May 4, 2021 | Senators Question Science Nominee on Past Mistakes | By Alexis Gravely |
“Eric Lander, who was nominated to lead the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, faced tough questions from senators about sexism and his ties to Jeffrey Epstein during his confirmation hearing.”
“During his confirmation hearing, Eric Lander — the nominee to lead the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy — faced criticism from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers for his controversial past actions, ultimately admitting his mistake in understating the role of two female scientists in the discovery of CRISPR gene-editing technology.
Senator Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois, said during her opening statement at the hearing last week that she was “troubled” by issues surrounding Lander’s nomination. The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee reportedly delayed his confirmation hearing to allow for a “full and thorough review of Dr. Lander’s record and qualifications,” said committee ranking member Roger Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi.
“You have been criticized for downplaying the contributions of the female Nobel laureates I just mentioned, for toasting a well-known racist, misogynistic anti-Semite, and for attending lunch meetings with the late, disgraced Jeffrey Epstein,” Duckworth said.”
“CRISPR gene-editing expert Eric Lander, Biden’s director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, is awaiting Senate confirmation to serve in a new Cabinet-level position in the Biden administration. Jeffrey Epstein, the eugenicist pedophile and sex trafficker, bragged about funding Lander’s research and was photographed taking part in at least one meeting with him.
Shortly before he took office, President Joe Biden announced that he would be elevating the director Office of Science and Technology Policy to a cabinet-level position, meaning that his nominee to lead that office, geneticist Eric Lander, would require confirmation by the US Senate. Lander is currently serving as director of that office, but has yet to serve in cabinet-level capacity as he awaits confirmation.
Mainstream media reports described Biden’s move to place Lander in his cabinet as “meant to highlight his commitment to science,” which has been used to contrast his approach with that of Trump, who was accused of second-guessing “authoritative” voices from academia and the medical establishment. Lander is deemed to be one such “authoritative” voice, having previously served as external co-chair on former President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
However, Biden placing Lander in this role begs the question of exactly what type of science he will promote in his new position, as eugenicist and intelligence-linked pedophile Jeffrey Epstein bragged on his website abouthaving “had the priviledge [sic] of sponsoring” Lander’s research via the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation. Lander’s spokesperson told the New York Times in 2019 that “Mr. Epstein appears to have made up lots of things and this seems to be among them,” regarding whether or not Lander had indeed received funding from Epstein.
In addition to the issue of funding from Epstein, Lander, who is also a biology professor at MIT, is known to have met with Epstein at least once, as he was pictured taking part in a 2012 meeting with Epstein at the office of Harvard’s Martin Nowak, a mathematical biologist who received millions in funding from Epstein. After Epstein’s 2019 arrest, Lander claimed that he had been invited to the meeting by Nowak and had been unaware of who was set to attend the event. He additionally stated that he “later learned about [Epstein’s] more sordid history” and denied having had a relationship with Epstein.
Yet, there remains the issue that Epstein himself included Lander in a list of scientists he sponsored, with the other scientists on that list having indeed been supported by Epstein in some fashion. If we are to believe Lander, it remains unclear why Epstein, before he became so infamous, would falsely claim to fund Lander and why Lander would wait to deny any association until only after Epstein’s arrest. Given that the other scientists listed alongside Lander on Epstein’s website did receive funding from his foundation, it seems unlikely that Epstein would deceptively throw in Lander’s name among a list of several other scientists he was funding at a time, particularly when he was not yet publicly controversial and did not present such a grave risk to his associates’ reputations.
However, Lander’s denials seem to have been more than sufficient for some mainstream media outlets following his nomination to serve in the Biden administration, with some outlets now claiming that Lander was not reported to have received funding from Epstein, despite Epstein’s own claims to the contrary. For instance, BuzzFeed wrote on January 19, 2021 that Lander “has not been reported to have received any money from Epstein”.
The Broad Institute, Silicon Valley and Intelligence
Despite Lander’s denials of a personal relationship, Epstein also had very close ties to Lander’s employer, MIT.Epstein donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the institution and Epstein was also used as a channel for making donations to MIT by billionaire Bill Gates. Gates has yet to explain why he would funnel his donations through Epstein as opposed to publicly donating via his well-known “philanthropic” foundation. Epstein’s funding of the MIT Media Lab in particular led to the resignation of its former director Joi Ito in September 2019 following Epstein’s arrest and subsequent “suicide.”
In addition, Epstein was particularly close to one of the biggest names at MIT, the late artificial intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky. Minsky once organized a two-day symposium on artificial intelligence at Epstein’s private island in 2002 and Epstein victims have alleged that they were forced by Epstein to engage in sex acts with Minsky. Both Minsky and Eric Lander were corporate fellows of the Thinking Machines corporation, a DARPA contractor that made supercomputers in the late 1980s and early 1990s. That company’s various components were acquired by a web of intelligence-linked companies like CIA-linked Oracle and IBM while many of its former engineers left for Sun Microsystems, where future Google CEO Eric Schmidt was then serving as Chief Technology Officer.
Lander, more recently, has again become closely associated with tech companies deeply tied to the US national security state as the founding director of the Broad Institute, an independent genomic research institution partnered with both MIT and Harvard. Incidentally, MIT and Harvard are the two academic institutions most closely linked to Epstein’s “philanthropy,” particularly in the field in which the Broad Institute specializes.
The Broad Institute depends heavily on “private philanthropy” according to its website and its board of directorsincludes Apple chairman, Arthur Levinson; chairman of the McKinsey Global Institute, James Manyika; current chairman and former CEO of IBM, Louis Gerstner Jr; and former Google CEO and current chair of the National Security Commission on AI, Eric Schmidt. Also on the board is Seth Klarman, owner of the Times of Israel and a major donor to the DNC last election cycle. Klarman’s family foundation has donated heavily to the Broad Institute. In addition, Klarman announced his rejection of former President Trump in a coordinated PR push alongside Leslie Wexner, Epstein’s main backer who was integral to his intelligence activities and sex trafficking operation, in 2018. More recently, he was outed as the main financing source for the dysfunctional Iowa Caucus app in the most recent DNC primaries.
Right before Lander joined the Biden administration, the Broad Institute announced a new partnership with tech giants Microsoft and Google subsidiary Verily, further reflecting the Broad Institute’s ties to Silicon Valley. As part of that partnership, Microsoft and Google will share the companies’ cloud data and AI technologies with a “global network of more than 168,000 health and life sciences partners” to accelerate the Terra platform. Terra, originally developed by the Broad Institute and Google’s Verily, is an “open data ecosystem” focused on biomedical research, specifically the fields of cancer genomics, population genetics, and viral genomics. The biomedical data Terra amasses includes not only genetic data but also medical-imaging, biometric signals, and electronic health records.
In the case of Google, the data accessed via this partnership will likely inform their obvious AI healthcare ambitions, some of which are being pursued in partnership with the US military. Google recently announced a partnership with the Pentagon to “predictively diagnose” cancer and COVID-19 using AI. Google’s ties to the US military have become overt in recent years and the company is well represented on the National Security Commission on AI (NSCAI), which is chaired by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. In the case of Microsoft, the company was recently awarded the massive JEDI cloud contract by the Pentagon, though litigation may soon change that. Microsoft also recently launcheda new “secret” cloud service for US intelligence and classified government data systems and, like Google, are also well represented on the NSCAI.”
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Maxwell, Epstein, Science, & Control [video]
Q: Why was this study retracted?
RESEARCH Control of Science since WWII