The Jeffrey Epstein saga has the rare quality of being a story where public fascination has grown rather than faded with time. Epstein died in 2019, which is ancient history in our frenetic media environment, yet he has become more infamous with each passing year. The release of a new tranche of his private communications this month by the Department of Justice has ignited further public interest in the case, turning Epstein and his crimes into a landmark event in American culture. The whole thing deserves a suitably memorable title at this point, something like the “Epstein Affair,” to which future historians (assuming there are any) can easily refer back.

My colleagues and I at Drop Site News have been publishing an ongoing exclusive series of stories about Epstein, focused on his sprawling network of political, financial, and intelligence connections. Those stories will continue, and there is much more to come. But it is also worth taking a step back to ask why Epstein matters exactly, and why the public is so enthralled by his case.

On one hand, there is a perennial human fascination with stories of illicit sexual transgression, and Epstein and his associates’ crimes against women and young girls naturally draw such attention. But there is another reason people remain gripped by this episode, one at least as important: what it reveals about transnational corruption, and the hollowness of our fake meritocracy.

Epstein and his associates are creatures of the post-Cold War world, where formal institutions have been weakened by transnational capital. Instead of democratic institutions with identifiable representatives, power has gradually shifted into the hands of opaque networks of wealthy private individuals, global governance bodies, and “philanthropic” organizations. Epstein was both a generous patron and expert manipulator of these networks.

We now have overwhelming documentary evidence that Epstein held regular counsel with heads of state, diplomats, oligarchs, scientists, and intelligence chiefs worldwide—even facilitating backchannel negotiations on matters of war, peace, and global energy flows.

Yet unlike the diplomats and politicians of the twentieth century, Epstein did not have a business card signifying his allegiance, or to whom he was accountable. If he answered to anyone at all, it was the transnational elite that some are now acidly referring to as the “Epstein Class.” These are the people who continue to shape politics outside institutional channels—in conversations on private islands, in encrypted email threads, and in Signal chats—while hollowing out the increasingly impotent institutions that are supposed to represent the general public.

The phenomenon of wealthy individuals working privately with one another across borders to advance shared political and economic goals appears ad nauseam in Epstein’s communications. Such activity is, by its nature, a “conspiracy,” and it is also part of what makes the Epstein Affair so infuriating to the broader public. People feel powerless in the face of these elite networks, which have predictably descended into extreme forms of corruption—including sexual corruption—in the absence of transparency. To add insult to injury, the public is now being denied the right to even name the phenomenon.

Because of elite capture of many institutions, the coverage of Epstein’s activities by establishment news outlets feels a lot more like damage control than accountability. Despite his extensively documented political influence and even his role in shaping frontier research in AI and biotechnology, Epstein himself has attempted to be quarantined as merely a “con-man” and “dead pervert.” What is being covered up here are not his sexual abuses, but what his role and activities reveal about how power actually operates today.

In the absence of establishment media attention, small teams of investigative journalists and members of the public have been left to extract meaning from mountains of raw data abruptly released by the government on late Friday evenings, in what appears to be a deliberate effort to sow confusion and muffle the impact of what is being disclosed. Although they are being forced to continue talking about it, the whole issue seems to make people in power extremely uncomfortable.

Epstein was a fixture on the sidelines of gatherings like the Davos Summit. If you look at the agenda of such an event, you will see lots of mention of inspiring topics like fighting climate change and ending global hunger. This framing acts as a moral alibi, justifying to the masses an otherwise intolerable condition of democratic helplessness. It assures people that even if they can’t see exactly what they’re doing, their elites are upstanding individuals, interested in their general wellbeing, and deserving of the unique privileges they have been afforded.

Recent disclosures suggest that this morally upright image is quite bogus. The powerful people who shared Epstein’s networks spent a tremendous amount of time engaged in sordid and self-interested financial dealings, manipulated public institutions to their personal ends, and profiteered from the most extreme human misery—all to say nothing of their evident involvement in the global sex trade and, in some cases, pedophilia.

In one comically evil exchange that was emblematic of many of their joint activities, Epstein wrote to his close friend, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, “with civil unrest exploding in ukraine syria, somolia [sic], libya, and the desperation of those in power, isn’t this perfect for you.” Barak replied: “You’re right [in] a way. But not simple to transform it into a cash flow. A subject for Saturday.”

