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--:-- John Bickley: Welcome to Morning Wire, I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley, and I'm joined by Georgia Howe. It's Sunday, November 26th, and this is an extra edition of Morning Wire.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Joining us to discuss the role the world's wealthiest and most influential men are playing in the reshaping of society is Seamus Bruner, director of research at the Government Accountability Institute and a bestselling author.
--:-- John Bickley: Seamus, thanks for coming on. It's always great to be with you.
--:-- Seamus Bruner: Thanks for having me, John.
--:-- John Bickley: This is a densely researched book that tracks the most powerful men on the planet, the key players among the 25 men whose companies now account for some $10 trillion in wealth, as you wrote here. First, let's start with the name of the book since it really captures its premise, Controllogarchs. Why did you choose that name?
--:-- Seamus Bruner: I just kept coming back to the word control. It was in every facet of the industries I was looking in. And I was looking into Bill Gates and what he was up to and George Soros and what he's up to. And the word control continued to be a theme. And I one day said, control a guard. That's what these guys are. They want to control every aspect of our lives. They've got more money than some countries have when you put it all together. And they are the people who know the future because they are shaping the future.
--:-- John Bickley: How much money are we talking about?
--:-- Seamus Bruner: Well, so that $10 trillion figure refers to just the top 25 corporations who are leading the World Economic Forum. Now, it'd be companies like Microsoft and Alphabet and Meta. When you add in BlackRock and the other asset managers holdings like State Street and Vanguard, that brings you up into the $25 trillion range. So why that's important is, I mean, the GDP of the United States is around 23 trillion right now. China's is less than that. So in effect, these people have more money. They're sitting on more money than the most powerful countries in the world.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And so that's not a problem. You know, we're capitalists at the Government Accountability Institute. But it's what are they doing with that money and with the influence and power that comes with such money?
--:-- Seamus Bruner: And then just on the personal net worth side of things, the characters in this book, not every billionaire is a character. This isn't like a class warfare book in any way. But the oligarchs in this book are much different than the billionaires of the past, like the Carnegie's and the Vanderbilts who would use their wealth to fund schools and libraries and parks. Oligarchs these oligarchs people like Bill Gates are using their now it's over 1.25 trillion when you add up and it's just under 20 people uh you know 1.25 trillion is just an unfathomable sum and what are they using that money for they're using it to shape the future to force behaviors to change whether it's from climate change to control of the energy sector to food the food sectors, a big section in the book.
--:-- John Bickley: Digital ID, just last week, Bill Gates, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation partnered with the United Nations on a digital ID initiative that aims to implement a digital ID regime in 50 countries within five years. That was called the 50 in 50 event.
--:-- Seamus Bruner: So the kinds of things that are talked about in this book, they sound like science fiction. It sounds you know you think maybe there some conspiracy theory No we dug through a mountain of corporate records and financial filings a lot of documents that have been scrubbed from the internet from the World Economic Forum and white papers And they're pretty bold, actually, and pretty proud of what they're up to.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now, you mentioned the World Economic Forum, the so-called Great Reset, comes into play a lot in this book. So let's discuss the Great Reset. How is that important and how is it connected to the COVID pandemic?
--:-- Seamus Bruner: Yeah, that's exactly right. It is really the most essential and consequential event in recent history. The Great Reset, for those who haven't heard of it, was Klaus Schwab's declaration amid the COVID-19 pandemic. He made this announcement, Klaus Schwab being the founder and chairman of the World Economic Forum. He made this announcement in July of 2020. 2020, he says the pandemic has brought all of this pain. And so we need to reset, have a great reset. And he called it an opportunity. The pandemic is an opportunity for a great reset of everything from capitalism to the key focus of the great reset has been, in Schwab's words, rebuilding a greener society.
--:-- John Bickley: And so many people think, what on earth does green energy have to do with the pandemic? And a lot of people say, well, it's 2023. The pandemic is over. It's in the past. No, no, no. The pandemic was a blueprint for the future as Schwab lays out, and it's going to revolutionize everything. He has a new form of capitalism called stakeholder capitalism, and that's sort of personified by the ESG scores that corporations get. And the fourth industrial revolution is a big pillar of this great reset. And the fourth industrial revolution really refers to the artificial intelligence and automation revolution that's currently underway.
