Kleptocracy, Kakistocracy, and Governance | Jodi Vittori

What happens when corruption stops being an isolated scandal and becomes part of the operating system itself? In this episode of Brungardt Law’s Lagniappe, Maurice Brungardt speaks with Jodi Vittori about the intersection of corruption, illicit finance, national security, and institutional decline. Drawing from her experience with the U.S. Air Force, NATO’s counter-corruption task force, Transparency International, and Georgetown University, Jodi explains how corruption evolves from individual misconduct into systemic kleptocracy — “government by thieves” — and why societies often fail to recognize the transition until public institutions begin to erode around them.

This conversation explores corruption as both a legal and cultural phenomenon, examining how narratives, polarization, weak governance structures, and economic extraction can normalize institutional decay. Jodi discusses organized crime in the Balkans, mission failure in Afghanistan, the influence of money in democratic systems, the rise of “kakistocracy,” and the growing role of AI in scams, illicit finance, and governance. The discussion ultimately raises a difficult but increasingly relevant question: at what point does influence, access, and concentrated wealth begin reshaping governance itself?

Jodi Vittori is a Professor of Practice and co-chair of the Global Politics and Security Program at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. A former U.S. Air Force officer, she served in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Balkans, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and NATO assignments focused on corruption, terrorism finance, and national security. Jodi previously worked with Transparency International and is widely recognized for her research on corruption, kleptocracy, illicit finance, and state fragility.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

What is corruption, and at what point does it evolve into something more systemic? When does influence, access, or financial power stop operating within the bounds of governance and begin to quietly reshape it? Terms like pleptocracy are often reserved for distant regimes, conjuring images of leaders extracting wealth from the state and society. While cacistocracy suggests rule by the least qualified or most unscrupulous. But are these truly foreign concepts or points along a broader spectrum that can emerge in subtler forms within any system? The more pressing question may not be who is involved, but how the underlying structures allow such patterns to persist, adapt, and at times normalize within the very institutions designed to prevent them. Welcome to Brungart Laws Langout, where we provide a little extra perspective through conversations with individuals from across the spectrum of society. I'm Maurice Brungart, your host. I enjoy engaging with experienced, knowledgeable, and passionate individuals for the opportunity to forge to enrich our understanding of the world through their eyes. The more we learn, the more likely we can become better versions of ourselves and guide others towards the same. Today's guest is Jody Vittori. Jody is a professor of practice and co-chair of the Global Politics and Security Program at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, where she lectures about the shared nodes among corruption, state fragility, illicit finance, and U.S. national security. She previously worked at Transparency International's Defense and Security Program and served in the U.S. Air Force with deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq, South Korea, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain, as well as was assigned to NATO's only counter-corruption task force. Welcome to the program, Professor.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Thank you. Thanks for having me here. Please, Jody, not Professor. I mean the answer to anything, but you know, hey you, lots of various terms.

SPEAKER_03 1:58

Well, hopefully not too much hey you. Um speak to us about your early influences.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Um I didn't working on countercorruption, illicit finance, and national security was not initially on my bingo card, to put it bluntly. Uh, I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up. I went to the Air Force Academy. I studied astronautical engineering, because that's what you study if you want to be an astronaut. Found out I was lousy at it and didn't like it. Nothing against the astronautics department. It's not their fault. Um, and so I applied to be an intelligence officer and found that I really, really enjoyed working in political science-related fields. And that sent me all around the world. Um, and that's part of what made me very interested in the intersection of corruption and illicit finance and national security. Um, for example, when I was stationed in the Balkans, and the role that organized crime had played in both facilitating the horrible civil wars there, um, the role that organized crime played in keeping Milosevic in power, um, how organized crime groups were the shock troops, if you will, for Milosevic, especially a particularly notable warlord organized crime person nicknamed Arkan. Um, and how it encouraged the various ethnic elites to keep the conflict going. If the conflict wasn't there, these incredibly corrupt, incredibly criminal elites wouldn't no longer be in office, would no longer be able to steal money from their militias, for example, that were supposed to go to their paychecks and stuff like that. Um, and so that that dynamics of organized crime, corruption, and national security, in that case, specifically civil war and warfare, uh, was something I found incredibly depressingly interesting.

SPEAKER_03 3:45

And from there, where did you transition to?

SPEAKER_00 3:49

Um, so I had worked, uh, I worked on some terrorism financing and resourcing issues in Iraq. At the time, I was getting my PhD uh compliments of the taxpayer. So you guys may ask for a refund, I realize. Uh, but a PhD on behalf of the taxpayer, and was working on a PhD dissertation on terrorism finance. Uh so I went to Iraq to work on terrorism-related issues related to what was then called Al-Qaeda in Iraq, changed names a couple times later, or merged into new variations of groups later on called ISIS and stuff. Um, but was working on how they were getting money, how they were um getting recruits, stuff like that, uh, kind of mapping out those networks and what we could do to defeat them. And was often, you know, seeing the role that money played or didn't play and resources play in in again, national security on, you know, where our troops are stationed, who was who was paying for all those car bombs to blow people up and stuff like that. Like there's real financial, you know, running al-Qaeda in Iraq is not it was not as expensive as running a traditional military. Terrorism is cheaper, but it's still expensive and someone's got to pay the bills. So, how was how did that function work? And so I was doing my PhD dissertation at the time and didn't directly feed into my dissertation, but it it certainly um the PhD dissertation was a lot of in the book that came out of it, what I wished I had known before I went to work on terrorism finance stuff in Iraq, difficultly. And then I worked in Afghanistan, as I you mentioned on the counter-corruption task force because of my work with terrorism finance, because I'd written a book at that point on terrorism finance as well. Um, when I went to Iraq, I worked on the counter-corruption task force. Uh, and again, saw very up close how, for example, oftentimes the same money launderers, even the same banks, would facilitate the financing of terrorism, would facilitate the financing of narcotics trafficking, the massive corruption of the Afghan government at the time. Um, and so it's you know, you really can't talk about mission failure for the United States in Afghanistan without talking about corruption. Some people put the reason we failed in Afghanistan primarily is Pakistan first and corruption second. Others say it was corruption first and Pakistan second, but corruption's never like number 12 reason. It's always number one, number two, maybe number three. It's always one of the top reasons for mission failure there. So we really see the national security ramifications that comes out of facilitating a lot of corruption in the listed finance locations.

SPEAKER_03 6:19

When it came to being on the counter-corruption task force, what was the objective to identify those least corrupt that we could engage with or where we should be directing our money to? Kind of curious about that.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

That's a really good question. And I don't have a very good answer for you. I can only provide a lot of uh I can surmise a lot. At this point, um, there'd be these huge corruption scandals. Another one is ongoing called Cobble Bank. Um, and think, you know, multi-ton loads of narcotics were found in governors' houses, and you know, the stepbrother of the president was running around as the main narcotics facilitator, and cousins of you know, Hamad Karzai were the main facilitators of things like contracts and um oil gas oil and mining contracts, particularly working with like Chinese companies and stuff like that. Um and so there was a lot of pressure on US forces in Europe, uh, the US forces on the State Department and others to do at least look like they were doing something. I'm not sure. There was our task force was only about 50 people. It had no budget, it had no authorities. So I'm not really sure 10 years into an occupation that's that corrupt, what Congress actually wanted out of 50 people with no budget, no authorities. Um, but it did say that the United States and NATO was trying to do something and the State Department was trying to do something, which provided some cover to keep money and support going for the operations. As soon as, shortly after I left Afghanistan, um, so by I guess 20, I'd have to look up the exact date, 2015 or 2016 or so. Um, even though we hadn't withdrawn troops there yet, the task force against corruption was basically shuttered. It was a very short-lived thing that lasted five to seven years.

SPEAKER_03 8:13

While we're on the topic of corruption, why don't you go ahead and share with us problems associated with that word?