Insisting that anyone who even notices any of this is a morally reprobate conspiracy theorist is predictably just making people even more furious.

Mafia Boss

In social critic Christopher Lasch’s final book, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy, he predicted the emergence of a transnational elite that was completely alienated from the people it ruled. These people would view themselves primarily as “world citizens,” while avoiding taking on any of the “obligations that citizenship in a polity normally implies.”

Deeming itself both superior and fundamentally different from the masses, this ostensibly meritocratic elite would feel no real obligation toward them, having, as Lasch put it “removed themselves from the common life.” Had he lived to see the current situation, Lasch would have recognized Epstein and his associates immediately.​

Epstein was a node in a transnational network—similar in its parastatal structure and clandestine operations to a criminal mafia—that is connected by shared tastes, institutional affiliations, and class interests. These people come from around the world, including the Middle East, Africa, Russia, Europe and the United States. Yet despite their veneer of cosmopolitanism, the ethnic, national, and religious differences among them are largely irrelevant. What really matters is being a member of the club.

Another thing that characterizes this club is the stark divide in cultural and moral attitudes between them and the people over whom they rule. The enthusiastic embrace of sex trafficking is merely one aspect. In Epstein’s communications with his associates the cultural and religious beliefs of ordinary people are treated as something to be mocked and humiliated, while they, as an avowedly transhumanist class, pursue loftier aims like genetic modification and even immortality.

In this world, the poor do not even receive the noblesse oblige of earlier eras, and are treated either as a threat to be carefully monitored, or as a commodity to be exploited for sex and economic gain. There is an unmistakable air of contempt in it all. The very same people Epstein mingled with in life, and who participated in or abetted his abuses, now seem to relish the prospect of rendering the vast majority of humanity redundant through advances in robotics and artificial intelligence.

Some defenders of the Epstein Class have implied that the public’s intense interest in this episode reflects a moral failing. That supposed failing lies not with Epstein and his associates, but with the public itself—portrayed as a primitive mob, incapable of processing information rationally, and easily drawn into spirals of medieval superstition.

In reality, public interest and outrage over Epstein is entirely justified. This whole sordid episode is another data point in a ruthless class war being waged by a relatively small number of networked wealthy people against the rest of society. That there aren’t actual riots and disorder in response to the revelations contained in the latest Department of Justice disclosures only reflects how far the neoliberal project of atomization and suppression of the public has progressed.

Many people are by now fully aware of what is happening, and they are angry. Yet the formerly proud and autonomous citizens of democracies have had their mechanisms for collective action dismantled, leaving them to vent their rage impotently through social media platforms controlled by the very oligarchs responsible for this adverse transfer of power, and whose names are overflowing in these disclosures.

Power Broker

Contrary to attempts to portray him as merely an elite confidence man, Epstein, despite his profound moral failings—including sexual abuse, pedophilia, and racial supremacism—was also highly intelligent. He understood how power operated, particularly in technology, finance, and global logistics. That is why he surrounded himself with scientists and stayed abreast of emerging developments in biotechnology and cryptography.

He did not do this out of idle curiosity, but because he understood keenly from where future power would flow. It was also why he went to such lengths to befriend and influence the people who controlled the ports and shipping terminals upon which the global economy now depends, including his close friend whom we wrote about, the now-former Dubai Ports World chief Sultan Sulayem.

Any collective effort to push back against the Epstein Class requires an equally keen understanding of where real power lies today, along with the development of legal and political tools to confront it. Despite its flaws, the nation-state still contains structures designed to respond to public pressure—mechanisms that could be used to track down and dismantle the vast pools of capital that have enabled this oligarchic, transnational elite to flourish.

Many years ago, in very different circumstances, Hannah Arendt wrote about a form of tyranny in which “there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can present grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted,” calling it “a tyranny without a tyrant.” Arendt was referring to the power of faceless bureaucracy—but her description resonates uncannily with the grey networks of transnational influence revealed in the Epstein disclosures.

If there was anything Jeffrey Epstein did in his life that ultimately served the public, it was to shatter a veil of secrecy and provide a potent symbol—himself—through which people could identify the networked tyranny that now defines our world.

