by Alan Browne
What Are We Actually Talking About?
The term “deep state” has become linked to so much conspiracy-theory baggage that serious discussion of the topic is often dismissed before it begins. But beneath the noise lay two very important questions: To what extent do entrenched networks of power—spanning intelligence agencies, defense contractors, corporate lobbies, and political institutions—operate within the United States? And, what degree of autonomy from democratic accountability do they have while pursuing interests that are not necessarily aligned with those of the general public?
In academic and political discourse, the “deep state” refers to a covert network within government that exerts significant influence over national policy and decision-making. Sometimes, even operating beyond the reach of legitimate elected government. This is not necessarily a cabal of shadowy figures meeting in secret rooms like a James Bond villain. However, it is more accurately described as a “system of powerful, unelected bureaucrats who think they decide, that they govern, on all things more so than any elected official”. As one analysis puts it, the deep state is “a hard-to-perceive level of government or super-control that exists regardless of elections and that may thwart popular movements or radical change”.
This concept is not new.
In 1961, President Kennedy’s top adviser Arthur Schlesinger wrote a 15-page memo warning that the CIA had become a “state within a state”—a phrase that captures the essence of what we now call the deep state. Schlesinger expressed concern that “no one knows how many potential problems for US foreign policy—and how much potential friction with friendly states—are being created at this moment by CIA clandestine intelligence operations”. This warning, preserved in recently released JFK files, offers documented evidence that concerns about unelected power centers within government are not the product of modern paranoia. Even Kennedy’s predecessor, and former World War II general, Dwight Eisenhower, alerted the American public of their existence in his farewell address.
The State as an Instrument of Class Rule
To understand how such power structures operate, it is useful to turn to a thinker who analyzed the nature of the state with remarkable clarity: Vladimir Lenin. In “The State and Revolution” (1917), Lenin argued that the state is not a neutral arbiter of society’s interests but rather “a tool for class oppression, a creation born of one social class’s desire to control all other social classes”. Whether a dictatorship or a democracy, the state functions, in Lenin’s analysis, as “an instrument of class oppression”—a machine “for holding the obedience of one class to other subordinate classes”.
Lenin’s framework helps illuminate what the deep state represents in practice. It is the capture of state machinery by organized interests that use its powers—intelligence, law enforcement, contracting, and regulation—to advance their own agendas. The state, in this view, is not a neutral instrument but a prize to be won and wielded. As Lenin observed, the state “arises directly out of class antagonisms” and has “the ultimate purpose of suppressing the ‘wage-slave’ proletariat in favour of the ‘bourgeoisie’”.
This is not to suggest that the United States functions as a Leninist state in the early 20th century. But Lenin’s insight—that state institutions can become instruments of particular class interests rather than neutral administrators of the public good—offers a useful lens for examining how concentrated wealth and organized power shape policy outcomes. When Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick remarked in 2025 that Lockheed Martin, which generates “97% of its revenue from the US government” is “basically an arm of the US government”, he was acknowledging a structural reality -- the line between public authority and private corporate power has become deeply blurred.
Jack London’s Prophetic Vision
More than a century ago, long before the term “deep state” entered popular discourse, the American novelist Jack London foresaw many of these dynamics. In his 1908 dystopian novel “The Iron Heel”, London depicted the rise of an oligarchic tyranny in the United States—a future in which “the great capitalistic monopolies of the U.S. band together in a fascistic organization”. This oligarchy, which London called the “Iron Heel,” creates “a caste system with a plutocratic aristocracy at the top, supported by secret police, a military oligarchy, and a few powerful subsidized unions that aid in suppressing the majority of organized labor”.
London’s novel, written years before World War I, “anticipated many features of the past century, including the rise of fascism, the emergence of domestic terrorism, and the growth of centralized government surveillance and authority”. It was recognized by George Orwell for its “foresight regarding the rise of fascism in Europe”. London speculated that “the corporate oligarchy would stomp down the revolution by the workers and that it would take 300 years of underground resistance for the powerful 1% to be overthrown”.
