Naomi Wolf: How Big Tech Profited From the Pandemic | CLIP | American Thought Leaders

One thing that was really fascinating to me in the book was your look in on the big tech involvement in all of this. And of course, as you mentioned, the biggest of the big tech companies all did really well over the last two years. The thing that was interesting is you were able to offer the mentality of people in these businesses and how they look at people and how that is incredibly compatible with what happened, for lack of a better term. Tell me about that. Yeah, it's really at the heart of the bodies of others. So as I mentioned, I am CEO now of a successful tech company, and I'm in that space, as they say, in that world. And one of the favorite terms, one of the buzzwords of the tech industry is disruptive. And that's not a negative, it's considered a high compliment to say that someone has created software or a digital process that's disruptive of an industry usually. And so that's the context in which you've got to understand one of the core arguments of the bodies of others that that tech companies had an active hand in shaping legislation and certainly in presenting the drama of COVID and lockdowns to us and then the vaccine rollout in such a way as to change human behavior and to change human society. And part of what I mean by that is that, well, there's just evidence that they liaised. I mean, there are emails from Mark Zuckerberg to Anthony Fauci that have been disclosed. But in addition to that, if you think about how you lived through the lockdowns, and and then the rollout of the vaccines, and what you should do about the vaccines, how you should talk about the vaccines and the lockdowns, much of what we experienced as human beings was mediated through digital platforms and digital messaging. And what I mean is we were, you know, restricted to our homes for a long time. And then there was a limit on how much assembly we could engage in. In New York State, I'll just stick to that churches and synagogues were closed, town halls were closed. So we're not having normal pre 2020 assembly. So what that means, especially for the first year when we were literally, you know, in New York State, upstate, we were forbidden to have more than six people in our homes at one time, according to our governor, and that led me to have an illegal potluck. But that's another story, I suppose, you know, in violation of our constitutional rights to assemble, and and the right to take whatever risk you are going to take as an adult, you know, assembling with other humans. But the point is, because we were restricted, and children and college students were not allowed to go to in person class, they were sent home, they were tethered to their computers, human beings couldn't learn from each other about what was really happening in their communities. And if they were gathering in bars, gathering in restaurants, gathering at their bowling league, they would have told quite a different story than the story that was told to them by digital platforms. And so what I trace in the book is that digital platforms invested in, and you know, both sides of the of the lockdown, and of the vaccine rollout. Microsoft built and Salesforce built the first vaccine passports. For instance, IBM built a vaccine passport. Now, T-Mobile is partnering to roll out a vaccine passport in Europe. At the same time, these digital, these these big tech companies also invested in the vaccines. We live in an era of censorship and disinformation. And it can be really hard to know what's true and what's false in this information climate. To get honest information and insights you can trust, join us on Epoch TV. You can sign up for your 14 day free trial at ept.ms slash freetrialyon. That's ept.ms slash freetrialjan. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is invested in the mRNA vaccines. And so what you get is you got constant, constant messaging that followed you from platform to platform to platform about how dangerous it was outside and how, and this to me very bizarre, sentimentalizing in a very consistent way of distance. You know, you show your love to your grandmother by not hugging her, not visiting her at Christmas. You know, slogans like we stand together by staying apart. And that just appeared out of nowhere. And so what I do trace in the book is, is how there was a vast profit that tech companies made by suppressing human assembly, by suppressing and helping to message that it was unsafe or unlawful to gather in person in a town hall, gather in person in a classroom, send your child to play with their peers in a playground, you know, gather to worship. That was all messaged as being deadly. And when you understand that big tech companies are competing with human beings gathering in human spaces, you understand why there was a vested interest in suppressing human assembly. Because when you're a tech company, you can't compete. Like human beings are encouraged to believe that everything they do is not as good as everything that digital technology does. But in fact, right now, there are things human beings do better than digital technology, like you just smiled. And that's the best emoji is not going to make humans feel the way they feel when a human being smiles at them. When humans gather to worship, a digital platform can't compete with that. When they gather in a town hall, they can coordinate and create outcomes and solutions much more efficiently than they can on even the best Zoom meeting. And even better than AI can, you know, right now, certainly for their own purposes, right? So it's kind of genius. You know, I started this discussion earlier by saying, digital technology CEOs want to disrupt. Well, one thing they want to disrupt is human assembly. Because every time your child is in a classroom with 30 other kids, with a human teacher, no money is being made for tech companies. And every time you shop at your local butcher or baker, and you chat with, you know, your neighbors afterwards, having a cup of coffee in a cafe, and you walk up and down Main Street, no money is being made by digital technology companies. And when you're worshiping in church, they're not making money. But if you can disrupt all of that, lock people in their homes, drive them onto their screens for education, for communication, just to see the faces of their friends, then you're harvesting money in multiple ways. If you're a tech company, because they're really only three basic business models for most software companies and their eyeballs, meaning your attention, subscriptions, right, meaning like a paywall, and your data, you know, what they're harvesting as you're surfing the web, or even your biometric data, your medical data, if they can get it right. There are marketplaces, vast marketplaces for selling your data. Well, when people are gathering with their friends, none of that is happening, right? So what you see, you know, with the lockdowns, and the sudden appearance of educational technology, distance learning tech, which was a loser industry when people could actually be in classrooms, which they love, you know, no one would rather be home on a computer than being in a classroom with peers, and a teacher, or industries like meal kits, which, again, tech investors invested in them, but they were going nowhere, you know, until the lockdown, right? Or even businesses like Amazon, those industries went up 20 to 25% in net revenue, as did Google, as did Microsoft, as did Nintendo, right, in the two years of 2020 to 2022. Why would they ever let that go? And, and I guess the last thing I want to say about disruption is that I mentioned that one of the key business models for tech investors and tech companies is subscriptions. And it's very common for a digital platform, the CEO and developers to create an experience in which you're lured in, you're having a wonderful time, you're playing the game, or you're decorating your home, you know, virtually, or whatever it is that the experience represents, you get invested, and then your access is suspended, right? And you have to swipe your credit card to stay in and by then you're already hooked on whatever it is they're selling, right? That's a classic, classic way to create a successful digital platform.