SPEAKER_00 8:24

With the word corruption. Oh boy. All right. Well, I think the first one is what does corruption even mean? There's not one definition of corruption out there. Um, three broad top throughout three broad areas of definitions of corruption, though. One is the definition that Transparent International uses. Transparency International is the largest and oldest specific anti-corruption organization, global organization in the world. It's been around about 25 years. And if you ever see those, you know, like such and such country is the most corrupt country in the world or the cleanest country in the world, like that they're usually quoting Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index. Um, and so their definition is the abuse of entrusted power for private gain. And there's a lot of variations on that sort of definition. Some are abuse of entrusted office or private gain. The World Bank uses a public office, uh, some sort of, but there's always some sort of abuse of public or entrusted something for private gain or private benefit or you know, private wealth, or some sort of you know, sacrificing the the private interests being predatory on the public interest itself. Um, some scholars will add a defin add part of the definition against the public interest to note that this is very predatory on what is for the good of the country, the good of the citizenry overall. And a definition like that has been around in variations since at least about the 1880s here in the United States. So it's not new, but we don't like we don't teach what corruption is in school. Like it wasn't probably part of your civics or American history class, it wasn't mine, it's not my son's. We don't talk about that. So that's that's kind of the back-of-the-pocket definition of corruption. Uh, for the lawyers like you, there's a whole very significant set of legal rules of what is corrupt and what is not. And indeed, you can make a lot of money as a lawyer if you know where those bright lines are and are willing to consult the cult um clients willing to do that. What is lobbying versus what is a bribe? Um, what is tax evasion versus tax avoidance? Um what, you know, when is when is there a conflict of interest in you're having government contracts, but you also own a private business? Like these are all the kinds of things that lawyers can make a lot of money on. What is what falls under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act? What falls under the Corporate Transparency Act or not? Uh these are all Bank Secrecy Act. We can keep going. So this is where lawyers make a lot of money, but this isn't what people normally think of as corruption. The third definition, the one that's most out there and is the most difficult to deal with, when you ask some, when you ask people what is corruption, they'll mostly just say like it doesn't seem fair, or I don't like it, or someone put the thumb on the scales against me and my family. And that's the hardest one to deal with because what you might think is fair and what I might think is fair are two very different things. Um, a lot of our huge public protests, and what a uh the motivation for a lot of nonviolent protests, like my Maidon Square in in Ukraine, for example, in 2014, are corruption focused. Uh, we've had huge, they call them the Gen Z protests oftentimes, Nepal, Bangladesh, Morocco, Kenya. We've had huge protests that are centered around that corruption side. But translating that, particularly that life doesn't seem fair, the elite seem to have the best shot, and there's nothing left for people like me, is very hard to deal with. But that is that kind of feeling of what corruption is, is what usually motivates those large-scale protests. So it's complicated.

SPEAKER_03 12:02

It definitely sounds like it, and I think it depends on who you're asking, as you pointed out, right?

SPEAKER_00 12:08

Yeah. Um one of the places we really saw this was with Doge last year.

SPEAKER_03 12:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 12:12

Because Doge was putting out a lot of I'm firing people for corruption, or I'm getting rid of corruption, I'm getting rid of fraud. Um, but his but Elon Musk and his inner circles definition of corruption would not, again, there's not one definition of corruption, but would not match either the legal definitions nor that abuse of entrusted power for private gain, even if we add against the public interest definition. Um, and I know this because people, like friends of mine and stuff from Military Academy, who are sending me emails asking this question. So I know they were puzzled. Like Elon Musk is saying there was all this corruption stuff, and there is corruption in the American government. Please don't, please don't think I'm saying there's none there. Um but but I don't really understand what's going on because I don't I don't see how this is corruption. People are very confused because we don't teach what corruption is. So, you know, if you have a worker at USAID, let's say a TS13, so you know, kind of a mid-level-ish, higher level um civil servant, you know, they applied for the job, the job had certain qualifications, they met the qualifications, they had an interview, they got hired, they're doing the job per, you know, statement of work and stuff that they have. Just because you don't like what their job happens to be, doesn't mean that that person was involved in corruption. Now, if they're taking bribes or something like that to like give out contracts on behalf of USCID or look the other way on things, that's corruption. But just because you don't happen to like the completely legally designated job that they were doing to the best of their ability doesn't mean it's corrupt. And so I think we really saw that lack of definitional understanding, whichever definition you use with Doge really stood out.

SPEAKER_03 13:50

Now, please correct me if I'm wrong, but as you were then with Transparency International, it seems your field of interest expertise started evolving from the study of corruption and to now kleptocracy. Tell us about that.

unknown 14:06

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 14:07

Um, so kleptocracy is kind of corruption on steroids. Once again, it's the academic admin. There's no one definition of kleptocracy except that it means rule by thieves. So, like you've heard of klepto klepto maniac, you know, someone who can't stop thinking stealing. Okay, so that's the klepto part, theocracy part, governance, like theocracy, democracy, etc. That just means governing by. So it's government by thieves. But that that doesn't tell us much because, like, what do you mean by thieves? What's what's theft enough? You know, what kind of thieves? What do you mean?

SPEAKER_03 14:39

It sounds like the opening line for Game of Thrones or something. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:43

Game of Thrones actually works, is actually really good in in international relations. I could just use a lot less sex and violence in it. But um, it's not my thing. Sorry. But it's really, it's really good political science. Um, and so when we have kleptocracy, I would argue there having looked at a lot of different definitions out there, because people have tried to define it, kleptocracy means a couple things, or what makes a kleptocracy different from just a lot of corruption somewhere. Um, one is it's it's going to be a network, usually around some sort of godfather, could be godmother type figure. Um, and all of the key sectors of the state are going to kind of revolve around them. So the economy, the politics, the diplomacy, um, public services, criminal and not criminal. Oftentimes religious will get involved as well. So you've kind of got this key group of elites around sort of a central figure or small group of figures. Um, and then that interact and they run the government in such a way that I mentioned that public interest thing. The government doesn't function for the public interest, however, you might define it. I mean, you know, you might define the public interest different than I do. You know, how much money should go to schools or how much money should go to medical care or what should be covered when, like these are all different discussions on public interest that rational people have all the time. It's what makes politics discussion so much fun. Um, but instead of acting in some level the public interest, you're acting on behalf of um how this certain group can get in power, stay in power, and basically get as much money as they can. It's kind of inverse Robin Hood, robbing from the poor to give to the rich. How do they pull money, resources, et cetera, up from kind of your average person to themselves, to this inner circle, and then stay in power so they can keep what that money and power allows them to do, all the other things that allow them, the impunity that goes with it, and so forth, to be able to act in ways that they want. Um, a couple ways you know if you're in a or you're likely to be dealing with a kleptocracy or something moving towards a kleptocracy. First is there aren't any accidental kleptocracies out there. You can sometimes stumble on like a loophole somewhere or something no one noticed, and like do these massive multi-billion dollar corruption scandals at times. There were some involving like some tax rebates with VAT in Europe, for example, that some individuals just wandered into and made tons, billions of dollars off of. But in a kleptocracy, it's a deliberate strategy and you're running a whole bunch of grand corruption schemes all at once. So you might be able to like kind of muddle through on one big corruption scheme, but if you've got multiple grand corruption schemes across multiple parts of your government economy going at once, that takes a lot of work and you have to put a lot of effort into it. If you don't keep the effort going, your kleptocracy is going to fall apart. So you see these this very systematic network reinforcing, keeping this whole system going at one time. So there's a lot of different massive grand corruption scandals going on at once or grand corruption things going on at once. The second thing we see in a kleptocracy is that the corruption has become so bad that the average person can't miss it anymore. The reality is if you live in a multi-trillion dollar economy, you can have, you know, a billion-dollar corruption scandal, and you might be mad when you see the headline news, but it doesn't personally affect you. Like, okay, you know, sometimes corruption, anti-corruption advocates will like, oh, this is the equivalent of a cup of coffee a day to the average taxpayer, whatever, but you're probably not feeling that. But kleptocracy is so large at that point that the typical person can't miss it. There, you know, there's so much money being sucked out of the system that the schools that used to be funded aren't funded anymore. The electric power grid, if we use the South Africa example, well, this electric power grid starts to collapse because so many fraudulent um uh contracts have been given out to buddies in the South African ruling regime that have no intention of keeping the power grid running, that it just collapses. Transportation networks start to collapse. Again, I'll use South Africa as an example where the train network, which is really important if your main economy is mining, you really need those trains for mining. You can't move a lot of that stuff by truck, for example. Um because again, so many crony contracts, overpriced contracts, et cetera, had gone out to friends of the regime that the rail network started to collapse too. So that meant, you know, with no power and no rail, if you're a mining, if you're a mining economy, the mines don't work in those cases. Or, you know, you can pull stuff out, but it doesn't go anywhere. Um so you really like the average person can't mix that when their power grid's not working right or it's too expensive to afford, the healthcare system, so much has been stolen from healthcare that you know your local hospital has closed, um there's no maternity ward anymore, you can't get immunizations from your for your kids, you can't miss it. And then the third criteria I'd argue is that it's it's not an aberration. The corruption, even a lot of scandals aren't an accident, they become a core function of how that state works. And indeed, the scandals become so fast that the average person just you can't even follow them all. You can't, you just can't adapt. You just kind of like shrug and like, oh my god, there goes another one if you even notice it, because there's just so many. In some ways, in some of these really kleptocratic states, the levels of corruption almost become background noise because it's just everywhere, it's all pervasive. Um, and so it's it's not just a lot of corruption, it is where corruption has become the system and the government functions to maintain maintain corruption and maintain those that power and wealth for that tiny inner circle at the expense of the rest of the population.

