Argument: Dynasties in U.S. Politics Present Security Vulnerabilities
Power families using their resources, names, and influence to repeatedly win or determine political offices can become de-facto dynasts to the detriment of U.S. national security. Much like software, firmware, or operating systems, such families are like programs running public offices with informational and other flaws that become well known and more vulnerable over time. Failure to update or patch these vulnerabilities subjects the entire system and all of its data to damage, takeover, and loss.
Russia and China have teamed-up to use disinformation to try to ruin not only U.S. American presidential candidates and their families on both GOP and Democratic Party tickets, but to make these families’ troubles synonymous with the legitimacy of the United States Presidency and its foundational Constitution.
Oppositional intelligence agencies have concentrated resources on predictable, well-studied incumbent power structures, dynasts, powerful families, and their wealth-supported networks to find and seize on their traumas, vulnerabilities, and situational factors. Using a combination of cyber and human intelligence, the work products are predictably turned over to gossip, gotcha, and conspiracy tabloids in the West, morphing from blackmail material into information weaponry. Sensationalist media make this easier, providing research on American celebrities and power families that give leads that adversaries can operationalize.
Sophisticated autocrats hone-in on and contrasting western candidates’ personalities, families, friends, businesses, wealth-effects, and weaknesses and falsely impute their human (or sub-human) flaws to American governing and legal institutions.
Too many western media concerns amplify it all, play by play, for the morbidity-ratings cash-haul, publishing “bombshells” with which American civilization could sooner bomb itself into a political stone age. These weaknesses then become information weapons exploding in chaotic loops. The psychological warfare effects are fatigue, cynicism, apathy, and division as the people throw-out all sources with the unhinged-negatives.
One of RU-China’s boldest political objectives is to tempt the United States to embrace a one-party autocracy to stop the pain of the information warfare loop. This U.S. autocracy would be indebted to them, dysfunctional, and would seek advice on autocratic rule from them, becoming a client state over time. This would turn the U.S.A. into a strapped-down Gulliver, a shell of what once was, and an organ donor to the rise of global autocracy.
Shall we stop the autocrats now, or leave it to future generations of formerly free Americans to struggle to overcome as might not be possible for a long time? America’s power families have a special responsibility to eschew the temptation to think that their own dynastic control or presence in political power is the best thing for the country. There are other ways to profit and give-back that do not damage buy-in from all Americans. We are a representative country based on the American dream of opportunity for all, not just a few.