The Architects of the Übermensch.
"Masters of the Universe" — How self-appointed visionaries without a moral compass, with unlimited money and access to cutting-edge technology, shaped the future of humanity. And why history keeps repeating itself.
An essay by Christiane Reichwein | February 2026 | Part 2 of the series "The X-Ray of an Era"
In my last essay — "The X-Ray of an Era" — I traced how the Epstein files expose a network of financial crime, intelligence agencies, and technology control. The response was overwhelming. And the most pressing question I've been asked since then is: How deep does this go?
The answer: Deeper than I myself had suspected.
Something is shifting. Names that seemed untouchable for decades are now under pressure. A peculiar immunity — one that had little to do with the rule of law and everything to do with power — is beginning to crack. There is legitimate hope that real investigations will take place, the kind that would be standard procedure for any ordinary citizen. Whether that hope holds remains to be seen. What I've found in the files makes a strong case that the pressure must not let up.
Because what I've uncovered in the more than 3.5 million pages of the Epstein files — as a journalist who never truly stopped being one — has led me into a field that deeply unsettles me as an AI speaker: transhumanism. The movement that dreams of "enhancing" humanity through technology — making us faster, smarter, immortal. And which, as the files show, was systematically funded by Jeffrey Epstein for years.
I have to be honest with you: I am beyond horrified.
Not because transhumanism is inherently wrong — the question of how technology can extend and improve our lives is a legitimate scientific inquiry. But because these files contain names that anyone familiar with artificial intelligence will recognize: Ray Kurzweil — Google's Director of Engineering and the visionary behind the "Singularity," the merging of human and machine. Ben Goertzel — one of the pioneers of Artificial General Intelligence and creator of the humanoid robot Sophia. Joscha Bach — a renowned cognitive scientist who worked at the MIT Media Lab. Marvin Minsky — the founder of AI research at MIT, who also appears in the abuse allegations.
And now comes the point that, for me, represents the moral line of demarcation — and it must be stated up front, because it frames everything that follows:
Jeffrey Epstein was convicted in 2008 of procuring a minor for prostitution and registered as a sex offender. This was public. This was known. There was no gray area.
Anyone who accepted money from this man after 2008, invited him to conferences, exchanged emails in which they dismissed investigative reporting about his crimes as "media idiocy," and used his connections to leverage public research funding — did so with full knowledge of Epstein's status as a convicted sex offender. The files document this comprehensively. What that means is for each reader to decide.
What concerns me most isn't the individual behavior of specific researchers. It's the structural question behind it: How did a convicted sex offender become the central funding source for one of the most consequential technologies of our time? And what does that say about a system in which scientific progress is so chronically underfunded that researchers are willing to accept money from virtually any source?
At the same time, a congressional hearing reveals the full scope of institutional failure: Representative Ted Lieu of California confronted Attorney General Pam Bondi with the fact that there are over 1,000 documented victims of sex trafficking in the Epstein network — and that not a single client has been criminally prosecuted. Not under Merrick Garland, not under Bill Barr, not under Pam Bondi. Lieu cited the Federal Victims' Trafficking Protection Act: it's not just Epstein who is guilty — everyone who used his system committed a crime. And yet: over 1,000 victims, zero convictions.
Sources: Public hearing, U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Rep. Ted Lieu (CA) questions AG Pam Bondi, February 2026; Federal Victims' Trafficking Protection Act
In this second essay, I will show you how Epstein's money financed the foundations of the technology that now shapes all of our lives. How a convicted sex offender became the most important funding source for the development of artificial general intelligence. And why the movement called "transhumanism" is so deeply intertwined with his network that the two can no longer be examined separately.
But once again, this story doesn't end in darkness. It ends with the question of what we do about it now.
Part 1: What Is Transhumanism — and Why Should We All Care?
Before we dive into the files, I need to explain a term that will become as commonplace in our daily lives in the coming years as the word "algorithm" is today: transhumanism.
