In today’s society, governments around the world are increasingly shrouding their actions and decisions in a veil of secrecy. This lack of transparency undermines the principles of democracy, making it difficult for citizens to hold their leaders accountable. In the United States, this culture of secrecy has grown significantly since World War II. However, historian Matthew Connelly’s book, “The Declassification Engine,” uses advanced data science techniques to analyze a vast collection of state secrets, revealing not only what the government is hiding, but also why they are doing it. Here is a summary and review of The Declassification Engine.
Publishing information
Title: The Declassification Engine : What History Reveals About America’s Top Secrets; Author: Matthew Connelly; Hardcover; $32.50; Feb 14, 2023 ; ISBN 9781101871577
Book Summary
Every day, the United States government generates thousands of new secrets, shrouding its operations and decisions in a veil of secrecy. However, the purpose and beneficiaries of this secrecy are often unclear. Prior to World War II, the United States had a proud tradition of transparent government, reserving classification, covert operations, and spying for only the most serious of circumstances. However, after the war, the government found the power to determine what information to keep secret too alluring to relinquish. As a result, intelligence agencies, black sites, and classified laboratories have proliferated without adequate oversight, creating a culture of secrecy that undermines the principles of democracy.
Officials argue that secrecy is necessary for national security, but the true costs have been ignored for too long. Historian Matthew Connelly uses advanced data science techniques to analyze a vast collection of state secrets, revealing not only what the government is hiding, but also why they are doing it. By examining pivotal moments in history, from Pearl Harbor to drone warfare, Connelly exposes the underlying drivers of state secrecy, such as incompetence and criminality, and how excessive overclassification makes it impossible to protect truly important information.
Connelly’s study is a powerful reminder of the abuses of power enabled by government secrecy, the negligence it protects, and the loss of accountability suffered by citizens. The Declassification Engine is a crucial exploration of the self-defeating nature of excessive secrecy, the dire state of our nation’s archives, and the importance of preserving our past to secure our future. It provides a call to action for citizens to demand greater transparency and accountability from their government, in order to uphold the principles of democracy and protect our freedoms.
Source: Penguin Random House
Author information
Matthew Connelly is a renowned professor of international and global history at Columbia University, where he is also the principal investigator at History Lab. This innovative lab is an NSF-funded project that applies data science to the challenge of preserving and releasing public record in a timely manner. Connelly holds a B.A. degree from Columbia and a Ph.D. from Yale. He has authored several books, including A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria’s Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era, as well as Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population.
Source: Penguin Random House
Media Review
“America’s secrecy system is a Cold War creation that went out of control long ago. To tackle the issue in his book, Connelly takes on three tasks: describing the system’s dark labyrinth; cataloging the catastrophic effects of robotic classification on our ability to understand the past; and proposing a computer-driven assault on the empire of secrets. He succeeds admirably in two out of three; the search engine he’s devised is off to a slow start.” – The New York Times
“A new era began in 1931 with the groundbreaking for a national archive, and Franklin Roosevelt appointed the first archivist three years later. At this point, the “dark state” began its epic growth, which Connelly recounts in 10 unsettling chapters and the traditional yet still dispiriting how-to-fix-it conclusion. The author delivers a wild, page-turning ride packed with intelligence mistakes, embarrassing decisions, expensive failed weapons programs, and bizarre research that has ranged from the silly to the murderous. ” – Kirkus
“What [ Matthew Connelly] discovered was unnerving: a highly fallible, exorbitantly expensive (over $18 billion annually, by Connelly’s estimate), virtually uncontrollable [classification] system that ultimately renders its administrators unaccountable to the American taxpayers funding it. . . . One hopes this book will generate serious discussion of the issue.” – Booklist
“Connelly’s new book, The Declassification Engine, is both an impassioned indictment of America’s culture of official secrecy and a blueprint for how advanced computer-search capabilities could be used to restore our nation’s traditional transparency. His criticism is for the most part balanced: He allows for the need to guard some sensitive information and debunks notorious conspiracy theories with more plausible explanations (that nevertheless represent dangers of their own).” – Washington Independent Review of Books
Public Review
“A profoundly important work of scholarship, one that addresses core questions about American democracy and the challenges to the nation’s venerable tradition of open government. Connelly’s findings are deeply troubling but also hopeful, showing us how data science can be used to help us better understand the past and thereby point the path to a more enlightened future.” – Fredrik Logevall, The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Embers of War
“A brilliant, deeply unsettling look at the history and inner workings of ‘the dark state.’ The number of things that truly must be kept secret is small. The vast amount of information classified by the government is simply a means of wielding enormous power without real oversight. Again and again, Connelly reveals, secrecy has been used to hide mistakes, avoid embarrassment, cover up incompetence, and mislead the public. At a time when federal agencies are increasingly classifying or destroying documents with historical significance, this book could not be more important. An inscription at the entrance to the National Archives says it best: ‘Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.’ ” – Eric Schlosser, New York Times best-selling author of Command and Control
Similar Type of Books
- The Pentagon Papers: The Secret History of the Vietnam War by Neil Sheehan, E.W. Kenworthy, Fox Butterfield, and Hedrick Smith
- The Secret State: A History of Intelligence and Espionage by John Hughes-Wilson
- The National Security State: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration by Tom Engelhardt and Karen J. Greenberg
- The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff
- Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America by Nancy MacLean
