The Epstein Files and the Crisis in Science

by Archishman Raju

The disclosure of the Epstein files has offered a remarkable glimpse into the moral degradation of the Western elite, and the social networks that bind them together. The files include cultural icons, financial, tech and political elites as well as members of the European royalty. Jeffrey Epstein was clearly a node in the bourgeois social networks that are essential for Western power. One important set of connections to Epstein were academics and intellectuals, particularly in the natural sciences. 

It is important to understand that the academics connected to Epstein were not anomalies. Rather, they are some of the most influential and powerful personalities in the academic world. These individuals constituted connected and influential hubs setting the agenda and research direction for their fields. The institutes that hired them, including Harvard and MIT, still tend to dominate and heavily influence the agenda of scientific research. These institutes advertise themselves and are generally perceived as the peak of academic achievement. Students and researchers around the world labour to climb this peak which is now revealed to be one of moral depravity and rank opportunism. Hence, the revelations of the Epstein files are not only an indictment of a few individuals, but they are an indictment of the state of academic knowledge in the sciences. 

The role of scientists and academics in the Epstein files raises several questions. What were the fields of knowledge that Epstein was most interested in? What is the role they play in the thinking of the Western elite? What are the lessons to be learnt for countries and civilizations that seek to establish an independent scientific system? The revelations of the Epstein files are not a simple matter of some scientists’ bad choices. Rather, they expose a deep and systematic rot in the system itself. 

The ideological project that Epstein was connected with was transhumanist, neo-malthusian, Zionist and white supremacist. The project, of which he was one part, is attempting to transform the study of human behaviour away from sociology, history and political economy to neuroscience, evolutionary biology and analytic philosophy. 

The academic system that Epstein embedded himself in had existing weaknesses. For example, the scientific publishing industry is known to be super-exploitative. Ghislaine Maxwell, who was Epstein’s closest associate, had a family connection to this business through her father Robert Maxwell who played an important role in transforming this industry [1]. The work done in this industry is more or less all unpaid (i.e. writing articles and reviewing them is done for free). More so, scientists nowadays have to pay to publish their own work in journals leading to a system of predatory publishing. All sorts of ranking systems and indices have been established to judge “impact” and establish reputation. Scientists are incentivized to publish papers in “prestigious journals”. Much of this works like a social club where journal editors fraternize with scientists over dinner parties and social prestige is essential for careers. Academics are now mainly guided by money, celebrity and career. However, what emerges out of a study of the Epstein files is how deeply enmeshed top scientists were with a network of finance, tech and Zionism. One part of this network actively campaigned for transhumanism and for genetic engineering applied to human beings i.e. a revival of eugenics. 

The fields that Epstein was most strongly invested in are evolutionary biology, neuroscience and theoretical physics. One program he was very closely connected to is the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard University. The former director of the program, Martin Nowak is likely one of the most cited mathematical biologists. His main work is in formulating the ideas of evolutionary theory in a mathematical language to address questions of biological importance including human behaviour. Nowak primarily used and developed ideas from evolutionary game theory. The ideas of game theory were originally promoted by the RAND corporation, a cold-war era military think tank which applied game theory to study military strategy [2]. Nowak was part of importing these ideas into evolutionary biology and hence offer an evolutionary explanation of human (and other organisms’) behaviour as an equilibrium solution of competing strategies. In many ways, Nowak was therefore an intellectual descendant of the sociobiological project which purported to explain human behaviour based on loose biological analogy. He shifted the methodology to mathematics and computation, thereby rendering it more abstract and giving it a veneer of scientific neutrality. It was not just professors who were in touch with Epstein. Nowak’s graduate student Corina Tarnita established contact with him soon after joining the lab and facilitated wire transfers that Epstein made to Romania purportedly for academic scholarships [3]. 

Epstein was not simply interested in mathematical abstraction, but also in practical action. He therefore established a relationship with geneticist George Church who is one of the pioneers of gene-editing technology. Church is very deeply connected to the biotech industry and has been a long time proponent of genetic enhancement of human beings, framing it as a “life and death” issue [4].. These genetic editing technologies are often framed as being important for curing diseases even though these researchers are well aware that the majority of diseases that cause illness and death among humans can not be explained by one or even a few genes. Church identifies as a transhumanist and strongly advocates for genetic engineering to enhance human beings [5]. He maintains a list on his website of possible genetic enhancements and their purported advantage to human beings. He is also connected to Peter Thiel, the financier who himself had very close connections with Epstein. Thiel along with others in Silicon Valley actively supported research on genetic testing and engineering [6]. Indeed, the attempts to reverse ageing and genetically engineer babies is something of an obsession for many in the tech world. Several new companies have been established including Orchid or more recently Herasight which claims to predict intelligence by screening embryos [7]. Typically the screening scores ask for racial ancestry. 