At its core, the idea is simple: humanity should transcend its biological limits through technology. Eliminate disease. Stop aging. Enhance cognitive performance. Merge human and machine. This sounds like science fiction at first — and in part, it still is. But the research programs underlying these goals are real, backed by billions, and well underway.
The problem isn't the vision. The problem is what happens when that vision falls into the hands of people who lack a moral compass.
Because transhumanism has a dark twin. And that twin is called eugenics — the pseudoscientific idea of "improving" humanity through selective breeding. The Nazis took this idea to its lethal conclusion. What the Epstein files reveal is this: the same fundamental idea — the notion that some humans are genetically "superior" and others "expendable" — has been given a new look over the past two decades. A technological look. Funded by Jeffrey Epstein.
Epstein compared society to a biological organism. "Dead cells," he said, needed to be "washed away." "Cancer cells" — elements no longer useful — needed to be "eliminated." He rarely spoke about people. He spoke about organisms, systems, efficiency. He planned — as documented by the New York Times — to use his ranch in New Mexico as a breeding facility where up to twenty women would be simultaneously impregnated with his sperm to "seed" humanity with his DNA.
Sources: The New York Times, "Jeffrey Epstein Hoped to Seed Human Race With His DNA," July 2019; The Guardian, "Private jets, parties and eugenics," August 2019
Transhumanism without a moral compass is eugenics with better technology. And that is exactly what Epstein funded.
And he didn't just fund the ideas. He funded the people who could turn those ideas into reality. The brightest minds in AI research. The architects of the technologies that now shape all of our lives. Let's look at who they were — and how deep the entanglement runs.
Background: Why AI, Longevity, and Transhumanism Are Inseparable
The "perfect storm" of ideologies — and why actors like Epstein were drawn to it
The convergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI), longevity, and transhumanism is no coincidence. It is the product of a shared technological roadmap and a deeply held philosophical conviction. In the world of the tech elite, these fields are often seen as a single endeavor aimed at shattering the biological limits of the human condition.
1. AI as the Ultimate Research Accelerator
Transhumanists like Ben Goertzel argue that a true AI (AGI) could deliver "a century of discoveries in a decade." While human researchers need decades to understand complex molecular networks or genetic aging processes, AI can analyze trillions of data points in real time.
Digital Twins: AI enables the creation of digital copies of one's own body on which medical treatments can be simulated before being tested on humans.
Gene Editing: AI identifies precise targets for tools like CRISPR to activate "longevity genes" or reverse aging processes at the cellular level.
2. The Singularity as Survival Strategy
For visionaries like Ray Kurzweil, the "Singularity" — the point at which AI surpasses human intelligence — is inseparable from immortality.
Longevity Escape Velocity: Kurzweil predicts that by around 2032, we will reach "longevity escape velocity" — a point at which science adds more than one year of life to our remaining lifespan each year.
Mind Uploading: The ultimate goal of many transhumanists is to separate consciousness from the fragile biological body and upload it to the "cloud." AI is the necessary software architecture to make this process of consciousness continuity possible in the first place.
3. The Ideological Umbrella: TESCREAL
Critics like Timnit Gebru and Émile Torres coined the term TESCREAL to describe the bundle of ideologies driving Silicon Valley: Transhumanism, Extropianism, Singularitarianism, Cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and Longtermism.
Techno-Utopianism: The conviction that all human problems — including death — are technical problems that can be solved with enough computing power.
Longtermism: A focus on the billions of humans who might exist in the far future (possibly as digital beings), which often relegates present-day moral concerns to the background.
4. Why Actors Like Jeffrey Epstein Were Drawn to It
For someone like Epstein, this convergence offered the perfect platform for power and personal perpetuation. He saw transhumanism as a modern form of eugenics — the idea of "optimizing" the human race through technology and genetic selection.
Eugenics 2.0: Epstein discussed plans to "seed" humanity with his own DNA and used transhumanist gatherings to discuss genetic experiments and cryonics.
