 Dreamland: An Autobiography
By Bob Lazar Published in 2019 243 Pages Thibault’s Score: 3/5 Bob Lazar is a failed whistleblower who attempted to expose the US government’s role in covering up extra terrestrials. Unlike more successful whistleblowers, like Edward Snowden, his revelations failed to raise significant public awareness. Instead, they succeeded in destroying his life. There are two versions of Bob Lazar’s life story. The first version is the one that you will find on Wikipedia. This version goes that Bob Lazar never studied at MIT, never worked for Los Alamos, and never worked for the air force and naval intelligence. He is just a crackpot with a long criminal history. The second version of Bob Lazar’s life story is that he graduated from MIT. Later, he got a job working on nuclear plants in the Los Alamos Lab. He eventually ended up working at Area 51 as a subcontractor for EG&G doing work for both the Air Force and Naval Intelligence. While at Area 51, he allegedly handled anomalous materials that defied the laws of physics. He also saw strange craft that were either US military experimental space ship style aircraft or alien aircraft (in his account he is unclear which it is). After a dispute with his employer, he blew the whistle, and claimed that he had seen evidence that the US was covering up extra terrestrial technology. Shortly after his dispute he found himself in a world of trouble which took the form of legal harassment, lawsuits, stalking, etc… I personally find Bob Lazar to be credible. Bob Lazar’s account reads a lot like other whistleblowers like Snowden’s book. Unlike Snowden, Lazar has absolutely no interest in informing the public or being a hero. He is purely interested in the scientific implications of what he witnesses. He acknowledges he had no idea that his revelations would have a significant impact on society. Later discrepancies and disputes about his career can be very easily explained by sheepdipping. Sheepdipping is a well known US intelligence tactic where the army colludes with universities, former employers, and financial institutions to erase the career history of a victim. This makes the victim look like a liar, and casts everything the victim says into disrepute. Because Lazar was whistleblowing about an unacknowledged program, the government couldn’t sue him. Suing him would force the government to acknowledge that, at the very least, he had actually worked on a secret program (even if it disputed the details). They also couldn’t assassinate him, because that would increase his credibility. Sheepdipping and destroying his reputation was tactically the best move for the government. Lazar was not a careful whistleblower. The stress of working in a classified facility got to him, and he carelessly started telling his family and friends about his work. Later, when he was caught and started panicking, he spoke to the media without any real plan out of self preservation. Lazar’s unflattering self description of his career; his admission of carelessly blowing the whistle; and focus on scientific rather than the social implications of his work all makes me think he comes off as credible. I don’t know if Lazar saw alien materials and technology. But I am sure that he believes that he saw something anomalous. What exactly he saw is unclear. This is a fascinating little book. It is a real page turner. Lazar’s own tragic life and failures show how in the real world, the good guys don’t always win. I wouldn’t recommend this book to most people. If you are first getting into the topic of extra-terrestrials I definitely don’t recommend it because there are far more credible and recent whistleblowers than Bob Lazar. I would recommend this book to someone who is already very interested and well read about the topic.
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 The Franklin Scandal: A Story of Powerbrokers, Child Abuse & Betrayal
By Nick Bryant Published in January 2012 648 Pages Thibault’s Score: 3/5 This book is a well written blend between a true crime book and a government coverup book. In the early 1990s, a child sex trafficking ring implicated many powerful players in the republican party. This sex trafficking scandal, in many ways, echoes Jeffrey Epstein’s own ring. The FBI covered it up - and many police officers, private investigators, witnesses, and journalists investigating the case died under mysterious circumstances. Only a single arrest was ultimately made - of a republican banker called Larry King (no relationship to the famous talk show host). With the benefit of hindsight and two decades for things to calm down, award winning journalist Nick Bryant tracks down many of the surviving victims to fact check their stories. He then explains, day by day, what happened during the period from 1982 - 1991 when the Larry King sex trafficking ring unfolded. Bryant gathers significant amounts of credible evidence that the sex trafficking ring was much larger than the one that was ultimately shut down by the FBI. He theorizes (with the benefit of both hindsight and significant evidence) that the FBI covered up the case. There are many reasons for a possible FBI coverup. First, the sex trafficking ring implicated many republicans during a 12 year long period of republican control of the US government. Second, some of the perpetrators seem like they may have had intelligence ties. Finally, US intelligence agencies have a long history of using sexual blackmail as a tool. The book extensively describes how young girls from broken homes were found and groomed. First, they started by dating older guys who did illegal but mostly harmless activities such as smoking marijauna with them. Later, they were convinced to have sex with someone at