US ‘on a trajectory’ toward authoritarian rule, ex-officials warn

The United States is “on a trajectory” toward authoritarian rule, according to a sobering new intelligence-style assessment by former US intelligence and national security officials, who warn that democratic backsliding is accelerating under the Trump administration – and may soon become entrenched without organized resistance.

The report, titled Accelerating Authoritarian Dynamics: Assessment of Democratic Decline, was released on Thursday by the Steady State, a network of more than 340 former officers of the CIA, the NSA, the state department and other national security agencies.

To conduct the assessment, the authors applied the same analytic methods used by US intelligence agencies to assess the fragility of democracies abroad but turned them inward for what the group called a “first-of-its-kind” analysis of domestic democratic decline.

“We wrote it because the same tools we once used to assess foreign risks now show unmistakable warning signs at home,” the group said in a statement upon its release.

It's one thing for the plebs to get bent out of shape. When you've got former spooks irritated the the ground is shifting so fast they eventually decided to just release the report while reserving the right to further updates, that's a far more serious situation.