Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World

by Anne Applebaum

Nowadays, autocracies are run not by one bad guy but by sophisticated networks relying on kleptocratic financial structures, a complex of security services—military, paramilitary, police—and technological experts who provide surveillance, propaganda, and disinformation.

Unlike military or political alliances from other times and places, this group operates not like a bloc but rather like an agglomeration of companies, bound not by ideology but rather by a ruthless, single-minded determination to preserve their personal wealth and power: Autocracy, Inc.

Instead of ideas, the strongmen who lead Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Angola, Myanmar, Cuba, Syria, Zimbabwe, Mali, Belarus, Sudan, Azerbaijan, and perhaps three dozen others share a determination to deprive their citizens of any real influence or public voice, to push back against all forms of transparency or accountability, and to repress anyone, at home or abroad, who challenges them.

the leaders of Autocracy, Inc., often maintain opulent residences and structure much of their collaboration as for-profit ventures.

Autocracy, Inc., offers its members not only money and security but also something less tangible: impunity.

Impervious to international criticism, modern autocrats feel no shame about the use of open brutality.

At the extremes, such contempt can devolve into what the international democracy activist Srdja Popovic has called the “Maduro model” of governance, after the current leader of Venezuela. Autocrats who adopt it are “willing to see their country enter the category of failed states,” he says—accepting economic collapse, endemic violence, mass poverty, and international isolation if that’s what it takes to stay in power.

Their primary goal is to stay in power, and to do so, they are willing to destabilize their neighbors, destroy the lives of ordinary people, or—following in the footsteps of their predecessors—even send hundreds of thousands of their citizens to their deaths.

To be more precise, that enemy is the democratic world, “the West,” NATO, the European Union, their own, internal democratic opponents, and the liberal ideas that inspire all of them. These include the notion that the law is a neutral force, not subject to the whims of politics; that courts and judges should be independent; that political opposition is legitimate; that the rights to speech and assembly can be guaranteed; and that there can be independent journalists and writers and thinkers who are capable of being critical of the ruling party or leader while at the same time remaining loyal to the state.

Their opposition rather has its roots in the very nature of the democratic political system, in words like “accountability,” “transparency,” and “democracy.” They hear that language coming from the democratic world, they hear the same language coming from their own dissidents, and they seek to destroy them both.

This is the core of the problem: the leaders of Autocracy, Inc., know that the language of transparency, accountability, justice, and democracy will always appeal to some of their own citizens. To stay in power they must undermine those ideas, wherever they are found.

Everyone assumed that in a more open, interconnected world, democracy and liberal ideas would spread to the autocratic states. Nobody imagined that autocracy and illiberalism would spread to the democratic world instead.

Autocracy is a political system, a way of structuring society, a means of organizing power.

“From the beginning, Putin and his circle sought to create an authoritarian regime ruled by a close-knit cabal…who used democracy for decoration rather than direction.”

Putin’s Russia was not an old-fashioned totalitarian state, isolated and autarkic. Nor was it a poor dictatorship, wholly dependent on foreign donors. Instead, it represented something new: a full-blown autocratic kleptocracy, a mafia state built and managed entirely for the purpose of enriching its leaders.

By the time Putin became president, he was well acquainted with the double standards of Western democracies, which preached liberal values at home but were very happy to help build illiberal regimes everywhere else.

Kleptocracy and autocracy go hand in hand, reinforcing each other but also undermining any other institutions that they touch.

How does a rogue state survive under sanctions? New sources of funding can help: drug trafficking, illegal mining, extortion, kidnapping, gasoline smuggling.

To prevent the democratic wave then sweeping across Western Europe from spreading to the East, China’s leaders set out to eliminate not just the people but the ideas that had motivated the protests: the rule of law, the separation of powers, the right to freedom of speech and assembly, and all the principles that they described as “spiritual pollution” coming from the democratic world.

The Chinese regime also cast the net wider, beyond cyberspace, learning to combine online tracking systems with other tools of repression, including security cameras, police inspections, and arrests.

the province inhabited by China’s minority Muslim Uighur population. Following a series of political protests there in 2009, the state began not only to arrest and detain Uighurs but also to experiment with new forms of online and offline control. Uighurs have been required to install “nanny apps” on their phones, which constantly search for “ideological viruses,” including Koranic verses and religious references as well as suspicious statements in all forms of correspondence. The apps can monitor purchases of digital books and track an individual’s location, sending the information back to police. They can also pick up unusual behavior: anyone who downloads a virtual private network, anyone who stays off-line altogether, and anyone whose home uses too much electricity (which could be evidence of a secret houseguest) can arouse suspicion. Voice-recognition technology and even DNA swabs are used to monitor where Uighurs walk, drive, and shop.

With every new breakthrough, with every AI advance, China gets closer to its version of the holy grail: a system that can eliminate not just the words “democracy” and “Tiananmen” from the internet but the thinking that leads people to become democracy activists or attend public protests in real life.

The lesson for Autocracy, Inc., was ominous: even in a state where surveillance seems total, the experience of tyranny and injustice can always radicalize people. Anger at arbitrary power will always lead someone to start thinking about some other system, some better way to run society.

If people are naturally drawn to the image of human rights, to the language of democracy, to the dream of freedom, then those ideas have to be poisoned. That requires not just surveillance, and not merely a political system that defends against liberal ideas. It also requires an offensive plan, a narrative that damages the idea of democracy, wherever it is being used, anywhere in the world.

This tactic, the so-called “fire hose of falsehoods” produces not outrage but nihilism. Given so many explanations, how can you know what actually happened? What if you can never know? If you can’t understand what is going on around you, then you are not going to join a great movement for democracy, or follow a truth-telling leader, or listen when anyone speaks about positive political change. Instead, you will avoid politics altogether. Autocrats have an enormous incentive to spread that hopelessness and cynicism, not only in their own countries, but around the world.

