"From the Pulitzer-prize winning New York Times bestselling author an alarming account of how
autocracies work together to undermine the democratic world and how we should organize to
defeat them We think we know what an autocratic state looks like: There is an all-powerful
leader at the top. He controls the police. The police threaten the people with violence. There
are evil collaborators and maybe some brave dissidents. But in the 21st century that bears
little resemblance to reality. Nowadays autocracies are underpinned not by one dictator but
by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures surveillance
technologies and professional propagandists all of which operate across multiple regimes
from China to Russia to Iran. Corrupt companies in one country do business with corrupt
companies in another. The police in one country can arm and train the police in another and
propagandists share resources and themes pounding home the same messages about the weakness of
democracy and the evil of America. International condemnation and economic sanctions cannot
move the autocrats. Even popular opposition movements from Venezuela to Hong Kong to Moscow
don't stand a chance. The members of Autocracy Inc aren't linked by a unifying ideology like
communism but rather a common desire for power wealth and impunity. In this urgent treatise
which evokes George Kennan's essay calling for "containment" of the Soviet Union Anne
Applebaum calls for the democracies to fundamentally reorient their policies to fight a new
kind of threat"--
