WW: Hey and welcome to unlimited Hangout. I'm your host Whitney
Webb. For a little over a year, the American Food and Drug
Administration or FDA has been led by a man named Robert
Califf. Very few people seem to know much about Califf or his
background, and there is very little critical reporting on
this man despite the power he currently wields over
significant aspects of American public health policy. During his
confirmation hearings last year, there were a few stories here
and there noting Califf's investments in the
pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries as well as his long
standing ties to Big Pharma and how this might present a
conflict of interest. Yet there is a deeper problem with Califf,
that goes far beyond these conflicts of interest that more
often than not, are the norm within the US federal government
and on Capitol Hill. This is Califf second stint as FDA
commissioner, having previously held the post toward the end of
Barack Obama's second term. After he left that position.
When Donald Trump took office in early 2017. Califf joined Google
becoming the Silicon Valley giants top strategist for its
forays into healthcare specifically for Google's health
focus subsidiary, verily Life Sciences. Ever since then, Califf
has been at the vanguard of the effort to kickstart the so
called Fourth Industrial Revolution, or for IR in
healthcare, and this has extended into the decisions he
has overseen over the past year as head of the FDA. Perhaps
unsurprisingly, Califf himself is a major evangelist for the for
IR in healthcare and is on record stating that he shared
the four IR vision of World Economic Forum Chairman Klaus
Schwab well before his notoriety during the COVID era, her Schwab
and his allies, the four IR, particularly as it relates to
health care, is about the merging our physical, digital
and biological cells, essentially transhumanism by a
different name. troublingly as FDA commissioner Califf is
already creating regulatory loopholes for devices that will
bring this dark vision to fruition, including brain
machine interfaces, neuromodulation devices and
surveillance wearables, among others. He is also doing the
same with other four IR health focus technologies, including
gene therapies and much more. For those Americans who are
concerned about the push to inject the four IR into the
American health care system and into our bodies. Robert Califf
is the man to watch. Joining me today to discuss Kayla from the
deeper problems here is Maddie Bannon investigator Researcher
and Contributor to the last American Vagabond substack. Last
year, Maddie published a deep dive on K lift called Brave New
real world data on the tlap substack which focused on
Califf's time before he became FDA commissioner and his love
affair with the World Economic Forum in the idea of the Fourth
Industrial Revolution. I highly recommend anyone interested in
Califf from the broader issues at play here. Give Matt his piece
of read. With that being said, welcome to unlimited hangout.
Maddy, it's great to have you here.
MB: Oh, thanks for having me.
WW: Absolutely. So, as I mentioned just a minute ago,
it's been acknowledged, right that Robert Califf has a
concerning conflict of interest with Big Pharma, which is, as
you noted in your article, you know, Bernie Sanders, among
others have challenged him on this. So I guess before we get
into some of the other key aspects about Califf here,
particularly about the four IR and things like that, let's talk
a little bit about his his connections to Big Pharma. Sure.
MB: Well, first of all, is Gousto trial, which was a mega
trial, over 40,000 participants in the study of cardio, mild
infarction, which is the heart attack was funded a lot by bear,
Sanofi GlaxoSmithKline on all the big names. So he's been
receiving funding from the big pharmaceutical industries for
the majority of his career, most of his papers that he's issued,
and he he, a lot of people, when they're interviewing him, are
sure to make note of that he's one of the most cited medical
writers in the field. They're sure to make note that for as
many papers, it's like, over 1200 that is accomplished.
They're all punctuated by very long conflict of interest
statements that lists, you know, dozens and dozens of
pharmaceutical companies. So he has a very cozy relationship
with all of them.
