1
00:00:00,103 --> 00:00:05,426
Chapter 3. The portfolio: how he
described what he was buying.

2
00:00:06,955 --> 00:00:08,131
Argument.

3
00:00:08,628 --> 00:00:14,411
From 2009 Epstein kept re-listing the same
bundle of fields, both to plan funding

4
00:00:14,431 --> 00:00:16,199
and to describe himself.

5
00:00:16,707 --> 00:00:20,199
Machine AI is one small item on those lists.

6
00:00:20,707 --> 00:00:23,923
"Biology and deception" is
the recurring headline.

7
00:00:24,431 --> 00:00:27,252
The lists doubled as his public identity.

8
00:00:28,483 --> 00:00:33,596
Section 3.1. The 2009 "gatherings" list.

9
00:00:35,119 --> 00:00:40,250
On 11 August 2009 Epstein wrote to
the literary agent John Brockman,

10
00:00:40,632 --> 00:00:44,967
whose Edge Foundation gathers well-known
scientists for discussion: "I intend to

11
00:00:44,987 --> 00:00:50,295
fully fund the following gatherings ( meetings
with lots of interaction hikes coffee.

12
00:00:50,805 --> 00:00:53,587
cross pollination ) over the next year".

13
00:00:54,108 --> 00:00:57,798
First on his list was
"Evolutionary Code dynamics..

14
00:00:58,305 --> 00:01:03,970
a brand new field that encompasses, game
theory, virus dynamics, (both computers and

15
00:01:03,990 --> 00:01:07,916
biological)., cryptography, and genetics".

16
00:01:08,424 --> 00:01:13,719
Game theory here means the mathematics of
strategy, how competing players should act.

17
00:01:14,227 --> 00:01:17,153
Second was "Synthetic General Intelligence..

18
00:01:17,661 --> 00:01:22,496
encompassing, signal processing, statistical
and machine learning, virtual world

19
00:01:22,516 --> 00:01:23,640
robots".

20
00:01:24,161 --> 00:01:28,575
Signal processing is the engineering of
pulling information out of signals such as

21
00:01:28,595 --> 00:01:31,521
sound, radio or sensor readings.

22
00:01:32,029 --> 00:01:36,574
Even at the start, the AI item was
framed through signals and codes.

23
00:01:37,807 --> 00:01:42,576
A month later he asked the New York Times
technology reporter John Markoff to help

24
00:01:42,596 --> 00:01:47,366
him "find a good writer to put together a
summary of my science projects, past and

25
00:01:47,386 --> 00:01:52,609
current„ quantum computing, string
theory, loop quntum gravity, chinese chi,

26
00:01:52,767 --> 00:01:59,237
complexity, neuroscience, bio physics,
evolutionary dynamics, cosmology, cognitve

27
00:01:59,257 --> 00:02:01,722
neuro, foundations of morals".

28
00:02:02,230 --> 00:02:06,987
String theory and loop quantum gravity are
rival attempts to unite physics' theory

29
00:02:07,007 --> 00:02:09,433
of gravity with quantum mechanics.

30
00:02:09,954 --> 00:02:15,026
"Chinese chi", the life-energy of traditional
Chinese medicine, sits in the same list

31
00:02:15,046 --> 00:02:16,551
without distinction.

32
00:02:17,072 --> 00:02:22,552
In January 2010 he told Barnaby Marsh,
then an officer of the John Templeton

33
00:02:22,572 --> 00:02:27,131
Foundation (a large charity that funds
research at the meeting point of science and

34
00:02:27,151 --> 00:02:32,407
religion), that "my funding is now
concentrated on 1 decoding and evolution..

35
00:02:32,928 --> 00:02:36,999
( there are no energy equations
in predator prey models. ),2.

36
00:02:37,507 --> 00:02:42,355
music and the brain" and psychoactive
drugs "used as tools to probe the mind, not

37
00:02:42,375 --> 00:02:43,354
the brain".

38
00:02:44,575 --> 00:02:49,727
Section 3.2. Writing
himself as a science patron.

39
00:02:51,259 --> 00:02:54,251
The lists were also about how he would be seen.

40
00:02:54,774 --> 00:03:00,557
In October 2010 his associate Al Seckel, a
writer on optical illusions who organised

41
00:03:00,577 --> 00:03:05,070
conferences for him, turned "a stream of
consciousness about your funding interests

42
00:03:05,090 --> 00:03:08,411
for 2011" into a public-facing list.

43
00:03:08,919 --> 00:03:13,069
Epstein asked him to "add new
financial systems, important..

44
00:03:13,577 --> 00:03:16,503
add pre life as replication of signals".

45
00:03:17,011 --> 00:03:20,424
The next chapter returns
to that idea of "signals".

46
00:03:20,932 --> 00:03:24,556
Chapter 10 returns to what
Seckel was doing with the list.

47
00:03:25,771 --> 00:03:31,871
Section 3.3. The 2015–2016 lists.

48
00:03:33,391 --> 00:03:39,186
In June 2015 Epstein told the biologist
Rupert Sheldrake, "I have begun to fund what

49
00:03:39,206 --> 00:03:41,488
I call AI (-1).