The parallels between London’s fictional oligarchy and contemporary power structures are striking. The Iron Heel’s tactics—state propaganda, violent suppression of opposition, the manipulation of political outcomes, and the use of subsidized unions to control labor—bear an uncomfortable resemblance to real-world dynamics. London, a socialist who eventually resigned from the party amid the ideological turmoil of the early 20th century, understood that concentrated economic power naturally seeks to capture political power. His novel serves as a reminder that these concerns are not new; they have been part of American political consciousness for generations.
The Defense-Industrial Complex: A Case Study in State Capture
Perhaps the most concrete example of deep-state dynamics in action is the relationship between the US government and the defense industry. This is not speculation; it is documented fact.
Just this month, August of 2026, the Pentagon awarded Raytheon (an RTX subsidiary) a “$22.9 billion contract” to dramatically boost Tomahawk missile production. The contract will allow annual production to increase from just 60 missiles to more than 1,000. The US military, scrambling to rebuild depleted stocks after supplying large amounts of arms to allies and using munitions in ongoing conflicts, is brokering multi-year deals with the biggest US defense contractors. Earlier that month, the military signed similar deals to ramp up production of Patriot and THAAD interceptor missile parts.
But this is only the most visible part of a much larger pattern. Lockheed Martin, the nation’s largest defense contractor, generates “97% of its revenue from the US government”. As Commerce Secretary Lutnick put it, these companies are “basically an arm of the US government”. The Trump administration has even discussed acquiring equity stakes in major defense contractors. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has handed out millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded grants to these companies to expand factories while also looking to have a direct investment interests with those very same businesses.
These figures are not anomalies and they reflect a systemic reality. The defense industry is so thoroughly integrated with the state that distinguishing between public and private becomes almost meaningless. Private defense firms received a majority of the Pentagon’s $4.4 trillion discretionary spending budget and the elected representatives in Congress who are supposed to provide legislative oversight actual represent these firms and help pave the way for billions more in handouts. A review of the budget bill signed in July 2025, and the campaign contributions of those who voted for it, only proves this point and it is merely one example of countless similar cases.
This is the deep state in its most tangible form. A revolving door of personnel, a cascade of taxpayer dollars flowing to private corporations, and a policy environment shaped by the interests of those who profit from perpetual military spending. The Government Accountability Office found in June 2025 that major defense programs now take nearly “12 years on average” to deliver even initial capability. This is 18 months longer than the previous year, but way more expensive. Combined costs across 30 major programs has increased by “$49.3 billion”. The system is not only expensive, but it is profoundly inefficient. Yet, the money continues to flow.
The Broader Web of Subsidized Interests
The defense industry is far from the only sector where taxpayer dollars subsidize concentrated private interests. The food system offers another instructive example.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—commonly known as food stamps—has long been a major subsidy channel for food producers. Recent legislation has slashed “$185.9 billion from SNAP over the next 10 years”, a 20 percent reduction, while simultaneously showering cash on already lavishly subsidized farmers, mainly corn and soybean producers. As one analysis put it, “millions are likely to go hungry while Big Ag is showered with new subsidies”.
This dynamic—cutting assistance to the poor while increasing subsidies to powerful agribusiness interests—illustrates how government policy is shaped not by the needs of the general public but by the organized lobbying power of concentrated industries. The food stamp program is estimated to account for about “7.5% of sales” at major grocers and food companies, meaning that companies from Walmart to Smithfield Foods have a direct financial stake in maintaining the program—not as a matter of public welfare, but as a matter of corporate revenue.
When one in seven Americans lives on food stamps, the subsidy to food producers becomes, in effect, a subsidy to the workers who consume their products—a wage supplement paid for by the taxpayer, which allows corporations to keep labor costs low while still generating profits. This is not conspiracy. It is the documented structure of the modern American economy.