Status Through Patronage: By positioning himself as a patron of "edge science," he purchased access to the brightest minds in the world — and sought ways to secure his influence beyond biological death.
AI provides the tools. Longevity is the goal. Transhumanism supplies the philosophical framework to present the transcendence of the human condition as a moral imperative.
Part 2: Ray Kurzweil and the "Billionaires' Dinners" — When the Tech Elite Dines at a Criminal's Table
Ray Kurzweil is no fringe figure. He is Google's Director of Engineering, one of the most influential technology thinkers in the world, and the man who popularized the concept of the "Singularity" — the point at which artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence and human and machine merge. When the future of AI is discussed, Kurzweil is one of the first names to come up.
And that very name appears in the Epstein files.
The connection ran through a man named John Brockman — a literary agent and founder of the Edge Foundation (Edge.org), which positioned itself as the intellectual salon of the global scientific elite. Brockman organized exclusive dinners marketed as gatherings of the "finest minds" — so-called "Billionaires' Dinners." And the man who financed these dinners almost entirely for years was Jeffrey Epstein.
Sources: Investigative reports following Epstein's death, 2019; Edge Foundation tax filings; The New York Times, September 2019
The Documented Proximity
Ray Kurzweil was a regular participant at these Epstein-funded events. The documentation is unambiguous:
In 2004, Kurzweil attended the so-called "Billionaires' Dinner" in Monterey, California — alongside Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Nathan Myhrvold, and Jeffrey Epstein. In September 2002, Kurzweil presented his talk "The Intelligent Universe" within the Edge network — alongside a group that included the Epstein-funded Marvin Minsky. And the correspondence released in 2026 shows that invitations to Edge dinners through at least 2014 — such as a dinner in Vancouver — went to a guest list that included both Epstein and Kurzweil, alongside Elon Musk and Bill Gates.
Sources: Edge.org archive; DOJ Epstein Files 2026; Evgeny Morozov, "Jeffrey Epstein's Intellectual Enabler," The New Republic, 2019
The Ideological Overlap
The connection between Kurzweil and Epstein was not merely social — it was ideological. Kurzweil's central thesis — that human and machine will merge — provided exactly the theoretical framework Epstein was looking for. Epstein's transhumanism, his obsession with genetic optimization and the extension of human life, found its intellectual foundation in Kurzweil's "Singularity."
Epstein exploited this deliberately: he initiated and funded the Edge of Computation Science Prize — a $100,000 award for research that "expands the idea of computation." A core concept of Kurzweil's "Intelligent Universe" thesis. The line between patronage and intellectual influence had long since been erased.
Kurzweil's name appears in the 3.5 million pages of the Epstein files released in 2026 — in contact books and on flight logs. He was a permanent fixture in Epstein's intellectual orbit. There is no public evidence that Kurzweil received direct research funding from Epstein, as was the case with Goertzel or Minsky. But the documented, years-long participation in Epstein-funded events — including after his 2008 conviction — raises questions that even a man of Kurzweil's intellectual stature must face.
The question isn't whether Kurzweil knew about Epstein's crimes. The question is why a network of intellectual events funded for years by a convicted sex offender was accepted for so long as a routine gathering place for the scientific elite.
Part 3: Ben Goertzel — The Man Who Built AI for Epstein
If Ray Kurzweil was the theorist in the orbit of the Epstein network, then Ben Goertzel is the practitioner. And his story — as the files reveal with remarkable detail — is a story about what happens when scientific ambition meets a patron without limits.
Goertzel is one of the pioneers of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) — the attempt to build an AI that doesn't just solve individual tasks but thinks, learns, and understands like a human. He is the creator of the OpenCog architecture, co-founder of SingularityNET, and the man behind the humanoid robot Sophia. In the AI world, he is a legend.
What the Epstein files reveal about him is staggering.
