It’s Not Just Spying – How the NSA Has Turned Into a Giant Profit Center for Corrupt Insiders

Michael Krieger | Posted Monday Oct 20, 2014// http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2014/10/20/its-not-just-spying-how-the-nsa-has-turned-into-a-giant-profit-center-for-corrupt-insiders/

Dear NSA Employees, You Now Have a Green Light to Loot and Pillage. It’s Time to Get Paid:
Are you just another one of those frustrated NSA employees who feels that unconstitutionally spying on your fellow citizenry under false pretenses isn’t giving you same thrill it once did? If so, have no fear.
Are you are sick and tired of having to spilt your precious working hours defending the destruction of our nation’s founding document to those pesky terroristic media dinosaurs who still think investigative journalism belongs in Amerika? If so, have I got a solution for you.
While it may sound too good to be true, trust me it’s not. You see, in recent years almost all crony-capitalist criminal activities have been deemed legal in the land of the free (to pillage). This incredible opportunity allows you to directly leverage your intelligence skill-set to earn the big bucks you know you’ve always deserved. You can now do just that by working in the private sector without having to give up that cushy government day job! I mean if we’re going to have this banana republic thing going we may as well GET PAID. Am I right?
Keep at it patriots, Michael Krieger
If the above sounds like a joke, unfortunately it is not. Last week, two very important stories came out; one from Reuters and the other from Buzzfeed. They both zero in on how current NSA employees are using their expertise and connections to make big money in the private sector while still working at the NSA. Let’s start with the Reuters story, which covers former NSA-head Keith Alexander’s business relationship with the NSA’s current Chief Technical Officer, Patrick Dowd.

Before we get into the meat of this story, I want to set the stage with a little background. In case you forgot, Keith Alexander launched his own cyber-security firm, IronNet Cybersecurity Inc., earlier this year. I highlighted this development in the post, Ex-NSA Chief Keith Alexander is Now Pimping Advice to Wall Street Banks for $1 Million a Month, in which I noted:

So what’s a Peeping Tom, anti-democratic, Constitution-trampling intelligence crony to do after leaving decades of “public service?” Move into the private sector and collect a fat paycheck from Wall Street, naturally. Following in the footsteps of some of the other top tier public sector cronies looking to cash out after doing their best to destroy the Republic, such as Banana Ben Bernanke collecting $250,000 per speech and Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner hopping over to private equity giant Warburg Pincus, Mr. Alexander is in good crooked company.
So what is Mr. Alexander charging for his expertise? He’s looking for $1 million per month. Yes, you read that right. That’s the rate that his firm, IronNet Cybersecurity Inc., pitched to Wall Street’s largest lobbying group the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), which ultimately negotiated it down to a mere $600,000 a month.

As if Mr. Alexander plowing right through the revolving door to earn $1 million per month from Wall Street less than a year after being at the center of perhaps the most expansive government violation of the Constitution in U.S. history wasn’t bad enough, he is now hiring top people still working at the NSA to concurrently work at his cyber-security firm. I wish I was making this up.
Reuters reports that:

(Reuters) – The U.S. National Security Agency has launched an internal review of a senior official’s part-time work for a private venture started by former NSA director Keith Alexander that raises questions over the blurring of lines between government and business.
Under the arrangement, which was confirmed by Alexander and current intelligence officials, NSA’s Chief Technical Officer, Patrick Dowd, is allowed to work up to 20 hours a week at IronNet Cybersecurity Inc, the private firm led by Alexander, a retired Army general and his former boss.
The arrangement was approved by top NSA managers, current and former officials said. It does not appear to break any laws and it could not be determined whether Dowd has actually begun working for Alexander, who retired from the NSA in March.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials, some of whom requested anonymity to discuss personnel matters, said they could not recall a previous instance in which a high-ranking U.S. intelligence official was allowed to concurrently work for a private-sector firm.

Alexander, who was the eavesdropping and code-breaking agency’s longest-serving director, confirmed the arrangement with Dowd in an interview with Reuters. He said he understood it had been approved by all the necessary government authorities, and that IronNet Cybersecurity, not the government, would pay for Dowd’s time spent with the firm.

As if the entity paying Dowd for his time spent at the firm is the issue. Alexander is the definition of the word creep.

Dowd, he said, wanted to join IronNet, and the deal was devised as a way to keep Dowd’s technological expertise at least partly within the U.S. government, rather than losing him permanently to the private sector.

Oh I get it now. America has become so hopelessly corrupt, that the revolving door itself is becoming too much of a headache. So the solution is to just get rid of it completely.

