Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World

Anne Applebaum examines how modern autocracies operate and threaten democratic nations. Rather than relying on a single all-powerful leader, contemporary autocratic states function through interconnected networks spanning multiple countries. These networks include kleptocratic financial systems, surveillance technologies, and professional propagandists that operate across regimes in China, Russia, Iran, and elsewhere. Corrupt companies conduct business across borders, police forces train and arm counterparts in other nations, and propagandists coordinate messaging about democracy's weakness and America's threat. Unlike Cold War-era communism, these autocracies are united not by shared ideology but by mutual interests in power, wealth, and immunity from accountability. Applebaum argues that traditional tools—international condemnation and economic sanctions—prove ineffective against this coordinated system. Popular opposition movements in Venezuela, Hong Kong, and Moscow have similarly failed to challenge it. She calls for democracies to fundamentally restructure their policies to confront this new form of threat, drawing on principles similar to George Kennan's Cold War containment strategy.