SPEAKER_03 20:30

Now, you've mentioned South Africa uh a couple of times. Can you share with us any particular instances of a kleptocratic environment in the United States uh uh along our timeline or at a municipal or state level?

SPEAKER_00 20:51

Probably the closest thing to a kleptocracy the United States had in our in our further past was probably uh many of the states in the Confederacy pre-Civil War, and possibly post-Civil War, but certainly pre-Civil War. Um, although the term, by the way, kleptocracy won't exist until the 1960s. So you wouldn't find any writing on it or any anything like that, because it just it it wasn't in your menu of kind of how you think of governing working at the time, I should note. Um, as I mentioned, like, for example, just the concept of like you can't bribe congressmen doesn't become a federal law until the 1850s. So, you know, keep in mind that this is not something you're gonna like find in your history, like directly in your history book, like the word clipracy and and uh corruption. By the way, right after the you can't bribe congressmen anymore in federal law, they had to pass another law that says you like nepotism's bad too, because of course then everybody like started giving jobs to you know their brother in laws. So, you know, it's always there's always a certain amount of uh you know adaptation and then counter to that adaptation. Um and so probably I would say the Confederacy in the past, at least on a large multi state scale. Maybe out, you know, Chicago is always famous for its corruption stuff. Because you had a very tiny number of extremely wealthy elites in the form of slaveholders, these large, very few people owned slaves. If those who did own slaves, they owned one or two. And then you have this really, really tiny, tiny, I mean, sometimes a handful of people per state or a handful of families per state that owned these very, very large plantations, the kind of gone with the wind stuff that we all tend to think of when we think of a slavery. And they had set up a governing system in their states that were extraordinarily extractive on the rest of their population. Obviously, with slavery, that's a given when you're enslaving other people, but also on the rest of the whites in the population. They had created a social structure and a social justification that, for example, public schools were bad. They didn't, there were very few public schools in the South. There were almost no public services. You had travelers from Europe, and there were cases that they would travel in the South, who would just be shocked by the level of poverty. And like we're talking like pre-Dickens times of like people used to, you know, Oliver twist levels of poverty, going, man, the South really sucks. Um so you really see this tiny group that's living incredibly wealthy. You have a tiny middle class, the doctors and stuff like that. You have a system that's geared to keeping them in power and very wealthy and serving all of their needs. And basically that's what the rest of the population does. Um, and so I would say, and then they end up going to war to keep that way of life. Um, going back to my work on conflict and corruption and leptocracy. Um, ultimately, it's a very small number of planters that's really pushing for, you know, what, you know, they're bringing in a narrative and stuff like that of, hey, it's states' rights or whatever, like that. But at the end of the day, it's an extract, extremely extractive system that they're maintaining and that they're fighting for. Very undemocratic system, too. They're very clear that they are not, you know, pro-democracy, pro-free press, pro, certainly not pro-human dignity, or they wouldn't be pro-slavery to begin with.

SPEAKER_03 23:56

Well, you remind me of a comment a former uh professor of mine made that, and he he's of Cajun origin in Louisiana, that he could never understand how it is a lot of people in the Confederacy fought because the vast majority of them didn't own slaves, and the war in and of itself was not in their best interest because I mean, you know, they were weren't gonna gain anything by it. What comment would you have on that?

SPEAKER_00 24:25

That's not uncommon in a club. Those sorts of things in a club to actually the narratives, um, because you need to you oftentimes over a long period of time. So I don't mean to make this like some sort of grand conspiracy. There's not like a guy in a tuxedo stroking a cat or something like that. Um although maybe sometimes we do get that, like in the South Africa cases, minus the cat, maybe. Um but when we're talking about, you know, you if you're running a kleptocracy, and one of the things we see in kleptocracy, a couple things. Um, one is this narrative of why those rich should be what they are. Um you don't want uh a kleptocracy needs those in charge of a kleptocracy, one of their greatest fears is that those at the bottom will rise up against them. And so they will work extremely hard, both in norms, in narratives, in laws, to keep sort of the lower classes apart and ideally fighting each other as much as they can. One of the warning signs of any authoritarian regime, but particularly a kleptocracy, is a government that deliberately engages in polarization. Because if I'm if I'm the kleptocrats and I'm worried about getting overthrown, and my fear is that all those people out there might realize that I'm basically stealing them blind, and the reason they're not getting public services, then if I can keep them fighting amongst themselves or get one group to keep another group down, then man, my my job as a kleptocrat is so much easier. And so when you see a government that is deliberately fostering racial animosity, religious animosity, gender animosity, that's usually a sign of some sort of kleptoc, or can be a sign of kleptocratic regime. And so if you think about you have this narrative of in the South of, you know, if you're poor white, but you're still better than the blacks, and you have a very strong racial, very strong, you know, obviously racial narrative going there of, you know, life might suck for you, but you're still better than those guys. Um, as bad as their life was, especially compared to for all the you know differences between north and south. You know, there were vast differences in say the standard of living in the north. We're still talking the 1850s here, so you know, it's still not great. But the quality of north, the ability to get, you know, get public schooling, the ability of to achieve universities, etc., in the north versus the south. You see it industrialization, you see it in things like railroads and other public infrastructure in the north versus south. Um, so you really want to keep those groups apart. You're gonna use a narrative to do that. Also, legal systems, going back to the southern example. So things like in states, blacks not being allowed to read. Um, you don't want people reading, you don't want people getting um you know getting fancy ideas about freedom and human dignity, of course. So you see specific legal laws. You see in the United States, um, with southern states working very hard to make it illegal, for example, to send anti-slavery things in the mails, um, thereby limiting, you know, what narrative gets out there, that only their narrative gets out there. Again, trying to keep people apart, keep that narrative of, hey, you know, you might be poor white, but you're still better than those guys. Ignore the fact you have no public schools or anything, even though they're growing increasingly in the north and they're starting to early versions of becoming a norm, and ignore the fact that they have railroads up there. Um, we're gonna keep you poor and uneducated and in a narrative in the south. So if we're gonna use a kleptocratic example. So it was doesn't surprise me at all because if you're gonna run a kleptocracy, and you can just use pure coercion, violence, but it's really hard. It's a lot easier if you can gain some legitimacy. You might do divine right of kings. I'm the king, so I have the right to have this great palace and everything. This is what kings get. You know, I have Cinderella's coach because you know, Cinderella's hanging out with the king. Um, you know, I could use um some sort of religious justification that says that those who are rich um are clearly designated by God as rich, um, that those who are prosperous have, you know, are clearly worthy of God's uh wealth. And if you're not that, it's your fault. It's not that there were no good public schools, it's all your fault because you didn't work hard enough or you don't have God's grace. So I could use a religious justification. I could use religious justifications for why or ethnic ones, why should you know my group should be higher than your group? I could use racial justifications. I gave the example in the South. I I I'll create a narrative of why the system as it is, a very unjust system, has to stay that way. That the poor will always be with us, and we can't do anything about it, so don't try, just be glad of your lot in life. Ignore my riches.

SPEAKER_03 28:54

So I have to ask, considering the the example of pre-Civil War uh society, sure. Um, so is there an implication here that the founding fathers were kleptocrats?