WW: Right. But I guess one of the things I want to talk about
today is that and what I've talked about in some of my work
over the past couple of years, is that big pharma and big tech
have essentially been coming together creating a lot of joint
ventures. And so what has been sort of emerging over the same
timeframe is you know, where As there was previously, this well
known revolving door between, you know, the FDA and Big Pharma
and other, you know, health care focused agencies like HHS and
Big Pharma. Now, there's a revolving door between those
health agencies and big tech firms like Google. So Califf is
one of these guys, of course. But there's actually quite a
few. So if you go to the Google Health About Us page, now that
Califf is, you know, more or less, not officially a big part
of it. But as you note in your PC still is very much connected
to Google Health and its initiatives there. But their new
chief health officers, a lady named Karen DiSalvo, she was
formerly the National Coordinator for Health
Information Technology, and Assistant Secretary for Health
in the Obama administration. And prior to that worked in HHS. And
then we have Dr. Michael Howell, who is at Google Health Chief
Clinical Officer and Deputy Chief Health Officer. He's an
adviser to the Centers for Disease Control. And then one of
the newest hires at Google Health as a man named Bakul
Patel, who's Senior Director of global digital health strategy,
and I guess the relationship with regulatory agencies. And he
was, he'd been at the FDA for decades before joining Google
most recently as the FDA is Chief Digital Health Officer of
global strategy and innovation. So there's a lot of these guys,
but of course, probably the most important one to point out would
be Califf. So as I mentioned in my intro, Califf was, of course
at the FDA during the Obama administration, and then he
joined Google. So I guess maybe you could tell us a little bit
about his time at Google and why that's significant.
MB: Sure. So he'll have served as the Commissioner for the FDA
between the years of 2016 and 2017. And that was his first
stent under the Obama administration. During that
time, the 21st Century Cures Act was passed, which is a very
important piece of legislation that kind of allows for all the,
you know, very new breakthrough devices and E ways and the
waiver of informed consent for minimal risk trials. So that was
passed during his time there. But he did leave in 2017. That's
when he went back to do for a couple of years. And he founded
Duke Forge. But in 2019, he joined verily Life Sciences as
their their head of like health strategy and policy. During that
time, he headed project baseline, which that is
basically,
you know, huge mega trial. Along the lines of the things that
he's already very interested in
NS projects at Duke, including the Duke Clinical Research,
initiative, and clinical CTTI, which is clinical trials
Transformation Initiative, where they're aiming to use digital
infrastructure, passively collected patient data,
including electronic health records. So project baseline at
fairly, was kind of a replication of that at a major
private company, who he said has the funding to do it, right,
which is what he is on, on record noting is very important.
He wants as much money as he can get to get these studies to be
what he actually wants. So Verily, you know, they recruit
people to join these studies, they had a wearable, a
proprietary watch, that is by prescription only that sense,
you know, biometric data back to Google for to be studied. They
studied a number of things, including, you know, oral health
and how that relates to overall health. And you know, the
impacts of daylight savings time on your restiveness and overall
well being based, they studied a number of very trite things, you
know, that I don't think really, not a lot of these study
results, while they are posted on clinical trials.gov. The
results are not posted there. So I'm not sure what the results
were. But they also study things like depression. So yeah, that's
basically their their whole thing is to continuously monitor
and collect data, because on the people that are involved in
their studies, because their goal is to map human health.
They said, we already have mapped the earth and now it is
time to map human health and that's kind of what they're out.
her.
WW: Yikes. Yeah. So they've mapped human health and they
contract with like intelligence agencies in the military. So
they can, you know, like drone bomb or find whoever they want.
Right. And so now we got them got a map the human body to
Well, that's fun. Okay, so one thing I really found interesting
as a major theme in your article is this about clinical trials
specifically about bailiff. So as you noted, you know, he made
a name for himself with this, um, I guess Gousto trial in the
in the mid 90s. But since then, he's essentially been trying to
revolutionize clinical trials and how they're performed. And
so a lot of the stuff you've touched on, including project
baseline, I'd like to get in into a little more detail of
those specific initiatives like that. And other ones you
mentioned a little bit later in this episode. But for now, I
just wanted to bring up that you noted in your piece that a lot
of key lifts career, specifically his time at Google
and this current stint as FDA commissioner, he's been spending
it quote, tireless tirelessly dedicated to the task of
removing the obstacles facing the four IR. So I think, you
know, since the four IR is a really key part of understanding
who Califf is why he was nominated by the Biden
administration to be in this particular role, at this point
of time, it's all very important to understanding those issues.