“I wanted Pat to stay at NSA. He wanted to come on board,” Alexander said.
Alexander and Dowd have jointly filed patents based on technology they developed while at the NSA. 
“If it isn’t structured very carefully, this runs the risk of conflict of interest and disclosure of national secrets,” Rothstein said. “It is a situation that in the interests of good government should be avoided unless there’s some very strong reason to do it.”

So Americans aren’t entitled to any privacy because of a trumped up terrorist threat, yet top NSA employees can moonlight for private businesses involved in the same areas as the NSA with apparently no threat to national security. America has gone completely insane.
Unsurprisingly, this is just the tip of the crony-capitalist fraud that the NSA has become. In fact, Buzzfeed broke a related story recently. It reports how one of the most powerful individuals at the NSA, Teresa H. Shea., has several intelligence related businesses run from her home. She is the registered agent for one of them, her husband holds that position for the other.
Teresa Shea is the director of Signals Intelligence, or SIGINT, which refers to all electronic eavesdropping and interception, including the controversial domestic surveillance program that collects information about Americans’ phone use. Naturally, no one is commenting.
From Buzzfeed:

On a quiet street in Ellicott City, Maryland, a blue-grey two-story clapboard house, set back from the road, is shaded by two sycamores and a towering maple. It’s the unassuming home of one of the National Security Agency’s most powerful officials, Teresa H. Shea.
In September, BuzzFeed News disclosed a potential conflict of interest involving Shea, the director of Signals Intelligence. Called SIGINT in espionage jargon, it refers to all electronic eavesdropping and interception, including the controversial domestic surveillance program that collects information about Americans’ phone use.
As BuzzFeed News reported, there’s a private SIGINT consulting and contracting business based at Shea’s home in that quiet neighborhood. Shea’s husband, a business executive in the small but profitable SIGINT industry, is the resident agent for the firm, Telic Networks.
In addition, James Shea also works for a major SIGINT contracting firm, DRS Signal Solutions Inc., which appears to do SIGINT business with the NSA.
DRS declined to comment, and the NSA declined to answer questions related to the Sheas, Telic Networks, or DRS.
Now there’s a new wrinkle, which the NSA has also declined to discuss: Yet another company, apparently focused on the office and electronics business, is based at the Shea residence on that well-tended lot.
This company is called Oplnet LLC.
Teresa Shea, who has been at the NSA since 1984, is the company’s resident agent. The company’s articles of organization, signed by Teresa Shea, show that the firm was established in 1999 primarily “to buy, sell, rent and lease office and electronic equipment and related goods and services.” An attorney who also signed the document, Alan Engel, said he couldn’t comment on client matters.
Records show Oplnet does own a six-seat airplane, as well a condominium property with an assessed value of $275,000 in the resort town of Hilton Head, South Carolina.
This summer the NSA turned down a Freedom of Information Act request for Shea’s public financial disclosure form. The agency said that, unlike every other federal agency, it could withhold the disclosure because of a sweeping 1959 law that allows it to keep almost everything secret.

Go ahead and read that twice. Read it three times. Still think we live in a free country?

Financial disclosure forms are central to public monitoring of ethics and potential conflicts of interests by federal officials. Without that form, journalists or concerned citizens must comb through corporate incorporations, property records, UCC filings, and court records to learn about an official’s financial interests outside of office. Often, these documents are not online and are in offices scattered across different states.
Teresa Shea, as head of SIGINT, has defended the program in declarations in two federal court cases.
Her husband has been involved in SIGINT as a private contractor and engineer since at least 1990, when he set up a company called Sigtek Inc., which would get hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts with the federal government, according to a federal contracting database. On his LinkedIn page, James Shea says the company’s key markets included “Defense SIGINT.”
In 2010, Teresa Shea was appointed the director of all SIGINT at the NSA, after a period working in London. The same year, James Shea became vice president at a major SIGINT contracting firm, DRS Signal Solutions, a subsidiary of DRS Technologies.
As BuzzFeed reported in its first story on the Sheas, neither the NSA nor DRS will comment on whether the company has contracts with Teresa Shea’s directorate.
Asked if there was a conflict of interest, DRS spokesman Michael Mount said “I understand your story, and we’ll still decline to comment.” He said that when responding to BuzzFeed News about questions concerning James Shea, the company has coordinated with the NSA.
Matthew Aid, who has written a book about the NSA, The Secret Sentry, said it would be difficult to understand why Oplnet, this second home-based business, was set up by Ms. Shea, without knowing more.
But he adds that the fact that Shea’s husband works for a SIGINT contractor, and has a SIGINT related company at the couple’s home, is confounding.
“From a purely financial point of view, there’s so much potential of conflict of interest.”
“The fact that the NSA will not respond to your request raises in my mind a host of questions. If there was nothing there, they could have come back to you and said, ‘She’d been diligent. She’s in compliance.’ Then there’s no story. But they’ve said nothing. That to me is what could potential signal some problems.”

