"Where you stand depends on where you sit" is the expression that fits. So no conspiracy. Just the logical bad result of having a large permanent bureaucracy.
That said, this assessment of those high ranking members of the federal bureaucracy is horrifying:
They think it deserves authority, and they have contempt—and I mean that literally—contempt for elected officials. [They think:] “These are buffoons in private enterprise. They are the CEO in some company; they’re some local Rotary Club member. They get elected to Congress, and then we have to school them on the international order or the rules-based order.”
In two decades of working for the state legislature with a rotating cast of legislators under term limits, I never developed that attitude.
I always said to myself--and to others as I explained my role--that I never received even a single vote, and my job was to provide the best information I could get to the people who got the votes and the right to make our laws.
Which is funny because before I worked in Lansing I had contempt for legislators. But seeing them and working with them made me appreciate that there are good and bad, and that most come into office with a sincere and obvious desire to do good things (regardless of whether I agreed with their definition of "good").
I developed respect.
I think there needs to be a lot of prosecutions, firings, and loss of pensions for senior people in our federal bureaucracy--a nonlethal and possibly nonrandom version of a Roman decimation--to send the message of proper roles and attitudes for those hired to work for those elected.
The interview is older but I don't think I've ever seen it. Better late than never.
