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.
Yeah, I mean I’m generally sympathetic to this idea that institutions suck and are immoral (e.g., schools). But it’s also one of those things where everybody everywhere has always thought that their pet radical project was ultimately morally correct, and they were doing a much-needed rejiggering of vastly evil institutions. And then we get Maoist China and Stalinist Russia and it’s all very fucked up. Conservatism seems like a really good way to build intellectual humility into our political philosophy.
I still think reforming institutions is often good. Like, with enough will, it should be possible to amend the Constitution to outlaw slavery and such. And it should be possible to put anti-factory-farming people in charge at the USDA. But all of that is built into the Constitution already! Protecting due process and liberalism and all the institutions that work well seems like a good safeguard against our potentially being wrong/careless/populistic/etc.
“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.”
I fear we already have one too many Americas involved in the Middle East… (But I assume by this you’re more referring to domestic policy, not foreign policy.)
Yeah, I know people *think* that. But I’m skeptical for a few reasons:
a) bureaucracy is ultimately accountable to the executive. they can slow things down, but it’s very rare for them to actually subvert popular will;
b) sometimes they do subvert the popular will! This is people like Milley and Barr, who act in the interest of the constitution, but it’s pretty rare;
c) bureaucracy is broadly uncoordinated. If I’m in the CDC and want to subvert the President, I won’t accomplish much and I’ll be fired. I would need to coordinate with lots of other CDC bureaucrats and some from the FDA and NIH and DHHS and so on—very difficult!
But the Supreme Court checks the deep state boxes (shadowy secretive cabal subverting democratic rule) without all these drawbacks: they’re unaccountable to the executive, commonly subvert the popular will, and are tightly coordinated.
You're just incorrect about bureaucracy being uncoordinated and accountable to the executive.
See Kenneth Shepsle Analyzing Politics 2nd edition, especially his two dimensional model of "bureaucratic drift."
And Shepsle's model reflects the theoretical MAXIMUM of Presidential and Congressional power over the bureaucracy. The messiness of real life means that their real power is even lower than their power in Shepsel's model.
Given the credible reports that the bureaucracy was able to delay the COVID-19 vaccines to stop Trump from winning the 2020 election. I fear you may be underestimating their ability to coordinate or work against the President. Also, since realistically, the President can’t be everywhere and has only 24 hours in a day, the bureaucracy will be able to dictate public policy on a lot of matters that the President doesn’t consider a high priority. This is neglecting the power they exercise through their ability to advise an influence elected officials.
The Supreme Court is one of the three branches of government, under the United Stated Constitution, along with the Legislative and Executive.
The ‘bureaucracy’ — regardless of the morale or ‘high ground’ of any particular appointed member of the CDC —per your example — is not enshrined in the Constitution.
You may be stretching the definition of official. I haven’t checked. Apologies.
Rulings of the Supreme Court have been overturned on Constitutional grounds, by the Supreme Court. This is consistent with the supremacy of our Constitution, not a shadowy cabal. Free thought precedes Free speech, as one might hope.
Certainly our previous President felt he could pardon at will a controversial member of the CDC, and did so with impunity. He pardoned many people, including himself and members of his family, after he had pledged not to do so.
Finally — for purposes of clarity — are you referring only to Trump as the ‘senile populist’?
Interesting to read your history of the origin of the term ‘deep state’ in Turkey. However, you are subjective when you apply this only to this Presidency (simple as opposed to supra majority rule) and not the immediate past Presidency.
I realize you only like to project hypotheses forward; but you expose your bias in doing so, which weakens your argument. If this is the only populist ‘idiot’ you are afraid will take a future action (which hasn’t happened), then your projections of what the ‘deep state’ as you define it might do or ‘certainly’ will do — are your subjective projections.
I get that blogs are subjective. But get your actual viewpoint back into your thesis. Don’t sandbag yourself.
The deep state fought Biden too. (https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-dealt-biden-historic-series-defeats-2025-01-18/) Ended affirmative action, expanded gun rights, blocked student loan debt forgiveness, etc. These moves also strike me as broadly good (maybe minus gun rights, though I’m uncertain enough to leave it be), so I think my pro-deep-state stance is more robust than you’re giving me credit for.
Interesting analysis, although I think you’re being pretty selective here in only counting undemocratic elite institutions that you generally like such as the Supreme Court, and ignoring ones, you don’t like like the food and drug administration, or for that matter the agricultural lobby. Also, while these institutions have often done good things they have also done quite a few bad things in their time. Just remember the slave fugitive act or how close proposition 12 came to being struck down. And outside of western countries, they have a much sketchier record. For example, the Indian Supreme Court here, was the one that through its orders initiated the Assam national register of citizens, which last time I checked, resulted in hundreds of thousands of people becoming stateless and being detained in camps. On net, I think independent, judiciaries have been a positive development, but they are hardly an unmitigated good, especially given that in a lot of countries they’ve managed to expand the scope of their power a lot, which is often bad because they don’t have any policy expertise, and at least here in India they have a tendency to expand their workload by taking on more and more cases and giving litigants more and more chances to appeal leading to a dysfunctional legal system, which takes forever to resolve any disputes.