parties. After that they would be blackmailed, threatened, and pimped out. The girls convinced themselves that they wanted to be prostitutes. Brainwashing and drug addiction did the rest. The most terrifying part of the book is not the actual sex trafficking. I think that everyone understands that horrible things happen and that there is evil in this world. The worst part was the degree to which the FBI at best was complacent, and at worst, helped cover up the crimes of powerful and wealthy people. Reflecting on this book has made me think of a major historical problem that many governments have faced. Although Bryant doesn’t go into this, it is worth exploring. Sex trafficking in elite circles is one of the most important and underreported issues. People think of it in terms of sex and a small handful of crazy people. However, it goes much deeper. There is a sort of prisoner's dilemma that all political systems have - how do you get the most powerful people in a country to all coordinate to keep a secret. States have used many different tactics. When the cause seems righteous, states have used ideology. This worked well to keep the Manhattan Project as a secret - everyone implicated truly believed that Nazi Germany and Japan were threats. When the state had a secret police, they used fear. This worked well in the Soviet Union. Sometimes, states have used outright torture. The Byzantine Empire would gouge out the eyes of nobles who spread lies. But what if what is being covered up is mundane, clearly morally wrong, and very damaging to the state (something along the lines of insider trading). The solution is to implicate key elites in various crimes then blackmail them. I discussed this with my boomer parents, and found the conversations to be somewhat frustrating. Their perspective likely reflects what normal educated Americans might believe. To understand why sex trafficking among the elites is relevant, you need a lot of additional context which can take years of study to truly start to understand. This context would include information about why secrecy is so important in the first place, why intelligence agencies don't just collect information about foreign adversaries (but actually play a significant role in controlling the population at home), how government psyops and coverups work, etc... My parents who lack this context fully concede that these sex trafficking rings are likely real, maybe even at a somewhat large scale. But they incorrectly assume it has no relevance to global geopolitics, the economy, and the life of ordinary people. Sex trafficking among the elites is as relevant to the outcome of state affairs as is NSA surveillance or CIA torture camps. It is a powerful - and misunderstood - tool. The writing style is very good. I would recommend the book to someone interested in understanding the realities of deep state sex trafficking. I didn’t finish the book. It was just too much. Too many graphic depictions of sex, too many long winded interviews, etc… It was interesting but it was just a little but too much. After reading roughly 75% of the book, I had gotten what I hoped to get from it. One thing that makes the book tedious is the extensive discussion of evidence, sources, etc… Books that make serious allegations require serious evidence. But it can also make the reading experience a little bit drab. Include it, and the book is boring. Exclude it, and the author goes from a credible journalist to a schizophrenic Qanon conspiracy theorist. If you read this book, I would recommend that the readers appreciate rather than downplay the extensive discussion of research methods.  The Vikings: A New History
By Neil Oliver Published in March 2021 400 Pages Thibault’s Score: 3/5 The Vikings A New History is a short survey history of the vikings. I basically came in knowing almost nothing about them, and thought it was a good place to start my historical research. I enjoyed listening to it, and would recommend it as a good starting point. Oliver covers many different aspects of viking history. I liked that he starts by giving the context of Scandinavia - explaining the ethnic Sami and pre-viking peoples who lived in the region. He then explains their journey into Eastern Europe down the rivers, founding what later became Russia. He also discusses their raids in the North Sea, as well as their colonization of the Falklands, Orkney, Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, and eventually the Americas. The first half was captivating; but I wasn’t able to focus very effectively on the second half due to personal issues I had to deal with in the real world. As a result I personally didn’t enjoy it for purely selfish reasons. I gave it a 3 even though I would recommend it due to my own weaknesses.  A Brief History of Anglo Saxon Britain
By Geoffrey Hindley Published in January 2006 320 Pages Thibault’s Score: 2/5 A Brief History of Anglo Saxon Britain is a survey history of the Anglo Saxons starting with their arrival in the late Roman period until the Norman Conquest. What is remarkable about this book is how little of it I remember. I listened to the audiobook several days ago and somehow retained absolutely nothing. The book contains a survey of the facts, but gets lost in the many complicated relationships between warchiefs and kings. It spends significant time talking about the conversion of the Anglo Saxons to Christianity. I knew that the Anglo Saxons were pagan but didn’t realize that the Anglo Saxons retained their paganism for some time in England. I thought they immediately converted after conquering the culturally and technologically superior Britons. Instead, they maintained polytheism, only slowly converting over the course of two hundred years. By the time