sense and elementary logic. And this "civil servant system" evidentially has power and is not a part of either of the three branches (which are all enumerated in the Constitution) ergo it's an unconstitutional junta.
>We are not going to either amend the Constitution nor abolish the civil service just because some pseudonymous online account says we should.
Did not you participate in the mass crying out on this very site when DOGE had been firing the "civil servants"?
The constitution says the president must "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed". That means hiring people to enforce the laws, that's the civil servant system.
I think the distinction between the one that you're describing and the one that the person you're replying to is describing is crime.
People like Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheneye were part of a criminal conspiracy to rob the America people and destabilize the US to make it ripe for further hijacking.
That's the deepstate -- it's everything you mentioned above + a criminal conspiracy mindset.
> Who even is the deep state any more?
The same thing it's always been: The military-industrial complex.
> MAGA was sure it was backroom democrats.
It's not that hard to distinguish "them", just look at how fast the mainstream media threw Biden under the bus over Afghanistan withdrawal.
1)POTUS orders the withdrawal.
2)Generals botch the withdrawal on purpose.
3)Mainstream media (left and right) eviscerates the POTUS. This sends a strong message to this POTUS, as well as any subsequent Presidents: "Don't mess with the profits of the complex or else."
This was the tipping point for me when I realized that the deep state is not a just a bogeyman conjured up by the right wingers. Should you cross the complex, it will just as easily come for you even if you're a Democrat that's been in politics for 50 years.
Finally, the Atlantic is as establishment as it gets. No matter which party is in power, their editorial board serves the ruling class, of which almost nobody on HN is a part of.
Whether their interests align with yours or not you can ascertain just by looking at approval ratings of the US Congress.
It was Trump who made that deal to withdraw from Afghanistan by May 2021. Biden as POTUS followed through with some delays.
So, what was this about not being a bogeyman being conjured by right again?
https://archive.ph/JOqhI
Based on recent stories on Ukraine signing agreements with GCC countries, it is Russian oil money vs Gulf oil money now.
So... will we see EU apply sanctions?
If you missed it ~ https://acoup.blog/2026/03/25/miscellanea-the-war-in-iran/
Can't read the Atlantic any more since it became private, but nobody can deny that America's more of a rogue and less super than it was a year ago.
> Can't read the Atlantic any more since it became private
It has always been in private ownership, never having been owned by a publicly traded company:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Atlantic#Ownership_and_edi...
Currently majority ownership is with Laurene Powell Jobs (widow of Steve Jobs).
Good information, but this is a time I don't mean stock ownership.
More like "members only" for the website where they don't accept "strangers" like they used to do :(
How times have changed when a neoliberal institution (not quite as bad as The Economist) openly says this:
> Even the threat of terrorism from the region was a consequence of American involvement, not the reason for it. Had the United States not been deeply and consistently involved in the Muslim world since the 1940s, Islamic militants would have little interest in attacking an indifferent nation 5,000 miles and two oceans away. Contrary to much mythology, they have hated us not so much because of “who we are” but because of where we are. In Iran’s case, the United States was deeply involved in its politics from the 1950s until the 1979 revolution, including as the main supporter of the brutal regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The surest way of avoiding Islamist terrorist attacks would have been to get out.
This is absolutely correct and it's wild we now live in a time when mainstream media just comes out and says it.
I agree with two general themes of this article:
1. This administration has done more to destroy American's global power than any other in history and it's not even closer. We live in a time when Europe is questioning its position of being America's dog. The Gulf states are questioning what they get out of America's security guarantee if America can't or won't protected them; and
2. Russia and China are huge winners here. China simply has to do nothing and not interrupt the US while they're making a historic and unprecedented mistake. And Europe and the US will likely make peace with Russia over Ukraine because of spiralling energy costs thanks to America's reckless misadventure in the Gulf.
This is going to end very badly for the US and it will (IMHO) go down as the biggest own-goal in American history.
The American presence was in opposition to the Soviet Union. There was a Cold War. It is very easy to show that the Soviet role in the production of Islamisant terrorism is infinitely greater. It is a universal feature of 21st c anti-yankee claptrap that it simply memory holes the Soviet Union.