This is a good point, and I think similar to Glenn's idea that "institutions are quite plausibly moral disasters"—my response is vaguely similar. I think reform is possible while maintaining a deep state, and it's ok for it to move slowly in case we're wrong—"good things are hard to create and easy to destroy," etc.
I don't know much about the India case—sounds very worrying!—but I do know that India's constitution defines the state as "socialist," which gives me doubt on two fronts: a) the constitution is probably written with the wrong kind of institutions in mind (I like the American deep state because it likes the free market), and b) it seems like the deep state is already failing, given that India is less than entirely socialist!
I'll admit that applying the "deep state is good ackshually" take globally is probably pretty fraught—but populists generally are really bad and scary for democracies, and deep states are our best defense.
This is a child’s view of the “deep state” - as impartial arbiters to some fixed and principled standard. In practice, deep states are invariably intensely self-interested and will create any justification to exercise their un-authorized power.
Just to take the US case: any “deep state” that says to one president “yes, you have broad powers on immigration and can import 9 million people at your sole discretion” but then tells the next president “you cannot deport any of these non-citizens without extensive due process” is a priori illegitimate and is owed neither loyalty nor obedience from anyone.
"Democratic and liberal"-it's been a long time since I took the SAT, so I'm not sure I remember what these words mean. I think they didn't mean "a military-judicial junta ensures elections don't translate to policies, and you have to spend your life as a tax slave to feed hordes of criminal murderers who hate you", but maybe that's changed.
"These are the principles of the Israeli state: wealth (living hand to mouth making sub Alabama wages while paying California level taxes while drowning in debt for a moldy apartment that costs the same as a house in Queens, NY), innovation (adware click maximization and holes in rubber tubes), cosmopolitanism (being indistinguishable from any other declining western nation- so whats the point of its existence?), democracy (unless the helots vote for "le bad"), liberalism (rule by a military- judicial junta). These are the principles that the Israeli deep state defends."
Incredible. If that's the guaranteed future of Israel, then I look forward to the arabs, Bibistim, Charedim, or Hilltop Youth, kicking the whole rotten structure down.
"I do wish more Israelis would rise above it." -- you are welcome to come live here and rise above it, whatever "it" means and however real or imaginary "it" happens to be; this way, one more Israeli will rise above it, fulfilling your wish.
Why doesn't today's Hungary have a deep state too?
They have this exclusive circle controlling the government, the media, the economy and the law.
A power-grabbing state becomes especially dangerous when it works for a populist leader.
I'm no expert on Turkey, but Erdogan seems to fall into this category as well. He mobilizes both Kemalist-inspired authoritarianism and Islamist-conservative populism to stay in power.
I am a bit confused by your comment that Israel would no longer be a net good if it lost its liberal character. Judging from your previous post, which you link in that portion of this post, by Israel is a net good you mean something along the lines of it’s better for it to continue existing than not. But even leaving aside the elephant in the room which is nuclear weapons, there is pretty much no way Israel ceases to exist without an incredibly bloody war, and its end as a nation would almost certainly result in mass ethnic cleansing of Jews at the very least. This is true regardless of whether it remains a liberal nation, so I am unsure why it turning fascist or even just normal illiberal would change the fact that it would be very bad for it to be ended as a nation. And this is ignoring important factors like the nuclear weapons or the fact that Israel is the richest country in the Middle East in terms of per capita GDP.
It need not be a war that Israel *loses,* as a state, that destroys it as a democracy. A war that Israel cannot win - or cannot win but by genocide - will suffice.
A confirmed fascist Israel would indeed be the end of everything that made Israel valuable. It would no longer be a place of freedom, a haven for diverse Jewish thought. It would be not an example of democracy and self-determination, but a counter-argument.
What does "democracy" mean? P-hacking on a national scale to ignore the expressed desires of the majority of the populace in order to get the outcomes you desire?
What does "self-determination" mean? Blinken standing in on Chief of Staff level planning commissions and then square jawed generals telling us that "the goyim said we have to accept thousands more dead Jews and we are their loyal servants"?
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.
Yeah, I mean I’m generally sympathetic to this idea that institutions suck and are immoral (e.g., schools). But it’s also one of those things where everybody everywhere has always thought that their pet radical project was ultimately morally correct, and they were doing a much-needed rejiggering of vastly evil institutions. And then we get Maoist China and Stalinist Russia and it’s all very fucked up. Conservatism seems like a really good way to build intellectual humility into our political philosophy.
