# Autocracy Inc [[Anne Applebaum]]'s account of the modern autocratic order as a **networked corporation rather than an ideological bloc**. Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, [[Belarus]], Zimbabwe, North Korea — regimes with nothing in common doctrinally — collaborate pragmatically through kleptocratic finance, shared surveillance technology, sanctions-evasion networks, and mutually reinforcing propaganda, bound not by ideas but by a common interest in impunity. ## The Argument The twentieth-century model (a bloc with an ideology and a center) is obsolete. Autocracy Inc. operates like a services conglomerate: money laundering as a service, repression tech as a service, narrative warfare as a service. Its unifying message to domestic and Western audiences alike is cynicism — *every system is corrupt, democracy is a sham, so why object to ours?* Applebaum argues democracies keep losing because they treat each autocracy bilaterally while the network plays as a syndicate, and because Western enablers (banks, law firms, real estate, lobbyists) are themselves load-bearing components of the machine. ## RWKB Relevance Connects the vault's [[Kleptocracy]] and [[Russia]] threads to the domestic democratic-backsliding cluster: the same impunity-network logic, enabler class, and cynicism propaganda that sustain foreign autocracies are the playbook the American authoritarian right is importing. ## See Also - [[Authoritarian International]] — Josh Marshall's 2026 frame, which moves the Western billionaire class from Applebaum's enablers to full members of the network - [[International Far-Right Networks]] - [[Anne Applebaum]]