Elite Influence

An accessible guide to identifying, tracking, and confronting elite influence in today's destabilized world.

Understanding today's elites and the unprecedented influence they wield has never been more urgent. In the United States and other democracies, these unelected, unaccountable power brokers are not the elites of yesterday. They have risen through seismic shifts in technology, finance, and governance to shape our futures in ways that are often opaque and far removed from traditional levers of power. Unlike their predecessors, they "give back" less to their home nations while exerting outsized sway over government, media, health, technology, and everyday life.

From household names like Larry Summers to under-the-radar players and oligarchs such as Elon Musk, these influencers operate through novel mechanisms that make them far more impactful than the Cold War titans or Robber Barons of old. Their reach is global, their methods complex, and their influence frequently skirts the line between legitimate power and corruption. This new normal emerged from decades of transformation: digitized finance and media, deregulated and privatized governance, and vast offshore networks fueled by post-Soviet wealth. These developments opened unprecedented opportunities for private actors to shape policy and public discourse worldwide.

Today's elite influencers own platforms that host social media rife with imposters, leverage cryptocurrency to bypass traditional systems, and deploy philanthropic and "grassroots" entities as vehicles of influence. The result? Corruption flourishes at pandemic proportions, public trust in institutions plummets, wealth inequality surges, and populist movements gain momentum.

This book offers an accessible, clear-eyed introduction to identifying, tracking, and addressing elite influence in an increasingly destabilized ecosystem. It explains the rapid transformations that created this new breed of influencers, reveals the networks and practices that sustain them, and equips readers with tools to map influence and separate conspiracy from reality.