Game Theory #13: Epstein's World

Professor Jiang frames global power through Plato’s allegory of the cave: humanity is chained inside a cave, watching shadows on a wall projected by a fire behind them, mistaking those shadows for reality. The “elite” are the free people manipulating the puppets; the rest of us are the prisoners who collectively create and sustain the illusion through our own consciousness and attention.

• Reality is a collective hallucination built by human consciousness, not imposed from outside. Wealth itself is stored human attention and consciousness. Money and capital are mechanisms that extract and store this consciousness.
• The elite maintain power not through force but through manipulation and deception. Their power depends entirely on the prisoners’ belief in it. If someone escapes the cave and returns with the truth, the other prisoners will kill that person to protect their shared fantasy.
• This framework is then mapped onto the real world: the American Empire provides military enforcement, the global financial order (Bank of International Settlements, IMF, World Bank, Federal Reserve, People’s Bank of China, Bank of England) constructs the rules of the game, and the US dollar is the primary mechanism of wealth extraction.
  • The global economy operates through a price hierarchy: resources (cheapest) → manufacturing → knowledge economy → finance (most expensive). This structure systematically transfers wealth from resource-producing countries (Russia, Middle East, GCC) and manufacturing countries (China) to the financial centers (United States and its allies).
  • Countries that refuse to play by these rules (Iran, North Korea) are excluded from the global economy entirely.
• A rules-based international order (UN, WTO, multilateral institutions) is layered on top to make the system appear fair and legitimate. These are “shadows on the wall” projected by the empire.
• Education, media, and culture are the three indoctrination mechanisms that make people believe the system is just. Schools and universities teach people to accept the order; media (CNN, BBC, New York Times) reinforces the narrative; culture (Hollywood, social media) shapes values and norms.
  • The legal and social enforcement mechanism is self-policing: if someone breaks the rules or exposes the illusion, the broader population—not the elite—punishes them.
• Three transnational systems operate above the nation-state to maintain the order:
  • Intelligence: infiltrates and co-opts national elites into the system.
  • Crime (drugs, human trafficking, money laundering): incentivizes global elite cooperation through shared profitable enterprises.
  • Science: not a pursuit of truth but a mechanism to find evidence justifying and protecting the status quo; fundamentally materialistic.
• These three systems promote three core values: open society (globalization, multiculturalism, diversity), neoliberalism/privatization (free markets, private enterprise over government), and consumerism (self-worth measured by purchases and social media validation).
• The elite who operate this system are organized into three groups—transnational capital, secret societies, and elite families—bound together by the occult (hidden knowledge drawn from Hermetic philosophy, the Bible, and the Kabbalah).
• Jeffrey Epstein and Jared Kushner are presented as concrete examples of individuals who operated this system, connected to the Rothschild family, secret societies (Chabad Lubavitch), and transnational capital.

Three structural problems with the system explain the current US-Iran war:

• The empire must appear invincible. If people believe the American Empire can be defeated, the entire system collapses. Therefore, America must fight wars to prove its dominance—Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and now Iran are all explained as demonstrations of power, not rational policy. The war in Ukraine continues despite being militarily lost because conceding would shatter the illusion.
• The system is deeply unfair to excluded and exploited countries. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 to renegotiate its position in the hierarchy. Iran, excluded entirely from the global economy, has identified the global economy itself as the weak point—by disrupting it (e.g., closing the Strait of Hormuz), Iran can collapse the entire house of cards.
  • There can be no ceasefire or peace because both sides are fighting over the nature and structure of reality itself.
• The boomers (elite cohort) defend the system fiercely. Though they don’t hold formal power, they benefit enormously and will pressure politicians and the military to fight to the death to maintain the illusion.

Answers to the three framing questions:

• Why did the US-Iran war start? America had no choice—it had to defend the illusion that the American Empire is invincible, or the entire edifice would collapse.
• How will the war end? When the global economy is destroyed, the entire system collapses.
• What happens after? A new world will emerge with different spheres of influence (details deferred to a later class).

Evidence from the Epstein files and related documents:

• The US Department of Justice released approximately 3 million documents from the FBI’s investigation of Epstein, revealing his connections to virtually every powerful person in the world.
• Epstein was not merely a Mossad blackmailer; his primary activities were arms trafficking and money laundering. Powerful figures like Bill Gates and Elon Musk sought meetings with him—not the other way around—because he represented “real money, real power” through his connection to the Rothschild family.
• Epstein’s family (the Epsteins of Vienna) are described as centuries-old bankers, on par with or exceeding the Rothschilds in power.
• An FBI confidential human source revealed that Epstein was connected to US and allied intelligence, worked with Israeli intelligence under Ehud Barak, and was linked to Vladimir Putin through Masha Drokova (a former Russian youth movement contact).
• Epstein was trained across all sectors of power through mentorships: Dalton (education), Bear Stearns (finance), Doug Levitt (arms trafficking/crime), and Ehud Barak (intelligence)—suggesting he was being groomed as an operative, not merely advancing through personal connections.
• Jared Kushner is connected to the same network through Chabad Lubavitch (a transnational religious organization). On the day Trump was elected, Kushner and Ivanka Trump were at the gravesite of Rabbi Schneerson, Chabad’s leader. The FBI source identified Kushner’s Russian financial ties as the “real Russian collusion story.”
• A secret British government report on Afghan investment opportunities was emailed directly to Epstein by Prince Andrew, suggesting that even royals answer to this network, not the other way around.
• Epstein and associates discussed profiting from Libya’s reconstruction after the 2011 US bombing, planning to recover frozen sovereign assets for commissions and position themselves for Libya’s $100 billion rebuilding effort.
• Epstein helped finance the development of Bitcoin and hosted dinners with Harvard’s president Larry Summers and scholar Steven Pinker, illustrating how academia and science serve as networking mechanisms for the powerful rather than truth-seeking enterprises.
• Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff conducted negotiations with Iran and Russia not to achieve peace but to create justifications for war and post-war real estate development opportunities (Gaza luxury villas, Ukrainian reconstruction).

The system is now experiencing a civil war within the elite:

• The current system is a parasite that extracts value from nation-states. Other elites—the “counter-elite”—are asking why they cannot be the parasites instead.
• This internal conflict is why the Epstein files were released on a government website: the counter-elite are using transparency as a weapon against the current ruling network.
• This civil war within the American elite will be the subject of the next class.