What part of ‘covert’ do you not understand? Most dictionaries define ‘covert’ as ‘not openly acknowledged or displayed.’ A prime example would be covert operations against a dictatorship—even by another near-dictatorship. Once they are acknowledged or announced, by definition, they cease to be covert operations. I was dumbstruck, therefore, to open up my morning newsfeed […]
View the most recent update here. PDF VERSION EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 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,[1] applies the analytic tradecraft of the U.S. Intelligence Community to conditions inside the United States. It concludes—with […]
Trump has been anything but shy about asserting that a Nobel Peace Prize was rightfully his. At the moment, he is basking in the glow of an important achievement in that direction: his successful intervention in the Middle East to bring about a ceasefire and hostage release in Gaza. Newspaper headlines and round-the-world photos add […]
The Chernobyl Accident On May 23, 2025, President Trump signed four Executive Orders to promote the development of nuclear energy. These actions build on previous administrations’ efforts to reinvigorate the U.S. nuclear industry, but they go too far by putting safety and security at risk. According to three former NRC Chairs, taking shortcuts by circumventing […]
It is one of the defining ironies of our political moment: an administration that has turned the Department of Justice into an instrument of personal and political vengeance claims to be the victim of “weaponization” by the Biden administration. This height of hypocrisy is designed to project a narrative of persecution. But to anyone paying […]
This Thursday, The Steady State will release Accelerating Authoritarian Dynamics: Assessment of Democratic Decline— written by former U.S. intelligence and national-security professionals, applying the same analytic tradecraft used to assess threats abroad. It was written by private citizens, and with no input from any government entities, political parties or candidates. The findings are stark: the […]
cbsnewsstatic.comhttps://assets1.cbsnewsstatic.com/hub/i/2025/09/03/7a54c771-f6bf-477d-a1f8-a9874dcd4237/cbsn-fusion-what-we-know-about-the-deadly-us-strike-against-apparent-venezuelan-drug-carrying-boat-thumbnail.jpg?width=768 Trump’s second-term cannonball into the Western Hemisphere’s community pool has roiled the neighborhood. Here are a few of his brash assertions: Canada should become the 51st state. Greenland is ours. Let’s launch missiles and deploy special forces to go after narco-cartels. The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement that I negotiated cheats American workers. I don’t like […]
In recent weeks, multiple press reports have described preparations by the Trump Administration to use the government shutdown as a pretext to terminate large numbers of federal employees—particularly those perceived as insufficiently ‘loyal.’ These reports align with increasingly explicit public statements by President Trump and his advisors. At a rally, Trump declared: “We’re cleaning out […]
Washington, D.C. — October 10, 2025 The Steady State, an organization of more than 330 former senior national security officials, today filed an Amicus Curiae brief in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia supporting the District’s opposition to the administration’s motion to dismiss in District of Columbia v. Donald J. Trump, […]
We all want a secure border and fair enforcement of immigration laws. But at what cost? When tens of thousands of federal and local officers and agents are diverted from their core missions to immigration enforcement, most notably the mass deportation of noncitizens from this country, regardless of whether the noncitizen has a criminal record […]