SPEAKER_00 29:06

Um again, the term doesn't exist, but actually I think a lot a number of scholars, and the one I'm the ones I'm most thinking of are Lawrence Lessig and Zephyr Kichau, make a very strong argument that our founding fathers were actually very concerned with corruption as they knew it, and put a great deal of anti-corruption stuff into the actual uh Articles of Confederation and into the Constitution itself later on. And let me give you a couple examples of that. And we know this because, you know, we have what they talked about, we have what they wrote about. Um one of the ones we see is the emoluments clause, for example, which is this, you know, you can't get, you know, neither knighthood and stuff like that, but you also aren't allowed to receive payments or anything from a foreign government. That starts in the Articles of Confederation, and it ends up moving without much debate, frankly, into the Constitution itself. It was kind of like one of those, like, this is moving over, right? Yeah. Because, you know, anybody who's seen a Hollywood movie, you know, you like a you said Game of Thrones, that's a great example. Um, we'll skip the red wedding for a minute. But Game of Thrones, you know, if I want to pull one family in Game of Thrones to another family, one of the ways I can do that is I can hand them a chest of money or promise them a bunch of land or something to get them on my side. And so this, you know, this is the type of thing that the founding fathers had seen forever. And so they wanted to prevent, you know, the proverbial, I don't know, the French king or somebody coming on with a chest of gold and bribing the president or member of Congress to get them to do what they wanted. And so that's why the emoluments clause is there, that you can't take those foreign gifts. Um, because that, you know, the corruption that they'd seen at the time. Another one is the requirement that you actually live in the state that you you serve. Sorry, Tommy Toberville, who lives in Florida, even though he serves Alabama. Um, the reason again, there was something called dirty burrows in Britain, which was this, you know, they would like find somebody to run for office. Um, and you didn't even have to live in the district, you were just whatever Duke or whatever's guy who did this. So this minimum requirement that you actually had to live in the district had to know the people had to be from the people, is a form of anti-corruption and a form of making sure that there was accountability to, you know, Bob who lives down the street or whatever over there versus Bob that lives six states over, who's never set foot in the state. Age requirements. So you couldn't put like your 16-year-old ne'er do well, because girls couldn't run back then, near do well's son in Congress. You have certain minimum age requirements, they have to be an adult. These are all forms of anti-corruption in the original constitution. This is something the founding fathers deeply care about because they understand that corruption, even if the definitions are different, words like kleptocracy don't exist at the time, etc., that these can degrade this early democracy that they're setting up. Because remember, they're making all of this up as they go along. I mean, they have a few examples. They have the British Parliament, and they're they're deliberately avoiding some of the mistakes they see, like the dirty burrows. They've got a little bit coming out of France, you've got the Polish Sejum or Seum, I never know how to pronounce that one right, um, and a few other early, you know, ancient Greek, um, you know, Rome, but there aren't that many practical examples. So they're they're doing an amazing job at making this up as they go along. I think they've done, you know, we're hitting 250 years of the um Declaration of Independence. And, you know, how they're really trying to live and write with compromises and everything, because it's it's a body of people who, you know, there's seven plus billion people in the world today. That means there's seven plus billion opinions out there of how things should work, or early founding fathers are no different. But in those compromises, how they make a system that works and they understand in things like Federals 51, they've written that you know, this corruption stuff like that can really tear apart a society. We also have a really interesting practical example, which has to do with Benjamin Franklin. Have you ever heard of Benjamin Franklin's snuff box?

SPEAKER_03 33:04

Uh I've heard of the snuff box, but I'm not quite sure where you're going with this, so I'll just kind of say no.

unknown 33:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 33:11

So Benjamin Franklin, of course, he's very famously the US, ambassador to France. Does a fantastic job there um in keeping French money and stuff like coming along, troops, etc. Everybody who's seen Hamilton knows Rochambeau and Lafayette. Okay. So he is a very old man. He's heading back to the States, and as is typical of the time, uh, Louis XVI gives him a gift, which you normally do when ambassadors are leaving. And he gives them this incredibly ornate snuff box with about 400 diamonds embedded in it. It's really ornate. Even today it would be really ornate. Back then, like it was really, really ornate. Not very big, but you know, it's really ornate. And he comes back, and there's a rule in the Article, because it's still the Articles of Confederation, it there's a rule in the Article of Confederations, an early version of the emoluments clause is in there. So he has to get permission from Congress to accept this gift from the French king. Remember, it's an emolument. And so we have a lot of how the founding fathers thought of emoluments because this had to go in front of Congress, so we have the records. And there's a really big debate going on on should Benjamin Franklin be able to keep this snuff box. He's an old man, he's not going back to France. You know, this this is it would have been hard enough as an old man to get to France on like an airliner now, but imagine doing it by boat. Like it ain't happening. Okay, so he's not going back. It's not a bribe. Services have already been rendered. You know, he's leaving. Um, but you know, there's this debate like unless it's payment for services already. Which by the way, the Supreme Court basically said you can't do anymore. There's a lot of anti-corruption law that has been undermined by the Supreme Court recently. We all focus on Citizens United, but not in all these other court cases that really have opened the door to corruption. Anyway, but I'll talk about that later if you want. Okay. So Benjamin Franklin, um, they're having this debate about it. Um, and so it's like, you know, can you really allow your former ambassador to accept this great box from France and then like go bad mouth France tomorrow because you need to for the national interest because they're not doing something in this predecessor United States' national interest. Um, it's not a quid pro quo, it's a gift exchange. But the gift has certain ramifications, it gives sort of a certain amount of French influence. People, a rational person could question like why this expensive gift is coming from France. Is this appropriate? He does get to keep the box, but it takes a vote of Congress too long to do it. And it gives us a real insight into the concerns that the founding fathers had about corruption and foreign gifts, domestic gifts, etc., in a democratic society, the role of norms, you know, not just bribes, but the sort of larger environment that keeps a democracy running.

SPEAKER_03 35:51

How do your students respond to your teachings and discussions about kleptocracy? I mean, it is Georgetown, it is the School of Foreign Service. Yes. And a lot of the students, you know, uh I would say they do come from, at a bare minimum, um, middle income or higher families. Uh, I'm sure there's a ratio or a portion of them that obviously uh they come from other aspects of society. Uh but regardless, how do they respond to this? And what are you learning from them that has given you some additional insights?

SPEAKER_00 36:26

Sure. No, that's a great question. Um just a couple things to note. First, I teach graduate students, so I don't have I love undergrads, it's just not part of my contract. I wish. But I teach the Master of Science and Foreign Service, so by definition, they're all graduate students. Um, two, is my course is an elective, unlike my foreign policy course, which is required. Um, my so they're they're there because they want to be.

SPEAKER_01 36:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 36:49

Could have taken a ton of other fantastic courses. Um, and three, the demo we'll see what happens with the demographics with the new um graduate loan limits and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 37:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 37:00

We actually had a more broad socioeconomic stratum that you might imagine. Okay. One graduate student because usually paying their own way. We used to get a lot of students who received full rides from State Department and USAID, pickering pain, etc., um, full rides. Some students are sent by their their full Ministry of Foreign Affairs from their governments that are sent on full rides. Um, they're often the best and brightest, so they're getting partial or full rides from other groups. So we actually had a much broader representation.

SPEAKER_02 37:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 37:33

That may change this year. The pickering, pain, and fellowships are gone. So that takes 15 to 20 percent of our students right there who are no longer on free rides. The amount of loans will no longer be there on the federal level, and the private loans are much more expensive. So that will price out our school as well. Um, and the fact that we have fewer students on free rides means what financial aid we have is being, you know, the peanut butter spread is thinner.

SPEAKER_03 37:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 37:56

So that may change, but just to kind of balance that out. So a lot of my students are in there because they either have seen corruption themselves in areas and they want to understand better what's going on. Kind of the same stuff I ended up working on, like what's going on around me, how do I understand this better? That's how I got into the field. Um, often they're from states with high levels of corruption. I mean countries, yeah. Sorry, with high levels of corruption or states. They could be from states like Alabama and stuff that are especially notorious for levels of corruption. Virginia's particularly poor governance laws against corruption, by the way, since I'm in Virginia. Louisiana is notorious for its levels of corruption. It has been for hundreds of years.

SPEAKER_01 38:34

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 38:35

Um so often they're interested in that because it's foreign service. Students are coming here because they want to serve others and they want to understand better how this works and where they can contribute to making the world a better place, uh including in the anti-corruption front. Um one of the things I have seen, students have always wanted what do we do about corruption? And if we had one solution for solving corruption, we would have already done it, and the world would be a better place, and there'd be rainbows, and there'd be unicorns and glitter everywhere.

SPEAKER_03 39:06

Everybody would get along.

SPEAKER_00 39:07

Everybody would get along, you know, peace on earth. Uh actually, there is a high correlation between high levels of corruption and conflict. So actually, there would be a peace on earth link. Um, actually, one of the biggest predictors we have of things like civil wars is high levels of corruption and kleptocracy. Um, so we would actually have better, at least closer to peace on earth, um, at least on the state nation-state level. But um they want to understand much more what they can do in the United States.

SPEAKER_02 39:33

Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 39:35

Uh sometimes they're very frustrated because US laws, there were the good many of the good laws we have have been undermined by the Supreme Court lately, the most famous being Citizens United. But there have been laws, for example, with these, I mean, and I'm not the lawyer, so I would have to refer you to that, to you, but um, for example, that came with this what I would argue is this very consort contorted justification for why certain you mentioned uh payment for services after rendered. There was actually a case that came up to them a few years ago. I can't think of the name off the top of my head, I'm sorry, um, of someone who had a local official who had been convicted for accepting a government job at a payment after he left his, I think it was a county office. And the Supreme Court came up with this really contorted reasoning for why Congress, who specifically passed the law to say that that stuff would be illegal, didn't mean it. You know, it was very clear that Congress meant it. Um, you had some of it with um, if you're from New Jersey, Chris Christie had um had some of his public servants, some of his political appointees, I mean, um like make fake bridge construction to hurt another person's district who isn't supporting him. The Supreme Court allowed that stuff through. Like there's a lot of campaign finance laws and stuff that have been undermined lately. So, you know, we see that we see a lot of things are either weren't legal before but are legal now. Um, heck, even lobbying, if you go back to what is it, the Trist case in the 1870s, the Supreme Court had said, and again, you're the lawyer, so I I defer to you if you kick me back here, but um lobbying contracts weren't illegal, but they weren't enforceable because you were selling your essentially selling your right to petition the government to somebody else for something you may or may not believe. And so in doing that, it was a non-enforceable contract, which is very different than how we see lobbying today. It's a 180-degree difference.

