This assessment, Accelerating Authoritarian Dynamics: Assessment of Democratic Decline, authored by members of The Steady State, all of whom are former U.S. Intelligence Community officers with analytic responsibilities, applies the analytic tradecraft of the U.S. Intelligence Community to conditions inside the United States. It concludes—with moderate to high confidence—that the cumulative effect of multiple reinforcing dynamics is placing the nation on a trajectory toward competitive authoritarianism: a system in which elections, courts, and other democratic institutions persist in form but are systematically manipulated to entrench executive control.