I made up this diagram for the chain of command in the United States back in 2020.
Although obviously I had to make educated guesses about many parts, I do not think it was far off. Now we have the emergence of Google, Amazon, Facebook, Open AI, Oracle, as Microsoft massive information pirates and warlords, so things have changed a little.
Here is a similar chart for understanding the political economy from that time.
The point here is that it is critical for ordinary citizens to have a basic grasp of how the entire system works—much more critical than any specific bit of information.