Ultimately, these ideas are a resurrected and sanitized version of eugenics and the belief in a genetic basis of racial superiority. While many in the western world hesitate from openly advocating for racist views, the white supremacist and racist views of the scientific and tech elite are not particularly hidden. 

Epstein’s emails expose the private minds of this elite, including an exchange with Noam Chomsky where Epstein emails him to write that Chomsky has encouraged him to look at the “facts” [8, 9]. He refers to the geneticist Watson’s views linking genetics and race with intelligence. Rather than being outraged by the views, Chomsky responds to this by doubting it but treating it as polite and interesting discussion. The view that genes are linked to intelligence (as measured by IQ tests) has always had a fascination for scientists. For example, Steven Pinker, a psychologist at Harvard who attended Epstein’s parties but has tried to minimize his connection to him, tried to defend the views that Ashkenazi Jews are innately more intelligent [10]. 

This view has always been directed and used against black people in the U.S. One of Epstein’s closest connections was with Marvin Minsky, known as the “father of AI”. Minsky is extremely  influential in the computer science, AI and neuroscience academic community. He himself has been named by Virginia Giuffre as being one of the prominent personalities she was asked to serve [11]. His student and intellectual descendant Joscha Bach engaged in an email chain with Epstein where he explained why “black kids in the US have slower cognitive development (and never catch up)” [12, 13].  Bach offered his “theory” for why this happens, “I suspect this means their brains are slower at learning high-level concepts, because the low-level structures are optimized for a shorter time”. Interestingly, Bach keeps referring to Noam Chomsky in the emails who he refers to as “generous, patient, kind and humble on the personal level”. Chomsky appears in this network as another highly influential intellectual whose ideas on language are important for theories of cognition. Bach went on to discuss the importance of cultural factors “Jews tend be intellectually independent and anti-authoritarian, which might make them creative and inventive in ways that are hard to find in Asia.” In a separate email, he instead ascribes increased intelligence to the “Ashkenazi mutation” [14]. Another topic of discussion was overpopulation and whether climate change was a good way to deal with overpopulation. This kind of mediocre racist garbage characterizes the personal views of this elite. Leading thinkers of the “left” like Noam Chomsky may have intellectually disagreed with it, but they participated in and normalized this discourse. As the New York Times reported, Epstein confided his scheme of “seeding the human race with his DNA”, an old eugenic fantasy, to several scientists and had contributed to the World Transhumanist Association (now known as Humanity Plus) [15]

This kind of race science and social Darwinism had been refuted and challenged by W.E.B Du Bois who studied race sociologically and historically. In 1929, Du Bois debated Lothrop Stoddard. Billed as the “One of the greatest debates ever held”, the topic was “Has the Negro the Same Intellectual Possibilities as Other Races?” [16]. Du Bois conclusively won the debate and pioneered the scientific study of race. Lothrop Stoddard was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Eugenics Society. Evidently, the intellectuals around Epstein are about as competent as Stoddard but more influential, powerful and dangerously connected. 

Theoretical physics was another field important to Epstein because it is treated, in this culture, as the domain of the super-intelligent. The theoretical physics community maintained close contact with Epstein. Murray Gell-Mann, a high profile physicist known for his role in establishing the standard model of particle physics, was among Epstein’s close contacts and received financial help [17]. The well known science popularizer, Brian Greene invited him to conferences and the physicist Lawrence Krauss was a close friend [18]. Krauss helped organize a scientific conference on Epstein’s island with several prominent physicists, defended him against accusations and asked him for advice on defending himself against sexual misconduct allegations [19]. The Harvard physicist Lisa Randall who attended this conference maintained close contact and engaged in banter with Epstein about getting “Jew Credit” [20]. Andrew Strominger, a string theorist at Harvard, was also in touch [21]. 

Many of these connections were facilitated by John Brockmann, a literary agent and founder of the Edge Foundation. This foundation sought to collect “extraordinary people”, almost exclusively white men from the American elite, who would take “the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are” [22]. Jeffrey Epstein was by far the largest donor to the Edge Foundation [23]. The foundation purported to present ideas at the frontier of “evolutionary biology, genetics, computer science, neurophysiology, psychology, and physics” all topics that were of great interest to Epstein [22]. 