Right. So if it's cool with you, let's go over, you know, for
people who may not know what the fourth industrial revolution is,
what are qlf stated views about the phenomenon? And what are
some of his roles in at the FDA and Google that he's played in
promoting these policies?
MB: Sure. One of his greatest achievements, according to him,
is convincing them President Obama, that the Fourth
Industrial Revolution was real and happening and very
important. So he's very, he's very much a fan. And he thinks
that it is important, he thinks that that will be happening. And
basically what the whole concept is, is that our bodies and then
eventually, our minds will eventually merge with
technology, and the internet by proxy. So this is the concept is
the brainchild of Klaus Schwab runs the World Economic Forum.
So, you know, the whole idea of the Fourth Industrial Revolution
is to gather as much data passively generated by either
people or the environment, via wearable devices, electronic
health records, insurance claims, you know, the devices in
your car, your social media to get it to make you your digital
self. They'd like to merge your physical self with your digital
self into one thing, so totally inseparable. But he, you know,
he cites Klaus Schwab and the fourth industrial revolution
book that he wrote in his papers, academic papers. He
talks about it frequently in interviews and things like that.
Yes, that's really his contribution as he I mean, he's
been, he's stated that he's gone to the World World Economic
Forum, and I'm sure he, you know, Knievel's on the other
acolytes there.
WW: He's openly said that lead he, you know, attended the WEF,
and was like, Wow, these guys are really on to something in a
video, I saw him where he's doing some Google interview
series. I mean, he talks very glowingly about all of this
stuff. And in the web itself. And of course, as you note in
the piece, some of the stuff he's overseen, as you know,
follows the web's favorite model, the public private
partnership, so he seems very much on board with a lot of this
stuff. And what's particularly concerning to me is that a lot
of these for IR technology, so like, you know, the way it's
described, it's something that's not just going to revolutionize
healthcare, right? It's supposed to revolutionize every sector of
society, society itself changed the meaning of what it is to be
human, and all other sorts of stuff. But the way they seem to
be going to get sort of this, their foot in the door here is
is through healthcare. And you know, as I wrote for tea lab a
few years ago, that particular policy has its ties with Google
going way back to the, you know, well, before COVID, with the
Eric Schmidt led national security commission on
artificial intelligence, of course, Eric Schmidt, being the
longtime head of Google. And that particular Commission said
that the best way to get AI mass adopted by the American populace
was to have it sort of shoehorned into health care
policy. And they essentially have framed this as a national
security imperative. And so on this commission, you know, you
have big tech, and you have the national security state, you
know, mainly the military and intelligence communities and
this is their, their view, you know, the most powerful actors
really in the United States today that it's a national
security imperative to have basically the the four IR types
of technologies implemented into our healthcare system. First as
a way of having them spread throughout society, and they
frame this as, as you know, necessary to counter China's AI
supremacy and hegemony that will, you know, allegedly happen
if we don't surpass China in terms of the mass adoption of
these types of technologies. But oddly enough, you know, if you
really want to believe it take national security agencies at
their word, you know, that this was about China, not about like
long standing agendas of theirs to mass surveillance, you know,
of mass surveillance and things like that, you know, obviously,
that's, that's up to you, and everyone can have their own
opinion about that. But it seems like Robert K lifts roll here
and more, you know, even bigger than Califf, really is the role
of Google and all of this, it's definitely something I think
more people should be paying attention to, at the very least.