Unlike Uncle Sam, the Soviet Union no longer exists, so the Economist, written by well-heeled 30-something media class types, sees nothing to blame.
Maybe it will finally get a critical mass of people to realize how much oil and gas sucks.
I think in the US we already have that; it's just that our current leadership is in love with oil and gas and thinks renewables are "woke" or something. The number of renewable energy projects that have been cancelled or stalled here in the past year+ is gross.
It is nice that some Trump supporters are seeing prices at the pump and are having second thoughts about their Dear Leader. But a) it's disappointing that that's what it takes, and b) he still has a rabid base of people who love him despite his policies being the exact opposite of what they need to prosper (not to mention many of his policies being the exact opposite of what he campaigned on).
So we can only assume that renewables will continue to be kneecapped in the US at least for the next ~3 years. Hopefully European countries are fast-tracking renewable projects, but those things take time to build and bring online. (Hopefully they've been doing so since the Ukraine war started, really. The current Iran-related energy crisis is bad, but it's not like Europe had been sitting pretty with energy resources a month ago.)
Good points, except this one:
MAGA is investing hard in trying to kill the EU from within by exporting conservative dipshit organisations, blue-printed from the USA. I see al kinds of recruitment going on here. If they succeed there is a small chance Europe will betray Ukraine, but right now the momentum is going into the other direction. What events have shown is that criminal games are incompatible with civil society, and European leaders are finally learning to understand that you can't play with autocrats like Trump, Putin and Orban, because for the latter, their only modus is to exploit, to loiter, to steal, to create conflict, to escalate, to play the victim, to up their game. End game: everything ends in ruin. Crime knows only one game: zero sum. People are starting to understand it.It's not just the EU, you can see these organizations in Canada and in Japan. For example, I watch youtube channels ostensibly created to discuss Japanese Real Estate (I'm thinking about Rakumachi) which suddenly pivot to posting American right wing talking points in Japanese on their shorts channel. (Their long form RE content is usually interesting)
1. your conclusion is based on a remark by one hardly representative american journalist. you said yourself this has been going on since the 40s. it's cycles of "oh no, crazy republican goes to war", then reasonable democrat continues the war. we know the drill.
China has played much much better chess so it's not surprise they're benefiting. However, I don't really see how China will benefit from Iran being in ruins. Can you elaborate on how China benefits ?
From what I can tell, The USA is either going for force a regime change or it's going to ruin Iran. Where will China get oil from then? You might say Russia but that's a precarious situation for them to be in.
The Belt and Road initiative gets a shot in the arm. No tarrifs, free trade, lower cost finance with fewer encumbrances. Efforts to establish the Renminbi as a second reserve currency have been quiet, but these trade alliances and alternate banking arrangements are already making it a possible reality. US perception is that belt and road was unpopular and a failure, but its little different from US economic imperialism. The amount of money flowing through BRICS and the rise of China as the world's largest creditor is testament to this.
Cheaper weapons have shown to be effe tive in holding off a technologically superior force, and China is both great at producing them and happy to sell them to spec.
The US not being able to produce weapons at a fast enough cadence to refill the stockpile is an indicator that US weapons manufacturing is currently unsustainable, and prohibitively expensive. Both are weakness.
The US has shown that it cannot maintain moderate effort on two fronts. Not only is it financially almost unable to do so, only by the good graces of being the reserve currency, it would significantly struggle to maintain distributed engagements - this is military intelligence if an adversary wanted to engineer multiple conflicts requiring US attention globally to spread the US thin.
I'll give you a small scale example for that.
A year ago, when discussing AI adoption in an European business, the idea of looking at Chinese providers or Mistral was not seriously considered. The obvious answer was Microsoft/Azure and OpenAI.
That has changed nowadays. As a direct consequence of the behavior of the American government towards its "allies".
You can extrapolate from that. This isn't about short term oil supply problems when the whole world (lead by China) is moving to renewables anyways. It is about long term strategic consequences.
I don't think it has just changed to "China is ok" though, it seems to be more like, Europe has decided to build more of it's own infrastructure and military capability.