The Jeffrey Epstein saga has the rare quality of being a story where public fascination has grown rather than faded with time. Epstein died in 2019, which is ancient history in our frenetic media environment, yet he has become more infamous with each passing year. The release of a new tranche of his private communications this month by the Department of Justice has ignited further public interest in the case, turning Epstein and his crimes into a landmark event in American culture. The whole thing deserves a suitably memorable title at this point, something like the “Epstein Affair,” to which future historians (assuming there are any) can easily refer back.

My colleagues and I at Drop Site News have been publishing an ongoing exclusive series of stories about Epstein, focused on his sprawling network of political, financial, and intelligence connections. Those stories will continue, and there is much more to come. But it is also worth taking a step back to ask why Epstein matters exactly, and why the public is so enthralled by his case.

On one hand, there is a perennial human fascination with stories of illicit sexual transgression, and Epstein and his associates’ crimes against women and young girls naturally draw such attention. But there is another reason people remain gripped by this episode, one at least as important: what it reveals about transnational corruption, and the hollowness of our fake meritocracy.

Epstein and his associates are creatures of the post-Cold War world, where formal institutions have been weakened by transnational capital. Instead of democratic institutions with identifiable representatives, power has gradually shifted into the hands of opaque networks of wealthy private individuals, global governance bodies, and “philanthropic” organizations. Epstein was both a generous patron and expert manipulator of these networks.

We now have overwhelming documentary evidence that Epstein held regular counsel with heads of state, diplomats, oligarchs, scientists, and intelligence chiefs worldwide—even facilitating backchannel negotiations on matters of war, peace, and global energy flows.

Yet unlike the diplomats and politicians of the twentieth century, Epstein did not have a business card signifying his allegiance, or to whom he was accountable. If he answered to anyone at all, it was the transnational elite that some are now acidly referring to as the “Epstein Class.” These are the people who continue to shape politics outside institutional channels—in conversations on private islands, in encrypted email threads, and in Signal chats—while hollowing out the increasingly impotent institutions that are supposed to represent the general public.

The phenomenon of wealthy individuals working privately with one another across borders to advance shared political and economic goals appears ad nauseam in Epstein’s communications. Such activity is, by its nature, a “conspiracy,” and it is also part of what makes the Epstein Affair so infuriating to the broader public. People feel powerless in the face of these elite networks, which have predictably descended into extreme forms of corruption—including sexual corruption—in the absence of transparency. To add insult to injury, the public is now being denied the right to even name the phenomenon.

Because of elite capture of many institutions, the coverage of Epstein’s activities by establishment news outlets feels a lot more like damage control than accountability. Despite his extensively documented political influence and even his role in shaping frontier research in AI and biotechnology, Epstein himself has attempted to be quarantined as merely a “con-man” and “dead pervert.” What is being covered up here are not his sexual abuses, but what his role and activities reveal about how power actually operates today.

In the absence of establishment media attention, small teams of investigative journalists and members of the public have been left to extract meaning from mountains of raw data abruptly released by the government on late Friday evenings, in what appears to be a deliberate effort to sow confusion and muffle the impact of what is being disclosed. Although they are being forced to continue talking about it, the whole issue seems to make people in power extremely uncomfortable.

Epstein was a fixture on the sidelines of gatherings like the Davos Summit. If you look at the agenda of such an event, you will see lots of mention of inspiring topics like fighting climate change and ending global hunger. This framing acts as a moral alibi, justifying to the masses an otherwise intolerable condition of democratic helplessness. It assures people that even if they can’t see exactly what they’re doing, their elites are upstanding individuals, interested in their general wellbeing, and deserving of the unique privileges they have been afforded.

Recent disclosures suggest that this morally upright image is quite bogus. The powerful people who shared Epstein’s networks spent a tremendous amount of time engaged in sordid and self-interested financial dealings, manipulated public institutions to their personal ends, and profiteered from the most extreme human misery—all to say nothing of their evident involvement in the global sex trade and, in some cases, pedophilia.

In one comically evil exchange that was emblematic of many of their joint activities, Epstein wrote to his close friend, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, “with civil unrest exploding in ukraine syria, somolia [sic], libya, and the desperation of those in power, isn’t this perfect for you.” Barak replied: “You’re right [in] a way. But not simple to transform it into a cash flow. A subject for Saturday.”