So one interesting thing that you bring up in this article is
about Robert Califf, and you already mentioned it a little
bit that He was the founding director of the Duke Clinical
Research Institute, which predates his time working at the
FDA, but it sort of saw him partner up with the FDA. While
he was at Duke, where I believe he's been for a decent amount of
his academic career. And this is sort of a precursor to a lot of
the stuff that he's overseen since he got involved with the
FDA and overtly with Google as well. So can you tell us a
little more, you know, maybe a little more detail about this
Clinical Research Institute, he helped create and the initiative
that you mentioned early, earlier, the clinical trials
Transformation Initiative? Yeah, sure. I
MB: mean, they're, they both run along the same lines. And the
gold standard for clinical trials is a randomized control
trial. So they're looking for alternative fees. Because
though, to do a randomized control trial, it costs a lot of
money, you have to hire staff, you have to have, you have to
recruit participants, you have to, you know, fly the
intervention, or the placebo, and make sure that you're
tracking all the information that's associated with that you
have to have people enter that data and then make sure it's
correct. And have like an actual trial site and how people go to
and from and compensate them for that. So it's, it takes a long
time and cost a lot of money. So the aim, as far as I can tell,
and from writings that he and others have written about, you
know, real world evidence generation and real world data
in place of randomized controlled trials, is that it
cuts down on cost significantly, maybe up to 30%. And you can
definitely get it done a little bit faster. So if you already
have a pool of people whose information that you already
have access to, for instance, like I mentioned, the cell phone
data, electronic health records, insurance claims, all that, you
don't need to bother recruiting the participants, you don't need
to wait for that information to come in, especially for the low
risk trials that you again, you don't need informed consent for
those anymore, thanks to the 21st Century Cures Act that was
passed in 2016. So you can get a lot of things done faster and
more cheaply. If you use information. That's, like he
says siloed siloed, and not interoperable. What do clinical
research institute and the ctci are aiming to do is advocate for
those those data to be on siloed so that they're free, they're
shareable. And also to advocate for trials that use that kind of
data instead of the randomized control trial, right, the past
and that traditional sort of trials.
WW: So let's talk a little bit about what this means for you
know, the average person that doesn't necessarily like you
know, research these kinds of worlds very much. So like ran
the way basically the way that medical and clinical trials have
been conducted. Pretty much in the vast majority of the modern
era, right? This initiative was about essentially replacing
those trials with this real world evidence paradigm, right?
And you have a really helpful graphic about what real world
data and real real world evidence is in this piece, and
you know, that you wrote in some other descriptions of it that
you provide in the piece. But the graphics interesting because
it reminds me a lot of sort of, of the World Economic Forum's
policy paper, I think from 2018, about digital ID, where
essentially all these different things are interconnected. And
there's really like this centralized database for data
about you and so what's what's really crazy about it to me that
you know, it has, like, you know, you're in the center,
right, and all these different types of data that you generate,
are coming off, you know, from you and that this data is going
to be used to replace a clinical trial for to prove the
effectiveness of, of drugs. or wearables or, you know, brain
machine interfaces, you know, all this type of stuff. And it
has stuff like, you know, disease registries, things you'd
expect, right? Like electronic health records, survey data,
pharmaceutical data, like what types of medicines you take, and
then the wearable stuff. But it also has stuff like consumer
data, which is your buying habits, what you buy online,
right, but also, social media data, you know, who what you're
interacting with, what you're saying, online, what type of
information you're reading, and viewing, which is interesting in
the context of something I'd like to talk about a bit later,
which is Robert K lifts mission to have the FDA play a major
role in pre empting and debunking misinformation, which
is, which is interesting there. But the idea that all of this
data, this monitoring of stuff that has never really been used
in existing randomized clinical trials and stuff like social
media data, and just sort of data, harvesting the stuff from
people without their consent, and using that, in lieu of
randomized clinical trials, is just totally insane. And I just
in this, you know, the people that wanted to put him in charge
of the FDA obviously knew that he was in charge of these types
of initiatives, and that he was, you know, essentially there to
create the regulatory, I guess, I guess, you know, I'm calling
it a regulatory loophole, but really, it's a complete
alteration of the existing regulatory paradigm, to totally
just replace it so that all of this fourth industrial
revolution, technology can be fast tracked and mass, you know,
for mass implementation, mass adoption by the masses, but it
doesn't necessarily have to use the previous paradigm to prove
it any safety, any effectiveness under past metrics, right? Um, I
don't know, your thoughts on that. Maybe you disagree.