Welcome to the American Dream in 2014. Looks a lot like the Soviet Dream.
Utterly shameless.
In Liberty,
Michael Kriegerhttp://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2014/10/20/its-not-just-spying-how-the-nsa-has-turned-into-a-giant-profit-center-for-corrupt-insiders/

“LOCK ON THE TRACTOR BEAMS…”

Posted on October 31, 2014 by Joseph P. Farrell • Filed Under: Cosmic War • http://gizadeathstar.com/2014/10/lock-tractor-beams/

Many regular readers here shared this article from our friends at Phys.org, concerning the successful experiment conducted by Australian scientists to create a small tractor beam, in this case, one capable of pulling or pushing a small glass bead to a much greater distance than in previous experiments: some 20cm. OK, it’s not quite Star Trek, where entire huge starships are thus pushed or pulled, but it’s at least a start:
Researchers build reversible tractor beam that moves objects 100 times farther than other efforts
The key to this feat was discovered to be changing the polarity:

“The new tractor beam is based on heat—a laser that shines a doughnut-shaped beam (it has a cold center) was fired at a gold covered tiny (0.2mm diameter) glass bead that was small enough to just fit inside the beam, where it was cold. The heat from the surrounding beam caused the surface of the bead to heat—creating hotspots. When the hotspots came into contact with air particles, those particles were repelled, which in turn caused an opposing force against the glass bead, pushing it (up to a distance of 20cm). The researchers found they could change the movement of the beads by adjusting the polarization of the laser, causing changes in the hotspots on the beads. That meant the beads could be pushed forward, stopped, pulled back, or held in place.”

The real questions are, why reveal such technologies now, and to what pitch of development might they have been brought in black projects research (and for that matter, how long have they been researching it)? If one stops to consider this announcement in a wider context – the sudden push of 3-d printing (or additive manufacturing) at a popular level and in a variety of uses, the announcements of DARPA to make the USA “warp capable” in 100 years, the increased interest in the privatization of space, both commercially and in terms of exploration, and the push to mine asteroids and other celestial bodies, and finally, the recent concerns about how to deal with threatening asteroids, how to push them out of dangerous collision paths with Earth – all these things suggest to my mind that this technology might be being investigated for its potential utility (a long way off, to be sure, given the state of what is known about it publicly) in all these areas. Combining such a technology with additive manufacturing would be a huge benefit for the manufacture of small components; its utility, if scaled up, for other uses is apparent, including the possibility that it might be scaled up to such a size as to be able to deal with small celestial objects.

Which leaves the question, why reveal all these technologies now? Consider the rush of recent announcements: Rossi’s cold fusion E-Cat reactor, DARPA’s strange “warp capability” goal, 3-d printing, Lockheed curious timing of its own fusion reactor announcement… all of this suggests to me that the global financial and technocratic elites know big changes, the largest technologically and culturally, in human history, are coming, and they are beginning to prepare (and to prepare us) for it. This means, similarly, that a huge transition both in domestic and international finance is under way, and the technologies being “memed” right now suggest that this system will to some extent be equity-based, as former HUD Assistant Secretary Catherine Fitts has hypothesized.

There is one thing absent  – and glaringly so – in the public perceptions and even to some extent the elites’ seemingly consistent push of these technologies into the public consciousness, and that is spirituality… how will humanity deal with such a vast expansion of its technological power. Ultimately, that remains up to each individual to decide… and therein is the rub, for the technologies themselves can be both individually liberating, or, conversely, horribly collectivizing.

CHINA’S ALLEGED PESKY ANTI-STEALTH CAPABILITY

Posted on October 30, 2014 by Joseph P. Farrell • Filed Under: News • http://gizadeathstar.com/2014/10/chinas-alleged-pesky-anti-stealth-capability/

This article was shared by Mr. M.N., a regular reader here, and it’s worth passing along, especially in view of America’s “Pivot to the Pacific” strategy and its growing concern over China’s growing power. America’s doctrine of warfare as it has emerged since World War Two (under the learn-while-you-burn tutelage of the Germans) has been one of technological and fire-power superiority and attrition, backed up by an immense logistical capability, a doctrine that, in some sense, had to emerge to combat the cluster of potential enemies arrayed against it in the post-war world, and in a world with an economically powerful and technologically capable China, with a vast population base, that doctrine is even more reliant upon technology and fire-power attrition. And the key to that doctrine is in turn the necessity of achieving and maintaining air superiority. To this end, of course, America has developed an expensive array of radar stealthy fighters and strategic bombers, a luxury that smaller powers cannot afford.
Except… there’s a glitch in this wonderful stealthy world: it doesn’t work as well as the popular imagination thinks it does:
Did China Just Render America’s $1 Trillion Stealth Fighter Program Obsolete?
I hope you caught the problems here(and let’s also recall, in this regard, Lockheed Martin’s fusion reactor claims, and the lack of any really good hard data backing it up):

