For years, a small group of billionaires has amassed increasing power, steering American politics for their own benefit. Many of these figures are familiar. There’s Elon Musk, who has used his wealth to help place Donald Trump back in the White House. There’s Mark Zuckerberg, who has used his resources to transform America into his own digital playground. There’s Jared Kushner, who has used family connections to gain more political power than he ever dreamed of.

But these oligarchs are not working alone. From China to Russia to Saudi Arabia and beyond, many of these men have cultivated alliances with America’s most notorious adversaries, opening the doors for autocrats around the world to sink their teeth into the U.S. Placing profit over patriotism, they have transformed into vectors of influence for some of the world’s most repulsive dictatorships, all of whom are trying to create a world dominated by imperialism and tyranny. Connecting everything from the devastation in Ukraine to destruction in Gaza to destabilization in Greenland, these oligarchs have transformed American policy and American politics into their own private fiefdoms, regardless of what Americans actually want.

Casey Michel is an author, journalist, and Director of the Combating Kleptocracy Program with the Human Rights Foundation. He is the author of American Kleptocracy, named by The Economist as one of the "best books to read to understand financial crime." His writing on kleptocracy, illicit finance, dark money, foreign interference has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The Atlantic, and more.  His second book, Foreign Agents, is about the rise and devastating impact of the U.S.’s foreign lobbying industry and was described by The Economist as “an eye-opening depiction of an industry that has largely defied efforts to keep it in check” as well as one of the “biggest foreign-policy book releases of 2024" by Foreign Policy Magazine.

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