50
00:03:42,012 --> 00:03:46,479
After funding in general areas that are
searching for answers I have asked people to

51
00:03:46,499 --> 00:03:49,964
devise an artificial method
for asking questions.

52
00:03:50,472 --> 00:03:55,214
-my view is that intelligence has too
often been modeled after computation".

53
00:03:55,735 --> 00:04:00,222
"AI (-1)", artificial intelligence
to the power of minus one,

54
00:04:00,604 --> 00:04:05,004
was his coinage for a machine that would
ask questions rather than answer them.

55
00:04:05,525 --> 00:04:10,926
In October 2016 he sent Robert Lawrence
Kuhn, the host of the public-television

56
00:04:10,946 --> 00:04:15,267
series Closer To Truth, his "topics
i intend to fund this year".

57
00:04:15,775 --> 00:04:18,477
The list ran: "1 the power laws.

58
00:04:18,985 --> 00:04:22,201
found everywhere in nature, no derivation.

59
00:04:22,709 --> 00:04:27,729
zipfs pareto" (power laws are the pattern
in which a few items are huge and most are

60
00:04:27,749 --> 00:04:31,570
small, as with city sizes or word frequencies).

61
00:04:32,077 --> 00:04:36,425
Second came "biology and
deception, mathematics and truth.?

62
00:04:36,946 --> 00:04:39,609
all living things are predator and prey.

63
00:04:40,130 --> 00:04:44,992
first line of attack and defense is
deception", then power, money as "nothing more

64
00:04:45,012 --> 00:04:49,583
than a trusted agreement", and music
as a tool to interrogate the brain.

65
00:04:50,091 --> 00:04:53,780
Kuhn replied that several
topics "fit Closer To Truth".

66
00:04:55,015 --> 00:05:00,917
Section 3.4. The 2018 "radical
breakthrough" agenda.

67
00:05:02,443 --> 00:05:08,364
The archive's most crowd-starred
topical thread (1,832 stars on Jmail)

68
00:05:08,719 --> 00:05:14,738
is a note Epstein forwarded to himself on
8 January 2018 under the subject "radical

69
00:05:14,758 --> 00:05:15,803
breakthrough".

70
00:05:16,327 --> 00:05:21,056
It was first seen as House
Oversight document 19871.

71
00:05:21,577 --> 00:05:28,069
Its government duplicate is
document E-F-T-A ending 2540965.

72
00:05:28,577 --> 00:05:31,543
It is a numbered list of 33 questions.

73
00:05:32,051 --> 00:05:37,529
They include "1 beards and long hair, are
meant to catch and hold smells. ?", "16.

74
00:05:38,037 --> 00:05:41,437
deception and its role in biollogy", "18.

75
00:05:41,958 --> 00:05:45,069
power lawws and probability", "24.

76
00:05:45,590 --> 00:05:52,215
questions = AI to the minus 1" (the PDF's
text layer reads "Al", an optical-reading

77
00:05:52,235 --> 00:05:59,727
slip for "AI"), "29. micro bioome anti
biotics" and "33 signal processing..

78
00:06:00,248 --> 00:06:03,227
noise. excription".

79
00:06:03,735 --> 00:06:07,266
A string of names follows
the list ("gromov deepak.

80
00:06:07,774 --> 00:06:14,569
church. martin. joscha watson,
chomsky... thiel... bannon.

81
00:06:15,090 --> 00:06:22,215
barrak. ruemmler. reid"), with "membrane
computing" (computation modelled on cell

82
00:06:22,235 --> 00:06:28,662
membranes, section 1.1) and "FFT" (the
fast Fourier transform, a standard way of

83
00:06:28,682 --> 00:06:31,911
splitting a signal into
its component frequencies).

84
00:06:32,432 --> 00:06:36,293
A longer roll of famous names
opens the forwarded copy.

85
00:06:36,814 --> 00:06:41,531
The note mixes real scientific questions,
folk theories and name-dropping, and the

86
00:06:41,551 --> 00:06:48,056
same core themes recur: deception, signals,
power laws, and the "AI to the minus 1".

87
00:06:49,291 --> 00:06:53,022
Section 3.5. Triad.

88
00:06:54,535 --> 00:06:55,698
Ideals.

89
00:06:56,195 --> 00:07:01,280
The lists above, in his words: "Evolutionary
Code dynamics", "Synthetic General

90
00:07:01,300 --> 00:07:07,464
Intelligence", "biology and deception,
mathematics and truth", "AI (-1)".

91
00:07:08,695 --> 00:07:11,226
Pushback, and decisions anyway.

92
00:07:11,750 --> 00:07:16,368
Brockman answered the 2009 plan with a
warning about the Templeton Foundation:

93
00:07:16,724 --> 00:07:20,242
"You will lose half the people
you want by involving Templeton.

94
00:07:20,763 --> 00:07:23,781
The other half will go along but be unhappy".

