Autocracy, Inc.

What if the next political earthquake you feel—an energy price spike, a wave of trolls on your feed, or even a local corruption scandal—can be traced back to a deal in Dubai, a pipeline across the Baltic, or a meme farm outside St. Petersburg? In Autocracy, Inc., Anne Applebaum argues that twenty-first-century autocracies don’t operate as isolated tyrannies run by one strongman; they function as a global, profit-driven network bound by greed, shared technologies of control, and mutual regime survival. Applebaum contends that this web of regimes, proxies, oligarchs, and enablers—stretching across Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and far beyond—exchanges money, surveillance tools, disinformation tactics, and diplomatic cover to enrich elites and weaken democracies. To understand your world today, she says, you have to see autocracy as a syndicate business model—Autocracy, Inc.—not as a cartoon villain at the top of a pyramid.

From Blocs to Business Deals

Unlike the twentieth-century Cold War, this isn’t a rigid ideological standoff. Autocrats call themselves communists, Islamists, nationalists, or socialists. Some wear suits; others sport fatigues. What unites them isn’t a creed, but a spreadsheet: a relentless focus on personal wealth and power. Chinese police-state technologies train Iranian or Venezuelan security forces. Russian mercenaries keep African dictators in power in return for gold and timber concessions. State banks in Beijing and shell companies in Dubai or Delaware move cash for sanctioned elites. And when street protests break out—from Caracas to Minsk—this network supplies riot gear, surveillance software, and propaganda, plus the narrative that democracy is naïve, chaotic, and a Western trap.

Why This Matters to You

The book shows how Autocracy, Inc. reaches into your daily life. Your utility bill can swing with a decision made in the Kremlin (Nord Stream and gas blackmail). Your local real estate market can be distorted by anonymous shell companies owned by Angolan generals or Russian mayors’ spouses (see the Pandora Papers and the Baturina estate in Hampshire). Your social feeds can be flooded by a biolabs conspiracy seeded by Russian outlets, amplified by Chinese state media, and repackaged by a British-registered front company in Damascus—reaching you via influencers you trust. This isn’t abstract geopolitics; it’s the operating system beneath our information, our markets, and our elections.

What This Summary Covers

You’ll first see why greed is the glue—how pipelines and privatizations birthed a hybrid of dictatorship and kleptocracy, with Western enablers playing key roles (Germany’s Ostpolitik, London’s Rosneft IPO, and U.S. property deals). You’ll then watch kleptocracy metastasize through case studies: Venezuela’s PDVSA heists and currency scams; Zimbabwe’s Gold Mafia; and “bridging jurisdictions” like the UAE and Turkey that launder sanctioned wealth while staying plugged into Western finance. Next, you’ll learn how autocrats control the narrative: China’s Great Firewall and Xinjiang’s surveillance grid; Russian “fire hoses of falsehood”; and information laundering across RT, Xinhua, Telesur, PressTV, and front outlets such as Yala News or Doppelganger’s typosquatting sites.

From there, we shift to system change: the move to erase universal human rights language in global bodies, replace it with “sovereignty” and “win-win cooperation,” and normalize transnational repression (the Belarusian hijacking of a Ryanair flight; GRU poisonings; illegal Chinese police stations abroad). Applebaum shows how Syria became the test lab—bombing hospitals using UN coordinates and smearing the White Helmets—to desensitize the world. We’ll examine how autocrats smear democrats at home, criminalizing NGOs, labeling “foreign agents,” and orchestrating online mobs (from Zimbabwe’s #ThisFlag to Mexico’s troll storms against feminist critic Denise Dresser). We’ll also analyze the first kinetic clash—Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine—and how Autocracy, Inc. quickly supplied drones, ammo, sanction evasion, and propaganda to sustain it.

The Stakes—and a Playbook

Finally, Applebaum offers a plan: “Democrats United.” Think anticorruption coalitions to end anonymous ownership and real estate secrecy; coordinated “pre-bunking” and platform accountability to blunt information laundering; and economic de-risking of supply chains so Beijing or Moscow can’t weaponize minerals or code against you. She spotlights new alliances among dissidents (World Liberty Congress) and argues that your freedom doesn’t just depend on your constitution—it depends on whether democracies worldwide can dismantle the money pipelines, the troll factories, and the spyware stacks that keep Autocracy, Inc. profitable.

