The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium

A former CIA open-source intelligence analyst argues that the information explosion — driven by the internet and mobile devices — has fatally undermined the authority of institutions that depended on controlling the flow of information: governments, media, political parties, expert bodies. Gurri wrote the first edition in 2014, before Brexit, before the 2016 US election, before the pandemic, and the book now reads as prophecy. The Stripe Press edition added the chapter that connected his thesis to the events everyone was trying to explain. His framework is simple and powerful: the public can now see institutional failure in real time but has no constructive programme to replace what it tears down, producing a cycle of negation without resolution. For product directors operating in environments shaped by social media, algorithmic distribution, and eroding institutional trust, Gurri provides the structural analysis that most commentary on these topics lacks.