The K-Shaped Economy and the Wealth Gap
The economic context in which these dynamics unfold is stark. As of the third quarter of 2025, the wealthiest “1% of Americans controlled nearly 32% of the nation’s wealth”—a record high—while the bottom “50% held just 2.5%”. Imagine a society where one person out of every one-hundred people has more wealth than half of them combined. That is the U.S. today!
This represents the most extreme wealth inequality since the Federal Reserve began tracking the data in 1989 and this is not a temporary or cyclical phenomenon. As Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi noted, “This is a structural, fundamental problem”. The top 1% “holding a total of $55.9 trillion in wealth” while the bottom 50%, which consists of 67.7 million households, survive on a fraction of that.
The term “K-shaped economy” has been used to describe this divergence—one line going up for the wealthy, another going down for everyone else. Working-class Americans live in a substantially harsher economy, experiencing financial strain much more directly in their daily lives. Real wages declined “0.3% for low-wage workers in 2025”, while household electricity costs rose more than “9%”. A full-time worker near a large city must now earn “$33.63 per hour” to afford a modest two-bedroom rental home; more than half of all wage earners can't even afford a modest one-bedroom apartment.
The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour for the twenty states that use it as their default minimum and it hasn’t been raised since 2009. Food service workers across the U.S. get a pitiful $2 and change per hour depending on what state they live in. How are they to afford to live? Customers leave tips to “reward them” for good service while the restaurant owners, many of them major corporations, pay them less than $60 a week because they are all part-time. This is the “richest most powerful country in the world” in the year 2026!
Historical Patterns and the Question of Resistance
These conditions of extreme inequality, state capture by concentrated interests, and the systematic subsidization of corporate power are not unprecedented. Historians have identified three previous eras when oligarchs effectively took over the US government: the 1850s, the 1890s, and the 1920s. In each case, concentrated wealth captured the levers of state power, and in each case, popular resistance eventually pushed back.
The question for the present is whether—and how—working-class Americans can organize effective resistance to these dynamics. The early labor movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries faced similar challenges: organized capital, state repression, and the co-optation of union leadership by corporate interests. Jack London’s “The Iron Heel” dramatized these conflicts, showing how the oligarchy used “a few powerful subsidized unions” to suppress the majority of organized labor.
Today, the mechanisms of control are more sophisticated but no less effective. Surveillance capabilities have been largely auctioned off to private industry through mechanisms like the National Defense Authorization Act. Data centers house vast databases of personal information. Intelligence agencies conduct covert operations that destabilize democratically elected governments. The deep state, in this context, is not a single conspiracy but a complex ecosystem of interlocking interests that together shape policy in ways that are often invisible to the public.
Conclusion: Beyond Paranoia, Toward Clarity
To speak of the deep state is not to embrace conspiracy theory. It is to acknowledge a documented reality: that organized, concentrated interests—operating through intelligence agencies, defense contractors, corporate lobbies, and political action committees—exercise enormous influence over government policy, often with minimal democratic accountability.
The evidence is overwhelming: the CIA’s history of covert operations, from the Bay of Pigs to Iran-Contra; the defense industry’s near-total dependence on government contracts; the systematic subsidization of agribusiness while cutting food aid to the poor; the extreme concentration of wealth that leaves the bottom 50% with just 2.5% of the nation’s assets. These are not the products of fevered imagination; they are the structural features of American political economy.
Lenin’s insight—that the state is an instrument of class rule—helps explain how these dynamics persist. Jack London’s prophetic novel reminds us that these concerns are not new. And the current economic data makes clear that the stakes are high.
Whether working-class Americans can organize effective resistance to these dynamics remains to be seen. History suggests that when economic stress reaches a breaking point, popular movements emerge—sometimes peaceful, sometimes not. But understanding the nature of the power structures arrayed against them is a necessary first step. The deep state, in its real-world manifestation, is not a shadowy cabal but a system of institutionalized power that serves organized interests at the expense of the general public. Recognizing this reality is not paranoia; it is the beginning of clarity.
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