After Russia conceded that its Soviet Empire could not sustain itself, the great espionage systems stood as lonely and as pointless as old second world war gun placements on forgotten shore lines. In that brief moment when history ended, a career at the cutting edge of global surveillance could neither beckon to the patriot nor the technical wizard hoping for unlimited budgets to fulfil undergraduate fantasies. From the pool of mathematical geniuses in Cambridge and MIT flowed a steady stream of inspired innovators into the great finance centres of London and New York, redefining the meaning and potential of uncontrolled global credit. Little noticed was that smaller stream, that steady trickle, who flowed from the same pool into the Cold War monsters of surveillance at GCHQ and the NSA.
Though now working in quite different worlds, these young people, together with others of that generation empowered a new, dark and secret search for wealth and power, with convictions born of cold calculation of the outcomes for a world choking on its vast consumption. The coming amorality of global systems failure, with the inevitability of war, mass starvation, pestilence and desperate migrations, became the justification for the ruthless amorality of wresting control of the levers of power from the fools that emanated from political process to govern nation states of diminishing meaning.
The conspiracy for this revolution was hardly spoken, but something understood. A pen drive in the post to an old friend's home address gives advanced warning of contracts to be signed and deals to be made. A minister of state, recently installed is briefed by a senior civil servant who makes clear that the minister's darkest secrets are safe with him. Regulators un-regulate. Judges make surprise judgements. Legislators vote against their voters interests. Monopolies and Mergers are un-hindered. News anchors collude to fold news seamlessly into public relations. New enemies are created, funded, given victories and defeats and at each turn the power of the money and the secrets grows, as ownership and control of true wealth flows into the dark corners where questions are not asked. Hedge Fund, Shell Company, Foundation, Trust, Private Equity, Shadow Banking, Sovereign Wealth Fund: the names we have for components of the unseen world, where the oligarchs and the lesser oligarchs conceal the meaning of their power.
And somehow, it all seems nearly normal. We vote. There is a government. Parliament debates the issues of the day. Criminals and perverts are sent to prison. The Christmas carnival and village fete proceed. Children go to school and pass exams, grown ups go to work and the rubbish is collected. There are cameras watching everywhere and Wikilealeaks and Snowden revelations, conspiracy blogs and arrests at protests, but everything is sort of normal. Doubting normal is just another product. Reasonable people debate reasonably. It is all very nearly normal, but not quite. Its the kind of normal that isn't normal described in films by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright just before the mayhem. Its just that things don't feel right. Politicians seem to be doing what they are told and saying what they are told to say. New appointments to key positions seem to go to the same sorts of people. Laws are passed that no-one wants. Hatreds are being stirred up. Important issues and ideas are excluded from public debate. The weak and vulnerable are blamed for being weak and vulnerable. This is not normal. It is the new normal that is not normal at all.