the vikings came, some groups were only still in the process of converting. The conflict between Celtic Christianity and Roman Christianity is very interesting as well. It also contains a detailed - and interesting - “hagiography” of King Alfred the Great. I didn’t know very much about King Alfred, just that he was deposed, and that when he was on the run, he burnt some pies. I knew that he beat the vikings. What I didn’t realize was that he built significant amounts of infrastructure such as roads, bridges, and most importantly, fortifications to stop future viking raids. I also didn’t know that he was a patron of arts and scholarship. He commissioned the creation of the Anglo Saxon chronicle. Finally, the last major part that I remember is what happened to the Britons after the Norman conquest. Initially, the Normans attempted to impose French culture on the Anglo Saxons. They explicitly attempted to raze Anglo Saxon churches and monuments in what the author calls “cultural genocide.” Despite this, they slowly adopted more and more Anglo Saxon customs over time. Within a century and a half, the Normans were speaking English and using it to write laws and deal with court cases. It is important to note that today we don’t talk about “Normano-Britons.” Instead, we talk about “Anglo Saxons.” Many cultures existed in England prior to the Anglo Saxons such as the Romans and Celts; many cultures existed concurrently such as the Scottish and Welsh; and many invaded after such as the Vikings and Normans. Despite all of the competition for cultural hegemony, Anglo Saxon culture won out. The writing style is boring but clear enough. There is nothing special about this book. It doesn’t waste too much time on pointless academic solipsisms. I do not recommend this book. If you are specifically studying this period of history in depth, it is likely too basic for you. It might be a decent study guide for a PHD student new to the period.  Treasury's War: The Unleashing of a New Era of Financial Warfare
By Juan Zarate Published in September 2013 512 Pages Thibault’s Score: 3/5 Treasury’s War is an insider account of how the US government invented and deployed targeted sanctions. The book was written by Juan Zarate, a neoconservative who was appointed by Bush to lead his sanctions efforts in the US treasury. He held various other roles in the Bush and Obama administrations. Now he runs his own private intelligence and consulting firm. Prior to the 9/11 attacks most sanctions were embargos. They banned Americans from doing business with entire categories of goods or countries. After 9/11 the Bush administration leveraged new technologies to develop what it called “targeted sanctions.” After the September 11 attacks, the US government brought on board experts who had history fighting organized crime, rather than terrorism and nation states. These new experts developed targeted sanctions. Zarate was one of these anti-organized crime experts. Targeted sanctions target specific people or companies, rather than entire countries or industries. Targeted sanctions were enforced by fining and penalizing banks that did business with rogue states or terrorists. This had the advantage of being unilateral enforceable by US authorities without involving other companies. This meant that, for example, a Lebanese bank that banked Al Qaeda risked getting fined and cut off from the US financial system; as a result nearly all banks in the world including in countries like Russia and China would follow US sanctions. This history of targeted sanctions is one of incredible success, partial success, and finally reading through the lines, the ultimate collapse of the US dollar. Zarate, being one of the people who invented this sanctions technique, is very positive. Many of my judgments come from interpreting his information through the lens of my own outside information. Targeted sanctions may have been what ultimately led to US victory over Al Qaeda after 9/11. Al Qaeda was largely funded through donations from ideologically sympathetic Saudis and Muslim businessmen. When these businessmen faced targeted sanctions which threatened to cut them off from the global banking system, they withdrew their support for terrorists. As the funding dried up, so did Al Qaeda recruitment and attacks. Now Al Qaeda still exists, but is almost powerless. The Bush administration expanded targeted sanctions to target rogue states such as Syria, Iran, and North Korea. These had mixed results. On one hand, the US successfully seized billions of dollars of assets from rogue state leaders. This forced them to negotiate. On the other hand, political inconsistencies made them seem biased and unfair; internal US government disputes made their rollouts chaotic; and overuse allowed American enemies to slowly develop an immunity against these measures. Zarate’s book ends in 2013. However, these are the very same sanctions that would be used against Russia in 2014 and 2021. These targeted sanctions have completely failed to move Russian policy. In fact, it has significantly weakened the US dollar. Many nations now distrust the US, which is no longer seen as an impartial actor. Countries like Russia, Iran, and China are now building large parallel banking systems that bypass the US dollar entirely - and threaten the US economy. I decided to pick up this book after Trump’s failed “Liberation Day” where he attempted to force all US trade partners to renegotiate trade deals. Like targeted sanctions, Liberation Day has contributed to a significant weakening of the US dollar. Targeted sanctions have had their moments. For example, US officials waited to freeze Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s assets right when it was the most