SPEAKER_03 41:32

Do you see an impact, a greater impact, on this uh topic uh presented by technology and AI? Is that changing the dynamic in any way?

SPEAKER_00 41:47

Oh, yeah, in a couple areas.

SPEAKER_03 41:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 41:50

Um, unfortunately, more for good for bad right now than for good. But let me start with the good anyway. Okay one of the things that AI can allow us to do, because it does pattern recognition, is help us to catch all sorts of both the corruption itself and illicit finance associated with it, but also the crimes that are facilitated by corruption. So there's the taking the bribe itself, which is bad. And then there's the um like what I'm paying the bribe for. So I might just, you know, accept if I'm a politician accepting bribes, maybe it's to look the other way while you move that fentanyl shipment into the United States or something. Um, customs and borders in any country are tend to be one of the um law enforcement institutions most susceptible to corruption. US, there's been a number of cases, uh, for example, in CBP of corruption and also a lot of loopholes in CBP rules we've learned. Um but so let's say I'm taking a bribe for that to allow the drugs to come in. So whether the bribery itself was bad, but the underlying reason why the bribe is going through, whether it's to facilitate illegal timber, facilitate illegal fishing, pollute more, get someone to pass legislation I want them to, um, look the other way in that human trafficking thing, whatever public bad thing, like I may have to bribe someone to do it. Not always, but so that's the other reason for corruption. Um I forgot the question I'm really saying.

SPEAKER_03 43:10

AI, technology and how it's altering the dynamic.

SPEAKER_00 43:14

So money laundering, if I'm I don't have to launder my bribe, but I probably if it's large, I probably will. You know, I don't want to show up with a suitcase of cash to close on a house and they say, Where'd you get the cash? And you're like, Well, I see I took this bribe from a narco trafficker. Like, that's awkward. So I'm gonna make a all money laundering in is making dirty money look, if not clean, then not so dirty, no one will take it. And I need to make a story around it. And I'm gonna move it through a whole bunch of things. And so I'm gonna make it really hard to follow where the money went. Basically, it's a fur ball of money, like just moving around through shell companies, anonymous trusts, anonymous charities, family offices, hedge funds, you name it. I'm just gonna make it too hard to follow. Where AI can do interesting things is, for example, They can find those patterns sometimes where a human can't, because it is about pattern recognition. If I can put the red flags in and stuff like that, I can potentially find some of those. Let's say finance red flags or Hawala red flags or whatever red flags, because it can sort through those patterns way better than I as a human ever could. And help me see this, like, you know, why is this company why supposedly have 5,000 other companies associated with this address? That's a lot of water coolers in one building. Um, those sorts of things.

SPEAKER_03 44:30

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 44:31

So they can help me track back and find the corruption, the illicit finance, the money laundering. Unfortunately, we're really seeing AI in a number of means facilitate corruption and illicit finance. One is just the huge amounts of money that are going into it. Um, probably the main case that we're seeing right now, speaking of emoluments, are um the Emirati government and leaders in the Emirati government uh paying family members, the Witkop and Trump families, um, sometimes through intermediaries like Binance, to be uh and right after that, approvals for things like some of the high-powered US chips, what would be essentially the golden goose of America's future national defense and prosperity if you believe that a hype about AI, like selling those chips off to places like the UAE, which also tend to be conduit to passing things on to China as well. So it's a problem sending it off to UAE, and it's a bigger problem because it also goes on to China, which at least for our national security strategy is supposed to be our biggest um you know adversary. Um so AI can facilitate, there's just the amount of money in AI, who's giving the money to politicians. You're we're really seeing like these super PACs and stuff like that. They're giving huge amounts of money, often dark money because of Citizens United. It's not it's legal. This is one of the issues we're having in the United States, is what is legal, particularly since Citizens United, but all this dark money coming from AI associated PACs, as well as things like um the facilitation around AI. So things like utility companies, because all of that power, who's gonna pay for that huge amount of power? Right now, you and I do. Um, and utility companies often lobby very hard uh to make sure that the, you know, because they want lots of customers who want lots of power because that's how they make their money. And if they can make somebody, if they can make make a deal with those customers, um, you know, that will facilitate as well. So there's that specific side of corruption. Matter of fact, Virginia is particularly bad about this. This is one of the reasons we see so many high-energy data centers here, is we have especially bad laws because um companies with business before the state, including utility companies, can fund campaigns, and there's a very, very limited transparency on those on that funding and a lot of, or theoretically good transparency, but huge loopholes that make it nearly worthless. So Virginia is particularly bad. It's one of the reasons you see so many of them here. Um, so we have the specific corruption that AI companies are engaged in or activities that might feel like the abuse of entrusted power for private gain, individuals willing to take that money for a gain that goes to us a very, very small number of people at the public's expense. Because remember, very few people are making money off of AI stuff and the stuff they do right now. So um it it if it if the gains don't move much more broadly, this looks very predatory on the larger population. But then there's also the ability to use AI in ways that are associated with corruption illicit finance, and that's things like scams. Law enforcement are pulling out their hair because the number of scams have just gone through the roof around the world, not just here in the state. Because you, you know, they're using AI and chatbots and stuff to send better spam to get people trapped into these, what we call pig butchering scams. Don't worry, no pigs were butchered in the in the making of these scams, but the the fake business scams, the fake investment scams, often link through crypto, the fake um romance scams. Uh, so you can have AI like make a whole series of romance scams. You can even get it to make a chat bot to do the first couple rounds to see if you can get someone to bite on those romance scams and only then jump in. You know, people who've gotten smarter be like, well, I'm not gonna trust this romance scam. I want to see what it's usually men who fall for romance scams, but it does happen to women. Um, I want to see what she looks like. People are using AI to create like the videos and stuff to have video calls that get people scammed, and you know, they give their life savings to this supposed girlfriend they had. It's really, really made it much harder.

SPEAKER_03 48:36

But how but how does that particular example play into corruption and more importantly, kleptocracy?

SPEAKER_00 48:43

So we see this particularly a lot of not all because it's spreading, but um we've seen a number of kleptocratic states in particular that facilitate these scams, um, most notably Cambodia and Laos. And so those two regimes in particular seem to be in the pocket of these scammers. They no longer prey as much on the Chinese because the Chinese basically threatened them. And interestingly enough, it seems to be causing conflict as well. Um, there is, you may remember, a border war between Thailand and Cambodia recently.

SPEAKER_03 49:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 49:14

A lot of that is over those scam centers, and also who's gonna get the bribes and stuff out of those scam centers. Uh so it's and and just to throw another side to the things, according to The Economists, they did a whole podcast called Scam Inc. Um, some of the arguments, because the Chinese communist government has had a weird relationship with organized crime, particularly since they started to open up the world in the 1970s, often through Hong Kong. Um, and so there are some indications, it's not a slam dunk, that they see these scams as a means to undermine the US. So it's like, don't go after our Chinese citizens, but feel free to milk the Americans for all it's worth. Or the Western countries and everybody else for all it's worth. You know, presumably they're getting a kickback of some sort too at senior leaders, but we don't know that. So it's actually a part of foreign policy as well, possibly with the Chinese government.

SPEAKER_03 50:07

So I saw in some of uh your your uh publications um you had referenced at one point or brought up Cachistocracy. I don't know how how much you've uh explored that, but briefly uh share with us uh what you're seeing and also why this is important for people to take into consideration.

SPEAKER_00 50:32

Absolutely. Um good question. So Cachistocracy was Economist magazine's word of the year for 2024, which might not be a leading magazine on the shelf in much of Louisiana, but for elites throughout the world, um it's one of the key business journals, politic politics journals, etc. It's a very influential journal. So that that says a lot if the economist is labeling the word of the year cacostocracy. And it it is what it sounds. I mentioned earlier, acracy means governing by caca is exactly what it sounds like. Like literally the baby talk. Um, it's ruled by your take your bodily function type of people.

SPEAKER_03 51:14

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 51:14

Um your lotion boo. The term is actually over 300 years old. It's not new, it's just making a comeback.

SPEAKER_02 51:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 51:20

So it's not something that just popped up. Um, but we see particularly kleptocracies and cacistocracies don't have to align, but they often do. One of the red flags for a kleptocracy, everybody's got a brother-in-law, that's normal in life. There's always a couple of incompetent people in car in any sort of legislature and any sort of executive branch, and even the courts, people are people, okay, around the world.