95
00:07:24,303 --> 00:07:30,414
On the evening of 9 February 2013 Boris
Nikolic, an investor then working with Bill

96
00:07:30,434 --> 00:07:35,296
Gates (his messages speak of "Bill" and
of "we" working with top scientists), was

97
00:07:35,316 --> 00:07:39,717
advising Epstein on whom to introduce to
a person the thread does not name in this

98
00:07:39,737 --> 00:07:40,597
part.

99
00:07:41,105 --> 00:07:45,388
He wrote: "I would stay away of Barnaby
— I know that you are liking him but

100
00:07:45,408 --> 00:07:50,098
Templeton Foundation has a bad reputation
of religious mambo jumbo wrapped up with

101
00:07:50,118 --> 00:07:51,532
pseudo science."

102
00:07:52,039 --> 00:07:56,781
Epstein defended Marsh: "your call,
but barnaby is not like that at all.

103
00:07:57,303 --> 00:08:00,571
he went to oxford, only liikes real science.

104
00:08:01,079 --> 00:08:03,031
the princpals are wackos".

105
00:08:03,553 --> 00:08:08,348
Minutes later Nikolic replied that "Because
of its prinicipals, that foundation has

106
00:08:08,368 --> 00:08:10,189
a horrible reputation.

107
00:08:10,697 --> 00:08:14,368
Not bad but a number of scientists
are actively lobbing against",

108
00:08:14,763 --> 00:08:18,927
and that "It might be risky to get
involved/have any connection with Tempelton at

109
00:08:18,947 --> 00:08:20,137
this stage".

110
00:08:20,645 --> 00:08:25,321
Epstein answered, "got it, who on the list
do you think he would enjoy the most".

111
00:08:25,829 --> 00:08:29,768
He gave way on this introduction
but not on Templeton itself.

112
00:08:30,276 --> 00:08:32,645
Templeton money and Templeton-linked matching

113
00:08:33,000 --> 00:08:37,755
(offers to give an amount equal to a
Templeton grant) run through Chapter 9.

114
00:08:38,983 --> 00:08:40,317
Supporters.

115
00:08:40,814 --> 00:08:45,077
Brockman's Edge circle was Epstein's
main route into the scientific elite,

116
00:08:45,485 --> 00:08:48,964
as BuzzFeed News documented in 2019.

117
00:08:49,472 --> 00:08:53,333
Kuhn took the 2016 list as programme material.

118
00:08:53,841 --> 00:08:59,255
Marsh replied to the 2010 list, "these are
all good topics, I'm looking forward to

119
00:08:59,275 --> 00:09:00,846
exploring together!".

120
00:09:02,071 --> 00:09:03,918
What the lists point to.

121
00:09:04,442 --> 00:09:07,455
The same small set of ideas recurs for a decade,

122
00:09:07,850 --> 00:09:11,407
so the interest was persistent
rather than a passing pose.

123
00:09:11,929 --> 00:09:16,922
But the lists were also written for an
audience: lawyers, reporters, a television

124
00:09:16,942 --> 00:09:19,236
host and a conference organiser.

125
00:09:19,744 --> 00:09:23,777
They tell us what he wanted to be seen
funding, which is not the same as what he

126
00:09:23,797 --> 00:09:24,789
funded.

127
00:09:25,297 --> 00:09:28,723
Chapters 4 to 9 test the
lists against the money.

128
00:09:31,519 --> 00:09:37,119
Chapter 4. Biology as code and
deception: the centre of gravity.

129
00:09:38,635 --> 00:09:39,811
Argument.

130
00:09:40,308 --> 00:09:45,367
The idea that recurs most often in Epstein's
own words is that living systems run on

131
00:09:45,387 --> 00:09:47,011
encrypted signals.

132
00:09:47,519 --> 00:09:52,729
Deception, on this view, is how organisms
protect their most efficient "algorithms",

133
00:09:52,953 --> 00:09:56,314
so understanding life
becomes a code-breaking job.

134
00:09:56,835 --> 00:10:03,019
Between 2012 and 2015 he turned this into
repeated attempts to recruit code-breakers,

135
00:10:03,374 --> 00:10:07,432
including from the National
Security Agency, for biology.

136
00:10:07,953 --> 00:10:11,379
No agency or code-breaker is shown taking it up.

137
00:10:11,900 --> 00:10:13,874
Energy belongs in this chapter too,

138
00:10:14,243 --> 00:10:18,459
because he wrote about it as free energy
and entropy in living things rather than as

139
00:10:18,479 --> 00:10:20,590
a power-station technology.

140
00:10:21,835 --> 00:10:26,237
Section 4.1. "Truth vs deception".

141
00:10:27,751 --> 00:10:34,073
The earliest full statement is a note Epstein
emailed to himself on 25 November 2010

142
00:10:34,093 --> 00:10:35,980
under the subject "content":

143
00:10:37,207 --> 00:10:41,238
"I. biology verus mathematics, yin/yang.

144
00:10:41,762 --> 00:10:47,570
Truth vs deception.. the most efficient
algorithm, is the most vulnerable.