2001: The Birth of a Dependency
In 2001 — when AI research was in the so-called "AI Winter" and AGI was dismissed as utopian by the academic world — Goertzel received a $100,000 grant from the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation. This money didn't just fund research. It was Goertzel's personal salary. Without this grant, he could not have continued his foundational work on cognitive architectures.
Sources: Forensic analysis of Epstein Foundation payments; Anadolu Agency, February 2026; Wikipedia: Ben Goertzel
This illustrates Epstein's method: he identified brilliant, underfunded researchers on the margins of the academic mainstream — and provided just enough capital to build long-term connections. Goertzel was one of the earliest examples of this pattern.
2011: After the Conviction — the Hand Stays Open
Three years after Epstein's conviction and registration as a sex offender, Epstein donated $20,000 to Humanity+ (formerly the World Transhumanist Association) — an organization where Ben Goertzel served as vice chairman. The funds were processed through Darren Indyke, vice president of the Epstein Foundation, and frequently flowed directly into Goertzel's commercial projects. The boundary between nonprofit advocacy and private-sector research was effectively eliminated in this arrangement.
Email records show that in the same year, Goertzel asked Epstein for an additional $10,000. His exact words: "I really can't afford $10,000 personally right now."
Sources: Anadolu Agency, "Epstein aided AI pioneer in securing Hong Kong funding," February 2026; DOJ Epstein Files 2026
Let that register: a leading AI researcher writes to a convicted sex offender that he can't afford $10,000 — and asks him for money. Three years after the conviction. The files document this.
The Hong Kong Lever: How $113,000 Became $1.14 Million
The most sophisticated phase of the financial relationship was a "pass-through" mechanism that Goertzel deployed in Hong Kong between 2010 and 2016. Epstein provided at least $113,000 — not as direct research grants, but as a strategic investment in a system that leveraged public funds.
The mechanism worked as follows: Epstein wired money to the U.S. nonprofit organization Humanity+. Humanity+ forwarded it to Novamente, Goertzel's private software company. Novamente could then serve as an "industry sponsor," which under the rules of the Hong Kong Innovation and Technology Fund (ITF) was a prerequisite for applying for public research grants. The result: Epstein's $113,000 turned into HK$8.9 million — roughly $1.14 million USD — in public research funding for three projects at Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
| Stage | Actor | Amount | Role |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inflow | Jeffrey Epstein | ~$113,000 | Private funder |
| Intermediary 1 | Humanity+ | ~$113,000 | Nonprofit pass-through (reputation laundering) |
| Intermediary 2 | Novamente (Goertzel) | ~$113,000 | "Industry Sponsor" for public grant applications |
| Result | HK Innovation & Technology Fund | HK$8.9M (~$1.14M) | Public taxpayer funds — 10:1 leverage |
Sources: Anadolu Agency, February 2026; DOJ Epstein Files 2026, wire transfer EFTA01432671
The projects funded through this mechanism were an integral part of the OpenCog architecture and the software that ultimately powers the humanoid robot Sophia. Epstein's money — the money of a convicted sex offender — flowed through three intermediaries into the development of one of the most recognized AI applications in the world. And in doing so, it leveraged taxpayer funds at a ratio of ten to one.
2015: "Media Idiocy" — The Revealing Email
One of the most revealing documents in the Epstein files is an email exchange from 2015. That year, media coverage of Epstein's crimes and the scandalous "sweetheart deal" he received in Florida in 2008 intensified. When an Epstein assistant suggested that funding might need to pause due to the "current environment," Goertzel responded immediately — siding with the convicted man.
He described the investigative reporting as a "bout of media idiocy" and wrote: "I'm sorry you guys have to deal with that." Epstein's response: he authorized the requested $25,000 the same day.