I think the over-reliance mistake won't be made again for a long time.
I don't disagree that it's beneficial for China, likely in the short term, but I also don't think a lot of countries are just happy to go full Communist party either.
Real life is not chess, and inaction is a valid move for the Chinese. Look up Wu Wei 'action without action'
Somewhat hilariously, the US adopted the same Wolf Warrior diplomacy.
Maybe public diplomacy is simply adjacent to local politics to the US. I still think this will backfire spectacularly over the medium term.
Let's say the USA does gain control over the Straight of Homuz, wouldn't that be quite an issue for China though? Where would it get it's oil from?
I don't agree with what's going on in Iran, I'm just thinking that regardless of whether or not it's a good idea, if the USA is basically in control of all meaningful oil exports, then it's game over for any significant Chinese military action because, they won't have the oil to run their aircraft carriers etc (they don't have nuclear carriers).
I think I understand their logic, but I might agree with others who say this is going to be an extremely bloody / unpopular war with very little justification for it's existence.
They become a serious partner for many countries disillusioned by the US.
china benefits from America eroding its global power is what the thesis is, I believe.
Iran being a quagmire that erode's America's global power.
They're gambling basically, if it works and they do topple the regime, I think it will work for the USA, and if it turns into a prolonged quagmire, then yes, it will probably not be successful and very detrimental. I do sympathize with those who just wanted cheaper eggs.
The US cannot ruin Iran short of the widespread use of nuclear weapons.
Air power has never resulted in regime change. Never. It takes boots on the ground and one just needs to look at a map. Iran is surrounded on 3 sides by mountains and the Gulf on the fourth.
Iran's drones and ballistic missiles are incredibly cheap, well-defended and impossible to meaningfully disrupt. The interceptors used to stop them are running out and increasingly ineffective. I think I read that the ballistic missile strike rate on Israel is now over 50%. What does it take to launch drones or even a ballistic missile? A cheap modification to any truck, basically.
The US cannot forcibly open the Strait of Hormuz because that would put them in close range to Iranian drone and missile strikes that the US doesn't have the weapon systems, interceptors and munitions to defeat. It's suicide.
Any escalation will end up much worse for Iran's neighbors than Iran because Iran is already built for economic isolation and self-reliance, thanks to years of criminal economic sanctions. You want to hit Iranian desalination plants? Well, that'll invite a hit on desalination plants in other Gulf states and that's going to end up much worse for them. Why? Remember those mountains I mentioned? They're covered in snow. Iran has ski resorts. Many people don't realize that. What does that mean? Just like California, they get significant freshwater from snow melt.
A ground invasion of the Iranian mainland has no staging ground. For Kuwait, we used Saudi Arabia. You can't stage across the mountains so you need an amphibious landing, much like D-Day. And it would need to be probably as complex and large. We simply don't have the ships, the soldiers or the logistics for that.
Basically, we have no options. This was unwinnable before we even started. This is why every president since Reagan refused Israel's attempts to start a war with Iran. Until Trump.
I honestly think he'd been fooled into thinking he could do a decapitation strike on Iran like Venezuela and get a friendly regime. That was never going to work. Iran has almost 50 years of hardening and maintaining a regime to resist US interference.
The one thing this administration seeems to care about is gas prices. This is why Iranian exports haven't been blocked. China is still getting oil from Iran. In fact last week the US lifted sanctions on Iranian oil, which was previously being sold below market. In January, Iran was selling oil for $48/barrel. Now they're selling it for >$100.
China has a massive reserve (~1.4 billion barrels) and has suspended exports of refined oil products. Countries friendly to us in the region are in for a world of hurt, most notably the Phillipines and Vietnam (Japan seems to have significant reserves like China, at least for now).
This war of choice on Israel's behalf has alienated and weakened Europe, the Gulf states and Asia. Iran is being smart about all this and allowing non-US oil to traverse the Strait, further putting a wedge between those countries and the US.
The US started it, has no path to victory and doesn't even know what victory is. It's up to Iran when this ends now and they're going to exact a price that will put them significantly ahead of where they were before this started. Ending of sanctions, tolls on ships traversing the Strait and/or reparations.