MB: Um, I mean, it, the problem is, they can't really verify
whether or not the information that you're receiving is good or
bad. They're trying to come up with ways to do that. But I
don't think that that's really feasible. So, you know, one way
that Kailis has, you know, he gave a talk at Google was a
Google Talks, then it's on YouTube, he mentioned, the one
way, or at least one of the ways that we'll find out if these
things go wrong is if they become catastrophic. So that's,
that's when we'll know how to regulate these kinds of trials
is if there's like, a massive safety or efficacy, catastrophic
situation that occurs, as he says, That's how things have
gone in the past. But, you know, when you're talking about mega
trials where, you know, over 40,000 people, and he's already
done, that's, I don't know if the benefit, risk calculus
really makes sense there. So in and to be honest, I don't think
that these real world evidence based trials are going to
supersede randomized control trials entirely, I think that
they are using them to fast track certain sort of
medications and devices, at least through phase one and
phase two trials. And they're doing they're applying it to
post market studies as well. So as far as actually, when the
when medical devices or drugs are, have some sort of risk to
them, I think they're still applying the randomized control
trial. But they're, you know, they're, they're huge, they're
implementing and using this as much as possible to cut down on
costs and getting those things to market as quickly as
possible. And another thing too, that I've been thinking about is
that I, he uses a lot of language of these being
important and necessary so that those drugs and devices can be
made available to the public, as you know, more quickly, and
that's kind of the the pill that he gives you to swallow
alongside the current near constant surveillance that he
alleges will be occurring, and that is occurring. Because
people need these life saving devices. Now, they don't need
them in five to seven years. But really, you're asking the
consumer to adopt all the risk there?
WW: Well, we heard this with COVID, right? The same thing,
like a change of the regulatory paradigm for the purpose of oh,
we need to get this out faster. So we have to produce a vaccine
on the timeline that's completely unprecedented. And we
have to change how trials are conducted. And you know, as I've
noted, in my work, and other people have noted, you know, a
lot of these companies like Madonna, for example, couldn't
get a product to market under the previous regulatory
paradigm. And so the emergency use authorization and a lot of
these, you know, emergency measures we're used to sort of a
totally change how a lot of these trials for these vaccines
were conducted. And, you know, because of the, you know,
professed sense of urgency, that, you know, this idea that,
you know, the risk is being taken on by the person that
receives, you know, the vaccine, instead of having, you know, the
FDA saying, Yeah, we can say, Well, I mean, they did say it
was safe, right, but, you know, that wasn't necessarily
reflected by the trials, and it was all justified by speed. And,
you know, what you're seeing here is them using speed as as
the justification and also cost reduction, but you know, it's
troubling stuff. And I may have misspoken earlier, what I meant
is that um, so in your piece, you were talking about CTI this
transformation, clinical trial Transformation Initiative, and
you said it seeks to do is to use real world evidence in place
of evidence generated by RCTs. And so I sort of see what Robert
Califf is doing now at the FDA sort of as not necessarily
trying to replace, you know, eliminate randomized clinical
trials entirely. But when it comes to a lot of these, more
like novel devices, not necessarily things like
vaccines, and like pharmaceutical products that are
more traditional, like pills and, and other types of
injections and stuff, it seems to be some of these other
devices, whether they're wearables or implantables,
really also are sort of being treated under this, this new
paradigm, this idea of like the remote clinical trial, it's not
necessary to physically monitor and observe patients and just
basically use the data that's collected by their interaction
with these devices and the connectivity. And all of that is
essentially replacing traditional trials. And to me,
that seems sort of like a way of sidestepping some of the
traditional metrics for these particular devices, which, of
course, those devices are obviously necessary to get the
for IR really rolling in the healthcare space, right?
Particularly with the, you know, the brain machine interface, or
some of these neuromodulation devices sort of get the nervous
system of the human body connected to the internet.
Right?
MB: What what's funny about that is there the breakthrough
devices designation given by the FDA to medical devices is really
for devices that are or to treat life threatening, or
irreversible diseases, which, when you think of a brain
computer interface, sure, you can maybe make the claim that
our brain computer interface can treat paralysis, or help the
blind see, or the, you know, stroke victims have more
functioning sides of their body. Yeah, that's fine, but they also
will be applied for many, many other uses. So it just seems to
me that companies like Black Rock technologies, and Syncron
and neuralink, etcetera, are using this, you know, this claim
that their brain computer interface will be used to treat
life threatening and in or irreversible diseases as a way
to get get their stuff through the door and fret and prioritize
that at FDA so that it can be pushed through more quickly, you
know, disregarding all the other applications that Amin B is for
and it will most likely be used for and that's probably what
they're, what their primary aim is at the end of the day.
