What ultimately restrains powerful entities is their separateness.



If Google tried to blackmail people, the federal government could arrest, prosecute, and jail the responsible parties. If national-security officials tried to mistreat Google, its management could marshal a substantial fortune, high-powered lawyers, and a far-reaching public platform to fight back. The same goes for Wall Street, Walmart, and the city of Walla Walla, Washington: America has countless repositories of power, some big, some small. And while that doesn't always prevent abuses, even serious ones, it has prevented us from becoming a society where anyone, whether a military dictator or the owner of a company store, has free rein to rule over regular people.



The diffuseness of power in America has long been a strength. But we're rapidly undermining it. I don't just mean that we're increasingly federalizing everything, and concentrating power in the executive branch, though we've done both of those things. What I mean is that, during the last two presidencies, a series of events, including the 9/11 attacks and the global financial crisis, have led to increasingly, uncomfortably close ties between Big Finance, Big Telecom, Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. And apparently, Alexander is pushing for even closer ties, in the form of government eyes constantly inside of America's financial infrastructure.



Americans shouldn't trust any of these repositories of power. Government and corporations are both capable of terrible things. To have them colluding with one another in secret, inexorably arranging things so that there's disincentive for disagreement among them, is terrifying. The people can fight Big Government. The people can fight Big Finance. The people can fight Big Tech. Could the people fight them if they're all working together with secret law on their side? Booz Allen Hamilton is paid handsomely to spy on us for the government, then pours campaign contributions back into that same government, protecting their powerful financial incentive to have the surveillance state expand, something that is already a bipartisan cause. Five years hence, are Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan Chase going to be similarly invested in the expansion of the national security state? How about Microsoft and Google? AT&T? Under the umbrella of cybersecurity, is there any corporate player the NSA won't court or compel?



Alexander is no fool. He knows it is in his interest to make the NSA useful, even indispensable, to as many powerful corporations as possible -- that just as the military-industrial complex consists of public and private entities with a common interest in growing the state every year, so too could his surveillance and cyber-security complex, if he is smart in how he proceeds.