In Defense of the Deep State
Why harvesting adrenochrome is good, actually
1. What Is the Deep State?
These days, we think of the deep state in mostly an explicitly negative way. A shadowy cabal of elites subverting the popular will, propping up the neoliberal agenda, and maybe also drinking baby blood in pizza shop basements.
This is, uh, not what the deep state is, for the purposes of this post.
The term originally comes from Turkey, where it referred to networks of collaboration between the military, various government institutions, and criminal syndicates. It was a little bit involved in the overthrow of the Ottomans and founding of the modern Turkish state, and very much involved in suppressing the Kurds in the 90s.
Ryan Gingeras writes:
The deep state is not a monolithic entity that shadows the bureaucracy, the military or civil society. Rather it is an eclectic, ever evolving political theater of competition rooted in the halls of power, one that includes elements both explicitly legal and outlawed in nature. Paramount to the operation and survival of the deep state is the extreme emphasis placed upon state security.1
That’s the general grounding we’ll use—throw out all the criminality and blood-drinking, for now. The deep state, as I see it, is simply a collection of bureaucrats, officials, and institutions looking to keep the state secure.
They’ll undermine the democratic process if they need to, and they’ll undermine personal freedoms if they need to—anything to protect the state, its principles, and its institutions.
In Turkey, this meant conspiring with Atatürk in the 20s, and with narcotics traffickers in the 70s. It meant military coups in 1960, 1971, 1980, and 1997 to resist, respectively: desecularization, fascism, Islamism, and Islamism. All ideologies at odds with the state, its Kemalist principles, and its secular institutions.
So why didn’t the deep state stop Erdogan’s Islamist takeover?
Simple: he admitted publicly that it existed, made it everyone’s enemy, and gleefully dismantled it. No one thought to do this before—no one had the know-how and the incentives lined up quite like Erdogan did—so the deep state fell apart, and Turkey lost all the Kemalism it had left. When the deep state died, so did the state itself.
2. The American Deep State
In Turkey, where the state’s founding ideology was authoritarian Kemalism, the deep state mostly consisted of authoritarian Kemalist military officers.
In the United States, our founding ideology is constitutionalism. Our deep state, then, mostly consists of the Supreme Court (and the judicial system at large).
The executive and the legislature get a popular mandate—the people tell Trump, “go to town, deport all the immigrants you want to El Salvador,” and so he does it. We’re a democratic country! He’s duly elected, he has a right to do whatever he wants if 51% of Americans voted for him.
Ah, but the Supreme Court says, “not so fast!”
“You have to respect due process,” the deep state commands. “The rule of law is paramount. The constitution and the institutions it provides for must be preserved. No democratic mandate can override the legal apparatus.”
This is obviously a good thing!
Democracy’s primary failure mode is national populism—an idiot getting himself elected by appealing to all of low human capital’s ugliest desires. Punishment and retribution and cruelty against the rich and the foreign and anyone else the base happens to dislike.
All that has ever stopped American populists from getting what they want—stopped Debs and Bernie from destroying our free market, and stopped Pat Buchanan and Trump (in his first term) from stripping away our freedoms—is the deep state.
Elite human capital—either in the judiciary, or simply aligned with it and its constitution—wielding its power against the nutjobs. Throwing Debs in jail, and giving Hillary the win via superdelegates; William F. Buckley’s book-length hatchet-job on Buchanan, and Mark Milley resisting Trump’s madness.
I love America, her freedoms and her constitution, and so I love her deep state too. The Justices who rule 9-0 for sanity over duly-elected lunacy, the generals who refuse to launch ICBMs on the whim of a senile populist.
3. The Hungarian Deep State
Hungary is a much younger republic than the United States; it’s only been around since the late ‘80s.
During the Cold War, it fell behind the Iron Curtain, though not entirely.
They called it Goulash Communism—socialist, sure, but in a mixed-up, decidedly non-Stalinist sort of way. Parts of the economy became heavily-regulated markets rather than entirely state-controlled. It was “the happiest barracks”—in the 1970s, you were better off in Hungary than in Russia, Romania, or anywhere else in the Eastern bloc.
Hungarians could travel to the West, could buy our crap and consume our culture. And so they did—they traveled and bought and consumed, and they slowly became more like us. Hungarian elites grew to love liberal democracy, and when the Soviet bloc began to dissolve, in 1989, they were second to revolt after Poland.
Of course, since their elites were so overwhelmingly aligned with democratic ideals, they finished their revolution first—Russian troops left Budapest in 1991; they wouldn’t leave Warsaw until ‘93.
The new Hungarian state had a constitution and separation of powers. Its deep state was under construction, elections were held, and all seemed well.
Then Viktor Orban came along. Scott Alexander gives the full rundown:
But, basically, Orban was a totally unscrupulous, incredibly charismatic, and remarkably capable populist. He won lots of elections by very wide margins, rewrote the constitution, and packed the courts. He dismantled the deep state before it could ever take control.
Hungary is a cautionary tale for America, though one we’re truly unlikely to live out. If Trumpists ever achieved a massive supermajority, it seems like it would be fairly trivial for them to throw our constitution out and pack our courts. As it is, though, they’ve only got a simple majority.
Sure, they’ll try their hardest to trample our institutions anyway, but it’s much harder to defeat our deep state, which has been solidly entrenched since Tilden v. Hayes.