Sources: DOJ Epstein Files 2026, email correspondence 2015; Anadolu Agency, February 2026
Four years later, after Epstein's final arrest in 2019, Goertzel told the New York Times that the revelations were "disturbing" and "go way beyond what I thought." The discrepancy between private cynicism and public dismay speaks for itself.
| Year | Audience | Goertzel's Position |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 | Jeffrey Epstein (private) | Media coverage is "utterly idiotic," a "bout of media idiocy" |
| 2018 | Jeffrey Epstein (private) | Invitation to SingularityNET event, request for "one-on-one" meeting |
| 2019 | New York Times (public) | Reports are "disturbing" and "go way beyond what I thought" |
| 2026 | Public (after DOJ release) | AGI funding was "almost impossible" — justification through scarcity |
The defense goes: "There was no other money for AGI research." The question that follows is a different one: How did a convicted sex offender become the most important funding source for one of the most consequential technologies of our time? This isn't individual failure — it's a systemic problem.
Goertzel's email signature in these exchanges read: "My humanity is a constant self-overcoming." A transhumanist credo that takes on a remarkable double meaning in the context of these files.
Part 4: The Network Behind the Network — Bach, Arel, and the Systemic Failures of Research Funding
Ben Goertzel was not an isolated case. He was a node. The Epstein files show that Goertzel served as a kind of intellectual broker — he curated a portfolio of researchers, connected them to Epstein, and coordinated alternative funding routes to obscure direct associations with the convicted man.
Joscha Bach: $300,000, School Tuition, and Racist Emails
The most prominent secondary beneficiary of the Goertzel-Epstein connection was Joscha Bach, a German cognitive scientist. The documents released in 2026 show that Goertzel introduced Bach to Epstein and proposed using Humanity+ as a vehicle to funnel funds to Bach. Goertzel explicitly coordinated "alternative funding routes" to avoid a direct connection to Epstein.
Bach's subsequent appointment at the MIT Media Lab was substantially funded by Epstein — with donations totaling approximately $300,000 in 2013 and 2014. That represented about 40 percent of Epstein's total donations to the Media Lab during that period — after his conviction. The files released in 2026 show that Bach used this money in part for his children's private school tuition and for travel to Epstein's Caribbean estate.
Sources: Wikipedia: Joscha Bach; DOJ Epstein Files 2026; MIT Media Lab investigation report, 2019
Bach's defense after the revelations: engaging with convicted individuals does not imply endorsement of their crimes, and Epstein funded "unusual scientists" who were marginalized by the mainstream. Bach compared the work to that of the "fathers of AI" like Alan Turing.
The files released in 2026, however, also reveal that Bach's own correspondence with Epstein contained statements about cognitive differences between ethnic groups and the intellectual interests of women — statements that bear a striking resemblance to Epstein's documented supremacist and eugenic beliefs.
Sources: Mother Jones, "Jeffrey Epstein Couldn't Stop Emailing People About Eugenics," February 2026; Byline Times, "How Epstein Channelled Race Science," December 2025
Itamar Arel: When Epstein's Money Flows Into Public Universities
Another example of the network's reach is Itamar Arel, a former associate professor of computer science at the University of Tennessee. Arel began corresponding with Epstein in 2009, presenting research on facial recognition systems and AGI. In his emails, Arel wrote: "I'm ready to change the world, given a chance to do so." By 2011, he had asked Epstein for $50,000 in research support.
A 2013 research proposal written by Goertzel for the Epstein Foundation cited Arel multiple times and outlined plans for robots with the cognitive capacity of a human toddler. Goertzel used his position as Epstein's primary "AI advisor" to assemble a portfolio of researchers — acting as an intellectual broker for a convicted criminal.