--:-- Georgia Howe: You've brought up Bill Gates' name a few times already. He comes up early and often in your book. You call him a fanatic masquerading as a health expert. That's a quote. What was his role in the pandemic reset?
--:-- Seamus Bruner: So Bill Gates, everybody knows Bill Gates is off and on been the richest man in the world. At least 20 of the last 30 years, he was the number one richest man in the world. He built his fortune on Microsoft. And so he's a computer guy, right? And suddenly he's a global health expert. And now he's a farmer. He's got many hats. The global health hat he put on right around the time he founded the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This would be right around 2000. I mean, he had some other initiatives in the 90s. But from 2000 onward, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been investing in virus research and vaccine research.
--:-- John Bickley: They're very concerned about getting vaccines in as many arms of as many people as possible around the world. They claim that this is going to help solve overpopulation, which seems counterintuitive in a way, like saving lives and curing diseases. They do have a rational explanation for that. They say that the more lives they save of children, the less women want to have more children, according to Bill and Melinda Gates.
--:-- Seamus Bruner: Now, also, you know, part of the reason I chose this book was all this talk of plandemic, and it sounded very conspiratorial. And certainly, we don't allege that Bill Gates planned the pandemic, but he certainly planned for the pandemic. And he was in a great position to profit from it. He and his foundation have invested in various technologies, the mRNA technologies and various vaccine technologies. He and George Soros invested in PPE, a mask company, of all things.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And what about Gates' land grab? What exactly is he doing there with all the purchase of farming property?
--:-- Seamus Bruner: So everybody heard about Bill Gates amassing farmland in the U and sort of wonder what he up to It feels sinister when a person trying to buy up the food supply the land that produces the food supply You know, there's big problems with China doing that in the United States. What I found with the whole Gates food investment, because it ties into his investments in the fake meat companies, companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods that are making these fake burger patties.
--:-- John Bickley: And it's actually a Microsoft strategy from the 90s that the Justice Department, when they had this antitrust trial against Microsoft, where it accused Microsoft of trying to monopolize the computer market, it was an internal strategy. It's in the emails between Microsoft executives called Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, where Microsoft would enter a market, and that was the embrace phase, and they would, let's call it the internet browser market. They would enter that market. They would create Internet Explorer. The next step is the extend phase where they put Internet Explorer on every computer and that's kind of growing their reach. And then in the final phase, extinguish, they would push for new standards that would regulate their competitors, companies like Netscape, out of business.
--:-- Seamus Bruner: And that's how they cornered such markets. And it's been applied numerous times, not just in the internet browser market. It's the same thing with the foods. In the embrace phase, which Bill Gates began around 2012, buying up the farmland, then he gets into this and ends up with over 250,000 acres. That's the extend phase. He goes on a buying spree throughout 15, 16, and 17. And we're just now entering the extinguish phase where new restrictions and regulations are placed on the competitors. That would be the family owned farms that have been owned for generations.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And these are billed as ways to save the planet, whether it's from cow flatulences to creating global warming or the fertilizers that farmers have been using for decades are not sustainable. Bill Gates has a solution. The farmers didn't know they had a problem, but Bill Gates has got a solution for them, and that would be the new patented fertilizers that he's invested in.
--:-- Seamus Bruner: There are these new synthetic fertilizers in partnership with big agrochemical giants like Bayer Monsanto. And as far as the cows are concerned, they're headed for slaughter, actually, in countries like Ireland because of the methane. You've heard Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, representative AOC, complaining about so-called cow farts.
--:-- John Bickley: The reason that that's a problem or, you know, how Bill Gates will profit from restrictions on meats is he's invested in their fake meat alternatives. And he says they're much greener, they're much healthier. Well, just like with the fertilizers and the other parts that he's investing in, these companies have patents. And I actually followed the money, went through, I mean, patent records are the most boring records you can imagine. But found that Bill Gates' investments in these fake meat companies tracked exactly with their award of a patent.