145
00:10:48,078 --> 00:10:53,742
Therefore deception needed for protection.,,
viruses, tehonology now available

146
00:10:53,762 --> 00:10:58,689
encryption de enctution„ wavelete anuaysism
ellitcal transformations real random

147
00:10:58,709 --> 00:11:00,096
genetratersl.

148
00:11:00,617 --> 00:11:06,439
Self deception, alice — bob, well established,
code theory, codebreaking, evolution

149
00:11:06,459 --> 00:11:08,925
butterly, computer can't deceive."

150
00:11:10,159 --> 00:11:15,901
Read plainly, he is saying that mathematics
deals in truth and biology in deception.

151
00:11:16,424 --> 00:11:20,161
A living thing that runs a very
efficient routine is easy to exploit,

152
00:11:20,530 --> 00:11:22,561
so it must disguise itself.

153
00:11:23,069 --> 00:11:26,074
The tools he names are cryptographers' tools.

154
00:11:26,595 --> 00:11:31,115
"Alice — bob" are the stock names
cryptographers give to two parties exchanging

155
00:11:31,135 --> 00:11:32,640
secret messages.

156
00:11:33,148 --> 00:11:38,089
Wavelet analysis and elliptic transformations
are mathematical techniques used in

157
00:11:38,109 --> 00:11:40,956
signal processing and modern encryption.

158
00:11:41,477 --> 00:11:46,339
"Evolution butterly" points to the butterfly,
the textbook case of camouflage and

159
00:11:46,359 --> 00:11:47,364
mimicry.

160
00:11:47,885 --> 00:11:53,719
The last clause, "computer can't deceive",
sets up a theme that returns in Chapter 5.

161
00:11:54,943 --> 00:11:59,753
Section 4.2. Cells as encrypted senders.

162
00:12:01,267 --> 00:12:07,878
On 4 July 2013 he wrote to four scientists
at once: Martin Nowak, the Harvard

163
00:12:07,898 --> 00:12:12,385
mathematical biologist whose Program
for Evolutionary Dynamics he funded;

164
00:12:12,569 --> 00:12:15,043
Ed Boyden, an MIT neuroscientist;

165
00:12:15,253 --> 00:12:20,875
Neil Gershenfeld, who directs MIT's Center
for Bits and Atoms; and Whitfield Diffie,

166
00:12:21,151 --> 00:12:26,051
a co-inventor of the public-key cryptography
that secures most internet traffic.

167
00:12:26,572 --> 00:12:28,077
The message read:

168
00:12:29,299 --> 00:12:34,207
"What I would like to explore/fund, is
the premise that biological, cellular,

169
00:12:34,378 --> 00:12:39,371
neuronal, signals are all highly encrypted,
and the possibility that each entity has

170
00:12:39,391 --> 00:12:41,857
its own unique encoding algorithm.

171
00:12:42,380 --> 00:12:44,854
Where Mathematics has no need for protection,

172
00:12:45,275 --> 00:12:49,952
Biology and its agents on the other hand
consists of fundamentally merely helpless

173
00:12:49,972 --> 00:12:54,268
prey without a system that protects them
from the free -energy seeking predators in

174
00:12:54,288 --> 00:12:55,596
their environment"

175
00:12:56,827 --> 00:13:01,898
"Free energy" here is the physicist's term
for the usable energy a system holds.

176
00:13:02,408 --> 00:13:05,729
Predators, in his picture, are hunting for it.

177
00:13:06,250 --> 00:13:09,724
Three days earlier he had pressed
Gershenfeld on the same idea,

178
00:13:10,145 --> 00:13:14,638
asking for "a closer look at cellular
signaling form one to another attacked the

179
00:13:14,658 --> 00:13:17,453
same way as other signal intelligence.

180
00:13:17,961 --> 00:13:22,887
the signal is chemical in nature, but that
might mean electircal or physcial shape".

181
00:13:23,395 --> 00:13:26,229
Gershenfeld answered as a scientist would.

182
00:13:26,737 --> 00:13:31,415
He pointed Epstein to colleagues who study
how cells sense and signal ("a colleague

183
00:13:31,435 --> 00:13:35,796
who's worked on pulsatile signalling", that
is, signals that cells send in rhythmic

184
00:13:35,816 --> 00:13:41,112
pulses rather than as a steady level) and,
the next day, to the systems biologist

185
00:13:41,132 --> 00:13:43,900
Adam Arkin ("look at Adam Arkin").

186
00:13:44,421 --> 00:13:48,414
In July he did not take up the
framing of signals as codes.

187
00:13:48,921 --> 00:13:53,184
In December he answered the deception
idea with a broader proposal of his own

188
00:13:53,474 --> 00:13:55,585
(section 4.2a).

189
00:13:56,106 --> 00:13:58,361
The choice of addressees matters.

190
00:13:58,869 --> 00:14:04,283
He put an evolutionary game theorist, a
brain engineer, a physicist of computation

191
00:14:04,303 --> 00:14:09,045
and a cryptographer on one email and
asked them to treat the cell as a cipher.

192
00:14:10,267 --> 00:14:18,432
Section 4.2a. A "Mathematics of
Deception" retreat, 2013–2014.