Sources: UT Daily Beacon, "Former UT Professor's Emails with Epstein Revealed," February 2026; DOJ Epstein Files 2026
| Recipient | Epstein Funding (Post-2008) | Institutional Affiliation |
|---|---|---|
| Ben Goertzel | ~$113,000 | Novamente / Humanity+ → HK Govt Grants |
| Joscha Bach | ~$300,000 | MIT Media Lab / Humanity+ |
| Itamar Arel | ~$50,000 (requested) | University of Tennessee |
| Harvard (PED/Nowak) | $6.5M | Program for Evolutionary Dynamics |
| MIT Media Lab (total) | $736,000 | Various projects, internally called "Voldemort" |
| Peter Attia (Longevity) | 1,700+ documents | Access to "Masters of the Universe" / billionaire clientele |
The documented pattern: Goertzel identified the researchers. Epstein provided the money. Humanity+ served as an institutional pass-through. And public institutions — from Hong Kong to Harvard — did not scrutinize the origin of the funds. The question this raises is not merely a moral one. It is a structural one.
The Third Pillar: Longevity Medicine and the "Masters of the Universe"
Epstein's network didn't only encompass AI researchers and transhumanists. It reached directly into longevity medicine — the field described as the second pillar in this article's infobox. Peter Attia, one of the world's best-known longevity physicians with an audience of millions and a bestselling book, met Epstein in 2015 — seven years after his conviction. The files released in 2026 contain over 1,700 documents mentioning Attia's name.
The emails document a close, personal relationship. Attia wrote to Epstein that he wanted to add five years to his life — "even if the only reason to do so is to have more sex." He expressed a desire to visit Epstein's island and ranch. In another email, he wrote: "The biggest problem with becoming friends with you — the life you lead is so outrageous, and yet I can't tell a soul."
What Epstein offered in return is revealed in an email to Attia: he wanted to get him "in front of the masters of the universe" — access to billionaires who could become patients for Attia's high-end longevity practice.
And when the Miami Herald once again documented Epstein's crimes in detail in November 2018, Attia remained in contact for at least another four months. On December 4, 2018 — weeks after the story broke — he asked Epstein: "What is fallout from recent story?" As late as February 2019, he wrote: "Where are you these days?"
Sources: DOJ Epstein Files 2026, email correspondence Attia/Epstein; over 1,700 PDFs mentioning Peter Attia in the released files
The pattern is always the same: access in exchange for proximity. Prestige in exchange for silence. The currency never changed. And the phrase — "masters of the universe" — reveals more about this network's self-image than any financial analysis could. This was never about science or philanthropy. This was about building an empire in which self-appointed visionaries placed themselves above the rules that apply to everyone else.
How History Repeats Itself
Anyone who thinks this pattern is new is mistaken. History is full of networks in which power, money, and a sense of invincibility coalesced into systems that functioned for generations — detached from social norms, detached from the law.
In feudal Europe, there was the so-called Ius Primae Noctis — the alleged right of the lord to the first night with a serf's bride. Whether this "right" existed in the specific form described is disputed among historians. What is not disputed is that the sexual access of the powerful to those beneath them was a social reality for centuries — from the Roman Patria Potestas, the absolute authority of the head of household over all members of his domain, to the systematic assaults by European colonial rulers on colonized populations, to the abuse structures within the Catholic Church that were institutionally covered up for decades.
The pattern is always identical: a class of people — endowed with power, money, and the belief in their own superiority — views access to other human beings as part of their status. Not as a crime, but as a privilege. Not as assault, but as an expression of their position.
And this is exactly where the circle closes with the Epstein files. The arrest of Prince Andrew — a man who appears in photos alongside underage victims whose faces had to be redacted by the Department of Justice to protect them — was for misconduct in public office. Not for the sexual assaults he is accused of. The allegations exist. The photos exist. The witness testimony exists. But the charges don't reflect any of it.
At times, one could believe someone turned back the clock — to an era when the lord of the manor was simply entitled to assault a maid, because it came with his station. When the sexual access to those in one's charge was not a crime but a class privilege. In the Epstein files, this privilege has a name: "access." Access to islands, to ranches, to underage girls. And the currency used to purchase it wasn't called feudal law. It was called philanthropy.
"Masters of the Universe" — that's what Epstein called the billionaires he wanted to put his associates in front of. The term is more revealing than he knew. Because what these "masters" did was as old as human civilization itself: they took what they wanted — and the institutions that should have stopped them looked the other way.