Core Claim

Autocracy, Inc. isn’t a bloc—it’s a marketplace. Its products are kleptocracy, propaganda, and repression-as-a-service. Its customers are rulers who want to rule forever.

If you want to understand rising polarization, “Ukraine fatigue,” or why a gold deal in Harare can ripple into your city’s housing prices, Applebaum’s map of the autocratic network shows you where the money flows, where the lies start, and where democracies can still push back.

Applebaum argues that today’s autocracies are held together not by party committees or manifestos but by money. The modern hybrid of dictatorship and kleptocracy took shape through pipelines, privatizations, and a permissive Western financial system. If you follow the cash, you see how “Wandel durch Handel” (change through trade) morphed into change through capture—of elites, regulators, and publics.

Pipelines That Built Dependence

Start in 1967 at an Austrian hunting lodge, where West German and Soviet officials inked the logic of Ostpolitik in steel and gas. By 1970, the first pipelines were agreed: expensive, permanent, and political. Willy Brandt sold this as peace through interdependence; critics from Nixon to Reagan warned of “Soviet leverage” via energy. The argument never resolved—and it migrated intact into post-1991 Russia and a reunified Germany, culminating in Nord Stream. Trade would tame autocracy, said the optimists; pipelines could become weapons, said the realists. Both were right, but not in the way Europe hoped.

From End of History to End of Scruples

The 1990s “End of History” mood (popularly if simplistically attributed to Francis Fukuyama) gave Western bankers, lawyers, and dealmakers a moral hall pass: more trade equals more democracy. Clinton quipped that censoring the internet was like “nailing Jell-O to the wall.” Germany rhymed its hope—Wandel durch Handel. Meanwhile, in Russia, a different project took shape. Vladimir Putin—a KGB alumnus turned deputy mayor—piloted his first major swindle in 1992: export licenses for raw materials were used to buy foreign food; the cash vanished into companies tied to his circle. A later vehicle, the St. Petersburg Real Estate Holding Company (registered in Frankfurt), allegedly laundered Russian and drug money. When German police finally raided offices in 2003, no charges touched Putin. Why? Because Western participation—lawyers, exchanges, bankers, even Chancellor Schröder, who allegedly briefed Putin—had helped normalize the scheme.

By the mid-2000s, this kleptocracy wore a market-friendly mask. The state crushed Yukos, transferred assets to state-controlled Rosneft, floated Rosneft in London, disclosed—in a prospectus vetted by elite banks and firms—that the Kremlin would still control major decisions, and then watched global investors buy anyway. The signal was stark: if the right institutions stamped the paperwork, stolen property could become respectable assets. Rule of law was for the brochure; rule by law was for business.

Moneyland Comes Home

It wasn’t only Russia. Applebaum follows Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, who allegedly siphoned billions from PrivatBank and then bought U.S. assets: a steel mill in Warren, Ohio (scene of repeated explosions and shutdowns), office towers in Cleveland and Dallas, a mothballed Motorola plant. The money snaked through Cyprus, the British Virgin Islands, Delaware, and Deutsche Bank. Local communities saw a new owner and a temporary payroll; few saw the laundromat. American law didn’t require real estate agents to verify beneficial ownership. One in five condos in Trump-branded buildings is owned anonymously; at least 13 owners have known or alleged ties to the Russian mafia. You can’t fix what you can’t see.

The Pandora Papers revealed how banal the offshore world has become: South Dakota and Wyoming trusts mingle with Monaco shells and Caribbean “exempted” companies; Jordan’s king holds U.K. properties behind layers; Russian elites hide estates behind innocuous names such as “Skymist Holdings.” In one English village, Applebaum could find the £5.5 million sale price for an estate renovated by the wife of Moscow’s former mayor—but not her name.

Why It Binds Autocrats—and Touches You

Kleptocracy is more than theft. It’s a technology of power. When a ruler’s entourage can steal billions and mask it abroad, loyalty gets cheaper and repression gets easier. Elites will crush protests (Belarus 2020; Venezuela 2014/2017) if the price of defection is losing villas and school fees. And the more Western cities and firms profit, the more your home institutions—real estate markets, banks, even politics—start mirroring the opacity of the autocracies. That’s how “their” corruption becomes “your” mortgage, property tax base, and neighborhood affordability problem.