critical. Right before it came time for Gaddafi to pay his soldiers and mercenaries, tens of billions of dollars of his assets were frozen. The unpaid mercenaries and soldiers then refused to fight, contributing to his resounding defeat during the civil war. Zarate also details many underhanded and sketchy government tactics. First, Zarate describes how the treasury pressured SWIFT into monitoring transactions and handing over sensitive data. SWIFT is based in Belgium, and is supposed to be impartial. Zarate and the US government destroyed this partiality by politicizing it; but attempted to keep it secret in an attempt to preserve the appearance of SWIFT’s neutrality. Later, when the New York Times caught wind that SWIFT was being used to monitor the financing of potential terrorists, the US Treasury attempted to silence the New York Times journalists and pressured them to withdraw their coverage. Zarate also describes how US treasury officials used non-legal means to pressure banks to monitor their bank accounts and shut down terrorists. US Treasury officials will approach banks (including non-US banks) and tell them that they have intelligence that terrorists are operating within the bank. They will then send officials to meet with bank leadership and compliance officers, under conditions of strict secrecy. They will hand over intelligence to the bank that suggests terrorists are operating within it and make recommendations. Banks will then privately take measures to close accounts and freeze assets of suspected terrorists - without having received direct orders from the US government, which may not govern it. I can’t help but wonder if similar tactics were used to freeze the accounts of right wing commentators like Lauren Southern and Richard Spencer during the late 2010s. Although it wasn’t Zarate’s intention, this book explains to me why the US dollar is in the process of falling. The world reserve currency needs to be neutral. It also underscores the importance of neutral and apolitical cryptocurrencies which are outside of the control of nation states. This book will not be of interest to most average readers. However, due to a lot of my specific AML and CFT work, I found it very interesting. It also informed my geopolitical understanding and investments. I would recommend it to a narrow band of researchers studying money laundering and sanctions but not to a general audience.  The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age
By David E. Sanger Published in June 2018 386 Pages Thibault’s Score: 3/5 This book is an account of the beginnings of US Army Cyber Command. It chronicles how cyberwarfare came to play a major role in the United States’ foreign policy and strategic planning. David E. Sanger is a well known New York Times journalist, and the head correspondent for Washington DC. The Perfect Weapon is a very clearly written historical account of how cyberwarfare went from a neglected “side quest” during the George Bush administration to a mainstay of American strategy during the Obama administration. It perfectly captures how frustratingly incompetent the US government was during the early days of cyberwarfare, and how the American government was repeatedly caught off-guard by China and Russia. I would like to start this review by highlighting a side point - how heavily influenced Sanger’s thinking is by the US government. Sanger takes a very mainstream pro-government perspective. This somewhat stiffles his thinking. For example, he seems to believe that Edward Snowden is a traitor and that the US population would be better off not knowing that they were being spied upon. He goes as far to admit that he lets American intelligence officials review all of his articles, and censor them, before publication. In some cases, he proudly describes these censorship meetings in detail. Although it isn’t the main point of the book, reading through the lines really allowed me to see firsthand how the New York Times is directly censored and influenced by the American government. Sanger doesn’t make any effort to hide this. In my mind, this is extremely discrediting, because I was taught that the role of journalists was to speak truth to power. Once you accept this book for what it is - a sort of “officially sanctioned history” of US cyberwarfare, it is very interesting. The US has had several incredible cyberwarfare successes. The most famous - and obvious - example is the deployment of Stuxnet. Stuxnet is a computer virus which caused serious physical damage to Iran’s nuclear reactors by making them overheat. There are two types of cyberwarfare. One is obvious - sabotage, espionage, cyber-ransoming, stealing secrets, etc… This is what most people think about. There is a second - far more insidious - type of cyberwarfare. This type of cyberwarfare relies on using social media to spread deceptive propaganda to get them to act in ways that damage an enemy government. The Russian government’s Internet Research Agency is a semi-privatized online troll group set up by Yevgeny Prigozhin - the same person who also established the legendary Wagner Group. The Internet Research Agency would cause chaos by doing things such as using Facebook to organize a Black Lives Matter protest in Texas from afar; and organizing a white nationalist rally using 4Chan nearby. They would then observe to see if anyone showed up and if fights broke out. Their efforts may have had a significant impact on the 2016 election of President Trump. In Sanger’s mind, influence campaigns organized by groups such as the Internet Research Agency justify government-encouraged censorship of social media. Although Sanger doesn’t directly make any policy prescriptions, he seems to envision a model where the government publishes vague “responsible social media” guidelines; and it's up to private companies to decide how to specifically enforce them. This book was valuable to me, because it helped me get into the minds of the people who are driving US cyber warfare policy. Professionally, I am working for a Venture Capital syndicate which finances some projects which may have some cybersecurity implications. I don’t recommend this book for casual observers because it's not great. But if you really want to go deep into cyberwarfare, this could be part of your journey. It just wouldn’t be the most important or first part. Finally, cyberwarfare evolves quickly. 