I think that you might be misinterpreting what they're making a point of.

Firstly, I don't think it's the ultimate goal of a state to act in our interests, at least not to the degree you imply. Their main goal is to propagate themselves and some kind of national interest (in this case, the continuation of American presence and power), and you can look back across history and find a lot of governments do not concern themselves with what the people necessarily think are moral. I think the author made it very clear that individual members of government justify their immoral acts as them being vanguards or soldiers for the greater good of continuing their country.

Care to explain how taxation is immoral? I mean, I'm sure you have a good reason, but it looks like a non-sequitir in the discussion of a deep state. That's one of the oldest things done by a country, and probably not what the author means by a deep state.

And I don't think they're suggesting any kind of cabal running things. Rather, there's a lot of people who act like this, because they saw benefit and personal justification through doing so, and it creates a system that self-propagates. No specific group is running things, it's just that everyone, or a large number of the people involved in government and benefitting sectors, are keen to keep this system going because it benefits them. That's why even people who profess (and quite likely even have) different political opinions will do a lot of the same things in power, because they're still competing within this system. The most powerful people are still the elected officials, they just do things to benefit the system and those in industries like defence and finance, because they're seeing it as personally beneficial, and quite likely also internalized that helping those kinds of industries aids the national interest.