SPEAKER_03 51:45

Even in universities.

SPEAKER_00 51:46

Even in universities. There's always that professor, like, seriously, how did you get a PhD? Um, we are all there, any organization. But it's different from when you see, in this case, a governing system, because it's a ocracy governing by cakistocracy, with in the a large number of individuals who are very clearly very unqualified for their jobs. Having a cakistocracy is not uncommon in a kleptocracy because if, or any sort of authoritarian regime, but particularly in a kleptocra, because if I am the ruling kleptocrat, I'm Putin or something like that. Um, and one thing is I'm probably pretty insecure and I want to make sure I stay in power. So there are a couple things that I can do to make sure I stay in power. One is I want to make sure there's nobody to really challenge me. And so if I hire very inept individuals, their ability to challenge me is low because they're just they're literally not smart enough. Um and if I can challenge people who are both unqualified and highly corrupt, even better. Um, because they're not gonna challenge me and they're not gonna want to challenge me. A great example of this, unfortunately, was with some of the ruling hunters in South Vietnam as the South Vietnamese regime was collapsing. They'd been through coup after coup after coup in South Vietnam. And so the military hunter there made Hunter there made sure the best generals and stuff were way out in the distance in South Vietnam. Those around him were incompetent and corrupt so that he could control them because he didn't want any anybody to overthrow him. So, um, just to give an example, again, it has national security ramifications. Anybody who knows anything about Vietnam or has relatives who are in Vietnam, et cetera, like I did. Uh not that I was there. I mean, I have relatives. I'm too young for that. I'm old, but too young for that. Um, so that's one. Another thing is that I can also um they know that they're reliant on me for jobs. If they're inept, they know that they're never gonna get a job like the one I gave them. So they're gonna be loyal to me. And they know that there's plenty of other inept people that could take their place, so they're gonna be really loyal to me because they don't want to be on my bad side, and frankly, they have nowhere else to go. Third, if I'm dealing with a cactistocracy, especially with individuals that are heavily involved in corruption and scams and stuff, is I have black mail. If I find out that my cacistocracy cabinet or inner circle um do start to work against me, um, realizing that they're probably, if they're highly corrupt, they're probably transactional individuals. So they're only doing it until they find a better deal because I'm the kleptocrat, that's why I'm there.

SPEAKER_03 54:25

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 54:26

So I, you know, I'm bringing in people around me. Good people won't work for me. Not very many at least. So I've got P I know I've got people like me. So I know they've probably got a bad history. And I know that I can probably blackmail them. So if you think about defecting, say, to the other political party, or you're gonna go right out to the cops or something like that, just remember I have blackmail against you. So don't even think about it, like think very mafia, like if they're making you an offer you can't refuse, sort of stuff. Um, because these are often a very mafia boss type thing and a mafia boss type organization. I always remind my students to go like re-watch The Godfather before they take my class. Um, and so if I'm a leader, a cactusocracy makes sense for me. They're not gonna, they're less likely to overthrow me or challenge me, either overthrow like coup or overthrow like run for office against me, depending on the situation. They're gonna be very loyal to me because they have nowhere else to go, and they're probably blackmailable, and I can make sure they that's an extra insurance policy for me.

SPEAKER_03 55:23

Would you say that private institutions, whether they're non-profit or for-profit, are less vulnerable to kleptocratic tendencies or even cakistocratic tendencies? Because at the end of the day, they need to generate revenue in order to survive. And the only way you're going to do that is if you have competent people. Uh, so this is not to say they're immune uh to underperforming, but would the inherent nature of a private organization, again, leave them less susceptible?

SPEAKER_00 56:06

Private organizations and cleptocks are going to find themselves increasingly in a very tough situation, especially the middle size. Um, but even the upper ones. In the current environment, particularly in a Western country, um, there'll be more hesitancy to run the kind of highly corrupt corporations and the bribe paying that was the norm in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Um, because nowadays a lot of people, a lot of high-quality people don't want to work for a bribe-paying corporation that like pays autocrats to be, you know, to do whatever, to allow you to drill for oil or whatever, to use the classic example from the resource curse. Um, and also because the idea that a fish rots from the head. So if you're running a lot of corruption at the top of your organization, that's gonna start to filter down and and literally rot out your organization. So if you're like a medical company and you're running bribes at the top, eventually, you know, you don't want your like medical salesman to like be accepting bribes for faulty medical stuff that undermines your corporation and puts you into lawsuits and bankruptcy or something. So corporations don't want to deal with many of them. The exception tends to be in natural resources, but most companies don't want to deal with high high levels of bribery. And so, but if you're in a kleptocracy, that starts to go away because, first off, kleptocracies are the opposite of a proper capitalist system. So, in a capitalist system, like the biggest purchasers of things in the world are governments. Procurements, you know, governments buy much more than any human ever would. So the old Willie Sutton, why did you rob banks? Because that's where the money is. A lot of corruption comes through procurements. Why would you do corruption through procurements? Because that's where the money is. The governments are the biggest purchasers of things. If I could take a kickback of that, I could make a lot of money. If I can split the kickback with the government official or whatever and make lots of money. But in a capitalist system, whoever gets that government contract, for example, depending on how it's written, should be the most efficient, should be the best cost, should be the best quality, or some combination thereof, ideally picked in a way that is for the public interest. Let's say I'm building a road. You know, I should be using the best quality materials for the lowest price, it's going to last the longest, have fewest potholes. And ideally, those who are sitting and picking which company gets the procurement contract to build the road has a public interest at heart. My public interest is no potholes, probably yours too. Um, and so they'll be looking at those sorts of attributes. But if my goal isn't to pick the best company, as it wouldn't be in a cactus or a kleptocracy, it would be about making sure my friends and cronies give me, get the contracts that they give me the kickback. I might build a road that doesn't need to be built. I might charge the full price, but put um lower quality materials because I've already paid off the guys who are going to do the inspecting to make sure that they say it's, I don't know, three feet of high quality concrete when it's really two feet of crappy concrete. Um I might get permission. I might put a low bid in, but then request all sorts of additional extras that should have been part of the original contract. Um, I can come with all sorts of, there's whole big thick manuals of all the ways you can, all the red flags for corruption out there in in procurement. Um and so that is the opposite of capitalism. That the good there was a bidder probably who had a better road proposal for a better price, maybe union labor, um, wouldn't get as many potholes, four lanes instead of two, whatever. Okay. Nice bike paths, I'm a bicyclist. So nice bike paths, whatever. Um, but they didn't get the contract as it would be in a capitalist system. The corrupt guys who promised the kickbacks got the contract. And over time, me as the the you know, in a capitalist system, my efficient company should win out over time because you know, I'm bidding and doing a good job. But instead, I'm not getting the contract because I'm not paying the bribes. My brother-in-law over there, who is highly corrupt and is paying bribes for an inferior product, is getting the is getting the contracts, and I go out of business or I have to pay bribes, and he stays in business. And so this forces me as an ethical business owner with a good product, I should do well in a in a capitalist society, to either have to pay those bribes or I'm gonna go out of business and my market becomes less and less efficient. And maybe I'm somebody who has developed a great new asphalt to pave that road, but I can't even get a start because I can't pay the bribes and stuff. Even if I can show them how great my product is, I'm not paying the kickbacks. I can't pay the kickbacks. So that innovation that could have been great for my population never comes out. And so we see less entrepreneurial spirit, less innovation, we see way overpriced contracts and stuff. I mean, all governments have finite amount of money. If I'm paying twice as much for that road, I can only afford one road instead of the two I need, or I can only afford two lanes instead of four, or no bike paths, or whatever. Um, and you can see where this starts gumming up our system. And so kleptocracies do not do well economically. I mean, just look at the difference in how much lower the status of living is in a kleptocracy like Russia compared to even the other former Soviet states. I mean, it's much, much lower. You have a couple bright spots in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and a couple other cities that are kind of shiny. And then you're looking at something that looks more like Pakistan once you get out of those main cities. Something like 1,300 schools still have no running water in them in Russia. Like seriously, we're in 2026. And it's only getting worse because they're as they need to put more into funding their military and keeping their cronies going, um, they're pulling more and more money at things like schools and roads and so forth. So you really see that difference.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:48

Looking inward, the United States and the respective 50 states and territories, you know, how resistant are we to this?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:00