I still think reforming institutions is often good. Like, with enough will, it should be possible to amend the Constitution to outlaw slavery and such. And it should be possible to put anti-factory-farming people in charge at the USDA. But all of that is built into the Constitution already! Protecting due process and liberalism and all the institutions that work well seems like a good safeguard against our potentially being wrong/careless/populistic/etc.
“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.”
I fear we already have one too many Americas involved in the Middle East… (But I assume by this you’re more referring to domestic policy, not foreign policy.)
Very interesting essay!
The term doesn't refer to the judiciary, it refers to the permanent bureaucracy, which is generally opposed to the free market.
Yeah, I know people *think* that. But I’m skeptical for a few reasons:
a) bureaucracy is ultimately accountable to the executive. they can slow things down, but it’s very rare for them to actually subvert popular will;
b) sometimes they do subvert the popular will! This is people like Milley and Barr, who act in the interest of the constitution, but it’s pretty rare;
c) bureaucracy is broadly uncoordinated. If I’m in the CDC and want to subvert the President, I won’t accomplish much and I’ll be fired. I would need to coordinate with lots of other CDC bureaucrats and some from the FDA and NIH and DHHS and so on—very difficult!
But the Supreme Court checks the deep state boxes (shadowy secretive cabal subverting democratic rule) without all these drawbacks: they’re unaccountable to the executive, commonly subvert the popular will, and are tightly coordinated.
You're just incorrect about bureaucracy being uncoordinated and accountable to the executive.
See Kenneth Shepsle Analyzing Politics 2nd edition, especially his two dimensional model of "bureaucratic drift."
And Shepsle's model reflects the theoretical MAXIMUM of Presidential and Congressional power over the bureaucracy. The messiness of real life means that their real power is even lower than their power in Shepsel's model.
Given the credible reports that the bureaucracy was able to delay the COVID-19 vaccines to stop Trump from winning the 2020 election. I fear you may be underestimating their ability to coordinate or work against the President. Also, since realistically, the President can’t be everywhere and has only 24 hours in a day, the bureaucracy will be able to dictate public policy on a lot of matters that the President doesn’t consider a high priority. This is neglecting the power they exercise through their ability to advise an influence elected officials.
The Supreme Court is one of the three branches of government, under the United Stated Constitution, along with the Legislative and Executive.
The ‘bureaucracy’ — regardless of the morale or ‘high ground’ of any particular appointed member of the CDC —per your example — is not enshrined in the Constitution.
You may be stretching the definition of official. I haven’t checked. Apologies.
Rulings of the Supreme Court have been overturned on Constitutional grounds, by the Supreme Court. This is consistent with the supremacy of our Constitution, not a shadowy cabal. Free thought precedes Free speech, as one might hope.
Certainly our previous President felt he could pardon at will a controversial member of the CDC, and did so with impunity. He pardoned many people, including himself and members of his family, after he had pledged not to do so.
Finally — for purposes of clarity — are you referring only to Trump as the ‘senile populist’?
Interesting to read your history of the origin of the term ‘deep state’ in Turkey. However, you are subjective when you apply this only to this Presidency (simple as opposed to supra majority rule) and not the immediate past Presidency.
I realize you only like to project hypotheses forward; but you expose your bias in doing so, which weakens your argument. If this is the only populist ‘idiot’ you are afraid will take a future action (which hasn’t happened), then your projections of what the ‘deep state’ as you define it might do or ‘certainly’ will do — are your subjective projections.
I get that blogs are subjective. But get your actual viewpoint back into your thesis. Don’t sandbag yourself.
Thanks for writing.
The deep state fought Biden too. (https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-dealt-biden-historic-series-defeats-2025-01-18/) Ended affirmative action, expanded gun rights, blocked student loan debt forgiveness, etc. These moves also strike me as broadly good (maybe minus gun rights, though I’m uncertain enough to leave it be), so I think my pro-deep-state stance is more robust than you’re giving me credit for.
In the US though, the Supreme Court is right-wing.
And yet they ruled 9-0 against Trump! Their interpretations of the Constitution might be right-ish, but they're still interpreting the Constitution.
Yeah, you can be right-wing and still pro rule of law!
Hooray!