“In a 2013 RAND Corporation report, one of the nation’s foremost military analysts, blasted the F-35 for being a fighter that “can’t turn, can’t climb, can’t run.” Proponents of the F-35 reply that because it’s stealthy, it shouldn’t have to do any of those things — lobbing missiles at its foes from over the horizon, and long before they can even see it.
“Unfortunately, it turns out that the F-35 may not do the “invisibility” thing very well, either.
“As DefenseNews.com recently revealed, China has a new device that may be able to track Lockheed’s F-35 fighter with “passive” radar detection technology. Dubbed the DWL002, China’s equipment can apparently detect stealth aircraft at distances of up to 400 kilometers — and 600 kilometers for larger “stealth” targets — processing “pulse, frequency agility, pulse duration, tactical air navigation system, distance measuring equipment, jitter/stagger radar, and identification friend or foe” signals emitted by the otherwise stealthy aircraft to determine its location.”

And there’s more bad news of an historical nature to ponder:

“This problem with the F-35’s lack of invisibility, it turns out, is not limited to China. According to DN, both the Czechs and the Ukrainians have similar systems for passive intercept of electronic signals, capable of detecting stealth aircraft.
“Similarly, Aviation Week reported earlier this year that certain very high frequency (VHF) radar systems, such as Russia’s P-14 Oborona VHF early warning system, and its 3D Nebo SVU active electronically scanned array (AESA), may also be capable of detecting the F-35. (A new Chinese naval radar system, Type 517M VHF, may be similarly effective against the F-35.)
“And of course, there is the Balkan War incident to keep in mind. On March 27, 1999, Serbian anti-aircraft forces used a 1960s vintage P-18 VHF acquisition radar system (working in conjunction with an SA-3 SAM system for proximity targeting) to detect and down a F-117 stealth fighter jet.”

And let’s not forget the recent USS Donald Cook incident either, where an obsolescent Russian Sukhoi-25 apparently shut down the missile frigate’s Aegis missile defense system, not even allowing it to reboot.
Now there’s two problems here, and one of them is well-known, and the other concerns my high-octane speculation of the day. The well-known problem is this: radar is not, as the popular imagination has it, a “bounce,” but rather, is a secondary transmitter effect. The radar signal itself stimulates a current in objects which become a secondary transmitter via resonance, transmitting a signal back… know the resonance, and, theoretically, viola… one can stimulate that secondary current effect. Now, with stealthy aircraft, all the gimicks are meant to damp this effect. Looking at the Serbian downing of the F-117 in 1999, my guess is that this would appear to have been the basis of their ability to down the aircraft, probably, as hinted at in the article though not openly stated, through some sort of interferometry effect that magnified that secondary transmitter effect.
Which brings us to the second problem, one huge with implications for the “Pacific pivot,” for after a trillion dollars, it appears, at least on the surface, that we’re left with, as the article begins, with an aircraft that (1) can’t climb, (2) can’t turn, (3) can’t run, and (4) can’t be invisible either. So why not simply build a conventional aircraft to do all those things, like France, the U.K., Germany, Italy, Russia and Japan and anyone else with an air force does? Indeed, all of those countries certainly have the technological capability to build stealthy aircraft, yet, they do not do so. And I suspect the question is more than just budgetary concerns; they also know these basic principles, and know, ultimately, that there can be countermeasures conceivably rendering stealth not-so-stealthy.
So why does the USA insist on pursuing it?
My high octane suspicion is that “stealth” programs are exactly that, “stealthy” not in the radar invisibility sense, but in the budgetary sense, and that the real money is going for something else, and altogether much more exotic than stealth. After all, this is Lockheed-Martin we’re talking about folks, and you cannot tell me that $1,000,000,000,000 has only bought a plane that can’t climb, can’t turn, can’t run, and can’t ultimately be stealthy. A trillion dollars would buy lots of big underground facilities, fusion reactors, DARPA warp drive projects, and tractor beams though… but that’s another story…

Facebook Joins Tor, And The Dark Web Gets A Little More Useful (If A Little Less Cool)

from the good-news dept

Just a couple months ago, we wrote about how the folks behind Tor were looking for ways to deal with the fact that much of the web treats Tor visitors differently. It's a tough problem to solve, as we noted, because for all the benefits that Tor provides by allowing people to be anonymous, it's also very much a tool that is abused by some for nefarious purposes, including spamming and attacks. For sites that have any sort of heuristic systems in place (including us at Techdirt), it often defaults to treating many, if not all, Tor users as second-class citizens. This isn't an easy problem to solve, by any means. We've done our best to train our systems to minimize the hassle for Tor users, and yet they are still more likely to run into issues than non-Tor users (sometimes because of upstream efforts). We're certainly watching this effort closely, in hopes that we can benefit from it as well.