We don't know. I'm gonna be honest. I I hope very resistant, but we don't actually know. Um because the world the United States has the oldest continuous constitution, it's not the oldest continuous democracy constitutional democracy. We lost that on January on um January 20th, uh 2021. But because once you have a coup attempt, you're no longer in that. Now Switzerland won. Damn Swiss. Um, but anyway, uh, but we've never had usually when we see democratic places turn into kleptocracies and the democratic backsliding stuff that comes with it, because you can't have a full-fledged democracy and rule of law with a kleptocracy. I can't make sure my cronies get the road contracts and stuff in in a good bidding system, in a good capitalist system. I need to undermine my rule of law because you know, someone paid me bribes for road construction. I don't want some wise guy prosecutor who wants to be governor of New York someday or something to like actually investigate me and prosecute me for corruption. That doesn't work. If I'm in jail, I'm not I'm not the kleptocrat. I'm not protecting my cronies that keep me in power. Um, so I need to undermine my rule of law. I need to undermine my law enforcement. I need to um undermine my procurement systems, my consumer protections. Uh, and I need to probably craft a narrative of why I should be allowed to steal, or that I'm not really stealing, or that the other guy stole more, even if it's not true. We talked about narratives before with the Confederacy. Yes, you know, get everybody fighting against themselves or whatever. So I need to do all those things. So the United States, usually when we've seen places that were somewhat democratic fall into something much more corrupt. Um, you're dealing with like, I wouldn't argue Nazi Germany was a kleptocracy, but it was extremely corrupt, more than people realize. Um, you know, Hermann Göring didn't have the best wine collection in Europe because he bought those wines at the local liquor store, nor did he have that art collection because he went to the art galleries and purchased it, you know, sort of stuff. Um so Weimar Republic into uh much more corrupt, of course, we focus on all the other, rightfully the other stuff the Nazis did. Um, but the levels of corruption should not be ignored. Um the level we kind of have some of this a little bit in with the role of organized crime and real estate in Japan in the 80s, but they never fell to full kleptocracy. Um, you know, Hungary and Poland are probably the two that come closest. Poland never became a full kleptocracy, um, and it's really struggling now in the democratic backsliding to come back. Um, Hungary with the overthrow Orban is generally recognized as a kleptocratic regime by most scholars. So that's probably the one we'll be looking most closely at what to do about a kleptocracy. But Hungary and the United States are very different countries. It only got its democracy in the 90s, even though it fought hard for it. It only came in the 90s and they lost it very quickly. We don't have a model for the country in the international system, probably the most powerful country in history, where the financial, the you know, the longest democracy, the democratic norms that come out of it, the alliance structures they created, like NATO, the financial system where the dollar is everything, the internet system, you know, everything ultimately is the inner, you know, the US-based or US standard internet stuff. Like everything we think of, you know, the fact your credit card works and everybody in the world has a MasterCard or visa, like even that stuff. The TV shows, the soft power. Like, we've never had a country like that go into kleptocracy. So we don't know if the American institutions will hold. Um, we certainly see the red flags for kleptocracy or an emerging kleptocracy. Um, we see US laws that have become far more predatory than its citizens. The big, beautiful bill is probably the one that stands out most because of its defunding of medical care, um, but also just the fact that it raises the deficits. So high, the United States is now considered bankrupt. I mean, its debt is now higher than its GDP per the front page of the Financial Times this weekend. Um, and yet it sucked. We we know because it's a repeat of the 2017 bill, we have strong data of how much that moved money, how little went to the poor and middle class, and how much went to the rich in that bill. And so they have taken that and kind of added even more towards the rich and defunded other things. I mentioned education, like what they're doing with college loans that make it much more difficult for the poor. My, you know, the getting rid of scholarships and stuff like that as well. So it makes it harder for those in the poor and middle class to go to Georgetown. Um, we see things like the defunding of hospitals and stuff like that. So rural areas, we have you know places with hundreds of miles to your nearest paternity board. So we see what looks to be a governing system that is pulling from the basics of what keeps the country going, um, and kind of the common lower and middle class that's going to a very small number of individuals. Um, so that would be a concern. We do see a highly polarized narrative and trying to keep people apart rather than pulling people together. You know, just the narrative differences between post-9-11 under the Bush administration and what we see in today's administration. Very, very different if you remember Bush's response to 9-11. You know, big worry. I mean, I was military at the time, big worries about the rise of Islamophobia and stuff, and it did happen, but nothing compared to what's being pushed with Laura Loomer or something like that on Twitter. Um the ability to control the narrative by the Trump administration, um, making sure his friends control the media, and we see the degradation of much of the media. Um the Washington Post op-ed page, for example, two weeks ago, two Sundays ago, had um had an op-ed article about pulling one of the most effective pieces of uh anti-money laundering, anti-terrorism finance legislation, and it was a near fact-free op-ed. I mean, this is a US paper of record. Like, what do you mean there's a near fact-free op-ed? Like, it's it's crazy. So we see that degradation of a lot of media. Um we're seeing a less market-friendly environment. We saw some of that with Spirit Airlines this week. Um, part of the deal that would have kept Spirit afloat was that they would have given 90% control of the company to the government, which makes it a state-owned airline at that point. I mean, when has the United States ever had a state-owned airline? The deal that Intel made for money from the government for chips makes it a near state-owned chip manufacturer. When if we had a state-owned chip manufacturer, like all of these deals that are being being done that give control over to the government, that's very much the antithesis of the capitalist system. You know, you don't have state-owned airlines in a capitalist, at least not for very long. I mean, some do, but it's you don't have a lot of state-owned things in a in a capitalist system. Uh it's either a mixed system or you know, usually you're you're looking at something far more economically constrained. We see the narratives and also just the framing of the social fabric that we often see in a kleptocracy. Um because you're using a narrative that you're trying to come up with narratives that justify basically stealing from your citizens around you. And there's a couple ways you can do that. One is you can argue that uh you're just as corrupt as the last regime, even if it's not true. Um and uh you can argue everybody's equally corrupt, and it's always been that way. Again, whether it's not true or not, you can argue your racial group or gender group or whatever has the right to it, and indeed that your group is being stolen from. Um there's you can use a religious justification that you should be in charge, your religious group, and that if you're not a rich part of that religious group, you know, you're not favored by God. I mentioned that earlier. And sometimes just the cruelty in some ways becomes the point of making it, yes, it's okay. You know, there's a whole narrative out there how empathy is bad that's going around. Like those sorts of narratives don't have to line up with a kleptocracy. You can't just have mean people out there. But they, if you can convince people that watching out for your fellow citizen is bad, um, it makes a kleptocracy easier because then that justification we're not watching out for the national interest overall can be justified as well. And so there's a lot of red flags. Um, but on the other side, the United States has a tremendous history of fighting back against grand corruption. I mentioned the Articles of Confederation, Constitution itself, in many ways, are anti-corruption. So, like it goes back to our core founding documents of getting back to the emoluments clause and stuff. Um, we have huge anti-corruption things, including in the Civil War. There was a 1600-page report during the Civil War documenting the corruption that was coming out of the Department of War or Secretary of War's office at the time, early in the Lincoln administration. Anytime you have a lot of warfare, uh especially with a rapidly expanding military, you're going to get all sorts of corruption because suddenly the military needs to buy a whole bunch of stuff and a lot of good suppliers will come out, but a whole, you know, you need more stuff. So all sorts of scummy ones are coming out of the woodwork. Um, and that's what happened in the Civil War. You had this little tiny few tens of thousands of troops that suddenly need to grow into hundreds of thousands or millions. So all sorts of slimy purveyors of you know, animal feed and uniforms. One of the funny sides is one of the one of the worst purveyors of uniforms, there's a company from New York run by two brothers that were selling really terrible uniforms for like there weren't zippers yet. So like the buttons didn't unbutton and the pants were closed tight and the uniforms fell apart. That company's still there. It's called Brooks Brothers today. They've cleaned up their act, you'll be glad to know. But Brooks Brothers actually got a lot of their start as a really slimy provider of uniforms to the Union Army because no one was checking, they didn't have time, they were it was just get the stuff out there. Um, you could bribe the person who's checking anyway. We had this uh just mess in the federal government. So they write this whole huge report about corruption and do a lot to clean up the US government in the 1860s. And remember, this is before the typewriter, by the way, so someone had to handwrite that thing. Yes, you think the report's bad, imagine handwriting it. Well, uh, there'll be a lot of anti-corruption programs with, I mean, that's a lot of the muckraking era, Haida Tarbell, breaking up the trusts, you know, what Rockefeller and Bond politicians and all these sorts of things. You can read those articles today and be like, oh, this sounds familiar to me. Um, so these, you know, that the great muckraking era, Teddy Roosevelt, you know, electing an anti-corruption president in many ways. There's controversial in other areas, but a lot of the laws we still rely on are laws from that era with Teddy Roosevelt and stuff. We'll get new laws in the Depression in many ways, and also the sort of the beginnings of the welfare state in the United States. Think of uh post-Watergate. Oh, and uh, one other note with World War II, Truman actually became um FDR's vice president on that because of anti-corruption. Have you ever heard of the Truman Commission?