Part 5: From Lab to Baby Farm — When Ideology Meets Unlimited Resources
What happens when a man without a moral compass, with unlimited money and access to cutting-edge technology, doesn't just fund the idea of "genetic optimization" but puts it into practice himself? The Epstein files provide a documented answer.
The Designer Baby Emails
Among the released emails is a correspondence between Epstein and Bryan Bishop, a Bitcoin developer and biohacker. Bishop presented Epstein with a detailed project for producing "designer babies" and openly discussed human cloning. A five-year plan with a $9.5 million budget aimed — I quote from the email — for "the first live birth of a human designer baby and possibly a human clone within 5 years."
Bishop repeatedly emphasized the need for absolute anonymity in his emails: "Sounds like you could be the first investor as long as absolute anonymity is kept." Everything was to run covertly — under the guise of an existing research project, with a hidden funding structure. The mouse trials took place in a laboratory in Ukraine. Early experiments with human sperm modification were conducted in Mississippi.
Sources: DOJ Epstein Files 2026, email correspondence Epstein/Bishop; MIT Technology Review, 2019 (on Ukrainian laboratory experiments); Kim Iverson Show, investigative analysis, February 2026
A Victim's Diary
Among the most disturbing items in the current file releases are the diary entries of a minor. This girl describes being impregnated by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. She writes about "so many bonding moments with Jeffrey, Ghislaine, and their baby inside me." She speaks of a "superior gene pool" and asks herself: "Why me? Why my hair color and eye color?"
And then she writes the sentence that, as a mother, I cannot let go of: she calls Epstein's ideas "very Nazi-like."
She describes feeling like a "human incubator, not a person." How she was given only 10 to 15 minutes to hold and feed her baby after the birth before it was taken from her. "She's mine. I want her back." She references an earlier miscarriage and writes: "I'm tired of keeping this secret."
Sources: DOJ Epstein Files 2026, released diary entries of a minor victim
When an abused child draws the parallel to Nazism before we adults do, that tells us something about the clarity of those who experienced the system from the inside.
Zorro Ranch: The Infrastructure
Epstein's 10,000-acre ranch in New Mexico — Zorro Ranch — had its own airstrip, a temple-like building, and, as drone footage and internal maintenance records show, substantial underground infrastructure: basements with multiple showers, a "sub-basement" with wood flooring, and at least five large ventilation shafts suggesting extensive subterranean facilities. Victim witness Maria Farmer described "enormous mechanical rooms bigger than houses" and tunnel systems at all of Epstein's properties, riddled with hidden cameras.
It was not until February 2026 — more than six years after Epstein's death — that the New Mexico House of Representatives established a "Truth Commission" to investigate Zorro Ranch. Critics point out that excavators were spotted on the property weeks before this resolution was passed — a possible indication of cleanup operations before any official investigation could begin.
Sources: New Mexico House Resolution 1, February 2026; drone footage and on-site documentation; testimony of Maria Farmer; Kim Iverson Show, investigative analysis, February 2026
Designer baby emails. A victim's diary about forced pregnancies. Underground laboratory infrastructure. This is not the stuff of conspiracy theories. This is a documented chain of evidence — and it demands judicial reckoning.
Part 6: The 2008 Line — Why There Is No Excuse
I want to pause here and articulate the central moral argument of this essay. Because there is a clear dividing line in this story, and it runs through the year 2008.
Before 2008, one could argue — though with growing discomfort — that Epstein's criminal side was not widely known. His conviction in 2008 changed that. From that moment on, every interaction with Epstein was a decision made with knowledge of his status.
The files document what happened after that turning point: Ben Goertzel accepted at least $113,000 and used it to leverage over a million dollars in public funds. Joscha Bach received approximately $300,000 for his work at the MIT Media Lab — and used part of it for his children's private school tuition. Harvard received Epstein over 40 times in a dedicated office, despite the university having officially decided to accept no further donations. MIT internally called Epstein "Voldemort" — but accepted $736,000 after his conviction.
