"This is one important aspect of a broader process of state transformation. The US government - like other governments - has increasingly contracted out many tasks that used to be core parts of state functioning to the private sector. This may or may not create greater efficiencies, depending (accounts vary). Undeniably, it hollows out state capacity and the capacity of the state to function independent of contractors. Governments find themselves increasingly incapable of carrying out even very basic functions without the help of private sector actors." Excellent insight.
My take? It's corporatism with a twist, an example of where whatever authority remains in USA society exists in splintered form. A telling quote from Mussolini gave me the reference to 'corporatism': “Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” Your notes about the difficulty of any post-Trump administration 'disentangling' these ties nails a reality often ignored. Who will end up on top in that struggle? It won't be the individual citizen; that's a given because gradually, unthinkingly, we have given away our rights and authority in this transition.
That's by design. The reichwing has been promoting "small government" since even before 1980, but it was 1980 where it all started to come to fruition.
"I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." -Grover Norquist, 2001
Minor technical suggestion/complaint: if you manually use asterisks one has to scroll down & then find one's way back to where it was to read the footnote. If you use substack's automated footnote function, you can click down and then back to where you were—and you often don't even have to, since just hovering over the footnote number will show the text of the note if it's not too long. Much better reading experience. Just a thought.
It would be nice if substack's footnote functionality to allow us to choose a marker. As of now, it forces us to use numbers. Not really that big of a deal, but it can be annoying, especially if you want more than one marker to point to the same footnote, which substack also doesn't allow.
The interesting tension here is less Trump versus Anthropic than AI firms looking less like vendors and more like quasi-sovereign infrastructure. Once the US normalises coercive leverage over them, every other democracy accelerates the move to decouple.
Funny how decades of “small government” end with the state threatening quasi-expropriation because it hollowed out its own capacity. Hard to see how liberal institutions stay stable when core intelligence functions sit outside the state.
The thing I would add is the international dimension. As the court of Trump replaces the courts of law as arbiter, investors (both US and foreign) will put their money into other countries. It’s already happening. Similarly, the logical conclusion for Anthropic if Trump follows through on the escalating threats is simply to quit the US. Because it’s future then is as a global company with uncertain US income. There may be an IPO coming up and that could be easily done in London, to where the HQ and thousands of jobs could move.
Trump has granted foreign actors access to technology that some see creating security risks for the United States, primarily after leveraging one of many financial windfalls for his family and donors as a result of his office. The principles of the Anthropic CEO are entirely outside of the Trump mindset.
These — sometimes, or partly accidental — billionaires are as stupid as the rest of us (as history has amply illustrated), so even without ketamine, they cannot be expected to make wise, scenario-driven choices in this.
"Should Alex Karp (Palantir) and Elon Musk (X/Space-X etc) be sweating?"
The answer to this question is "Mikhail Khodorkovsky".
"This is the dirty secret of the Trump administration push to both privatize government functions and increase executive authority at the same time."
This is the analysis of a political scientist, and it may well be matched by some of those who surround Trump. But Trump himself cares nothing for the machinery of government or the interests of the state or the cybernetics of organizations; he is a mere amalgam of narcissism and greed. After Putin imprisoned Khodorkovsky, he called in all the other oligarchs for a meeting. They naturally wanted to know what they had to do to avoid Khodorkovsky's fate. The answer was that they had to give half of all they stole to Putin as tribute; he was to be the capo di tutti capi. Putin is the person Trump admires most in all the world.
"Russian oligarchs thought it was a great idea to help usher Putin into power. And indeed, some of them were right, sort of ..."
Some, sure. But those were the *weakest* oligarchs, the ones most dependent on Putin and with the most to lose if Putin lost his position. One does not see the realization of this in the aristocracy of Silicon Valley.
I always wish Farrell and other brilliant minds would put atleast one year of their classes online for those of us who will never be able to attend the institutions they are apart of .
I'd add to the discussion of the risk to oligarchs that one doesn't need a fully developed authoritarian model as in Russia. As Events in Ukraine has chronicled in detail, the most-powerful-oligarch-to-prison pipeline is rather short in Ukraine as well.
It sounds like both Trumpkopf and the billionaire tech oligarchs are walking a tightrope. May they all fall off and face plant on the ground below.
"This is one important aspect of a broader process of state transformation. The US government - like other governments - has increasingly contracted out many tasks that used to be core parts of state functioning to the private sector. This may or may not create greater efficiencies, depending (accounts vary). Undeniably, it hollows out state capacity and the capacity of the state to function independent of contractors. Governments find themselves increasingly incapable of carrying out even very basic functions without the help of private sector actors." Excellent insight.