SPEAKER_03 1:13:23

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:24

Okay, so you're familiar with like setting this up before World War II, keeping an eye out on are these contracts being used well? Is this equipment good equipment? Things like the Higgins boats are often attributed to the Truman Commission because like the Navy had a design that was far inferior, especially in rough seas, compared to this Higgins guy who had a much better boat for landing craft on the beaches. Think of how much of the war is amphibious. Yes, like if you have a crappy boat, as a military person, I care a lot about my equipment and corruption and equipment. Like crappy amphibious, think of crappy amphibious boats in rough seas on D-Day. Like anybody who's seen Save in Private Ryan now, picture the boat swamping and like drowning even more of them. Yes, how important that is. So Truman ends up on the ticket for FDR's final term and then president because he didn't expect to be vice president that short and get a promotion. Um, because he was seen as, you know, he was known as kind of Mr. Integrity. And there was a lot of questions about FDR running for a fourth term, and everybody knew his name because it was nicknamed the Truman Commission. And like he was the guy you wanted on your ticket. We can't elect people with a strong integrity background to be, well, in this case, vice president, but in this president, stuff like that. We have the post-Watergate reforms. Like we can do this as the United States. We have a history of getting people riled up, of passing amendments, things like the 16th Amendment for the income tax, which was supposed to alleviate some of the oligarchy concerns of the 19 teens. Like, so we have a history of this. We just haven't figured out how to tap into it yet in 2026, I think, to it enough of an extent that like people with high degrees of integrity are being pushed to run for office and win. We see other places where anti-corruption candidates have won. Maya Sandu in Moldova, for example. Um, a lot of anti-corruption platforms with Peter Magyar, although he was also in some ways an insider, but is able to report on what's going on in the Orban regime in Hungary. Um, again, I mentioned all those Gen Z protests around the world. People are watching what happens in Nepal, for example, right now, uh, and in Bangladesh. So it's gonna be like this can be done. It's just very hard, and it's not clear yet that the American electorate is willing yet to choose like good governance platforms and you know, voting for candidates who push for campaign finance reform, etc., yet.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:50

Well, that doesn't mean they won't. I think something that is also equally important it's to exercise individual thinking um and to be able to break away. Our society um is geared towards everybody jumping through hoops. Uh you're in high school, and there's the pressure to get the grades, to take the SAT score, uh, the SATs, get the good scores, participate in extracurricular activities to make you all a good candidate for a you know university. Uh so it's hoop jumping. And then uh we build upon that the applicant tracking systems, right? And everything, or you're working for a company and it's constant hoop jumping where one kind of loses a sense of self. Uh and you're you're thinking more of what do I need to do so I can fit in, right? Whether it's organizational or people pleasing. And I think if we lose that capacity to think for ourselves, to break away, stand alone, you're less likely to sort of question what is happening. Um I I digress slightly.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:04

Social media make no, true, and social media makes it worse. If I can feed you stuff that will make you angry that will addict you, and there's you know, the whole court case is going with meta and stuff right now, and what's coming out of these court cases and have been for years. If I can keep you busy on your phone first, so you're not doing other things like reading a book or even just watching television or with your friends. Yes, you know, if I can they make money off of how long you stay on it and how much stuff you click. And the reality is that things that make you angry will keep you on it longer. They are geared toward they are money-making organizations. It just so happens they make money by hurting larger society, they're predatory. They, you know, they could switch their algorithms to like push good things to you, like be empathetic to your neighbor and let's all get along. But they don't make money off of that. They make money off of you clicking a lot, and you're more likely to click on things if you're mad.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:57

So what I'm hearing here is I should gear my podcast to making people angry.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:03

If you want more clicks, yeah. I mean, this is this has been what a lot of these podcasters, I mean, I've listened to far right and far left. A lot of them are just about how do I make you angry? Let me give you a six-second sound clip. You know, I don't have to use AI for it, although AI makes it so much more fun because I can make fake things people didn't say, but let's just, you know, I can take something completely out of context and get you to boo it, what regardless of what your politics are eventually. Um, if I can get you to only watch that, I can keep you angry, I can keep you clicking it online. Those companies make money off of it. And these are the same companies that were in the front row of the inauguration.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:37

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:38

We can't forget that they sat in front of the family members.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:42

You know, if seating, you know, one of my favorite books is A Gentleman in Moscow. I don't know if you've read the book. Much better than the movie, no offense to Ian McGregor. Um, but the book, as always, is much better. And a whole huge portion of the last part of the book is this character writing down the seating chart for um what's gonna happen after who's gonna take charge after Shalom and who ends up sitting where and how, because the seating chart is so important. Anybody who's ever worked protocol, the seating chart is God. So when the business executives sit in front of the family members, there's a lot of thought that goes into that seating chart. Just keep that in mind. Always watch where people sit. Yes, it's super interesting from a politics perspective. Always watch where people are sitting. Um, and that includes inaugurations.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:32

As we come to a close, do you have a parting thought for our audience?

SPEAKER_00 1:19:36

I think the biggest one is just one of the couple stated goals of this regime. One of them is Steve Mannon's favorite quote, um, to flood the zoneless shit. And what he meant was disinformation, speaking of social media. He was speaking specifically about disinformation. But we also see that in corruption scandals. Um, if you think back to Watergate and the church committee hearings and everything else that went around, the number of movies you've seen about Watergate, documentaries, whatever. Um there's a scandal like that every couple days, to literally the point where it is impossible for the typical person to follow those. And it's gotten harder to follow on sort of the regular news. I mentioned what had happened to the Washington Post. There's still some very good reporters at the Washington Post, but there's a very different how they're doing a reporting. But we're normalizing the deviants now, and we're and normalizing the deviants and kind of letting ourselves get sucked into the narrative. Unfortunately, if you you know, uh America has been through similar versions of this before. We can pull ourselves out. We have a strong civil society, we have a motivated populace, relatively well-educated populace, still a fairly large middle class, although it's under great stress. Um, but we still have a fairly large middle class that can, we have all the building blocks, plus a great history. You know, going back to our founding documents, to like really, you know, it's the 250th anniversary. I live in DC, to really get back into that declaration of independence. You know, all men are created equal, they're endowed by their creative with certain inalienable rights to really get back to those, to get back to our preamble, the constitution. We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, etc. etc. etc. for ourselves and our posterity. You can tell it's the schoolhouse rock, right? Um, should we we the people of the United States? There's a mistake in schoolhouse rock. Anyway, um, like getting back to that, I think there is I do have a lot of hope for the American populace doing that. It will require people thinking it. One of the things that any authoritarian regime, but particularly kleptocratic regimes that have a little more genetic what to them will do, is they will allow good media in, but they will make it hard to access and expensive. And the crap that carries their narrative will be free. So that means people have to be willing to pay for good quality media, and that includes your local at your local level. Um paying for a local newspaper, the number of newspaper deserts is huge. And if you don't know what's going on in your local with your local dog catcher, um it only goes up for worse there because most of the crups you see is actually in your local level. Most of the federal government numbers and stuff are shocking. But don't forget your day-to-day governing stuff probably comes more at your state-local level. Who's on your school board? How much do your teachers get paid? Did that particular pothole get filled? Do you have bike lanes in your neighborhood? Those are local and state. So watching your what's going on in your state, because that's where governance is going to touch you most personally. Even who gets a tax break.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:42

Um, you know, as a charitable foundation, that's local governance. So don't be so busy with the federal government that you forget your local government and support your local newspaper and look for good candidates for local dog catcher all the way up and vote for them. You know, people of integrity, people with a practical experience in the things that you think, even if you don't always agree with them, that they have the public interest at heart versus their own private interest at heart that that speak that believe in the inherent dignity of each human being and that will push that forward. Um, and then do the same on the federal level. And again, support your local journalists, your local politicians, and stuff who you think have integrity and are focused on the public interest and not their private interest. Because it's really hard in politics, it's so expensive for those guys to break out. So look for them and help them run for office. We like we have done major governance changes before. It can be done to make that more perfect union. Yeah, it's another declaration of independence. I can do this.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:43

Jody, thank you for sharing uh your experiences, observations. Uh thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:48

I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:49

Uh well, this has been wonderful. Uh, I could go another hour, but we have things to do.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:55

I've not shut up. I don't want to hear myself any more today.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:58

Uh to our listeners, thanks again for joining us on Brungart Law's Langout, where we provide a little extra perspective because the devil is always in the details. Please invite others to listen. Please share your feedback with us. Jody, again, tremendous gratitude.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:12

Thank you. Thanks a lot for having me again. I really appreciate it. Good luck with the podcast.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:15

Thank you.