2018 is a very long time in the past in that world. This book has lost a lot of relevance post-COVID and post-Trump’s second term. I think it will be completely irrelevant in two or three years due to the implications of AI.  How the Irish Saved Civilization
By Thomas Cahill Published in March 1995 246 Pages Thibault’s Score: 2/5 This book is entertaining but stupid. I enjoyed reading it. Something about the writing style is amusing. The historical anecdotes are entertaining. However, based on everything that I know about history, this book gets a lot of stuff wrong. The big picture is correct - there were some Irish monks in the early Middle Ages who played a key role in the preservation and transmission of ancient literature to the present. These Irish monks travelled across Europe, founding dozens of monasteries, including (weirdly enough) in St. Gallen Switzerland, where I used to live. However, the detailed step by step narrative made me cringe. At some points I laughed. My favorite stupid claim is when the author goes on a very long diatribe about how St. Augustine was the first person to write a first person narrative autobiography. He acknowledges that while St. Augustine isn’t the first person to use the word “I” ; he is the first to write about his own psychology and feelings. This is a stupid claim. Some of the oldest pieces of writing we have are written in the first person. Shocker: as soon as people can write, they write about themselves. We have some fragmentary tablets from Sumeria dated to 3400 BC called the Kushim tablets which contain some accounts of people talking about doing business. The first detailed autobiography is the Cuthean Legend of Naram-Sin written in 1900 BC. By the time of classical Greece, there are countless autobiographies. The favorite that I have read is Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. Although I haven’t read them fully, I have listened to clips on YouTube from Herodotus’ History and Xenophon’s Anabasis. These are all autobiographies with deep psychological self reflections. Some Roman autobiographies - such as Cesar - did use the third person, but likely out of respect. Cesar was dictating to a scribe, and the scribe didn’t want to claim glory for Cesar’s acts so the scribe wrote “Cesar crossed the Rubicon” etc… That being said, only about 40 Roman books have survived in full, and about 150 in fragmentary form. So if you narrow the category of book arbitrarily to “fully intact autobiography written in the first person with deep psychological reflections about spiritual themes that don’t primarily seek to give advice to others” then St. Augustine might be a first. This book is full of weird bold claims like that which completely fall apart under scrutiny. There are sweeping claims about the role of women in Ireland and the rest of Europe. The author makes the claim that women in Ireland had many rights while they were enslaved in Europe. Once again, some context is needed. That may be true to an extent, but the Irish practiced sex slavery. On the other hand, there were many great women in antiquity. On the political side, women like Livia (the wife of Augustus) and Theodora (the wife of Justinian) essentially governed many aspects of the Roman state. On the scientific side, there are thinkers like the mathematician Hypatia or Plato’s female student Diotima. Although much has been lost, we have some fragments of many great female scholars in antiquity - there is an early chemist called Cleopatra (not to be confused with the Egyptian queen), a grammarian and historian called Agallis, and a philosopher and mathematician called Aesara. Just as today some women in some places live horrible lives, and others live good lives. To me the hallmark of bad history is when authors make very bold sweeping claims about “the first” or “there were no cases before” which can very easily be contested after about 15 minutes on Google. Good history might instead say “a remarkably early example” or “one of the earliest.” I find that a lot of popular history books tend to fall into this trap. Although I don’t know much about Irish history, there are enough mistakes in the parts of the book that I do know about that it casts a shadow of doubt on the rest. That being said, the book is very well written. At the time, in 1995, it was a best seller. The writing was so engaging that I finished it, and was able to chuckle and overlook the many mistakes or inaccuracies. I wouldn’t recommend this book. It will be boring for historians because its very basic. As for non-historians, the book is dangerous because it is well written but full of mistakes. If you want to read it, be sure to do so with a very skeptical mindset.  The Lazarus Heist: From Hollywood to High Finance: Inside North Korea's Global Cyber War
