Just as we are abandoning the frame of left/right (as ODNI did recently), we should limit the use of “nation state” as a frame for influence campaigns.
No country is a monolith; each country contains factional networks of power that exert influence internally and abroad.
No country is a monolith; each country contains factional networks of power that exert influence internally and abroad.
This is one reason why “Russian meddling” was such a bad paradigm for understanding what has happened the last several years.
It was a networked operation containing Americans, Russians, Brits, French, Germans, Poles, Hungarians, Italians, Australians, Chinese, Iranians.
It was a networked operation containing Americans, Russians, Brits, French, Germans, Poles, Hungarians, Italians, Australians, Chinese, Iranians.
We need to focus on mapping out power networks and how they persist over time. Trump is a symptom, and is NOT the seat of power. The plutocrat network will persist in 20, 50 years. The question is whether it will have captured all democracies by then, or indeed if it already has?
One template might be the idea of "Advanced Persistent Threats" used in the realm of cybersecurity. Powerful global factions map fairly well onto this model, though care must be taken to use describe factually in terms of long-term motives vs. a context of automatic demonization.
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