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timschmidt 3 hours ago

I would push back against the idea that intelligence agency behavior changes administration to administration. Looking through history, it's the intelligence agencies which have superior continuity of leadership. Which suggests things about who's directing who.

galangalalgol 19 minutes ago | parent [-]

Bureaucracy in general exhibits that kind of hysteresis. It is like a running average of who has been in charged mixed with a big dose of the culture that people who choose that sort of career create. Ironically, that inertia is considered by political scientists to be a safeguard for democracy.

timschmidt 12 minutes ago | parent [-]

It hits different when the bureaucracy's job is to collect and exploit secrets, and act in the shadows.