WW: So even though you mentioned that, like the breakthrough
device designation, technically is sort of, like reserved for
these devices that are like for, you know, irreversible, you
know, diseases, terminal illnesses and conditions, stuff
like that. It's being given to a lot of things that don't follow
under these metrics. So a recent FDA breakthrough device
designation was given to this company called Suma, which is
very much you know, it's basically Soma but with a second
Oh, and it received that designation for its innovative
at home depression treatment device, which it describes
basically well in the picture in the article anyway, it's
basically like a electrodes you were on like a weird little
beanie thing over your head. And like a electroshock see you I
guess, certain parts of the brain to like, make you not
depressed, right. But there's a lot of other treatments for
depression, right? And breakthrough device designation
as opposed to be for conditions that don't have existing
treatments, you know? So, this is one of those examples of sort
of the FDA sort of applying this designation to places where it
doesn't really need to be given right. And so you know, if you
look at this example, and a few others, it seems pretty clear
that the current FDA modus operandi as it comes to this
brand, As it relates to this particular designation, it seems
to just sort of be giving it to companies that, you know, have
some of these four IR related devices or, you know,
neuromodulation stuff specifically, and trying to get
them onto the market as quickly as possible, allegedly for the
benefit of consumers. But, you know, when you get these sort of
special designations, you're allowed to sort of skip a lot of
the, you know, the regulations and trials and other
requirements that, you know, competitors would have to
complete, you know, competitors that don't receive this
particular designation.
MB: Yeah, right. I mean, what's the breakthrough device
designation also allows for novel medical devices, they call
it de novo. So there's no you know, to be a de novo device,
there's not any legally marketed predicate device, so something
like it. As far as I know, Suma has at least some competitors. I
saw other sort of beanie electrode app applications and
devices a lot like it. So maybe they're competing for that
space. My My initial thought when I saw the, their device had
the head cap and the electrodes, I thought we had already kind of
tried electro thought shock therapy for mental illness, and
that it didn't really work too well, and also made people a
little bit weird. And not it was not good. So I think I mean, I
understand that it's a little bit more low voltage. But it
doesn't seem to be too original of an idea. But, yeah, as far as
I see, yes, they use a technique called transcranial direct
current stimulation we really neuromodulation is well, there
are a few different definitions that I was able to find. But
they're mostly that the international neuromodulation
society defines it as the alteration of nerve activity
through the targeted direct delivery of a stimulus through
electric or chemical agents at certain sites, so we have a lot
of companies that are looking at the spleen. Let's just saying
what does that nerve called, there's a there's a certain
nerve that that originates at the spleen. And it's part of the
autonomic nervous system. And they're looking at that for
Parkinson's to stop the hand tremors. Yeah, so you have a lot
of people looking at that for that. And they also are trying
to use it for rheumatoid arthritis, and things like
WW: that. So one of the companies pursuing neuro modular
neuromodulation of that particular nerve, you mentioned,
I guess, the spleen at nerve is for rheumatoid arthritis is
Galvani bioelectronics, which is an interesting company in the
context of Robert Califf, because it's a joint venture of
GlaxoSmithKline. And verily, which is Google's health
subsidiary that Robert Califf has been involved with over the
years. And they're one of the ones that sort of got this. I
think they've already started implanting it into people, but
they have a lot of ambitions for these neuromodulation advices,
which is basically to alter how the nervous system functions,
whether it's targeting specific nerves, or many nerves, or
groups of nerves, or the entire brain. That's sort of the whole
ambition there. And of course, verily, is also the people
behind project baseline, which is something that you mentioned
earlier. And I think not enough people have paid attention to
this. And it's a really crazy thing when you think about it.
So, um, there's this one, there's a few things that have
been written on baseline, you know, from mainstream sources.