Instead of money laundering, this is information laundering. The goal is to spread the same narratives that autocrats use at home, to connect democracy with degeneracy and chaos, to undermine democratic institutions, to smear not just activists who promote democracy but the system itself.

autocratic information operations exaggerate the divisions and anger that are normal in politics. They pay or promote the most extreme voices, hoping to make them more extreme, and perhaps more violent; they hope to encourage people to question the state, to doubt authority, and eventually to question democracy itself.

In seeking to create chaos, these new propagandists, like their leaders, will reach for whatever ideology, whatever technology, and whatever emotions might be useful. The vehicles of disruption can be right-wing, left-wing, separatist, or nationalist, even taking the form of medical conspiracies or moral panic. Only the purpose never changes: Autocracy, Inc., hopes to rewrite the rules of the international system itself.

collectively known as the rules-based order, have always described how the world ought to work, not how it actually works.

And in this new era—a time of the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”—China seeks to “take an active part in leading the reform of the global governance system.” In practice, this means that China has led the charge to remove the language of human rights and democracy from international institutions.

Instead of human rights, which are monitored by outside organizations and independent agencies and can be measured against international standards, China wants to prioritize the right to development, which is something that can be defined and measured only by governments. China also relies heavily on the word sovereignty, which has many connotations, some of them positive. But in the context of international institutions, “sovereignty” is the word that dictators use when they want to push back against criticism of their policies, whether it comes from UN bodies, independent human rights monitors, or their own citizens.

A world in which autocracies work together to stay in power, work together to promote their system, and work together to damage democracies is not some distant dystopia. That world is the one we are living in right now.

dictatorships survive not because of the unusual powers or personalities of dictators but because most people who live under their rule are apathetic or afraid.

He opposed the use of violence not merely on moral grounds but because it is an ineffective means of fighting a dictatorship: “By placing confidence in violent means, one has chosen the very type of struggle with which the oppressors nearly always have superiority.”

Sharp argued that social movements should instead begin by “identifying the Achilles’ heel” of the dictator, the areas in which he is weak or vulnerable. They should systematically consolidate the opposition, fight fear and apathy, persuade people to demonstrate their resistance to the regime, and rob the regime’s leaders of their legitimacy. The goal is to take power, but to do so peacefully.

Havel believed that if everyone were forced to choose, and if everybody were forced to confront propaganda with reality, then sooner or later the falsehoods promulgated by the regime would be exposed.

Creating bonds between different classes and across different geographies is not just a matter of activism. It also requires an idea or a set of ideas large enough to overcome class and social divisions. For some, universal principles of freedom and free speech matter most. Others are driven by the experience of injustice or state violence. In many cases, the gap between the stated principles of the constitution and the reality offered by the regime is enough to inspire calls for change.

They did everything right. But they were defeated because the Chinese authorities had also been studying the kinds of tactics proposed by Sharp and Havel. They had thought hard about how to mock and undermine symbolic acts; how to smear and discredit charismatic leaders; how to use social media to spread false rumors and conspiracy theories; how to isolate and alienate people; how to break links between different social groups and social classes; how to eliminate influential exiles; and above all, how to turn the language of human rights, freedom, and democracy into evidence of treason and betrayal. The rest of Autocracy, Inc., learned these lessons too.

The public smear campaign was coupled with financial harassment, controls on his movement, and physical violence, though not murder: the point was to scare him and to intimidate his followers, not to make him disappear altogether. Freedom House has called these kinds of campaigns “civil death.” In Zimbabwe, as in so many other places, they are designed to make it impossible to live a productive life.

Like the Russian journalists in Ukraine in 2013–14, they simply did not believe anyone could be so idealistic, or perhaps so naive, as to put themselves in danger for “democracy” or for “patriotism.” You will do it just because you love this country? Impossible.

Modern dictators have learned that the mass violence of the twentieth century is no longer necessary: targeted violence is often enough to keep ordinary people away from politics altogether, convincing them that it’s a contest they can never win.

This is why modern autocrats usually prefer to avoid murder. A martyr can inspire a political movement, while a successful smear campaign can destroy one.

Regimes that are themselves profoundly corrupt reverse the charges, blurring the distinction between themselves and their opponents.

However fantastical or hypocritical they may be, corruption allegations also deepen the natural cynicism that autocracies cultivate in their citizens, reinforcing the public’s conviction that all politics is dirty, including opposition politics, and that all politicians, even dissident politicians, should be treated with suspicion.

although autocrats work together to keep one another in power, there is “no alliance of those of us who are fighting for freedom.”

Already, they understood that one nation’s freedom can often depend on the strength of freedom in others.

The autocracies keep track of one another’s defeats and victories, timing their own moves to create maximum chaos.

This multifaceted, interconnected, self-reinforcing polycrisis was not coordinated by a single mastermind, and it is not evidence of a secret conspiracy. Instead, these episodes, taken together, demonstrate how different autocracies have extended their influence across different political, economic, military, and informational spheres. They also show how much damage they can do when they opportunistically work together toward their common goal: damaging democracies and democratic values, inside their own countries and around the world.

Global cooperation will be needed to mitigate climate change and other environmental challenges. The United States and Europe trade intensively with China, and it is neither easy nor desirable to end those trading links abruptly.

Sheldon Whitehouse, a U.S. senator who has argued for greater financial transparency for many years, once told me that he does so partly because “the same techniques of concealment used to facilitate offshore thugs and criminal activities also facilitate the political activities of domestic special interests.” The individuals who benefit from financial secrecy often seek direct political influence, and this too makes them hard to block.