Bottom Line

Autocracy, Inc. is not possible without “Democracy, LLC”: Western firms, courts, exchanges, and zip codes that make stolen money look clean.

(Context: Oliver Bullough calls this world “Moneyland”; Tom Burgis calls it “Kleptopia.” Applebaum shows how its plumbing empowers a political project: personalist dictatorship with offshore lifelines.)

Once you see kleptocracy as a service you can export, Venezuela and Zimbabwe look less like anomalies and more like product demos. Applebaum’s case studies show how regimes first hollow out accountability at home and then plug into Autocracy, Inc. to survive sanctions, buy allies, and repress citizens—while anonymous jurisdictions and “friends” in illiberal states keep the cash safe.

Venezuela: From Reformist Rhetoric to PDVSA Loot

In 1999, Hugo Chávez arrived promising to cleanse corruption. Within a year, his own intelligence chief, Jesús Urdaneta, warned him that top officials were padding contracts—including for printing the new constitution. Chávez chose silence, then dismissal. The new rule became clear: if you’re loyal, you can steal. Over fourteen years and roughly $800 billion in oil revenues, PDVSA turned into a cash spigot. Investigators later traced billions to Swiss accounts, Banco Espírito Santo, and Andorra. A parallel heist exploited multiple exchange rates: “student dollars” for study abroad were resold on black markets; insiders forged import paperwork for spare parts and medicines to score cheap dollars at scale. By the 2010s, hyperinflation, shortages, and hunger followed. Yet when Venezuelans poured into the streets (2014, 2017), the regime held on—not alone, but with help.

Sanctions Evasion as a Team Sport

Enter Autocracy, Inc. Russia replaced departing Western firms: Rosneft, Lukoil, and Gazprom invested; Moscow sent grain, gasoline, and $4 billion in arms (fighters, helicopters, Kalashnikovs). China lent tens of billions with few conditions, then sold riot gear, water cannons, and surveillance tools when the loans soured. Cuba supplied security advisers, trained intelligence officers, and helped weaponize food rationing: supporters eat; opponents don’t. Turkey swapped food for Venezuelan gold. Iran advised on repression, helped repair refineries, sent fuel, and allegedly used Venezuelan channels to support Hezbollah. In 2022, U.S. indictments described a scheme in which traders masked Venezuelan oil to sell to China and used the proceeds to buy U.S. components for Russian weapons—Venezuela’s kleptocracy feeding Russia’s war machine.

Zimbabwe: The Gold Mafia and Bridging States

Zimbabwe’s story updates a familiar script. After independence, Robert Mugabe ran a one-party patronage state, then wrecked agriculture with chaotic land seizures. As mining replaced farming, elites learned that gold is simpler to export off the books than tobacco or flowers. In 2023, Al Jazeera’s Gold Mafia documentary filmed “ambassador at large” Uebert Angel and aide Rikki Doolan selling access, diplomatic cover, and a laundered payments loop: smuggle gold to Dubai, cycle the cash through criminals’ accounts, return it as clean “state funds.” When the state itself is the laundromat, “omertà” is policy.

How does the money keep moving? Through “bridging jurisdictions”—legitimate economies willing to provide residency, banking, property, and logistics to sanctioned clients. The UAE became a magnet (Russian property purchases doubled after 2022). Turkey opened channels for cash and gold. Kyrgyzstan’s exports to Russia suddenly boomed with goods it never produced (toothpicks, car parts), a sanctions-evasion tell. As Russian money flowed, Kyrgyz authorities pivoted from relative media freedom to blocking investigative outlet Kloop and raiding reporters’ devices. Dirty money doesn’t just pass through; it rewires rule of law as it goes.

Why You Should Care

These schemes don’t stay “over there.” The Venezuelan exodus reshapes U.S. border politics. Zimbabwe’s gold smuggling pushes up your jewelry input costs and finances a government that bans criticism as “unpatriotic.” And the same anonymous companies that hold Harare’s slush fund might be bidding on an apartment in your city or pressuring your bank’s risk team to look away. In a world of interoperable kleptocracies, your supply chains, politics, and press freedoms become vulnerable to their incentives.

