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Notes -
The Deep State is a social network which has penetrated the permanent government sufficiently deeply that it can manipulate the elected government into doing what it wants. In other words, the Deep State is Georgetown and Manhattan cocktail parties and the CFR matters because it is run by people who are invited to those cocktail parties, not the other way round. Germany is run by industrialists so the German deep state prefer to speak through the IFO (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ifo_Institute_for_Economic_Research).
When I worked at Deutsche Bank, there was an occasional hint of the German Deep State in action. It is real, but it is narrowly mercenary in outlook and doesn't waste time thinking about national security. FWIW, the German Deep State is more closely tied to the Gnomes of Zurich than the US Deep State, but in an age where all Rhodes (scholarships) lead to Davos, this probably doesn't matter.
The French Deep State, incidentally, is also real, and is able to act independently of the US. From a Moldbuggian perspective, this is because Harvard does not control the ENA.
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