So one summary offered here and which you sort of have touched
on already and what you've talked about, it says, The
verily baseline Health Study launched in 2017. So that's
around the same time that Califf was at Google on being their top
health strategist, right. It was launched in 2017, with the goal
of mapping human health by collecting data from a variety
of sources, including self reported data, smartphone, or
wearable recorded data, or through electronic health
records. And as you mentioned earlier, because of the the
Cures Act, some of that recorded data by smartphone or wearables
that data can be obtained without informed consent.
Anyway, so it says essentially, a lot of this, this baseline
health study, and the broader baseline health platform is all
about changing. Again, how clinical trials function, right?
So I first heard about Project baseline during the COVID stuff
because they were using it specifically for that. And a
bunch of weird stuff was going on with verily and COVID tests,
including having people forcing people who took COVID-19 test
and the San Francisco area which were being managed I think the
government there, or had contracted Google or verily, to
do this, and they were requiring people that got COVID test to
basically link their test results to their Google account.
And if they didn't have a Google account, they had to make one in
order to participate, which is pretty insane. But essentially,
what it sounds like to me is that project baseline is just
trying to gather an insane amount of, of data on people for
all different types of purposes. And essentially, the goal they
say, is to collect comprehensive health information with the goal
of better understanding health and the transition to disease.
And it's important to keep in mind that at the same time this
has been going on and when this was launched, is when the
Pentagon and Google teamed up for this sort of predictive
health care thing. So basically, using all of this data, all of
these, this massive cachet that military holds from, like the
veteran and military health systems of X ray images, and
things like that, to train AI so that the AI could offer
predictive cancer diagnoses. So basically, the AI is like, Oh,
well, we've decided that you'll develop cancer in five years,
but you don't actually have cancer, you know. So it's all of
this sort of, you know, what I've, what me and people like
Ryan Christian are sort of referred to as the pre crime
paradigm applied to healthcare. So basically, you're going to be
told that you're going to develop this disease by AI, or
some of these different devices or by you know, this data
accumulation, and they're going to decide, they're going to tell
you what you're likely to develop before you develop it,
and then go and offer you all these different weird
therapeutics, whether it's stuff like, you know, mRNA stuff, or
gene therapy, or, you know, these neuromodulation devices,
or wearables are stuff that interacts, you know, with your
nervous system, or changes how it functions and all sorts of
stuff, even though at that particular moment, you don't
actually need it, it's being framed as preventative. Right.
And this is, again, Google with the military doing this, and you
have them of course, doing it, and all other sorts of, of
different guises. But ultimately, you know, it's about
per them about health care. Right? But it seems to be a lot
more than that, if you asked me, but, you know,
MB: yeah. And Kayla's. In an interview, he mentions that this
sort of, you know, influence subtle influence over people in
regards to their health is, you know, justifiable because it's
already happening. And it's been happening for a while through,
you know, private market advertisements, and cookies on
your computer and tracking what you buy, and figuring out what
you might be interested in buying, and then presenting that
to you. So he's just in he thinks that doing that isn't
necessarily good. It's not getting people, things that they
need, or make them have a happy or healthier life. So what he's
saying is, well, that's bad when we do it, it's good, because
we're trying to help people live longer and be less ill. So we're
going to track you and just the same way, we're going to nudge
you and influence you in just the same way. But our ends are
delivering those drugs and those medical devices that you
actually you need, right, and you'll be convinced that you
need them because we have all the data, and we'll present you
evidence that we found and tell you how this will help you and
your life before you are even considering going to the doctor
about it. But like you said it is it is preemptive. And he
thinks that it's totally fine. There's there's good guys and
bad guys. And the bad guys are the people who sell you clothes
and food and stuff like that. But they're good because they
sell you pharmaceutical, drugs and medical devices.
