Organized Crime as a Tool of State Power

What this episode covers

In Season 3, Episode 2 of Secure Line, Steph Carvin sits down with Jess Davis for a deep dive into Jess’s new book chapter, “State Secrets: Hiring Criminals for State-Sponsored Activities,” published in Killing in the Name of the State: State-Sponsored Assassinations in International Politics (Lynne Rienner).The episode unpacks a disturbing but increasingly visible trend: states using organized crime networks as proxies for covert action—from targeted assassinations and transnational repression to foreign interference and sabotage. Jess explains why these partnerships are attractive to states (plausible deniability, operational access, and reduced diplomatic risk) and why criminals take the deal (money, safe haven, market protection, coercion, and impunity). Steph and Jess also wrestle with what’s genuinely “new” versus what’s simply evolving—especially the role of encrypted apps, social media recruitment, cryptocurrency payments, and the growing use of youth in low-level state-linked disruption.Along the way, they nerd out on the conceptual questions—proxy vs. surrogate, principal–agent problems, and why this phenomenon is hard to measure—before bringing it back to policy: the crime–intelligence nexus doesn’t fit neatly into Canada’s institutional divide between CSIS and the RCMP, creating real enforcement and intelligence gaps just as state–crime convergence becomes more central to modern security threats.

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