Jess Davies in Podcast: State Secrets: Hiring Criminals for State-Sponsored Activities

Jess Davis, a SOC ACE researcher working on a project Criminal hands, state ends: State-sponsored assassinations using organised crime appears in the Secure Line podcast (Season 3, Episode 2) to discuss her 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. In conversation with Stephanie Carvin, Jess explores the growing use of organised crime networks as proxies for covert state activity.

The episode examines why states turn to criminal actors to undertake activities such as targeted assassinations, transnational repression, sabotage, and foreign interference. These partnerships offer states plausible deniability and operational access, while criminal networks may gain financial rewards, protection, safe haven, or market advantages.

Jess and Steph also discuss how technological changes - including encrypted messaging apps, social media recruitment, and cryptocurrency payments - are reshaping these relationships. The conversation touches on wider conceptual questions, including the distinction between proxies and surrogates, the principal–agent challenges inherent in outsourced violence, and the difficulty of measuring covert state–crime collaboration.

The discussion concludes by considering the policy implications of an increasingly blurred state–crime nexus, where the convergence of organised crime and state activity creates challenges for traditional boundaries between intelligence and law enforcement responses.

Listen to the podcast here