Pattern to Watch

1) Loot at home; 2) Park it abroad; 3) Import repression tools; 4) Evade sanctions via “friends”; 5) Call all of it “sovereignty.”

(Context: Casey Michel’s American Kleptocracy tracks how U.S. laws enable this flow; Applebaum shows how, once normalized, it funds a political project: keeping unpopular regimes alive and their critics offline—or in jail.)

Autocracy, Inc. doesn’t just move money; it manufactures permission—at home and abroad. Applebaum maps two pillars of narrative control: the surveillance state that narrows what you can say, and the propaganda ecosystem that narrows what you think is possible. Together they create a world where citizens are tracked, opponents are smeared, and outsiders shrug at atrocities.

China’s Test Lab: From the Firewall to Xinjiang

Beijing pioneered a system far beyond a “firewall.” It’s a conversation-control stack built from laws (Document No. 9 names “Western constitutional democracy” a peril), platform partnerships (at various times Microsoft, Yahoo, and Cisco adapted to Chinese rules), and integrated offline monitoring. In Xinjiang, “nanny apps” scan phones for Koranic verses, VPNs, or unusual power usage; DNA and facial recognition match bodies to databases; a social credit lattice blacklists dissenters. This works not because every piece is perfect, but because the parts reinforce one another: surveillance flags anomalies; police act; propaganda justifies.

Then Beijing exports the kit. Huawei’s “safe city” suites land in Pakistan, Serbia, and Zimbabwe; Singapore talks of face-recognition on every lamppost; hybrid democracies purchase Pegasus-like spyware to target journalists and opposition (Hungary, Mexico, India, Greece). Democracies do use surveillance to fight crime, but, crucially, they also have mechanisms to expose abuse (Snowden’s NSA leaks led to Pulitzer-winning coverage; Poland’s Pegasus scandal spawned a parliamentary inquiry). In China, Russia, or Iran, there’s no such check—only upgrades.

Propaganda 2.0: Cynicism Over Utopia

Yesterday’s dictators promised radiant futures; today’s sell you nihilism. Russian TV serves 18 anti-Europe stories per day so you conclude the EU is hypocritical or dying. Putin feigns culture-war solidarity—calling Russia a “white Christian” bulwark—even as Chechnya enforces elements of sharia and evangelicals are harassed. Uganda’s Museveni criminalizes homosexuality to rally a base and frame Western critics as “imperialists.” Chávez turned every Sunday into a talk-show monopoly (Aló Presidente), prefiguring social-media domination by contemporary populists.

The goal isn’t to convert you to a doctrine; it’s to make you retreat from politics. When Russia’s forces shot down MH17, the Kremlin didn’t launch one lie; it launched dozens. The effect wasn’t persuasion—it was uncertainty. If no version is credible, you stop trying to know.

Information Laundering—How Lies Reach You

Applebaum shows how state media, proxies, and bots braid together. China spends billions on Xinhua, CGTN, and StarTimes (a low-cost satellite TV giant in Africa). Venezuela’s Telesur pushes “anti-Monsanto” fare one day and Xinhua wire copy the next; Iran’s PressTV in Spanish peddles antisemitic tropes. Russia’s RT supplies video and controversy to a global clip economy. In 2016, the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency microtargeted Americans with fake “Black Lives Matter” and anti-immigrant pages—even in Muslim-light towns in Idaho.

Case in point: the Ukraine biolabs conspiracy. In February 2022, Russian officials accused the U.S. of funding bioweapon labs in Ukraine. A QAnon-linked account (@WarClandestine) spiked the meme; Tucker Carlson platformed it; Chinese spokesmen and outlets amplified; and a U.K.-registered, Damascus-run front (Yala News) localized it into Arabic. A quarter of Americans polled believed it. Another stunt in Taiwan—fake stories that “Chinese buses” rescued stranded Taiwanese tourists—triggered such a storm that a diplomat took his life; Japanese authorities later said the buses never existed. By 2024, Chinese “spamouflage” networks were posting in English with MAGA aesthetics, sharing AI images of Biden in prison and recycling RT narratives.