My take? It's corporatism with a twist, an example of where whatever authority remains in USA society exists in splintered form. A telling quote from Mussolini gave me the reference to 'corporatism': “Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” Your notes about the difficulty of any post-Trump administration 'disentangling' these ties nails a reality often ignored. Who will end up on top in that struggle? It won't be the individual citizen; that's a given because gradually, unthinkingly, we have given away our rights and authority in this transition.
https://tjelliott.substack.com/p/testing-assumptions-our-problems-with-authority-part-ii
That's by design. The reichwing has been promoting "small government" since even before 1980, but it was 1980 where it all started to come to fruition.
"I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." -Grover Norquist, 2001
What was he elected to?
He wasn't. He's a rich oligarch, albeit a millionaire not a billionaire. For more information, see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Norquist
Superb post, as always.
Minor technical suggestion/complaint: if you manually use asterisks one has to scroll down & then find one's way back to where it was to read the footnote. If you use substack's automated footnote function, you can click down and then back to where you were—and you often don't even have to, since just hovering over the footnote number will show the text of the note if it's not too long. Much better reading experience. Just a thought.
It would be nice if substack's footnote functionality to allow us to choose a marker. As of now, it forces us to use numbers. Not really that big of a deal, but it can be annoying, especially if you want more than one marker to point to the same footnote, which substack also doesn't allow.
Agreed.
The interesting tension here is less Trump versus Anthropic than AI firms looking less like vendors and more like quasi-sovereign infrastructure. Once the US normalises coercive leverage over them, every other democracy accelerates the move to decouple.
Funny how decades of “small government” end with the state threatening quasi-expropriation because it hollowed out its own capacity. Hard to see how liberal institutions stay stable when core intelligence functions sit outside the state.
The thing I would add is the international dimension. As the court of Trump replaces the courts of law as arbiter, investors (both US and foreign) will put their money into other countries. It’s already happening. Similarly, the logical conclusion for Anthropic if Trump follows through on the escalating threats is simply to quit the US. Because it’s future then is as a global company with uncertain US income. There may be an IPO coming up and that could be easily done in London, to where the HQ and thousands of jobs could move.
Trump has granted foreign actors access to technology that some see creating security risks for the United States, primarily after leveraging one of many financial windfalls for his family and donors as a result of his office. The principles of the Anthropic CEO are entirely outside of the Trump mindset.
These — sometimes, or partly accidental — billionaires are as stupid as the rest of us (as history has amply illustrated), so even without ketamine, they cannot be expected to make wise, scenario-driven choices in this.
And with Ketamine (and Ecstasy and Magic Mushrooms), they can make spectacularly dumb decisions - the Tesla Optimus robot being a perfect example.
Hegseth needs to watch the opening boardroom scene from Robocop before he trusts independently controlled AI lethal weapons.
Exactly the scene that came to mind!
"Should Alex Karp (Palantir) and Elon Musk (X/Space-X etc) be sweating?"
The answer to this question is "Mikhail Khodorkovsky".
"This is the dirty secret of the Trump administration push to both privatize government functions and increase executive authority at the same time."
This is the analysis of a political scientist, and it may well be matched by some of those who surround Trump. But Trump himself cares nothing for the machinery of government or the interests of the state or the cybernetics of organizations; he is a mere amalgam of narcissism and greed. After Putin imprisoned Khodorkovsky, he called in all the other oligarchs for a meeting. They naturally wanted to know what they had to do to avoid Khodorkovsky's fate. The answer was that they had to give half of all they stole to Putin as tribute; he was to be the capo di tutti capi. Putin is the person Trump admires most in all the world.
"Russian oligarchs thought it was a great idea to help usher Putin into power. And indeed, some of them were right, sort of ..."
Some, sure. But those were the *weakest* oligarchs, the ones most dependent on Putin and with the most to lose if Putin lost his position. One does not see the realization of this in the aristocracy of Silicon Valley.
The Greeks have a word for it, much clearer than the opaque Latin-derived "unitary executive" - MONARCHY.
"Governments find themselves increasingly incapable of carrying out even very basic functions without the help of private sector actors."
Is that because of a fundamental shift in technology or because governments were misled by the free-markets-are-always-more-efficient ideology?
Definitely the latter. While it's true there's a fundamental shift in technology, the free markets efficiency ideology has been with us since 1980.
I believe it's been way longer than that.
Yes, we could trace it back further, however, it was the advent of the St. Reagan "revolution" that really kicked it into high gear.
I always wish Farrell and other brilliant minds would put atleast one year of their classes online for those of us who will never be able to attend the institutions they are apart of .
Great insight. Thank you
I'd add to the discussion of the risk to oligarchs that one doesn't need a fully developed authoritarian model as in Russia. As Events in Ukraine has chronicled in detail, the most-powerful-oligarch-to-prison pipeline is rather short in Ukraine as well.
We‘ll see if Europe cooperates with the war in Iran. I doubt they will stand in the way.
Sorry, this was a reply to Alex Trolley above.
An excellent, thoughtful article! Thank you.