However, it looks like Facebook has taken a rather bold move to help Tor users: setting up its very own Tor hidden service, effectively creating a special "hidden" Tor version of Facebook that is designed for Tor users. Yes, Facebook has joined the dark web. It may not seem as cool as various dark markets and such, but it actually is rather important in helping to validate the use of Tor and the fact that not everything on Tor hidden services are about selling drugs or hiring hitmen, as some reports seem to imply.

This is a pretty big move, because Facebook was rather aggressive in treating tor users badly in the past, sometimes accusing them of hacking their own account, kicking them out or just displaying stuff weirdly. Obviously, users logged into Facebook over Tor are identifying themselves to Facebook, but it does provide more security and privacy for others, and works more seamlessly for those who wish to use Tor regularly.

As Runa Sandvik also notes, this is the first time that a certificate authority has issued a legitimate SSL certificate for a .onion address (Facebook is at https://facebookcorewwwi.onion/ in case you were wondering). Having both of these things happen at once may, as Andy Greenberg jokes, feel sort of like when your parents joined Facebook, but it also, hopefully, is the beginning of more widespread recognition that the Tor hidden services can be useful -- and not just for questionable enterprises. Hopefully others follow Facebook's lead.

Synth Biologists: From Plants To Humans, We Won’t Stop Until We’ve Altered All Life On Earth

Published studies reveal increasing environmental and health risks associated with GM crops and products, repudiating years of industry denial. Similar denial of the risks associated with synbio products raises an obligation for us to independently monitor and oversee these products. But what exactly is involved in synthetic biology? Briefly, it is human designed life, using computerised gene sequencing strands of artificial DNA and associated proteins. It can involve "gene shuffling" or "whole genome construction," using complex algorithm's involving millions of variants. These processes are neither risk free nor benign; they essentially involve the creation of novel life forms that could or would not exist naturally. Although experts have written extensively on the subject there is no dedicated international or national regulation of the associated processes, nor have the complex ethical, social, environmental or legal implications been...

On Machiavellian Statecraft and Conspiracies

jay008 / http://jaysanalysis.com/2014/10/30/on-machiavellian-statecraft-and-conspiracies/

The Art of War.

By: Jay
The popular views attributed to Niccolo Machiavelli are not actually his own.  Having not actually read him, the assumption by many is that he is known for advocating the notion that the ends justify any means, while rulers of state must have no scruples in achieving their ends.  While Machiavelli was a pragmatist in many respects, his positions place him firmly within the classical Western tradition of statecraft.  As a Renaissance thinker, the desire to revive classical Greek and Roman learning was in fashion, and it is within that milieu that we must situate him.  He does not advocate tyranny and abuse, and his insights on intrigue, subterfuge and conspiracy illuminate and rebuke many of the errors of our degenerate, effeminate gaggle of so-called leaders. Machiavelli’s The Prince is well-known, but few are familiar with his Art of War and The Discourses, which contain a wealth of knowledge about the workings of the state and strategic designs, and it is to all of these we must look to gain deeper insight.
In The Discourses, Machiavelli describes the cycle through which most civil states go, from oligarchy to revolution to democracy to anarchy.  Revolutionaries should take note, as the “revolution” they often seek to inflame often ends up bringing an even worse tyranny to follow.  Revolutionaries, unfortunately, are not historically known for a keen understanding of human nature, allowing their ideals to override the real, and  as a result, the Marxist state for example, finds itself frustrated and collapsing from within. Add to this the fact that most historical revolutionaries have been the tools of foreign and economic interests, and one begins to see why the pattern persists.  We can also see something akin to the future ideas of Oswald Spengler, where patterns and cycles are crucial, timeless phenomenon for historical analysis.
Machiavelli writes of the cycle of the state in The Discourses on Livy, Book I:

“Having proposed to myself to treat of the kind of government established at Rome, and of the events that led to its perfection, I must at the beginning observe that some of the writers on politics distinguished three kinds of government, viz. the monarchical, the aristocratic, and the democratic; and maintain that the legislators of a people must choose from these three the one that seems to them most suitable. Other authors, wiser according to the opinion of many, count six kinds of governments, three of which are very bad, and three good in themselves, but so liable to be corrupted that they become absolutely bad. The three good ones are those which we have just named; the three bad ones result from the degradation of the other three, and each of them resembles its corresponding original, so that the transition from the one to the other is very easy. Thus monarchy becomes tyranny; aristocracy degenerates into oligarchy; and the popular government lapses readily into licentiousness. So that a legislator who gives to a state which he founds, either of these three forms of government, constitutes it but for a brief time; for no precautions can prevent either one of the three that are reputed good, from degenerating into its opposite kind; so great are in these the attractions and resemblances between the good and the evil.”