And when an Epstein assistant suggested in 2015 that the funding might become problematic, Goertzel called the reporting on Epstein's crimes a "bout of media idiocy."
I'm not documenting this to put individuals in the pillory. Every reader can draw their own conclusions. What I want to make visible is the pattern: an entire industry — AI research in its critical early phase — was structurally dependent on a patron whose crimes were known. The question that follows isn't directed solely at the recipients of the money. It's directed at a system that allowed such dependencies to form.
And the institutional level continues to fail: in the U.S. Congress, Representative Ted Lieu documented that there are over 1,000 identified victims of sex trafficking in the Epstein network — and that not a single beneficiary of the system has been criminally prosecuted. The Federal Victims' Trafficking Protection Act criminalizes not just the operator but everyone who patronized the system. The law exists. It has simply never been enforced.
The arrest of Prince Andrew — for misconduct in office, not for the sexual crimes he is accused of — has shown that even with overwhelming evidence, the justice system falls short of what the files demand. The question is whether that will change.
Over 1,000 documented victims. Zero convictions of perpetrators beyond Epstein and Maxwell. A law that enables prosecution exists. It has never been applied. These numbers speak for themselves.
The Turning Point
I don't want to end this essay with fear. I'm not a doomsayer, and I have no interest in bashing humanity. What I've done in these two articles is what I learned as a journalist and practice every day as an AI speaker: gather facts, identify patterns, name connections — plainly and clearly, without hedging.
But after all of this — after the money trails, the intelligence agencies, the eugenics, the designer baby emails, the documented funding chains — a question arises that goes beyond pure analysis.
Where was the moral compass? Not among individual people — the question is directed at an entire system. At a scientific landscape where funding is so scarce that the origin of the money becomes an afterthought. At institutions that internally called Epstein "Voldemort" yet cashed his checks. At a society that celebrates technological progress without asking who finances it and what vision of humanity it serves.
A man who viewed children as disposable resources was able to fund two decades of foundational AI research — because nobody asked whether they should take the money. Only whether they could. That's not individual failure. That's a systemic defect, and it remains unrepaired to this day.
And yet — or precisely because of this — I am optimistic.
Not because I'm wearing rose-colored glasses. But because I've gone deep enough into the material to understand: we stand at a turning point as a species. And for the first time in history, we have the tools to shape that turning point in our favor.
The network is cracking. Names that seemed untouchable for decades are under pressure. 3.5 million pages of documents are now public. Things are moving — and they're moving faster than the participants expected.
And this is exactly where artificial intelligence enters the picture — not as a threat, but as the most powerful tool of empowerment humanity has ever had. Every one of us can now research what would have required a team of investigative journalists ten years ago. Anyone can search documents, trace financial flows, make connections visible. The asymmetry between the powerful and the rest of society — the very asymmetry on which networks like Epstein's were built — is being dissolved.
But only if we actually use these tools.
This is my position. This is why I stand on stages and talk about artificial intelligence. Not to scare people. But to give them the tools to see for themselves what's happening — and to draw their own informed conclusions.
Read the files. Use AI tools to ask questions that no editorial will answer for you. Follow the money. Talk about it — not as a conspiracy theory, but based on what is documented in black and white. And above all: insist that technological progress be bound to a moral compass.
Because the technology itself is not the problem. The question has always been: In whose hands does it lie — and what vision of humanity does it serve?
We can answer that question now. Not the billionaires. Not the networks. We can.
And that is not naive hope. That is an assessment of where we stand.
This essay is based on publicly accessible, documented material. All cited facts are verifiable through the referenced sources. Mention in this essay does not imply involvement in criminal activity unless explicitly stated otherwise. The email signature "My humanity is a constant self-overcoming" is a quotation from Goertzel's documented correspondence.