Key Mechanism

State narrative → proxy outlet → local-language site → influencer/“expert” → your feed. Each hop adds perceived credibility.

(Context: Peter Pomerantsev describes this post-truth ambience in Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible. Applebaum adds the wiring diagram and the cross-border choreography.)

Autocracy, Inc. wants to change not just stories but standards. Applebaum shows how China and Russia work to swap out the post-1945 rules—universal human rights, laws of war, independent scrutiny—for a new code: sovereignty above all, “win-win cooperation,” and “multipolarity.” That swap shrinks accountability, normalizes cross-border repression, and licenses war crimes.

From Universal Rights to “Win-Win”

In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights set a shared floor: life, liberty, free speech, no torture or arbitrary arrest. Its teeth were imperfect—but real. Soviet dissidents used it to shame the Kremlin; U.S. abuse in Iraq led to courts-martial. China’s response isn’t to argue the facts; it’s to erase the terms. In UN bodies, Beijing pushes “right to development” (as defined by governments), “mutual respect” (don’t criticize), and “sovereignty” (rules stop at borders). Russia traffics in “multipolarity,” framing itself as champion of the “oppressed” against an American hegemon—even as it colonizes neighbors and hires Wagner to secure gold mines in Mali and the Central African Republic.

Transnational Repression Goes Normal

If sovereignty means “no questions asked,” then dictators can reach abroad with impunity. In 2021, Belarus forced a Ryanair flight transiting its airspace to land in Minsk by inventing a bomb threat, just to arrest opposition blogger Roman Protasevich. Russian military intelligence used radioactive poisons and nerve agents in the U.K.; another Russian assassin murdered a Chechen exile in Berlin. Iran’s long record of targeting dissidents abroad now includes a 2023 U.S. case in which men working for Tehran plotted to kill American citizen Masih Alinejad in New York. China has operated illegal overseas “police stations” in New York and the Netherlands and pressures diaspora activists through family blackmail. Rwanda’s government has stalked and attacked exiles; in 2024, a Venezuelan military defector was abducted in Chile and found murdered under concrete.

Syria as the Template

In Syria, Russia and Iran partnered with Assad to demonstrate the new rules. After the UN shared hospital coordinates to avoid “accidents,” Russian and Syrian pilots used them to guide bombs. A UN convoy was “meticulously” targeted. Online, Kremlin-linked accounts smeared the White Helmets—volunteer rescuers who documented chemical attacks—as Western stooges staging scenes. The lesson to autocrats: violate humanitarian norms openly, undermine the investigators, and wait for the world to move on.

Rule by Law, Not Rule of Law

These standards are embedded in new groupings. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization members pledge to respect each other’s definitions of “extremism,” easing deportations of Uighurs or Russian dissidents. BRICS has expanded to include Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and Ethiopia—less a coherent bloc than a stage for anti-liberal rhetoric that shrinks space for scrutiny. Meanwhile, Wagner packages a “regime survival” kit: presidential bodyguards, disinformation, election tweaks, and tax-free extractives—all payable in concessions.

System Upgrade—For Them

Replace universal rights with “sovereignty,” fact-finding with “interference,” atrocity with “security.” Then call it multipolarity.

(Context: Steven Feldstein tracks how digital repression travels; Applebaum links that diffusion to diplomatic rewiring—language games at the UN that produce real-world violence.)

What happens when people stand up to this system? Applebaum draws on Gene Sharp’s classic playbook—build broad, nonviolent coalitions; use symbols; erode the dictator’s legitimacy—and then shows how autocrats learned to counter it. Instead of mass killings that create martyrs, they prefer legal traps, character assassination, and online mobs that leave a permanent smear—what Freedom House calls “civil death.”

Hopeful Tactics—and What Hong Kong Taught Autocrats

Sharp urged movements to use “198 methods” of noncooperation and symbolic resistance. Václav Havel’s “greengrocer” essay captured the courage of refusing to live the lie. In Hong Kong (2019), protesters perfected leaderless, “be water” strategies: encrypted chat, helmets and masks, human chains, citywide liquidity. They won battle after battle—and then lost the war to a Chinese state that already knew how to respond: smear leaders as foreign puppets, seed disinformation, arrest thousands under a National Security Law, and erase the public square.

