The Epstein files and moral bankruptcy of the techno-elites
Over 3million pages, 2,000 videos, and 180,000 images related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were released last week in response to legislation passed by US law makers last year mandating disclosure of all Epstein-related documents.
These files reveal new details about the sex offender’s network, connections with the rich and the powerful, as well as investigations into his crimes.
The Guardian published their initial 10 takeaways as their reporters continue to review this extensive trove of documents, including the revelation that tech billionaire Elon Musk had more deeper ties to Epstein than previously disclosed.
Elon Musk had more extensive – and more friendly – communications with the financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein than previously publicly known, according to documents released on Friday by the Department of Justice. Emails in the files appear to show the two cordially messaging each other on two separate occasions to make plans for Musk to visit Epstein’s island.
Wired has published a list of the tech elites and the number of times they were mentioned in the Epstein files with this disclaimer.
To be clear, a name appearing in the Epstein files does not mean that person has committed any kind of crime; a reference often means only that Epstein or an associate was talking about that person rather than directly to them, or shared a news article or press release with their name in it…Even so, the files reveal just how intertwined Epstein’s network was with the tech industry—even years after his 2008 guilty plea for solicitation of prostitution and of procurement of minors to engage in prostitution.
It wasn’t only the tech elites, Fast Company reports that Epstein’s influence extended to the cutting edge of tech research, including relationships between the disgraced financier and prominent researchers and academics.
The most direct link between Epstein and the AI world ran through MIT professor and pioneer Marvin Minsky, who died in 2016. Minsky helped establish artificial intelligence as a formal research discipline in the 1950s and later co-founded the field at MIT with John McCarthy, training generations of AI scientists.
Ronan Farrow reported for the New Yorker back in 2019, how the elite university’s research center concealed its relationship with Epstein.
Dozens of pages of e-mails and other documents obtained by The New Yorker reveal that, although Epstein was listed as “disqualified” in M.I.T.’s official donor database, the Media Lab continued to accept gifts from him, consulted him about the use of the funds, and, by marking his contributions as anonymous, avoided disclosing their full extent, both publicly and within the university.
And let’s not forget about this piece published by the Harvard Crimson on the link between its leadership and the notorious sex trafficker.
When former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers was pursuing a romantic relationship with a woman he described as a mentee, he turned to a longtime associate for guidance: convicted sex offender Jeffrey E. Epstein.
In his essay for the New York Times “It’s so much bigger than Epstein,” American journalist and author, Anand Giridharadas describes the moral decay and lawlessness of the Epstein club of powerful elites.
People are right to sense that, as the emails lay bare, there is a highly private merito-aristocracy at the intersection of government and business, lobbying, philanthropy, start-ups, academia, science, high finance and media that all too often takes care of its own more than the common good. They are right to resent that there are infinite second chances for members of this group even as so many Americans are deprived of first chances. They are right that their pleas often go unheard, whether they are being evicted, gouged, foreclosed on, A.I.-obsolesced — or, yes, raped.
Stay vigilant. Stay safe.