193
00:14:19,951 --> 00:14:24,614
By late 2013 the deception idea
had become a planned meeting.

194
00:14:25,137 --> 00:14:27,901
On 9 December Gershenfeld wrote to Ed Boyden,

195
00:14:28,256 --> 00:14:33,802
copying Judith Donath, Sebastian Seung,
Theresa Tomic, Epstein and a "Lesley" whose

196
00:14:33,822 --> 00:14:35,559
surname and address are boxed:

197
00:14:35,914 --> 00:14:40,703
"For a Mathematics of Deception weekend
retreat in sunnier climes (Jeff's island),

198
00:14:41,098 --> 00:14:48,287
we could all do Feb 8,9,
22,23, Mar 8,9, Apr 12,13.

199
00:14:48,809 --> 00:14:50,761
How are those options for you?".

200
00:14:51,282 --> 00:14:57,287
Epstein answered, "feb 22 23
ok if ok with everyone else".

201
00:14:57,795 --> 00:15:02,130
An invitation list is not attendance,
and none is asserted here.

202
00:15:03,343 --> 00:15:06,698
On 27 December Gershenfeld proposed a wider aim:

203
00:15:07,119 --> 00:15:11,217
"I haven't had a chance to return to this
thread, but I was thinking that a retreat

204
00:15:11,237 --> 00:15:15,111
to understand deception is too
modest a goal for this group.

205
00:15:15,622 --> 00:15:18,732
How about the more ambitious
goal of building a brain?

206
00:15:19,240 --> 00:15:23,483
Then your interest in deception becomes a
testable subsystem of the brain-building

207
00:15:23,503 --> 00:15:24,574
project.".

208
00:15:25,082 --> 00:15:28,266
A subsystem here is one working
part of a larger machine,

209
00:15:28,635 --> 00:15:31,535
a piece that can be built and tested on its own.

210
00:15:32,043 --> 00:15:36,851
Six minutes later by the printed
times, Epstein replied: "I agree..

211
00:15:37,372 --> 00:15:42,193
define -brain. - do we need a minion
of them for social behavior..

212
00:15:42,701 --> 00:15:47,543
I love the idea of throwing turing
aside and relooking from scratch at

213
00:15:47,714 --> 00:15:52,298
transistors,gates etc..- deception
and truth are asymmetrical..

214
00:15:52,819 --> 00:15:57,391
like chocolate milk,: a little chocolate
makes it chocolate milk, a few lies makes

215
00:15:57,411 --> 00:16:01,614
one a deceiver, where a few truths
do not make one a truthteller.".

216
00:16:02,122 --> 00:16:06,707
"Throwing turing aside" refers to Alan
Turing's model of computation, the

217
00:16:06,727 --> 00:16:10,508
step-by-step machine that
underlies ordinary computers.

218
00:16:11,029 --> 00:16:15,798
Transistors and gates are the tiny switches
from which computer chips are built.

219
00:16:16,306 --> 00:16:21,457
On 31 December Gershenfeld told the group:
"Jeff and I discussed a potential larger

220
00:16:21,477 --> 00:16:25,114
focus for the weekend: planning
a build-a-brain project.

221
00:16:25,622 --> 00:16:30,141
That of course has many potential meanings,
but I like the challenge, and within

222
00:16:30,161 --> 00:16:33,864
that deception would be a
subsystem to design or emerge.

223
00:16:34,372 --> 00:16:39,429
My personal interest would be the physical
computational substrate for consciousness.".

224
00:16:39,937 --> 00:16:44,674
A computational substrate is the physical
material that a computation runs on,

225
00:16:45,056 --> 00:16:48,732
such as silicon chips or, in a brain, neurons.

226
00:16:49,975 --> 00:16:52,072
The meeting moved to New York.

227
00:16:52,583 --> 00:16:58,957
By 11 February 2014 the group had settled
on 14 March, and Gershenfeld asked

228
00:16:58,977 --> 00:17:03,720
[R-22], "Do you want to book
travel, or should we do that and

229
00:17:03,740 --> 00:17:05,022
you reimburse?".

230
00:17:05,543 --> 00:17:10,175
On the day itself Boyden withdrew: "My
apologies -- for the Obama BRAIN initiative,

231
00:17:10,517 --> 00:17:12,772
I need to work at MIT today".

232
00:17:13,293 --> 00:17:18,115
Lesley Groff then wrote that "Jeffrey
prefers to either reschedule for April in NY

233
00:17:18,135 --> 00:17:22,609
or he could come to Boston
possibly sometime April

234
00:17:23,017 --> 00:17:26,983
23-25...Jeffrey was flying in for the
dinner so he prefers to reschedule".

235
00:17:27,490 --> 00:17:32,207
[R-24] proposed "continuing
with this evening's plan - and

236
00:17:32,227 --> 00:17:37,035
have Ed videoconf in", and Seung
agreed: "four out of five isn't bad".

237
00:17:37,543 --> 00:17:41,477
The documents checked for this paper do
not show whether the dinner took place,

238
00:17:41,793 --> 00:17:43,096
whether it was rescheduled,

239
00:17:43,477 --> 00:17:46,206
or whether the island retreat ever happened.