Zimbabwe’s #ThisFlag: From Viral Courage to “Traitor”

Pastor Evan Mawarire’s 2016 YouTube video—draped in the flag, mourning what each color had come to mean—sparked a nationwide movement. A successful general strike followed. The regime first mocked it (“a pastor’s fart”), then launched an #OurFlag counter-campaign. When that fizzled, it weaponized law and lies. Mawarire was arrested, tortured, and accused of being a Western-paid fraud. Even some supporters began to doubt. He fled, returned to prove his courage, and was jailed again. In time he left for safety. The message to others was received: politics equals risk; leaders will be smeared and broken; stay home.

Lawfare + Trollfarms = Civil Death

Modern autocrats prepare the ground with copy-paste laws: “foreign agent” statutes (Russia 2012; echoed in Georgia in 2023/24), “anti-extremism” bills (Russia), NGO strangulation (Egypt, Ethiopia, Cambodia), and “patriotic” gag rules (Zimbabwe 2023). They avoid overt political charges and instead allege mundane “fraud” or “tax” crimes—Navalny and his brother in the Yves Rocher case; Leopoldo López and Henrique Capriles barred from office for “corruption.” They leak hacked emails or ambiguous audio to create an aura of scandal even when there’s no crime.

Online, states outsource pile-ons. Saudi Arabia’s “army of flies” floods hashtags; Venezuela pays micro-bounties for retweets; Russia’s networks swarm local critics. In Mexico, President López Obrador’s daily pressers spotlight academics like Denise Dresser as “elite” enemies; trolls respond with misogynist memes, doxxing, and threats. In Poland, a Justice Ministry aide ran a troll operation to smear independent judges. You don’t need a death squad when a smear storm can cost targets their jobs, marriages, and peace of mind—and deter thousands more from trying.

Autocrats’ Counter-Play

1) Call dissent “foreign.” 2) Criminalize NGOs. 3) Indict for “fraud.” 4) Unleash trolls. 5) Avoid martyrs; create pariahs.

(Context: Sharp and Havel explain why nonviolent movements succeed; Applebaum shows how dictators learned to preempt those victories with law + narrative + networked harassment.)

Applebaum calls Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine the first open kinetic battle between Autocracy, Inc. and the democratic world. It’s a war against a country—and also against the idea that borders, treaties, and human rights still matter. The invasion revealed how quickly the autocratic network supplies money, munitions, and narratives—and how easily crises in other theaters can be synchronized to sap democratic will.

War Aims: Territory—and the World Order

From day one, Russia announced contempt for the rules: torture chambers in occupied towns; kidnappings of mayors and museum curators; targeting of rescue workers; deportations and forced “Russification” of Ukrainian children; annexation decrees over land Russia didn’t control. As Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, “This is not about Ukraine at all, but the world order.” Moscow sought to prove that the UN Charter and human rights treaties were play-acting. When the ICC issued arrest warrants for Putin and his children’s ombudswoman, Russia shrugged—and counted on friends to host him anyway.

Autocracy, Inc. Steps In

China refused to condemn and bought Russian energy at discount, sold dual-use tech, and echoed Kremlin lines about “NATO provocation.” Iran shipped thousands of Shahed drones; North Korea supplied artillery shells and missiles. Belarus offered territory and rails; Turkey, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan became hubs for sanction-evading machine tools and electronics. Information warfare scaled, too: “biolabs” conspiracies; “Nazis in Kyiv” slanders; and “Ukraine fatigue” stories proliferated in African, Asian, and Latin American outlets linked to Chinese and Russian content pipelines.

Democracies Respond—But Underestimate the Network

The initial democratic response was historic: severe sanctions, SWIFT expulsions, frozen reserves, and a 50+ country weapons coalition that nudged Sweden and Finland into NATO. Germany declared a Zeitenwende. Yet as months passed, autocratic resilience and Western division set in. Russia adapted via Central Asian reexports; European gas exposure (built over decades of “Wandel durch Handel” and Nord Stream lobbying, including Gerhard Schröder’s moonlighting) made voters acutely sensitive to price spikes; and targeted propaganda deepened partisan fractures in the U.S. and EU. A troll-fed rumor that Zelensky owned two yachts echoed in Congress; a senator cited it while balking at aid.

