There are few opportunities for the general public to see The Deep State (TDS), people they influence and tentacles that reach into industry, non-profits and federal agencies. Bernie, Trump, 9/11 and now are a few of the times we have been able to view TDS in real time. The power struggle between CIA, FBI, Department of State and Pentagon has erupted into a non compliant public. I don’t think Congress is a major player anymore. NSA was probably created to try and squelch the power struggles of the CIA and FBI.

The current version of TDS is probably the one created by the Reagan administration. Described in the article, The Armageddon Plan, as method to survive a nuclear war with the USSR which morphed into terrorists with nuclear weapons. The immediate actions following 9/11 were based on the drills Cheney and Rumsfeld had participated in during the Reagan and Bush I years.

The outline of the plan was simple. Once the United States was (or believed itself about to be) under nuclear attack, three teams would be sent from Washington to three different locations around the United States. Each team would be prepared to assume leadership of the country, and would include a Cabinet member who was prepared to become President. If the Soviet Union were somehow to locate one of the teams and hit it with a nuclear weapon, the second team or, if necessary, the third could take over.
The Armageddon Plan

The CIA and Pentagon run independent programs infiltrating and using commercial companies to meet their objectives. In-Q-Tel is the capital investment firm of the CIA. The Pentagon created the Highlands Group which morphed into the Forum in 1998.

The origins of this ingenious strategy trace back to a secret Pentagon-sponsored group, that for the last two decades has functioned as a bridge between the US government and elites across the business, industry, finance, corporate, and media sectors. The group has allowed some of the most powerful special interests in corporate America to systematically circumvent democratic accountability and the rule of law to influence government policies, as well as public opinion in the US and around the world. The results have been catastrophic: NSA mass surveillance, a permanent state of global war, and a new initiative to transform the US military into Skynet.
INSURGE INTELLIGENCE Part One

Part of the puzzle for us is which companies to support with our dollars, clicks and indirect activities. It is easier to see the connection between Lockheed to the Military. Industrial, Financial Complex (MIFC) than to the tech and media companies.

Lastly ponder the question of corporate control and independent management in the era of government funding. Is Google a real standalone company or is Facebook the social network department for the NSA?
Is the wealth of Bill Gates, the equity positions of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, or the tax dodge shares of Mark Zuckerberg a true reflection of their actual ownership stakes in their respective companies; or are they mere fronts for a shadow government? Just how many Eric Schmidt types are embedded in high-tech pulling the strings for the intelligence community?
CIA Funding of Tech Companies Intellihub.com

The decreasing difference between Democratic and Republican political leaders is a visible symptom of group think. The TDS influence in the Republican party is probably partially counter balanced by the Koch machine. (TDS want to be). The Clinton machine is highly infiltrated or co-opted by TDS. The Clinton machine is probably happy with the power to collect lots of money and do not have an ideological stand.

The group think directing TDS activity in media and high tech companies can be found in Thomas Barnett, The Pentagon’s New Map.

No better illustration of the truly chauvinistic, narcissistic, and self-congratulatory ideology of power at the heart of the military-industrial complex is a book by long-time Highlands Forum delegate, Dr. Thomas Barnett, The Pentagon’s New Map.
Barnett’s vision is neoconservative to the root. He sees the world as divided into essentially two realms: The Core, which consists of advanced countries playing by the rules of economic globalization (the US, Canada, UK, Europe and Japan) along with developing countries committed to getting there (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and some others); and the rest of the world, which is The Gap, a disparate wilderness of dangerous and lawless countries defined fundamentally by being “disconnected” from the wonders of globalization. This includes most of the Middle East and Africa, large swathes of South America, as well as much of Central Asia and Eastern Europe. It is the task of the United States to “shrink The Gap,” by spreading the cultural and economic “rule-set” of globalization that characterizes The Core, and by enforcing security worldwide to enable that “rule-set” to spread.
These two functions of US power are captured by Barnett’s concepts of “Leviathan” and “System Administrator.” The former is about rule-setting to facilitate the spread of capitalist markets, regulated via military and civilian law. The latter is about projecting military force into The Gap in an open-ended global mission to enforce security and engage in nation-building. Not “rebuilding,” he is keen to emphasize, but building “new nations.”
INSURGE INTELLIGENCE Part Two

I believe part of our responsibility is to identify the TDS players, major minor and inconsequential. Keep them in our collective memory. Once identified plans or actions can be made to minimize their effectiveness.

Total participants in the DoD’s Highlands Forum number over a thousand, although sessions largely consist of small closed workshop style gatherings of maximum 25–30 people, bringing together experts and officials depending on the subject. Delegates have included senior personnel from SAIC and Booz Allen Hamilton, RAND Corp., Cisco, Human Genome Sciences, eBay, PayPal, IBM, Google, Microsoft, AT&T, the BBC, Disney, General Electric, Enron, among innumerable others; Democrat and Republican members of Congress and the Senate; senior executives from the US energy industry such as Daniel Yergin of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates; and key people involved in both sides of presidential campaigns.
Other participants have included senior media professionals: David Ignatius, associate editor of the Washington Post and at the time the executive editor of the International Herald Tribune; Thomas Friedman, long-time New York Times columnist; Arnaud de Borchgrave, an editor at Washington Times and United Press International; Steven Levy, a former Newsweek editor, senior writer for Wired and now chief tech editor at Medium; Lawrence Wright, staff writer at the New Yorker; Noah Shachtmann, executive editor at the Daily Beast; Rebecca McKinnon, co-founder of Global Voices Online; Nik Gowing of the BBC; and John Markoff of the New York Times.
INSURGE INTELLIGENCE Part Two

other clues of TDS activity
Facebook encryption vulnerability.

Practice techniques of protest suppression missile launchers to North Dakota

Rick Perry now wants to run the Energy Department and its nuclear arsenal.