Interesting analysis, although I think you’re being pretty selective here in only counting undemocratic elite institutions that you generally like such as the Supreme Court, and ignoring ones, you don’t like like the food and drug administration, or for that matter the agricultural lobby. Also, while these institutions have often done good things they have also done quite a few bad things in their time. Just remember the slave fugitive act or how close proposition 12 came to being struck down. And outside of western countries, they have a much sketchier record. For example, the Indian Supreme Court here, was the one that through its orders initiated the Assam national register of citizens, which last time I checked, resulted in hundreds of thousands of people becoming stateless and being detained in camps. On net, I think independent, judiciaries have been a positive development, but they are hardly an unmitigated good, especially given that in a lot of countries they’ve managed to expand the scope of their power a lot, which is often bad because they don’t have any policy expertise, and at least here in India they have a tendency to expand their workload by taking on more and more cases and giving litigants more and more chances to appeal leading to a dysfunctional legal system, which takes forever to resolve any disputes.
This is a good point, and I think similar to Glenn's idea that "institutions are quite plausibly moral disasters"—my response is vaguely similar. I think reform is possible while maintaining a deep state, and it's ok for it to move slowly in case we're wrong—"good things are hard to create and easy to destroy," etc.
I don't know much about the India case—sounds very worrying!—but I do know that India's constitution defines the state as "socialist," which gives me doubt on two fronts: a) the constitution is probably written with the wrong kind of institutions in mind (I like the American deep state because it likes the free market), and b) it seems like the deep state is already failing, given that India is less than entirely socialist!
I'll admit that applying the "deep state is good ackshually" take globally is probably pretty fraught—but populists generally are really bad and scary for democracies, and deep states are our best defense.
This is a child’s view of the “deep state” - as impartial arbiters to some fixed and principled standard. In practice, deep states are invariably intensely self-interested and will create any justification to exercise their un-authorized power.
Just to take the US case: any “deep state” that says to one president “yes, you have broad powers on immigration and can import 9 million people at your sole discretion” but then tells the next president “you cannot deport any of these non-citizens without extensive due process” is a priori illegitimate and is owed neither loyalty nor obedience from anyone.
"Democratic and liberal"-it's been a long time since I took the SAT, so I'm not sure I remember what these words mean. I think they didn't mean "a military-judicial junta ensures elections don't translate to policies, and you have to spend your life as a tax slave to feed hordes of criminal murderers who hate you", but maybe that's changed.
"These are the principles of the Israeli state: wealth (living hand to mouth making sub Alabama wages while paying California level taxes while drowning in debt for a moldy apartment that costs the same as a house in Queens, NY), innovation (adware click maximization and holes in rubber tubes), cosmopolitanism (being indistinguishable from any other declining western nation- so whats the point of its existence?), democracy (unless the helots vote for "le bad"), liberalism (rule by a military- judicial junta). These are the principles that the Israeli deep state defends."
Incredible. If that's the guaranteed future of Israel, then I look forward to the arabs, Bibistim, Charedim, or Hilltop Youth, kicking the whole rotten structure down.
"I do wish more Israelis would rise above it." -- you are welcome to come live here and rise above it, whatever "it" means and however real or imaginary "it" happens to be; this way, one more Israeli will rise above it, fulfilling your wish.
Why doesn't today's Hungary have a deep state too?
They have this exclusive circle controlling the government, the media, the economy and the law.
A power-grabbing state becomes especially dangerous when it works for a populist leader.
I'm no expert on Turkey, but Erdogan seems to fall into this category as well. He mobilizes both Kemalist-inspired authoritarianism and Islamist-conservative populism to stay in power.
I tried to read this but I fell asleep halfway through… guess you could say I was in a deep state ‼️
I am a bit confused by your comment that Israel would no longer be a net good if it lost its liberal character. Judging from your previous post, which you link in that portion of this post, by Israel is a net good you mean something along the lines of it’s better for it to continue existing than not. But even leaving aside the elephant in the room which is nuclear weapons, there is pretty much no way Israel ceases to exist without an incredibly bloody war, and its end as a nation would almost certainly result in mass ethnic cleansing of Jews at the very least. This is true regardless of whether it remains a liberal nation, so I am unsure why it turning fascist or even just normal illiberal would change the fact that it would be very bad for it to be ended as a nation. And this is ignoring important factors like the nuclear weapons or the fact that Israel is the richest country in the Middle East in terms of per capita GDP.
Have you not noticed a bloody war in progress?
It need not be a war that Israel *loses,* as a state, that destroys it as a democracy. A war that Israel cannot win - or cannot win but by genocide - will suffice.
A confirmed fascist Israel would indeed be the end of everything that made Israel valuable. It would no longer be a place of freedom, a haven for diverse Jewish thought. It would be not an example of democracy and self-determination, but a counter-argument.
What does "democracy" mean? P-hacking on a national scale to ignore the expressed desires of the majority of the populace in order to get the outcomes you desire?
What does "self-determination" mean? Blinken standing in on Chief of Staff level planning commissions and then square jawed generals telling us that "the goyim said we have to accept thousands more dead Jews and we are their loyal servants"?