IMHO it's the biggest geopolitical mistake in US history and it's not even close.
I quite enjoyed the depth of that comment. Good write up.
Regarding countries friendly to the US - watching just how many foreign leaders have been diplomatically blunt or even hostile with the US has been interesting. Even the Australian prime minister, a famously boot-heeled position, has been publicly critical of the US.
Right now in Australia we are paying $3.30 AUD for a litre of diesel. That's over $8.50 USD per gallon.
I read these comments and I almost wonder if it's just parroting of state sponsored stories. I'm personally not in support of what's going on in the middle east at all, but it does sounds like a fear campaign or something. As if Iran is some sort of unconquerable bastion that is untouchable. In my honest opinion, no one except fairly senior intelligence people would really know what's going on.
They have no air force left, no navy, realistically no way to defend any of their infrastructure, yet apparently, there is no way they can be undone?
What do you think the entire freaking world is going to do if their economies start failing because Iran is blocking the straight of Homuz? Will we all just die or will other countries get involved and start making sure it opens? Will the trillions of dollars the gulf states have just sit there idly while Iran ruins their ability to sell oil ? I don't think so. Right now I think Iran has some leverage, there is maybe even some sympathy directed their way, but in my view it's limited. People right now are unhappy about what the US did, and maybe blame them for high oil prices etc, but at some stage, if it's between Iran existing, and peoples ability to eat, I think I know which side people will choose.
I do worry something like this could really be the start of WW3 though because I don't think China will allow Iran to topple, so it's a precarious situation.
Right now, the question seems to be more about whether or not the neighbors are willing to take the hit, and whether or not the world will tolerate the economic devastation, not whether or not the USA can inflict a lot more damage.
> The USA is either going for force a regime change or it's going to ruin Iran. Where will China get oil from then?
A positive story for China might be: a.) building port complexes and other industrial facilities is something China export as construction, engineering and financial services; b.) oil is a global commodity and a rising price everywhere doesn't create a relative disadvantage.
The single most interesting thing that will come out of the Iran war, is it's giving the go-ahead signal for China. I don't mean morally specifically, I mean practically: China is plainly seeing the US can't sustain a long campaign what-so-ever. The US has burned through ~850 Tomahawks in weeks, 20-25% of its stock. Again an opponent that wasn't that hard to knock down in terms of air to ground / ground to air, and strategic targets.
While the US can demolish high value targets all day long (assuming it can find them), it won't be able to sustain volume. And this is against a dramatically outmatched opponent (in terms of air + navy + intel, not boots on the ground).
China will build a hundred cruise missiles per day and truck them in from factories far away from the coast. The US can build 10-20. China's cruise missiles won't be as good, and they won't need to be. And that's the absolute least of what China will hyper produce in a mobilization to a war manufacturing stance. The US should just wave the flag before the first shots are fired re Taiwan given what we're seeing in Iran, it's over before it ever begins.
The US can't control the Straight of Hormuz properly, without taking losses (which it clearly doesn't want to do). That's a trivial task compared to trying to keep China from controlling the waters near Taiwan. The US won't be able to even get close to Taiwan is what this is demonstrating. China can stand-off the US easily.
The US is showing China and the world that it has zero chance at stopping a takeover of Taiwan.
China should be looking at this Iran mess and moving as fast as it can to launch their invasion. The US isn't ready, and won't be.
The US could put up a big fight at a full war mobilization, given some time to spin up. That scenario will not occur with regard to Taiwan. China has the green light.
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edit:
There was a story about the early days of the invasion into Iraq by the US, after 9/11. It was about the US soldiers rolling into Iraqi towns, cities. They thought the US soldiers were maybe superhuman, or at least had extraordinarily advanced technology. An Iraqi boy wondered if the US soldiers could see through buildings with their helmets and goggles. After all they dispatched Saddam from power so quickly, seemingly so easily - one can understand the wonder.
Then they figured out the US soldiers were just meatbags like any other soldiers. That IEDs killed them just the same, and sniper rounds, and so on.
