Seamus Bruner warns that a new class of ultra-wealthy “Controligarchs” now wield power to rival nation-states, and are shaping politics, media, and many global systems from behind the scenes.
Their sweeping influence, which he wrote about in his 2023 book Controligarchs, isn’t just about their money — it’s about control. They steer the funding of “get out the vote” efforts, information flow, and embed themselves into government and the Big Tech infrastructure. From Bill Gates’ links to Jeffrey Epstein to BlackRock’s expanding dominance and Meta’s data control, Bruner paints a picture of concentrated power accelerating rapidly.
Appearing on the Flyover Conservatives podcast with hosts Dave and Stacey Whited, Bruner updates the stories of each of the five “cover boys” that appear on the front cover of his book and offers a tease for his next one.
“Bill Gates has taken a big hit since the book came out. I will say that in the chapter “Gates of Hell” (chapter two), I got into his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein in detail,” Bruner said. “It took a lot of piecing together source material to paint the picture that I did. And since then, all of these Epstein files have come out. That’s what Bill Gates is dealing with right now.”
Bruner’s book was accurate in describing it. “It all revolved around global health. Gates and Epstein shared a couple of interests. One of them was population growth,” Bruner said. “They differed on overpopulation.” Bill Gates seemed to believe that by saving more people’s lives (through health efforts), you can lower the population rate. Hence, his vaccination efforts in Africa.” Epstein, Bruner reported, used to ask Gates ‘Why are we saving all these Africans if we think the Earth is overpopulated?’”
Bruner noted that Gates’s status has taken a big hit from the Epstein files, and from a recent exposé of him that appeared in in Vanity Fair magazine recently.
Klaus Schwab was the founder and chairman of the World Economic Forum. “After Bill Gates, he’s probably the most scandal-ridden. Right now, he’s dealing with a massive financial scandal at the World Economic Forum. He has stepped down, stepped back from his baby,” Bruner said.
“He’s now out, after sexual misconduct allegations from staff, and using the organization as a personal ATM machine, stuff like that,” Bruner added.
“Schwab has been replaced by Larry Fink, the chairman of Blackrock Inc., the largest asset manager and financial institution on the planet, $10 trillion plus, in value. Today, they actually touch over $40 trillion,” he said. “Blackrock enormous influence. Larry Fink is now the cochairman of the World Economic Forum. ‘Worse than Schwab’ is all I could say. And with far more assets at his disposal.”
“Mark Zuckerberg is one of these Controligarchs who is trying to rebrand himself in the Trump era,” Bruner said. “All of a sudden he’s working out, wearing cool clothes and pretending like he’s a conservative. ‘Yeah, we made a mistake with our Zuckerbucks in the elections, and we’re actually right wing now’. Don’t believe it for a second.”
Zuckerberg’s company (Meta) is now dealing with lawsuits alleging his platforms are intentionally addictive to children, Bruner tells the hosts. “He’s got a huge push into AI, and I documented that in the book.” You see an increasing number of people wearing the Meta glasses. It’s kind of weird.”
“Just this week, Meta Platforms announced that Instagram would no longer provide end-to-end encryption, starting in May,” Bruner said. “So, if you thought your Instagram messages or Facebook messages were going to be private, they’re undoing the privacy that they gave you, with end-to-end encryption. And now all of those messages are going to be read and analyzed by their AI.”
“Jeff Bezos has probably stepped back the most. He was kind of a liberal guy. He bought the Washington Post,” Bruner said. “He has, in the last year or so, announced that actually The Washington Post does value conservatives voices, and they put in place an editor who is supposed to allow more conservative viewpoints in the opinion pages, but it’s all kind of neo-con, establishment voices.”
“Bezos is all in on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Every website you go to is probably hosted on AWS, and they have enormous amounts of power. But, like Google, they are realizing that if they’re in peoples’ faces, they get freaked out.” He notes both companies have tried to make themselves less obvious, and praises YouTube as a platform for content creators but adds, “the censorship will come back.”
“I think that probably the biggest scandal facing Amazon and really all of these tech companies right now is the mass layoffs for AI,” Bruner said. “There are two statements they make, but they never make them at the same time: One is that AI is going to disrupt the workforce in a huge way, and lots of people are going to be laid off. The other thing they say is that we need more H-1B visa holders to come into the country. So, Amazon lays off 10,000, but then brings in 5000 H-1B visa holders to replace those jobs.”
Last but certainly not least is billionaire financier and leftwing philanthropist George Soros.
“His son Alex is basically taking over the day-to-day operation of the Soros empire,” Bruner said. “George Soros, I would guess, is not doing well. He’s in his mid-90s, and we haven’t seen much from him. Alex Soros, the son, is far more radical, more scary in terms of his funding efforts and efforts to thwart election integrity. He was just at the World Economic Forum to give a speech. I watched it and don’t think he’s very bright. He’s not like his father, so maybe he’s less threatening in that sense.”
As research director for GAI, Bruner has many research responsibilities but is also working on his next book, about which he offered only a few hints.
“It will be out after the midterms and will be about the right-wing guys. And it will be not as much like control arcs in the sense that it will be, it’s going to be neither a negative expose nor a love letter. It would be the good, the bad and the ugly of all of the guys. We mentioned some of them — Larry Ellison, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel — I think they’re doing great things,” Bruner said. “But there are also some concerns with Palantir and the Ellison media empire, just the consolidation of control over various critical parts of the economy,” he said.
He joked about calling them the “Bro-ligarchs.”
“The entire government will be running on Palantir before they’re done with it. And that poses certain threats. Because what happens if that power ends up in the wrong hands after 2028 or beyond if the power to do all those great things they are doing winds up in, let’s say, President Newsom’s hands or Kamala Harris’s. It might be terrifying.”