By Geoff White Published in August 2022 304 Pages Thibault’s Score: 3/5 I remember growing up learning about the insane isolated state of North Korea. However, what most people do not realize is that under Kim Jong Un, North Korea significantly began opening up. North Korea opened up by becoming a hub of global organized crime. North Korea has pivoted several times. First, it started printing “superdollars.” Superdollars are very high quality US dollar counterfeits. They were developed in North Korea’s labs by the country’s top scientists. Later, Korea began getting involved in the production of illegal drugs. North Korea would finally hit the jackpot when it discovered cybercrime. The communist educational system produced many high level computer scientists but no private sector to employ them. The government provided a select hand picked few with work opportunities, where they would get access to the uncensored internet. North Korean hackers would spend the 2010s doing a wide variety of crimes. They would hack Sony in retribution for a film that satirized North Korea’s leadership. They would steal money from Bangladesh’s central bank. They would unleash ransomware which would hold people’s computer files hostage unless they ponied up Bitcoin. They would create mock credit cards and use runners to withdraw cash. I found that accounts of North Korean money laundering to be the most interesting aspect of this book. Learning the details - and how investigators uncovered said details - kept me on the edge of my seat. Something about the book’s writing felt very sterile. The author felt very removed from the action. Simultaneously, there was sometimes too much of a focus on the humans involved and not the big picture. I would recommend this book to people who want to learn more about North Korea’s cyber operations.  King Arthur's Wars: The Anglo-Saxon Conquest of England
By Jim Storr Published in June 2016 302 Pages Thibault’s Score: 2/5 This book is a boring and poorly paced account of the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain. I did not finish it. Roughly 20% of the book consists of an explanation of the methods the historian will use for the remaining 80% of the book. When you finally get past the many warnings, and into the actual history, you get a disorganized jumble of facts that do not connect well to each other. This book falls into a very uncomfortable niche: it is too simple for professional historians, but too technical for casual readers. Writing history books is hard, and sometimes they flop.  Permanent Record
By Edward Snowden Published in September 2019 352 Pages Thibault’s Score: 5/5 This book is an absolute must read book to understand how the American deep state works. Edward Snowden was a high level CIA and NSA contractor. In 2013, he revealed to Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald what is now common knowledge - that the government collects all data on the planet, and stores it forever. All phone calls, text messages, Facebook posts, Twitter DMs, Discord conversations, word documents, internal business memos, powerpoint presentations, video calls, and other files you may have are stored and monitored by the NSA. At the time of his revelations Snowden had everything - a 6 figure salary, a beautiful fiancée, and a house in tropical Hawaii. He would lose everything after his revelations. The government would cancel his passport while transiting through Russia, exiling him there. Although the government had forced him to go to Russia in the first place, it would then use his exile there as proof of his treason. Snowden’s revelations were probably the single biggest news story of 2013. Now, they have all been forgotten. However, since then something major has changed. In 2024, everyone understands that the internet is not a free place. It is somewhere you will be monitored, tracked, and manipulated. Snowden has been forgotten by the younger generation. To my shock, many educated, smart Gen Z kids have never heard of him. They couldn’t believe me when I told them about Snowden, and asked me about what this guy’s “theory” was. The fact that the government propaganda would train the kids to think that Snowden was just some bargain basement conspiracy theorist rather than an actual insider shows how insidious propaganda is. But there is some significant hope. Millennials still believe in the institutions of America. My generation thinks that although there is some corruption, the government and its institutions are fundamentally benevolent. Gen Z kids assume that the government and its institutions are fundamentally corrupt. The single most interesting revelation to me in the book was about the structure of the deep state. Snowden often worked for companies such as Dell or Perot Systems. He rarely directly worked for the NSA. The deep state has been privatized. The very word “deep state” is a misnomer - it implies that the government is in the driving seat, making all decisions. In Snowden’s case, the private contractors were the technologically advanced elites. The government employees were just the help desk workers and bureaucrats. He reveals that the private contractors would drive policies, carry out plans, and make the key decisions. There is a tripartite hierarchy within the deep state. At the bottom, there is the private sector - everyone outside of the three letter intelligence agencies and the regulatory state. In the middle, there is the actual government - the agencies like the CIA or NSA as well as economic regulatory bodies. At the top are the small number of private parties that benefit which dictate policy. This book is very well written. Snowden comes off as someone that I would be friends with. It reads like a thriller. If you want to learn about the deep state, start here. My own intellectual journey, in part, started with Edward Snowden. No matter how much you think you know about the shadow government, whether its nothing or a lot, I still recommend reading this book. |
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