One of the very large benefits to rarely using your capabilities as a military superpower, is so that your enemies are unsure of just what you're capable of if pushed. And if you're lucky enough to put on a staggering outcome - as in the first Gulf War - in which Russia got to see their hardware decimated by vastly superior US weapons, then you should rest on that perception as long as possible. Iraq and Afghanistan substantially weakened the perception of US military domination (just a Vietnam did before that, for a generation). Iran doesn't show the US to be weak per se, rather, it shows the limits of its present endurance capabilities among other things. And that's what China needs to know.
And of course this happens to major powers from time to time throughout history. Russia goes into Ukraine and gets humiliated, its capabilities at the point of launching that war, were revealed to be embarrassingly mediocre compared to what was thought to exist. Or the USSR and Afghanistan before that.
China's biggest hurdle that they cannot manufacture is experience. They have virtually zero. How much of China's military command is a crony boys club full of people who never had to militarily prove anything? Just "win" at their own made up war games?
> How much of China's military command is a crony boys club full of people who never had to militarily prove anything?
Have you even glanced at the current leadership of the US military?
The real problem I see is the one child policy. If China decides to go to war and say they have 1000 deaths. How many bloodline die? I feel like there would be a hesitation to fight on the Chinese side if they were to take any losses.
It is one of the reasons I don’t believe China would take on Taiwan.
Well no. This will be the same as in the other countries : when you're poor and sufficiently brainwashed you go to war to "defend" your country, no question asked.
While true, China still has around 100,000,000 men between the ages of 20 and 35. Even a millions deaths would be tolerable, which itself seems crazy for an invasion of Taiwan.
Hesitation from whom? The eastern Han CCP? Take a look at Russia for an idea of what using a war for internal ethnic cleansing looks like.
The biggest thing protecting Taiwan right now is that the US keeps getting worse and worse. Why invade today when it'll be even easier next year? The current leadership of China has essentially committed to invading Taiwan but can stall by postponing. That's a tactic that won't work forever. The hope was it could last long enough for a leadership changeover in China, but at the rate the US is degrading, that seems like faint hope.
on the other hand the us interventions have betrayed that chinese radars e.g. don't "work as advertised", to the point that there have been purges at chinese military industrial manufacturers. on top of the recent purges in the military hierarchy, it seems like action against Taiwan is delayed for a few years.
conversely the US brass now has a fire lit under its ass due to low ammo stockpiles and and excuse to replenish them faster, develop anti drone tech faster etc.
imagine not having the current embarrassment in iran -- the generals would be complacent, and should a conflict arise over taiwan, they would not be ready.
> to the point that there have been purges at chinese military industrial manufacturers.
I'd like to learn more about this, do you have any sources that I can read?
If they move on correcting that properly of course. We'll see what they do.
The US requires an exceptional surge in manufacturing output for ammo.
of course, but point being: status quo was it wasn't happening, and the trajectory wasn't good.
Another example: Someone will have egg on face for leaving AWACs out on a tarmac (exactly dumb thing that we made fun of russia for doing) and so that seems unlikely to happen, if for no other reason than doctrinally, for the next minimum half decade or so.
The upside is that taking down Taiwan will be really hard. Fairly sure a lot of it is mountainous and forested and I think the strait is quite perilous.
So China might cripple Taiwan but invading it risks being their Vietnam.
That doesn't mean a war won't happen, people make stupid decisions all the time.
China is not going to militarily take over Taiwan. The most likely outcome now is a "three state" China where it joins the fold voluntarily and becomes a puppet state of China. Given the way the world has gone, it's the only rational choice.
Given what happened to Hong Kong, that is not an option that Taiwan is going to seriously consider - not for the next 50 years or so.
Seriously，Taiwan have to consider
If China switches to war time economy, they can produce very easily 1M Shahed like drones every month. Plus many millions of FPV/AI controlled drones. Plus massive number of missiles, including hyper sonic and supersonic. They can kill everyone in Taiwan with just drones and missiles if they decide to commit to it.
But given the advances that China has had in EVs, drones, solar, batteries, wind turbines, AI, nuclear energy, smartphones and other advanced industries IMHO it doesn't make sense for them to start a war right now. Better to keep growing their industry and exports and take over Taiwan sometime later.