We see here a realistic perspective inherited from the ancients.  All governments are liable to corruption and tyranny, although some more than others. The pattern for degeneration is monarchy becoming a tyranny, aristocracy becoming and oligarchy, and democracy becoming anarchy.  This pattern also hearkens to Aristotle, who made a similar list in his Politics.  History has seen many states, but all fall into these same basic forms.  While some governments are certainly better in form than others, nothing can halt a corrupt, degenerate elite and populace from collapsing when moral degeneracy and corruption reign.  However, there is an important realist corrective to modernity and progressive thinking here that cannot be passed over, which is that the reason for the collapse of any state is not the form of government itself, but the rise of corruption in men’s hearts.  Modern liberalism, which is still the norm among most, in praxis at least, assumes that the solution to problems arises from changes in law and government.  If we can only change our political leaders and get a new crop in!  If we can only change the law to get proposition 666 passed, why then we would have our freedom and progress!  Nothing could be further from the truth, as the problem ultimately lies not in externals, but in man’s own heart.  Corruption is rooted in, and proceeds from, individuals and their decisions, not from external forms and systems.  Classical liberalism and modern liberalism are rooted in the metaphysical error of attributing the location of evil in some institution, and not in man’s own decisions.
In this regard, Machiavelli is a pessimist with respect to human nature.  While the Renaissance is often lauded for its high view of human nature adopted from the Greeks, Machiavelli does not see the populace as able to govern themselves.  Heavily influenced by St. Augustine, Niccolo’s negative appraisal of human nature places him in a non-democratic tradition of classical republicanism.  While critical of monarchy due to its liability to fall into tyranny through its hereditary descendants, it is certainly not the worst form of government, which is democracy.  Early seeds of the U.S. Constitution can also be seen here, as Machiavelli is one of the most famous proponents of republicanism of the Italian tradition, and Madison and Hamilton had clearly read and been influenced by the Florentine thinker, as The Federalist Papers appear to show. Elucidating the cycle of collapse, Machiavelli comments, with hints of the nascent social contract theory:

“Chance has given birth to these different kinds of governments amongst men; for at the beginning of the world the inhabitants were few in number, and lived for a time dispersed, like beasts. As the human race increased, the necessity for uniting themselves for defence made itself felt; the better to attain this object, they chose the strongest and most courageous from amongst themselves and placed him at their head, promising to obey him. Thence they began to know the good and the honest, and to distinguish them from the bad and vicious; for seeing a man injure his benefactor aroused at once two sentiments in every heart, hatred against the ingrate and love for the benefactor. They blamed the first, and on the contrary honored those the more who showed themselves grateful, for each felt that he in turn might be subject to a like wrong; and to prevent similar evils, they set to work to make laws, and to institute punishments for those who contravened them. Such was the origin of justice. This caused them, when they had afterwards to choose a prince, neither to look to the strongest nor bravest, but to the wisest and most just. But when they began to make sovereignty hereditary and non-elective, the children quickly degenerated from their fathers; and, so far from trying to equal their virtues, they considered that a prince had nothing else to do than to excel all the rest in luxury, indulgence, and every other variety of pleasure. The prince consequently soon drew upon himself the general hatred. An object of hatred, he naturally felt fear; fear in turn dictated to him precautions and wrongs, and thus tyranny quickly developed itself. Such were the beginning and causes of disorders, conspiracies, and plots against the sovereigns, set on foot, not by the feeble and timid, but by those citizens who, surpassing the others in grandeur of soul, in wealth, and in courage, could not submit to the outrages and excesses of their princes.

Under such powerful leaders the masses armed themselves against the tyrant, and, after having rid themselves of him, submitted to these chiefs as their liberators. These, abhorring the very name of prince, constituted themselves a new government; and at first, bearing in mind the past tyranny, they governed in strict accordance with the laws which they had established themselves; preferring public interests to their own, and to administer and protect with greatest care both public and private affairs. The children succeeded their fathers, and ignorant of the changes of fortune, having never experienced its reverses, and indisposed to remain content with this civil equality, they in turn gave themselves up to cupidity, ambition, libertinage, and violence, and soon caused the aristocratic government to degenerate into an oligarchic tyranny, regardless of all civil rights. They soon, however, experienced the same fate as the first tyrant; the people, disgusted with their government, placed themselves at the command of whoever was willing to attack them, and this disposition soon produced an avenger, who was sufficiently well seconded to destroy them.