Epstein’s connections to Mossad and Israel have been the subject of much scrutiny. He was in close contact with the former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. His lawyer and close friend Alan Dershowitz is a well known Zionist. An FBI memo called him an active intelligence agent [24]. What is known is that the universities in which these academics operate are Zionist institutions, with close ties to the Israeli state. The horrific nature of Epstein’s crimes is that they targeted children with sexual abuse. The culture that normalized this also normalizes and defends Israel’s crimes. In fact, a study found that Israel accounts for 40% of deaths of children around the world from external attacks in the past thirty years [25]. 

The case of Jeffrey Epstein should not be treated as the life of a single individual convicted of crimes. Nor is it a simple matter of where scientists get their funding. Jeffrey Epstein was at the center of an ideological project, a technocratic resurgence of eugenics and racism with pseudo-scientific backing. None of the academics connected to Epstein have had to face any real consequences of their actions. Nobody believes their pathetic, bland, curated and retrospective apologies or their claims that they didn’t know. Everybody knew, and recognized the culture of these institutions. The files that have been opened to the public are only a small part of what exists. The ideas that Epstein was promoting continue to proliferate in the institutions that he was closely connected to. 

Dangerously, these institutions train scientists around the world. The culture in these institutions promotes a form of cognitive capture of those who are trained in them. They accept, propagate and implicitly legitimize these ideas under the guise of “scientific freedom”. This raises serious questions particularly for Asian scientists and Indian scientists in particular, who now constitute such a large part of this scientific establishment as graduate students, postdocs and faculty. These scientists are not exempt from the implications of the Epstein files. They often join in and perpetuate the culture of white supremacy. Many of these scientists who are trained in institutions like MIT and Harvard return to their own countries. They strut around their social connections and rely completely on Western fashions for legitimizing their work. For scientists around the world, this is a time to reject Western academic standards, to recognize their moral bankruptcy and to struggle for sovereignty of knowledge and a new kind of science. This will require reconnecting science to philosophy and history, so that the fundamental question of the purpose and moral center of scientific work can be discussed. Mahatma Gandhi had said, “It is my firm belief that Europe today represents not the spirit of God or Christianity but the spirit of Satan.” and that modern (or Western) civilization was satanic. The Epstein files show the inner workings of the elite who have fashioned this satanic civilization and purport to defend it in the name of science and technology. It is for the future of our children that we must fight against such a civilization that is fashioned on war and violence and build a new civilization. This new civilization must reject a mediocre elite that is drunk on its narcissism and technological achievements and wants to play at being God. 
 

References:

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science

[2] https://www.rand.org/topics/game-theory.html

[3] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00388-0

[4] https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2014/10/21/medical-professor-genome-editing/

[5] https://bigthink.com/health/harvard-geneticist-plan-for-redesigning-humans/

[6]https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/04/gene-editing-optimization-thiel-altman-armstrong-andreessen-ai-iq/

[7] https://www.herasight.com/

[8] https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/02/epstein-emails-eugenics-chomsky-altruism-billionaires/

[9] https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2011/EFTA02472774.pdf

[10] https://newrepublic.com/article/77727/groups-and-genes

[11] https://time.com/6552063/jeffrey-epsteins-unsealed-court-documents/

[12]https://bylinetimes.com/2025/12/05/how-epstein-channelled-race-science-and-climate-culling-into-silicon-valleys-ai-elite/

[13] https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA00823256.pdf

[14] https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2011/EFTA02543158.pdf

[15] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/31/business/jeffrey-epstein-eugenics.html

[16] https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b160-i451

[17]https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/jeffrey-epstein-files-shed-light-on-ties-to-santa-fe-institute-scientists/article_03cb3e26-5c53-4ea3-a683-bc98e7013058.html

[18]https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2026/02/04/brian-greene-frontiers-of-science-professor-invited-jeffrey-epstein-to-science-conferences-and-planned-to-attend-dinners-at-epsteins-home/

[19] https://www.npr.org/2026/03/09/nx-s1-5721150/epstein-scientists-physics-virgin-islands-conference

[20] https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/2/1/lisa-randall-epstein-ties/

[21] https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2010/EFTA01750209.pdf

[22] https://www.edge.org/about-edgeorg 

[23] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/jeffrey-epstein-john-brockman-edge-foundation

[24] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/9/what-were-jeffrey-epsteins-links-to-israel

[25]https://www.thehindu.com/data/children-have-borne-the-brunt-of-israel-us-aggression/article70758803.ece

​Archishman Raju is an editor of Vishwabandhu Journal.