Deep State, Peak State, and Shallow State

I probably did as much as anybody to popularize on the American right the Turkish/Italian term "the deep state." After visiting Turkey in 2009, I blogged:

An intriguing concept almost unknown in America but common in political discourse in Mediterranean countries such as Italy and Turkey is the putative existence of a “deep state” whose members ultimately pull (or could pull) the strings. In Italian history, for example, its manifestations might include Mafia connections with politicians, the P2 Masonic lodge in Rome that was discovered in 1980, and NATO’s Operation Gladio “leave behind” commando units that were intended to wage guerrilla war after a Communist takeover but may have been turned to less noble ends in the meantime.

Currently in Turkey, the ruling Islamic party is putting on trial many of its Kemalist and other enemies on charges of being part of a shadowy organization supposedly known as Ergenekon. …

To the American mind, this way of thinking sounds terribly Byzantine, a part of a culture where the smartest guy in the room isn’t the one who comes up with the simplest explanation but the one who comes up with the most complicated conspiracy theory. …

And, in the Turkish (much less American) context, does it even really exist? Is it excessive to give a portentous-sounding name to something that sounds like big shots scratching each others’ backs?

Nonetheless, the notion of a deep state, although perhaps better conceptualized less as a top-down conspiracy than as an emergent phenomenon among insiders with overlapping interests, might prove useful to Americans in overcoming our native bias toward boyish naiveté about the ways of the world.

Yet, I'm not that big fan of a fan of now popular theories about the Unknown Power Behind the Throne, in part because most of the proposed candidates for éminence grise, such as Michelle Obama, are lame.

And I suspect that most people who have what it takes to be a force behind the scenes can't resist becoming a big shot: what I call Peak State theory.

I came up with the concept of the Peak State after it was revealed in 2011 that the late Osama bin Laden had been living quietly a mile from Pakistan's military academy in Abbottabad since 2005. Because Pakistan is an ally of the U.S., that led to a lot of theorizing about how Osama's presence for all those years at the heart of the Pakistani military complex must be due to some shadowy rogue element within Pakistan's Deep State.

And Pakistan does indeed have a massive and scary Deep State that, when it is out of power, constantly conspires against elected governments of Pakistan. But when Osama was invited to hole up in Abottabad in 2005, the head of government in Pakistan was head of Pakistan’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, general Pervez Musharraf, who had overthrown the elected president in 1999 and made himself President.

Who decided that Osama should be given refuge in Pakistan? My guess is the top guy, President Musharraf.

Similarly, when former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan in 2007 to challenge Musharraf for power, she was soon blown up. She left behind letters stating that if she were assassinated, Musharraf was to blame for her murder because, at minimum, he chose not to provide her with the security she requested.

In 2013, Musharraf was indicted in Pakistan for the murder of Bhutto and in 2019 he was sentenced to death in absentia for treason. But he died in exile in Dubai, which doesn’t have an extradition treaty with Pakistan, in 2023.

Deep State theory would similarly argue that the reason Democrats are saddled with a remarkably unpopular Vice President in Kamala Harris and thus can’t push to get the aged Joe Biden to step aside is because the shadowy Deep State had game-planned all this years ago as a genius ploy to keep their puppet Biden in power.

In contrast, Peak State theory would suggest that the Big Guy himself, Joe Biden, hand-picked Kamala because, having spent over a half century in national politics, he grasped that Kamala would turn out to be such an obvious loser that nobody in the Democrats would dare try to push him into retirement after just one term.

Finally, Shallow State theory would suggest that Joe picked Kamala because she was a (sort of) black woman, and in 2020 that seemed like a genius thing to do.

A friend once suggested a reasonable candidate for an unelected figure of high behind-the-scenes influence in America: former Google chairman Eric Schmidt.

This is not to say that Schmidt runs America, it's just that if there is an Orwellian Inner Party in the USA, Schmidt would be a reasonable #1 draft pick. Schmidt is very bright, very energetic, very rich, and extremely connected. I was going to excerpt the best parts of his Wikipedia biography, but it's too exhausting for a layabout like me. I'll just recount the last line in his "Other Ventures" section:

Since 2023, Schmidt has been involved in building White Stork, a startup developing suicide attack drones.[79]

Apparently, Schmidt's start-up is testing artificial intelligence-directed flying death robots in Ukraine.

This is not to say that Schmidt has made efforts to stay obscure and occluded. He appears to be a vigorous self-promoter, striving to be recognized as an important Peak State figure. It’s just that nobody below about the 95th percentile of IQ can remember who he is. For example, in 2021, Schmidt co-authored a book entitled The Age of AI with an MIT professor and with Henry Kissinger, who was 98 years old at the time.