The Polycrisis Play

Autocracies don’t have a single command room, but they do watch each other’s timing. As EU and U.S. aid to Ukraine stalled in late 2023—driven by a Hungary veto in Brussels and MAGA obstruction in Washington—Iran-backed Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, and Iran-backed Houthis began firing on Red Sea shipping lanes. Azerbaijan seized Nagorno-Karabakh as global focus shifted. Chinese hackers probed Western parliaments. The cumulative effect: bandwidth drain, refugee pressure, market shocks, and political polarization—every one of which makes it harder to sustain costly support for Kyiv.

Strategic Insight

When democracies see “separate” crises, Autocracy, Inc. sees compounding leverage.

(Context: Analysts often slice regions into silos. Applebaum insists you look sideways: from Moscow’s gas leverage to Tehran’s proxies to Beijing’s cyber and media operations—because that’s how the autocrats are looking at you.)

Applebaum closes with a plan. The short version: stop funding your adversaries, stop letting their narratives colonize your feeds, and start building coalitions that are as networked as Autocracy, Inc. Her agenda isn’t starry-eyed; it’s legal, technical, and practical—grounded in dissidents’ experience and in pilots already underway.

1) End Transnational Kleptocracy

Treat anonymous ownership like toxic waste. Require beneficial ownership disclosures for all companies and trusts; ban anonymous real estate purchases; and bar professionals (lawyers, accountants, PR “reputation managers”) from servicing opaque structures. Build cross-border enforcement teams that move at the speed of money, not paperwork. Then explain it to voters with Navalny-style storytelling—videos that connect oyster-farm palaces to potholes and hospital shortages. If you want citizens to care about abstract registries, show them the hookah bar in Putin’s Black Sea palace and the empty mill in Warren, Ohio.

2) Undermine the Information War (Don’t Just Fight It)

“Pre-bunk” before lies land. The U.S. State Department’s Global Engagement Center now exposes Russian disinfo plans in advance (e.g., anti-health campaigns in Africa, Latin American content mills). Europeans have mapped networks like Doppelganger. Scale that. Simultaneously, demand platform transparency: user control over data and feeds; researcher access; liability when algorithms actively amplify terrorist or state-backed disinformation. TikTok’s opacity and X’s post-acquisition amplification of extremist content are national security issues, not just culture-war topics. Finally, build global news alternatives: help AP/Reuters and regional outlets compete with subsidized Xinhua/RT in the Global South, where cost determines what’s on the screen.

3) De-Risk, Don’t Decouple

Jake Sullivan’s “de-risking” frame is right: cut dependence on adversarial regimes for weaponizable inputs (lithium, graphite, AI chips) by building resilient supply chains with allies. Ursula von der Leyen calls for reciprocity against state-subsidized competitors. Extend that logic to AI and surveillance standards so the next generation of “safe city” tech is rule-of-law by design. Nord Stream’s sabotage ended the illusion that pipelines produce peace; don’t reproduce that illusion with code pipelines.

4) Network the Democrats

At the World Liberty Congress (Vilnius, 2022), dissidents from Russia, Iran, Zimbabwe, Nicaragua, and North Korea compared notes. Do the same at scale: link diaspora media (Meduza, The Insider), investigative hubs (OCCRP, Kloop’s Central Asia network), and lawmakers who can turn leaks into action. Share digital security, sanctions expertise, and playbooks for avoiding smear traps after protests fade—because that’s when regimes hit hardest.

Your To-Do List

• Back beneficial-ownership laws and local real-estate transparency rules.
• Support independent, evidence-based outlets; be wary of “free” foreign content syndication.
• Pressure platforms and legislators for algorithmic transparency and researcher access.
• Vote with your wallet—favor firms that de-risk China/Russia exposure in critical inputs.

(Perspective: During the Cold War, democracies built NATO and the IMF. In Applebaum’s view, the twenty-first-century equivalents are anticorruption registries, interoperable sanctions, and platform governance—plus a loud, global coalition of citizens who understand the stakes.)