The memory of the prince and the wrongs committed by him being still fresh in their minds, and having overthrown the oligarchy, the people were not willing to return to the government of a prince. A popular government was therefore resolved upon, and it was so organized that the authority should not again fall into the hands of a prince or a small number of nobles. And as all governments are at first looked up to with some degree of reverence, the popular state also maintained itself for a time, but which was never of long duration, and lasted generally only about as long as the generation that had established it; for it soon ran into that kind of license which inflicts injury upon public as well as private interests. Each individual only consulted his own passions, and a thousand acts of injustice were daily committed, so that, constrained by necessity, or directed by the counsels of some good man, or for the purpose of escaping from this anarchy, they returned anew to the government of a prince, and from this they generally lapsed again into anarchy, step by step, in the same manner and from the same causes as we have indicated.  Such is the circle which all republics are destined to run through.”

The cycle of collapse for the republic is similar to that of other forms of government, but is all the more relevant for our present day.  Since the French Revolution, the majority of the world’s states operate under the auspices of being “republics,” but there is an important distinction to be made that Machiavelli could have never foreseen: global shadow government.  In fact, it is Machiavellian realism that leads one to easily understand that our world is governed by international shadow entities that utilize nation states as fronts.  We are far beyond the era of the outdated nation-state going to war against rival nation-state – ours is the era of global oligarchical cartels in competition, with the Anglo-American establishment currently at the top.  Cartels and empires have always existed, but the world has never seen a global secret technocratic shadow government, and in that respect, we are in a unique situation.  The issues of corruption and degeneracy, are not new, but even more rampant than anything in Machiavelli’s day, precisely because there are newer, more sophisticated means of technological tyranny and evil than in any previous age.  We can see from this classical perspective that conspiracies and espionage are not surprising – they are synonymous with perennial statecraft.

New world order.

On conspiracies, Machiavelli explains in The Prince:

“But concerning his subjects, when affairs outside are disturbed he has only to fear that they will conspire secretly, from which a prince can easily secure himself by avoiding being hated and despised, and by keeping the people satisfied with him, which it is most necessary for him to accomplish, as I said above at length. And one of the most efficacious remedies that a prince can have against conspiracies is not to be hated and despised by the people, for he who conspires against a prince always expects to please them by his removal; but when the conspirator can only look forward to offending them, he will not have the courage to take such a course, for the difficulties that confront a conspirator are infinite. And as experience shows, many have been the conspiracies, but few have been successful; because he who conspires cannot act alone, nor can he take a companion except from those whom he believes to be malcontents, and as soon as you have opened your mind to a malcontent you have given him the material with which to content himself, for by denouncing you he can look for every advantage; so that, seeing the gain from this course to be assured, and seeing the other to be doubtful and full of dangers, he must be a very rare friend, or a thoroughly obstinate enemy of the prince, to keep faith with you.

And, to reduce the matter into a small compass, I say that, on the side of the conspirator, there is nothing but fear, jealousy, prospect of punishment to terrify him; but on the side of the prince there is the majesty of the principality, the laws, the protection of friends and the state to defend him; so that, adding to all these things the popular goodwill, it is impossible that any one should be so rash as to conspire. For whereas in general the conspirator has to fear before the execution of his plot, in this case he has also to fear the sequel to the crime; because on account of it he has the people for an enemy, and thus cannot hope for any escape….

For this reason I consider that a prince ought to reckon conspiracies of little account when his people hold him in esteem; but when it is hostile to him, and bears hatred towards him, he ought to fear everything and everybody. And well-ordered states and wise princes have taken every care not to drive the nobles to desperation, and to keep the people satisfied and contented, for this is one of the most important objects a prince can have.”

