Episode 228: “Google’s Utopian Vision and the 2024 Election” with Dr Robert Epstein and Jenny Beth Martin

Voter and ballot fraud may just be a small part of the problem that conservatives face in the upcoming 2024 elections compared to the power of Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube. 

 Using its “total data collection” systems it can sway the opinions of millions of people and influence how they vote.

We’ve known about this issue since at least 2016 and it has not gone away. If anything, with the emergence of AI, the threat has grown even more ominous. Executives at Google have stated that “investments in machine learning and AI” are a big opportunity to address the “misinformation” shared by “low-information voters.”

Shining a bright light on Alphabet’s power is the comprehensive research done by my returning guest, research psychologist Dr. Robert Epstein, a California Democrat with a Harvard Ph.D, who has spent the last decade monitoring Google’s manipulation of newsfeeds, search results and YouTube suggestions. 

Joining me to co-host is Jenny Beth Martin, founder of the Tea Party Patriots, who also has an extensive information technology background.

“96% of Alphabet’s employee’s political donations go to Democrats and its homogeneous culture leans extremely left and the two founders are utopians,” explains Dr. Epstein. “In their mind, they know what's best for the world. These are extremely arrogant people who think they have the power of gods.” 

An eight‑minute video leaked from Google called "The Selfish Ledger," starkly reveals Google’s aspirations to re‑engineer humanity according to its utopian “company values." 

Another leaked video after the 2016 election shows Google’s co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and its CEO Sundar Pichai dismayed by Trump’s win and essentially saying “never again.” In it, they  talk about Trump supporters as “extremists” and say the election outcome “conflicts with many of Google’s core values.” 

Epstein estimates that Google shifted about 6 million votes to Joe Biden in the 2020 election by manipulating voters with things like biased algorithms, “get out the vote” messages and videos. (Over 70% of the videos that people watch every day on YouTube come from liberal sources suggested by its “up next” algorithm.)

Does anyone doubt that Google will be all-in on making sure the “correct” candidates win 2024 elections?

One source of its power is that Google knows with precision practically every voter’s political preferences. They know who's going to vote, who's not going to vote, and how they're going to vote. 

“If you've been using the internet for 20 years, Google has the equivalent of more than three million pages of information about you,” according to Dr. Epstein. “They're doing surveillance at a massive level that J. Edgar Hoover couldn't even possibly have imagined. It's 24 hours a day, and it's over many, many, many different kinds of platforms that most people haven't even heard of.”

Google has also partnered in the “Global Disinformation Index” and the release of the Twitter Files have shown how extensively the Executive Branch communicated and coordinated with technology companies for taking in moderation “requests” from the White House, the FBI, DHS, HHS, DOD, the Global Engagement Center at State, and even the CIA.

If Google is manipulating search results or YouTube suggestions it’s impossible to trace because they are “ephemeral.” They disappear once you click off the links provided, and can never be recovered.

 However, there is hope, a potential counter-measure that Dr Epstein has developed to capture that ephemeral data by effectively “looking over the shoulders” of real users. He now has almost 8,000 registered voters in 50 states, who have given him permission to monitor and record their every Google interaction. Of course, challenging a $1 trillion tech colossus requires resources and it will take up to $50 million to fully build out his system. It’s a big lift and we talk about what it will take to get it done. It’s a critical project.

“With companies like Google, we're talking about control that's completely invisible to people,” Epstein says. “We're talking about control by mainly one and to a lesser extent a couple of other private companies … the more I've learned about it over the years, the more concerned I've become.”

We unpack a lot in this episode, including which email and browser you should be using to protect your privacy.