# State Capture **State capture** is a form of systemic corruption in which private interests — corporations, oligarchs, or ideological networks — subvert the mechanisms of a state so thoroughly that they shape its laws, policies, and institutions to serve themselves rather than the public. In [[Dave Troy]]'s "[[The Big History Behind January 6th]]" Coda, state capture is the destination toward which the whole story points: when powerful networks capture democracy's machinery, the result is a [[Plutocracy]]. ## The stealth strategy Troy draws on Nancy MacLean's *[[Democracy in Chains]]* to describe *how* capture is pursued. Per MacLean, [[Charles Koch]] concluded that Americans would never knowingly consent to the radical anti-government "sovereign" vision — so it had to be advanced stealthily. Working with economist [[James Buchanan]], Koch identified a set of incremental "interrelated plays" — moves that each win majority approval on their own terms but that, in series and in parallel, cumulatively hollow out the state until it is "too late to go back." Troy reads the coordinated initiatives of [[Council for National Policy]]-affiliated activists as exactly these interrelated plays, and argues that party affiliation has become "meaningless" as a frame — the operative unit is the *network*, not the party. ## Measuring and resisting capture Troy's practical proposal is that democracies can only be defended if the *degree* of capture is measured and managed. He names repealing [[Citizens United v. FEC]] as a necessary first step, and points to [[Peter Thiel]]'s active promotion of the [[The Sovereign Individual]] agenda — and firms like [[Palantir]] inheriting the domestic-surveillance capability once associated with [[PROMIS]] — as evidence that the [[Church Committee]]-era surveillance debates remain unsettled. ## See also - [[Plutocracy]] · [[Democracy in Chains]] · [[Fifth Generation Warfare]] · [[The Octopus]] · [[Citizens United v. FEC]]