Here Niccolo expounds the heart of conspiracy from the perspective of the ruler.  Conspiracy need only be feared when the ruler is hated as a result of his tyranny or sadistic cruelty.  Fear is a crucial key in the arsenal of the state, but fear must be tempered by virtue and security, and the imbalance in either direction leads to sedition from others and conspiracies become successful.  For the ruler, conspiracy the maintenance of goodwill among subjects is obtained through the management of public perception and genuine goodwill by the ruler.  It is not a license for doing anything and everything to maintain power, as many wrongly accuse Machiavelli, but as a balance of mercy and severity, and that power is maintained by fear.  Contrary to popular opinion, Machiavelli firmly rebukes the notion of immorality and devious designs, opting instead for an approach of balance, with the ruler’s reputation standing on its own through virtue.  Any other imbalance leads the ruler to fall prey to his own vices and overthrown by his own self-destructive folly.
Roman Catholicism through St. Augustine and classical virtue ethics also factor into Machiavelli’s tempering of the prince as it did for medieval warfare as a whole.  This comes to the fore in his lesser known Art of War that was the first treatise on modern warfare that would revolutionize the field.  For ancient and medieval leaders, the state, espionage, warfare and its deceptions, and the game of politics were considered “arts” that could only be mastered through study and practice.  Systematizing everything from military camps, music, flags and colors, size and ranks, Machiavelli revolutionized the medieval army to become a hierarchical standard that would be the norm for future Europe.  On another level, it also contains interesting aspects relating to psychological warfare, espionage and deception that are instructive for us in our day that help to grasp the level of deception we live under.  The ancient arts of statecraft and deception are not forgotten, they have been perfected and through a high-tech overlay, are beyond anything Niccolo could have imagined.
He writes:

“Birds or dust have often discovered the enemy, for where the enemy comes to meet you, he will always raise a great dust which will point out his coming to you. Thus often a Captain when he sees in a place whence he ought to pass, pigeons taking off and other birds flying about freely, circling and not setting, has recognized this to be the place of any enemy ambush, and knowing this has sent his forces forward, saving himself and injuring the enemy. As to the second case, being drawn into it ((which our men call being drawn into a trap)) you ought to look out not to believe readily those things that appear to be less reasonable than they should be: as would be (the case) if an enemy places some booty before you, you would believe that it to be (an act of) love, but would conceal deceit inside it.”

Book VI is the best section for these machinations, and in it we see the following perennial tactics:

• Consult a rising enemy or possible sedition to give the impression of heeding his ideas and win him by feigned interest
• Send wise men into the enemy’s camp as fake attendants of a fake dignitary to assess the enemy
• Use false defectors to be spies in the enemy’s camp
• Conversely, capture the enemy’s commanders to gain intelligence on the opponent
• If you have suspected spies in your camp, disseminate false information to various parties to see how the enemy reacts to which
• Sacrifice a town or some pawns as a gambit to give the enemy a false sense of security
• Utilize religious and superstitious omens as far as your soldiers revere them or invent them
• Disguise your soldiers as the enemy
• Give the appearance of retreat to lead the enemy into a trap
• Leave an open encampment for the enemy with fresh, albeit poisoned, supplies
• Never cause an enemy to despair, since he will only fight more desperately and possibly defeat you
• Use a subterfuge of a fake illness in your camp that leads the enemy to think you are weak
• Communicate among your generals and men with secret ciphers and codes the enemy cannot decode
• Use propaganda and stories to create a boost of morale among your men

The Prince.

Many more could be listed, but these are the most interesting and in our day, these tricks are used by the elite, not on foreign powers primarily, but as the bases for mass deception, with a massive surveillance state, poisoned food and water, false media reports, and countless other ruses.  One might think from this list Machiavelli is immoral and devious, but for him, these are necessary facts of war with the enemy, not on the populace itself.  The goal of war is not virtue for him, but simply to win at all costs.  Yet winning at all costs does not mean being sadistic or cruel or a brute, it means learning the art of war to be a just ruler and by so doing, win the admiration of your soldiers and homeland.  Far from corruption, Machiavelli castigated the corrupt leaders of his day and it serves as an apt warning to ours.  Corruption and effeminate degeneracy among the elite does not lead to power, it leads to the loss of power.  As far as one concedes to evil and vice in his own heart, especially the ruler, to that degree does he lose his power and become subservient to the passions.
He concludes:

“But let us turn to the Italians, who, because they have not wise Princes, have not produced any good army; and because they did not have the necessity that the Spaniards had, have not undertaken it by themselves, so that they remain the shame of the world. And the people are not to blame, but their Princes are, who have been castigated, and by their ignorance have received a just punishment, ignominiously losing the State, (and) without any show of virtu….

Our Italian Princes, before they tasted the blows of the ultramontane wars, believed it was enough for them to know what was written, think of a cautious reply, write a beautiful letter, show wit and promptness in his sayings and in his words, know how to weave a deception, ornament himself with gems and gold, sleep and eat with greater splendor than others, keep many lascivious persons around, conduct himself avariciously and haughtily toward his subjects, become rotten with idleness, hand out military ranks at his will, express contempt for anyone who may have demonstrated any praiseworthy manner, want their words should be the responses of oracles; nor were these little men aware that they were preparing themselves to be the prey of anyone who assaulted them.”