240
00:17:47,431 --> 00:17:55,636
Section 4.3. "A guy from nsa":
the code-breaking plan, 2012–2015.

241
00:17:57,163 --> 00:18:01,747
The plan to bring in professional
code-breakers ran for at least four years.

242
00:18:02,271 --> 00:18:06,828
The checks for this paper found it in
eleven separate government originals.

243
00:18:08,059 --> 00:18:10,340
January 2012.

244
00:18:10,851 --> 00:18:15,680
Writing to Tom Pritzker, the Hyatt hotels
chairman, who was on his way to Washington,

245
00:18:15,864 --> 00:18:21,475
Epstein asked: "ask her if we can nsa code
breaking ( signal processing) to work on

246
00:18:21,495 --> 00:18:24,409
brain actintiy and intracelluar deception".

247
00:18:24,917 --> 00:18:27,159
Pritzker had just written "Shit.

248
00:18:27,680 --> 00:18:29,922
I'm seeing Darpa lady tonite".

249
00:18:30,430 --> 00:18:35,698
DARPA is the Pentagon's research agency,
and the woman is not named in the email.

250
00:18:36,206 --> 00:18:38,277
Pritzker then asked, "Huh?

251
00:18:38,798 --> 00:18:40,540
Explain a bit more".

252
00:18:41,061 --> 00:18:45,620
Epstein explained: "think of communication
between cells in the body made up of

253
00:18:45,640 --> 00:18:50,948
proteins„ they are merey signals that we
cannot yet decode NSA decodes signals..

254
00:18:51,469 --> 00:18:54,080
in many languages and math forms..

255
00:18:54,588 --> 00:18:59,159
the algoritjms should be tested
against biologically generated signals.

256
00:18:59,667 --> 00:19:03,632
it is very clever and I promise
a leap in brain understanding".

257
00:19:04,140 --> 00:19:07,777
No further reply from Pritzker
on the subject was found.

258
00:19:08,995 --> 00:19:11,026
March 2012.

259
00:19:11,537 --> 00:19:15,945
He asked Boris Nikolic to set up a
conversation about "signal processing,

260
00:19:16,353 --> 00:19:19,371
and its application to biological systems.

261
00:19:19,879 --> 00:19:24,872
wavelet anaylsis, elliptical transformations,
either her or if you can help arrange

262
00:19:24,892 --> 00:19:26,884
through her the NSA guys".

263
00:19:27,392 --> 00:19:32,122
The woman is identified in the email only
by a first name, which is not expanded

264
00:19:32,142 --> 00:19:32,989
here.

265
00:19:34,219 --> 00:19:36,263
August 2012.

266
00:19:36,774 --> 00:19:41,030
To the banker Maurice Sonnenberg he wrote
that America's intelligence agencies

267
00:19:41,050 --> 00:19:45,819
"could be put to work on breaking the
dna code or protein signal problems.

268
00:19:46,327 --> 00:19:50,700
breaking foreign codes is the
expertise of the us and nsa.

269
00:19:51,221 --> 00:19:54,384
it would be great to know
which agency button to push".

270
00:19:54,892 --> 00:19:58,807
Three days later he sent the instruction
that became the template for his public

271
00:19:58,827 --> 00:20:03,767
image: "I want to use signal intelligene,
and cryptanalysis to understand the

272
00:20:03,787 --> 00:20:06,832
signals in biologcal systems„ cell to cell.

273
00:20:07,353 --> 00:20:11,292
dna to growth„, virus protection and operation.

274
00:20:11,813 --> 00:20:13,503
put it out on the blog".

275
00:20:14,011 --> 00:20:18,517
Signal intelligence is the spy agencies'
craft of intercepting other people's

276
00:20:18,537 --> 00:20:20,016
communications.

277
00:20:20,537 --> 00:20:25,003
Cryptanalysis is the art of breaking
the codes those messages are written in.

278
00:20:25,511 --> 00:20:30,214
Ten days later the writer who ran his
websites reported having "drafted and fleshed

279
00:20:30,234 --> 00:20:32,524
out seven forum concepts including:

280
00:20:32,919 --> 00:20:37,734
signal intelligence & biological
systems, music and the brain, dreaming,

281
00:20:38,090 --> 00:20:43,122
alternative currencies and the predator/prey
dynamic of biology" for the site

282
00:20:43,142 --> 00:20:45,503
jeffreyepsteinforum.com.

283
00:20:46,024 --> 00:20:48,569
The blog instruction was carried out.

284
00:20:49,090 --> 00:20:53,582
The scientific recruitment, as
far as the record shows, was not.

285
00:20:54,811 --> 00:20:56,947
December 2012.

286
00:20:57,458 --> 00:21:01,484
In a questionnaire for a blog post
he listed his "work this year": "1.

287
00:21:01,866 --> 00:21:06,529
do dreams occur 24 hrs, and
conciousness come on and off 2.

288
00:21:07,050 --> 00:21:10,569
signal intelligence for
biological communication...

