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Intelligence Assessment: US Heading for Competitive Authoritarianism; FBI is Key

Social Cyber Group

Key Facts:

Several of the wealthiest US tech oligarchs and their political allies in the US administration have by default co-created the information and coercive infrastructure to undermine possible Democrat victory in the mid-term elections 

This is probably not a coordinated conspiracy but the effects of their anti-democratic acitivity are cumulative

US allies will be deeply affected by the outcome of this political battle  

In the absence of official assessment from any Five Eyes government on the likely fate of democracy in the United States, a former Australian intelligence analyst  has released a discussion document  and a summary of it. The report carries a disclaimer.

 

The key question we looked at is the power of a small number of tech billionaires to subvert the democratic processes. The assessment finds that “A coalition of executive-branch actors and aligned technology wealth is weakening the constraints on executive power” and facilitating the consolidation of anti-democratic forces.  The analysis sees this as a “convergence of interests, not a directed conspiracy: while warning that the impacts are “cumulative”.  

 

Most importantly, some tech companies have by default put in place the “wiring” for a coup if they move in that direction, according to the document. “We flag it not because we assess a coup is being engineered through it – we do not – but because it is the mechanism that would most lower the cost of one, and because its trajectory is a genuine intelligence gap the alliance has not addressed.”

 

The biggest warning is that the FBI is in the best position to put its hands on the scale. If the FBI acts firmly in either direction then the armed forces leadership may well remain passive.

 

“The federal paramilitary layer [in part referencing ICE], is the active front, and this is where the assessment differs most from public commentary focused on the army”. The local sheriffs, all 18,000 of them, are a specific concern: “elected, armed, jurisdictionally entrenched and, in a contested electoral scenario, positioned to act against county election administration rather than for it”.

 

The report warns that the “irregular front” [mobilised armed citizens] is in reserve:  “latent but no longer negligible”. “Alongside them sits the private-security ecosystem around the oligarchy’s principals and the surveillance stack — the data-integration platforms documented earlier in this series — which gives every layer of this apparatus a targeting reach that historical analogues lacked”.

 

“The system is under attack and resisting at once; which prevails is genuinely uncertain.”

 

Disclaimer: This discussion document referenced above has been prepared for an Executive Workshop by the Social Cyber and Tech Academy relying on two separate AI systems. It is a simulated assessment written in the style of the Joint Intelligence Committee of the UK. The contents have not been fully verified. It does not necessarily represent the views of the Social Cyber Institute or Social Cyber and Tech Academy. Readers are encouraged to critically evaluate the analysis, evidence, assumptions and conclusions presented.

 

Warning: The scholar and former intelligence analyst who coached and prompted the AI systems to prepare the assessment, Professor Greg Austin, believes its conclusions are worth contemplating. "The United States is in a fight of its political life and this struggle threatens the security and economic prosperity of its closest allies". he said. "Several tech billionaires are heavily engaged in this fight and have the infrastructure resources to tip the balance in favour of the anti-democratic forces. We do not have a full picture of their intent or operations to overthrow the democratic system."

 

“The emergence of tech platforms as determining forces for radical political change has been in evidence at least since the Arab Spring beginning in 2010”, Austin said. “There is now little reason to assume that the US can still remain immune to these forces.”

 

“People who have worked in the allied intelligence community will relate to the careful balancing evident in this simulated assessment,” Austin said, “but we should note the seriousness and depth of key intelligence gaps”.

 

Greg Austin is an Adjunct Professor with the University of Technology Sydney. He is a co-founder of the Social Cyber Institute and the Social Cyber and Tech Academy. He has decades of experience in intelligence and international relations, beginning with the Defence Intelligence Organisation, and later leadership of think tank research, most recently for the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He has published and lectured on intelligence analysis in Australia and overseas.  He has consulted for the UK Cabinet Office, the UK Ministry of Defence, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the European Commission, and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

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