NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer-prize winning author an alarming account of how
autocracies work together to undermine the democratic world and how we should organize to
defeat them A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Economist Financial Times Foreign Affairs The Times
"A masterful guide to the new age of authoritarianism... clear-sighted and fearless.”—John
Simpson The Guardian " Especially timely. "—The Washington Post 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.