289
00:21:11,090 --> 00:21:15,766
4.biology, vs mathematics, decetion vs truth".

290
00:21:17,011 --> 00:21:19,266
August 2014.

291
00:21:19,790 --> 00:21:22,632
Writing to Bill Gates, he
described a new venture:

292
00:21:23,000 --> 00:21:26,861
"I am starting an institute at
MIT calling it ONE SCIENCE.

293
00:21:27,382 --> 00:21:32,466
basically, to explore the intersections
of what appears to be diverse fields.

294
00:21:32,974 --> 00:21:39,084
Signal intelligence, toplology, big
data, mathematical biology, neuro etc.

295
00:21:39,592 --> 00:21:44,018
It will be run by Joi Ito. head of media lab".

296
00:21:44,526 --> 00:21:48,887
Topology is the branch of mathematics
that studies shape and connection.

297
00:21:49,408 --> 00:21:54,269
No institute of that name appears
in MIT's public report on Epstein.

298
00:21:54,790 --> 00:21:59,111
The email is evidence of what he
told Gates, not of an institute.

299
00:22:00,331 --> 00:22:02,454
April 2015.

300
00:22:02,978 --> 00:22:07,616
A long note to himself included: "why not
attack the bio language the same way as

301
00:22:07,636 --> 00:22:13,603
speech. have nsa work on decrypting the
differnce in signals from a cancer cell as

302
00:22:13,623 --> 00:22:19,063
opposed to a helathy one. we know that
cells send out messages, am i in the right

303
00:22:19,083 --> 00:22:20,010
place".

304
00:22:21,235 --> 00:22:23,543
September 2015.

305
00:22:24,053 --> 00:22:29,230
He asked Kathy Ruemmler, a former White
House counsel then in private practice, "can

306
00:22:29,250 --> 00:22:34,466
you find a guy from nsa that can think
about signal intelligence applied to DNA.

307
00:22:34,987 --> 00:22:39,546
I woiuld love to get some contact with
decryptors that can work on biology „ I will

308
00:22:39,566 --> 00:22:40,427
fund.

309
00:22:40,935 --> 00:22:44,571
I want to intercept communicaiton
between living cells.

310
00:22:45,079 --> 00:22:48,769
in organisms, the rules should
be the same for language".

311
00:22:49,277 --> 00:22:52,400
Ruemmler replied: "I will make some inquiries".

312
00:22:53,611 --> 00:22:55,905
October 2015.

313
00:22:56,429 --> 00:23:01,777
To Joi Ito, director of the MIT Media
Lab, he floated a "collider" idea for

314
00:23:01,797 --> 00:23:06,382
President Obama and called it "not
as good as bio signal intelligence".

315
00:23:07,603 --> 00:23:13,045
Section 4.4. Energy, entropy and "default on".

316
00:23:14,575 --> 00:23:20,048
The same April 2015 note opens with a
theory of living things as energy systems:

317
00:23:20,390 --> 00:23:23,580
"unlike machines that turn on
when the switch is thrown..

318
00:23:24,104 --> 00:23:29,188
in essece default off. biological
systems are default on.

319
00:23:29,709 --> 00:23:31,635
they attempt to stay on."

320
00:23:32,143 --> 00:23:36,288
It moves on to consciousness as a "screen"
in front of dreams that are "ALWAYS on",

321
00:23:36,617 --> 00:23:39,517
a screen that "takes energy" to keep opaque.

322
00:23:40,025 --> 00:23:44,557
Entropy, the physicist's measure of
disorder, which every living thing must keep

323
00:23:44,577 --> 00:23:47,727
pushing back, is the background to all of this.

324
00:23:48,248 --> 00:23:53,538
In 2010 he told Marsh that "there are no
energy equations in predator prey models",

325
00:23:53,919 --> 00:23:59,583
the equations ecologists use for how
populations of hunters and hunted rise and fall.

326
00:24:00,090 --> 00:24:03,490
Energy in the technological
sense hardly appears.

327
00:24:04,011 --> 00:24:06,156
There is no fusion-power funding thread:

328
00:24:06,511 --> 00:24:11,332
the scan found only four distinct
statements on fusion, two of them his.

329
00:24:11,840 --> 00:24:17,163
The one striking line is a boast to Al
Seckel in October 2009: "regarding cold

330
00:24:17,183 --> 00:24:20,793
fusion. i killed pons years ago".

331
00:24:21,314 --> 00:24:26,649
Stanley Pons was one of the two chemists
whose 1989 claim of room-temperature fusion

332
00:24:26,669 --> 00:24:29,898
collapsed when other laboratories
could not repeat it.

333
00:24:30,419 --> 00:24:34,307
Epstein's claim to have "killed" the
idea is his own and has not been checked

334
00:24:34,327 --> 00:24:36,398
against any outside record.

335
00:24:37,615 --> 00:24:41,346
Section 4.5. Triad.

336
00:24:42,859 --> 00:24:44,022
Ideals.