--:-- Seamus Bruner: So there's dozens of patents that Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have received. They've got over 100 patents pending. And the way to think about patents is patents equal profit. And they're basically a 20-year monopoly on a certain kind of technology.
--:-- John Bickley: How much did you find with the World Economic Forum and its coordination with government entities?
--:-- Seamus Bruner: Yeah, that's exactly right, John. So I'll give away the end here. The end game is the final chapter, and it talks about how these corporations, particularly the World Economic Forum, have a very close relationship with China. It's much more than just a simple business relationship. And it's really that they see the Chinese style system, which is this amalgamation of capitalism and communism. It's called state-run capitalism in China. Klaus Schwab and his economists since the 70s have been helping China develop this system He was awarded a Medal of Friendship from China for his efforts helping develop their economic system Now Klaus Schwab calls this stakeholder capitalism. And that is this new system that hopes to upend free market capitalism, wherever, you know, there's all these stakeholders.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The funny thing is, though, I've read through all of Klaus Schwab's manifestos, the people are never the stakeholders. It's always business leaders, government and decision makers, NGOs, we don't get a seat at that table. And that's really the biggest problem with the control agarcs is they're unelected, and therefore they're unaccountable.
--:-- Seamus Bruner: A couple of other big names that come up a good bit in your book are major big tech figures, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. How does big tech in general play into this? And what are some of the big picture takeaways that you found?
--:-- John Bickley: Certainly. So Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, I would say that they are not as ideologically driven as, let's say, a George Soros and a Bill Gates. I mean, going back to the 90s and their upbringing, they've always had this kind of libertarian bent. They still claim to be pro-free speech. Of course, you see time and again that they contrast Facebook with someone like an Elon Musk with X, formerly Twitter. Amazon, of course, has removed titles from its platform. So they aren't that ideological, but at the same time, their investments show where their priorities are.
--:-- Seamus Bruner: Both Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg are investing in these alternative protein fake meat companies. They, at a minimum, see that that's the direction we're headed is banning meats. And they are fully on board with the climate change agenda. Jeff Bezos has set up the Bezos Earth Fund, capitalizing it with $10 billion. It's one of the largest funds for private funding for climate change type research. Then, of course, he uses the nonprofit tax-exempt resources to benefit private investments. So he's invested in electric vehicle companies. And we just saw this month Congress passing the kill switch on all vehicles made after 2026.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So it's not too far-fetched to envision just down the road a scenario in which you post the wrong thing on Facebook and you lose your driving privileges for the month. Let's hope we don't see that.
--:-- Seamus Bruner: Speaking of Congress, you offer some congressional action, legislative fixes to address some of these issues like the collusion between private sector and the government or monopolistic practices. What can Congress do?
--:-- John Bickley: Well, Congress needs to investigate a lot of these public-private partnerships that are set up with the contrologarchs. I mean, Bill Gates has got his TerraPower nuclear energy company that gets large amounts of taxpayer funding. And it's kind of like Congress just sleepwalks into these partnerships and provides funding. I mean, the Congress is providing funding to the World Economic Forum, for example. Why on earth, by the way, does the most exclusive and wealthy country club in the world need our taxpayer funding?
--:-- Seamus Bruner: The World Economic Forum seems to be doing just fine by itself. And then the same thing with these initiatives. Why do billionaires need taxpayer funding? It's said that this is going to benefit taxpayers, but it doesn't look like that at all. It looks like it's funneling us into a system of control where everything we eat, all the energy we use for both our cars and our homes. And most critically, I believe our information is so tightly controlled that Congress needs to step in and possibly look into the antitrust implications.
--:-- John Bickley: Seamus, a really fascinating and impressive work here. Thank you so much for joining us and presenting this.
--:-- Seamus Bruner: It was my pleasure, John. Thank you.
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--:-- John Bickley: That was GAI's Seamus Bruner, author of The Controllagarchs, and this has been an extra edition of Morning Wire.