Insisting that anyone who even notices any of this is a morally reprobate conspiracy theorist is predictably just making people even more furious.

Mafia Boss

In social critic Christopher Lasch’s final book, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy, he predicted the emergence of a transnational elite that was completely alienated from the people it ruled. These people would view themselves primarily as “world citizens,” while avoiding taking on any of the “obligations that citizenship in a polity normally implies.”

Deeming itself both superior and fundamentally different from the masses, this ostensibly meritocratic elite would feel no real obligation toward them, having, as Lasch put it “removed themselves from the common life.” Had he lived to see the current situation, Lasch would have recognized Epstein and his associates immediately.​

Epstein was a node in a transnational network—similar in its parastatal structure and clandestine operations to a criminal mafia—that is connected by shared tastes, institutional affiliations, and class interests. These people come from around the world, including the Middle East, Africa, Russia, Europe and the United States. Yet despite their veneer of cosmopolitanism, the ethnic, national, and religious differences among them are largely irrelevant. What really matters is being a member of the club.

Another thing that characterizes this club is the stark divide in cultural and moral attitudes between them and the people over whom they rule. The enthusiastic embrace of sex trafficking is merely one aspect. In Epstein’s communications with his associates the cultural and religious beliefs of ordinary people are treated as something to be mocked and humiliated, while they, as an avowedly transhumanist class, pursue loftier aims like genetic modification and even immortality.

In this world, the poor do not even receive the noblesse oblige of earlier eras, and are treated either as a threat to be carefully monitored, or as a commodity to be exploited for sex and economic gain. There is an unmistakable air of contempt in it all. The very same people Epstein mingled with in life, and who participated in or abetted his abuses, now seem to relish the prospect of rendering the vast majority of humanity redundant through advances in robotics and artificial intelligence.

Some defenders of the Epstein Class have implied that the public’s intense interest in this episode reflects a moral failing. That supposed failing lies not with Epstein and his associates, but with the public itself—portrayed as a primitive mob, incapable of processing information rationally, and easily drawn into spirals of medieval superstition.

In reality, public interest and outrage over Epstein is entirely justified. This whole sordid episode is another data point in a ruthless class war being waged by a relatively small number of networked wealthy people against the rest of society. That there aren’t actual riots and disorder in response to the revelations contained in the latest Department of Justice disclosures only reflects how far the neoliberal project of atomization and suppression of the public has progressed.

Many people are by now fully aware of what is happening, and they are angry. Yet the formerly proud and autonomous citizens of democracies have had their mechanisms for collective action dismantled, leaving them to vent their rage impotently through social media platforms controlled by the very oligarchs responsible for this adverse transfer of power, and whose names are overflowing in these disclosures.

Power Broker

Contrary to attempts to portray him as merely an elite confidence man, Epstein, despite his profound moral failings—including sexual abuse, pedophilia, and racial supremacism—was also highly intelligent. He understood how power operated, particularly in technology, finance, and global logistics. That is why he surrounded himself with scientists and stayed abreast of emerging developments in biotechnology and cryptography.

He did not do this out of idle curiosity, but because he understood keenly from where future power would flow. It was also why he went to such lengths to befriend and influence the people who controlled the ports and shipping terminals upon which the global economy now depends, including his close friend whom we wrote about, the now-former Dubai Ports World chief Sultan Sulayem.

Any collective effort to push back against the Epstein Class requires an equally keen understanding of where real power lies today, along with the development of legal and political tools to confront it. Despite its flaws, the nation-state still contains structures designed to respond to public pressure—mechanisms that could be used to track down and dismantle the vast pools of capital that have enabled this oligarchic, transnational elite to flourish.

Many years ago, in very different circumstances, Hannah Arendt wrote about a form of tyranny in which “there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can present grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted,” calling it “a tyranny without a tyrant.” Arendt was referring to the power of faceless bureaucracy—but her description resonates uncannily with the grey networks of transnational influence revealed in the Epstein disclosures.

If there was anything Jeffrey Epstein did in his life that ultimately served the public, it was to shatter a veil of secrecy and provide a potent symbol—himself—through which people could identify the networked tyranny that now defines our world.