337
00:24:44,519 --> 00:24:47,703
In his words: cells send
"highly encrypted" signals;

338
00:24:48,032 --> 00:24:49,993
"the rules should be the same for language";

339
00:24:50,190 --> 00:24:50,999
"I will fund";

340
00:24:51,019 --> 00:24:52,682
"put it out on the blog".

341
00:24:53,899 --> 00:24:56,430
Pushback, and decisions anyway.

342
00:24:56,954 --> 00:24:59,722
Nobody in the record rebuts it outright.

343
00:25:00,243 --> 00:25:05,039
The nearest thing is Gershenfeld's reframing
of deception as "too modest a goal" and

344
00:25:05,059 --> 00:25:07,783
a "testable subsystem" of
a brain-building project

345
00:25:08,151 --> 00:25:10,209
(section 4.2a).

346
00:25:10,730 --> 00:25:15,868
Goertzel wrote in 2026 that Epstein "once
proposed that “deception” was the core of

347
00:25:15,888 --> 00:25:20,144
all intelligence and of molecular biology"
and that "I thought he was straining

348
00:25:20,164 --> 00:25:21,749
things and said so".

349
00:25:22,270 --> 00:25:26,643
That is his later account; no email
of the time was checked for it.

350
00:25:27,164 --> 00:25:30,854
Otherwise the responses are
puzzlement (Pritzker: "Huh?

351
00:25:31,362 --> 00:25:36,579
Explain a bit more"), deflection (Ito:
Obama did not seem "that interested in hard

352
00:25:36,599 --> 00:25:41,551
sciences") or polite compliance
(Ruemmler: "I will make some inquiries").

353
00:25:42,059 --> 00:25:46,789
The record does not show any
intelligence-agency person, DARPA official or

354
00:25:46,809 --> 00:25:48,578
code-breaker engaging.

355
00:25:49,099 --> 00:25:53,967
This absence was checked: every email
in the archive was searched for "nsa",

356
00:25:54,191 --> 00:26:00,178
"decryptor", "cryptanalysis" and "signal
intelligence" within 300 characters of "dna",

357
00:26:00,507 --> 00:26:04,770
"cell", "biology" or "genome",
and the 82 distinct hits were read

358
00:26:05,138 --> 00:26:07,696
(the project file gaps phase2).

359
00:26:08,217 --> 00:26:12,697
The decision he made anyway was to put the
idea into his public profile through the

360
00:26:12,717 --> 00:26:16,914
blog, and later through a draft
character reference written about himself

361
00:26:17,138 --> 00:26:18,380
(Chapter 10).

362
00:26:19,627 --> 00:26:20,961
Supporters.

363
00:26:21,458 --> 00:26:26,978
The scientists on the 2013 email did not,
in the record, take up the encryption

364
00:26:26,998 --> 00:26:28,503
premise as stated.

365
00:26:29,011 --> 00:26:34,016
In July Gershenfeld redirected it toward
ordinary cell-signalling research.

366
00:26:34,524 --> 00:26:39,425
In December he went further and organised
a "Mathematics of Deception" retreat, with

367
00:26:39,445 --> 00:26:43,682
Boyden, Seung and Donath among those
invited (attendance is not asserted),

368
00:26:44,037 --> 00:26:48,807
and proposed making Epstein's "interest in
deception" a "testable subsystem of the

369
00:26:48,827 --> 00:26:50,542
brain-building project".

370
00:26:51,063 --> 00:26:54,398
The work he funded did
overlap with it in places.

371
00:26:54,919 --> 00:26:59,524
Ben Goertzel offered to build a "deception
character" with his OpenCog software

372
00:26:59,866 --> 00:27:05,136
(Chapter 5), and Martin Nowak's evolutionary
dynamics, the mathematics of how

373
00:27:05,156 --> 00:27:07,235
strategies spread in populations,

374
00:27:07,590 --> 00:27:11,700
is the scholarly field closest to
his predator-and-prey language.

375
00:27:12,931 --> 00:27:15,923
Where his idea meets mainstream biology.

376
00:27:16,446 --> 00:27:21,584
Biologists do study cell signalling, the
chemical messages cells use to coordinate

377
00:27:21,604 --> 00:27:24,044
growth, defence and death.

378
00:27:24,565 --> 00:27:30,341
Evolutionary biologists also study deception,
in mimicry and camouflage, and in the

379
00:27:30,407 --> 00:27:35,953
"honest signals" that animals cannot easily
fake (a phrase that appears in his 2018

380
00:27:35,973 --> 00:27:37,004
agenda).

381
00:27:37,512 --> 00:27:42,005
What mainstream biology does not do is
treat cellular signalling in general as

382
00:27:42,025 --> 00:27:45,860
encrypted, as messages hidden
from a listener by design.

383
00:27:46,367 --> 00:27:48,649
That step was Epstein's own.

384
00:27:49,157 --> 00:27:53,940
It explains why he kept reaching for
spies rather than biochemists, and why the

385
00:27:53,960 --> 00:27:57,808
people he approached answered with
puzzlement, referrals or a broader

386
00:27:57,828 --> 00:28:00,973
counter-proposal, rather
than code-breaking research.