Deconstructing Project 2025's Capture Architecture
This manuscript provides a systematic deconstruction of Project 2025’s policy proposals, analyzing each chapter through the lens of institutional capture mechanisms. The analysis draws on political science, public administration theory, and historical precedents to map how proposed reforms would transform the relationship between elected officials, career civil servants, and democratic accountability.
Methodology
Each chapter examines a distinct capture vector—from executive authority consolidation to regulatory dismantlement—tracing the specific mechanisms by which proposed changes would shift power dynamics within and across institutions.
Diagnostic Framework
This diagram summarizes the capture model used throughout decon. Each chapter maps to specific instruments and feedback loops within this system.
THEORY OF CAPTURE
A Systems Model of Democratic Degradation
Read as: Demand → Activation → Conversion → Outputs → Feedback Loops
INPUTS: Enabling Conditions
POLARIZATION
- Affective sorting / tribal ID
- Media fragmentation
- Zero-sum framing
CRISIS (real or manufactured)
- Economic precarity
- Security threat narrative
- Cultural displacement anxiety
INSTITUTIONAL EROSION
- Declining institutional trust
- Norm degradation / elite defection
- Prior capture-cycle residue
Some inputs are downstream products of earlier capture cycles (see Feedback Loops).
INSTRUMENTS OF CAPTURE
Mutual Reinforcement: Each instrument enables and amplifies the others
LAW
- Selective enforcement / non-enforcement
- Remedies + review disablement
- Removal/appointments
- Immunity & clemency
PERSONNEL
- Loyalty tests / purges
- Schedule F conversion
- Acting appointments
FUNDS
- Impoundment
- Conditional spending
- Contract steering
- Grant defunding
INFORMATION
- Collection halt / sabotage
- Access denial / classification
- Surveillance
NARRATIVE
- State propaganda
- Media intimidation
- Platform capture
VIOLENCE
- State: Militarization, Detention
- Stochastic: Intimidation, Vigilantism
OUTPUTS: Capture Products
MINORITY RULE
- Electoral lock-in (suppression, gerrymandering)
- Counter-majoritarian capture (courts, Senate)
- Policy decoupling from majority will
- Structural lock-in / hard-to-reverse rules
OLIGARCHIC EXTRACTION
- Regulatory capture
- Tax arbitrage / public asset transfer
- Rent extraction (health, housing, edu, energy)
- Wealth concentration acceleration
Minority rule provides political protection for extraction; extraction funds political protection.
FEEDBACK LOOPS (arcs flow right-to-left from Outputs back to earlier stages)
LOOP 1: IMPUNITY
Outputs → Instruments
No prosecution / clemency → Emboldens actors
"Transgression becomes precedent; precedent becomes entitlement."
LOOP 2: EXIT
Outputs → Permission Structure
Brain drain / capital flight → Weakened opposition
"Those who could resist leave; those who remain accommodate."
LOOP 3: EPISTEMIC COLLAPSE
Outputs → Inputs
Information destruction + narrative dominance → Cannot measure harm → Cannot mobilize
"You cannot fight what you cannot name or count. Hardest-to-reverse loop."
Figure: Theory of Capture — Systems Diagram. A model of democratic system conversion into instruments of minority rule and oligarchic extraction. Read left-to-right as causal chain (Demand → Activation → Conversion → Outputs), then trace feedback loops showing system stabilization.
Canonical: /diagrams/theory-of-capture/
1. On coordination: This model does not require conspiracy; systemic outcomes emerge from partial coordination plus convergent incentives.
2. On reversibility: Each feedback loop raises reversal costs and lowers detection probability. Epistemic collapse is the hardest-to-reverse loop: destroyed measurement infrastructure makes harm undocumentable.
3. On endogeneity: The system is self-amplifying. Today's outputs become tomorrow's inputs.
Citation
Oh, Jason. Deconstructing Project 2025’s Capture Architecture. Working Draft v0.1, December 2025. Hemlock Collective.
Table of Contents
Preface: The Seawall
A personal reckoning with the acceleration of political violence, connecting the author’s family history of persecution to the operationalization of Project 2025.
Part I: The Ideological Engine
The Ideological Engine: Project 2025's Inversion of 'Values' for Authoritarian Ends
Deconstructing the semantic inversions—'Freedom,' 'Merit,' 'Patriotism'—that serve as the permission structure for authoritarian capture and cryptoplutocratic rule.
Part II: The Architecture of Capture
// Cluster A: Institutional Capture
Dismantling the Executive & Administrative State
The operational mechanics of 'deconstruction': Schedule F purges, the abolition of independent agencies, and the consolidation of unchecked power under the Unitary Executive.
Subverting the Judiciary & Rule of Law
The transformation of the legal system into an instrument of regime preservation: court-packing, the weaponization of prosecution, and the creation of a two-tiered justice system.
// Cluster B: Democratic Erosion
Nullifying the Vote & Entrenching Minority Rule
Deconstructing the 'Election Integrity' pretext: how federal coercion, state-level ballot blockades, and narrative warfare are engineered to entrench minority rule.
Capturing Federalism: Imposing Centralized Ideological Control
How 'states' rights' rhetoric masks a strategy of 'instrumental federalism': selectively centralizing power to crush local resistance while devolving authority to dismantle worker protections.
// Cluster C: Information Control
The Architecture of Epistemic Collapse: Engineering a Post-Truth State
The architecture of 'epistemic capture': dismantling independent media, weaponizing state communications, and engineering a post-truth reality to manufacture consent.
Remaking Education for Indoctrination & Ignorance
The campaign to dismantle the Department of Education, weaponize 'parental rights,' and privatize public schooling to produce a compliant, uncritical citizenry.
// Cluster D: Economic & Social Control
Weaponizing the Economy for Political Control & Elite Enrichment
How the 'Extractive State' converts public goods into private assets through crony contracting, regulatory demolition, and the systematic sabotage of economic data.
Degrading Civil Rights & Weaponizing Discrimination
State preemption strategies, federal funding weaponization, and the reconfiguration of federal-state power dynamics.
Abdicating Global Leadeship for Transactional Authoritarianism
Voting rights restrictions, election administration capture, and the restructuring of electoral accountability mechanisms.
Part III: The Playbook Revealed
The Playbook of Systemic Capture: Tactics of the Authoritarian Ascent
Withdrawal from multilateral institutions, treaty obligations, and the restructuring of America's role in the global order.
Part IV: Conclusion
Conclusion: The Unmasked Threat & The Imperative for Reconstruction
Integrating the vectors: how individual capture mechanisms combine into a coherent system of institutional transformation.