4. The Israeli Deep State
writes that a shocking number of Israelis are fascist and awful.
He claims:
Even before October 7th, Israel was an extremely racist society where the majority of Israelis Jews viewed Jews as ethnically superior to Palestinians. The majority of Israelis agreed that “most Jews are better than most non-Jews because they were born Jews.” The majority supported segregating Jews from Arabs. Ninety percent of Israelis said they would be disturbed if their daughter befriended an Arab boy.
This mostly checks out. First of all, those links point to real surveys that really support the claims Shouse makes. But also, I’ve been to Israel, I’ve spoken to Israelis, and a shocking number of them really are extremely racist. Israeli teens throw the n-word around as much as black Americans do (though I suspect this has more to do with “straight outta Compton” acculturation than actual racial animus) and make extremely frightening claims about who Palestinians are (terrorists, all of them) and what they deserve (death).
All of this is very bad! I think it’s fairly understandable that such a meme would catch on—it’s hard to live next to a bunch of societies that teach The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in history class without negatively polarizing—but I do wish more Israelis would rise above it.
In any case, the Israeli deep state keeps such animosity from breaking through to government policy.
Yes, I’m serious: the Israeli government and the Israeli military are much less racist, much less prejudicial, and much more enlightened than the public at large. Israeli institutions are remarkably good at keeping populists at bay and prosecuting wars without engaging in genocide.
Even disregarding my personal connections to the state, I would endorse
’s view, expounded in his Sorta Contra Zionists:I appreciate Israel only for its tangible qualities and the values it upholds in practice: how wealthy and innovative it is, how cosmopolitan, how democratic, how resilient it has been in defending liberal values under siege.
These are the principles of the Israeli state: wealth, innovation, cosmopolitanism, democracy, liberalism. These are the principles that the Israeli deep state defends.
Israel has no constitution, but it does have a Supreme Court. So the deep state inhabits the Supreme Court and it rules based on vibe. Striking down laws that don’t fit Enlightenment ideals, making rulings that preserve Israeli liberalism in the face of Israeli national populism.
Remember judicial reform? The national populists wanted to overthrow the deep state. They tried to change the judicial appointment process, stop the court from reviewing laws. And they failed! The deep state rallied the media and the more enlightened corners of the Israeli public, hundreds of thousands marched in Jerusalem, and the populists backed down.
Of course, now they’re back at it. The Supreme Court swore in a new chief justice, and the Prime Minister and Justice Minister both boycotted the event. Netanyahu went before the Knesset and attacked the deep state in explicit terms—much like Erdogan. It’s no coincidence that, in the same speech, he took a hard line against the judicial appointment process and threatened to annex territory in Gaza.
The Defense Minister also just announced a panel tasked with figuring out a scheme for the “voluntary resettlement” of Palestinians from Gaza.
The Israeli government is at war with itself. National populists, fascists, and Kahanists are trying to upend Israel’s liberal character, and the deep state is all that stands in their way.
I believe that Israel is a net good. But that’s only true so long as Israel remains the kind of state it’s always been—wealthy and innovative, cosmopolitan, democratic, and liberal.
If the deep state falters, Israel will become just another Hungary, another Turkey. It could be an America in the Middle East, it has the capacity—but only if the deep state asserts itself, asserts its control, and wins the war.
Gingeras, Ryan. “LAST RITES FOR A ‘PURE BANDIT’: CLANDESTINE SERVICE, HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THE ORIGINS OF THE TURKISH ‘DEEP STATE.’” Past & Present, no. 206, 2010, pp. 151–74. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40586942. Accessed 14 Apr. 2025.
Excellent post, Ari. A lot of what you're saying reminds me of Mark Milley, a US general who, after the Jan 6th coup attempt, basically strongarmed every significant person involved in the nuclear weapon launch process into consulting him before doing so, in order to check the possibility that Trump might do something stupid with them. That strikes me as quintessential "deep state acting for the good of America" by your definition.
(Republicans tried to prosecute him for this, but Biden gave him a full pardon for everything. Ha!)
I’m not a fan of these conservative takes (which are surprisingly common — why? I blame Huemer!) from people in our orbit. Even if I agree with the object-level analysis, they’re still directionally wrong.
If you think most beings who are deserving of moral patienthood are systematically excluded from the moral circle, and we’re committing countless ongoing moral catastrophes because of this, it seems that the default position toward Our Norms and Institutions should be enlightened radicalism, i.e., that most of them ought to be torn down as soon as practicable, and the only reason for conservatism is that we first have to figure out what to replace them with.
For an obvious example: The deep state in the USDA consists mostly of factory farm lobbyists turned bureaucrats and welfare administrators. I think it’s obvious that it should be smashed.
You might think most institutions aren’t like this, but why would that be? Unless it’s something that promotes better thinking about moral philosophy (like liberal democracy) or having the resources to engage in moral philosophizing (like free markets — hence no object-level disagreements), it seems like misalignment is inevitable. Like, I have no idea how different ways of organizing liberal democratic capitalism affect longtermist invertebrate welfare (likely the most important thing), but it would be very surprising if our present system, which doesn’t take longtermism or invertebrates into account, was anywhere near the best. And ditto for the countless other moral catastrophes we’re probably causing that we aren’t even aware of. Most of the deep state is probably the vanguard of tremendous moral ill.