WW: Yeah, crazy. So. So in your particular article in talking
about the Cures Act, you sort of mentioned that Califf had a role
and getting that certain aspects of that legislation, you know,
in place, you know, involved in to an extent in the drafting and
lobbying process for this particular law. And so I found
it interesting, too, that rolled within that act, were things
like the BRAIN Initiative, and Biden's Cancer Moonshot
Initiative, which, you know, is was basically the basis for
Biden's recent creation of ARPA H, which was previously shopped
around to the Trump administration under the name of
Harper. And we're basically a health focused DARPA equivalent
and I actually did a podcast a few months ago about one of the
guys behind the BRAIN Initiative and how he has been very active
where I live down in South America in Chile and getting
Chile to be the first country to establish what he what are
called neuro writes. This idea of trying to protect your
individuality and so Out of this paradigm where brain machine
interfaces, and all of this are, are very common. And
essentially, you know what I sort of talked about this likely
being in that particular podcast, instead of it being
framed as protecting you from all the bad stuff these devices
could do to you. Making you lose your sense of self, among other
things, is really about creating the necessary framework and
public justifications to get these types of devices on the
market, not necessarily for healthcare related purposes, but
also for commercial purposes. Because people like Elon Musk,
like neuro link and stuff, you know, on one hand, they're
saying and I guess Syncron, to probably in some of these other
firms doing the same thing, you know, on one hand, they're
framing this as Oh, this is a health device to help people
that are paralyzed, walk, and, and all and blind people seeing
all of that, but at the same time, you know, Elon Musk is
like, pretty open, that neuro link is intended to be like,
used for commercial purposes, people could use it to play
video games and stuff. And you know, even some of the animal
trials, they promoted were like monkeys with the neuro link
implant playing video games with their brain and stuff, not
paralyzed monkeys walking again, you know what I mean? So it just
seems, you know, a bit different than it's being done, it's being
sold.
MB: Sure. I think, you know, for the brain computer interfaces,
the only, there's a difference between imagination and reality.
And you can, you know, postulate and say that our BCI is going to
help people walk or see or whatever, I don't see any
evidence of that, at least as far as like the initial studies
and video footage and things like that, that there's no
evidence for that actually happening. As far as what is
able to be accomplished is that you can control like, so if
you're a total, if you're 100%, paraplegic, and you have no way
to move your hands or interface with a computer, you can do so
they say, quote, unquote, simply by thinking, and while that may
have medical application, you know, if you're trying to help
people who are paralyzed, sure, but Why can't anybody else use
it for that? So it's just to pass it under the guise and get
these sort of fast tracks to market seemingly to preempt your
competition and kind of monopolize that market as soon
as you can. Which is, I would say, Syncron is definitely much
further ahead than than anybody else on that front. That seems
to be what it's actually for. Because I don't I don't, you
know, the brain computer interfaces. There's, there's
just not enough evidence out there to suggest that it's
actually going to help people with with their claims of you
know, the ever irreversibly debilitating diseases or the
life threatening diseases. There is one company it's called, see
things called like neuro neuro links or neuro leaf, that's what
it is. They have this brain computer interface that links
with an exoskeleton that helps people who have you know, have
had a stroke, move the hand, that's not working anymore. That
makes more sense. But yeah, it seems more just trying to get
these things on the market as quickly as possible under the
guise of helping people as
WW: Yeah. And what I mentioned earlier, there's this whole, you
know, ulterior motive coming from the highest levels of the
national security state and people like Eric Schmidt, trying
to get the stuff out there on the market as quickly as
possible because they see it as part of this big tech war with
China. Right. Which is also pretty crazy. And, you know, a
key point I want to make here too. So I'm sure people are
familiar with, you know, my analysis and other people's
analysis of statements made by by people tied up with the World
Economic Forum and big you know, for IR evangelists, like Yuval,
Noah Harare, who basically say that, like the whole wearable
paradigm, like getting wearables on everybody is the red line
that will, you know, result in the ushering in of what he calls
digital dictatorships, you know, basically the surveillance of
what's going on not just inside your body, but inside your mind.
And I think this is all kind of interesting when you're looking
at the big players here in the context of a lot of how this
mass surveillance is also, you know, tied into this, this
effort to launch a war on domestic terror and master bail
everybody and sort of usher in the paradigm they tried to do
after 911 with things like DARPA is total information awareness
and stuff. So you know, you have groups like Google and also
Palantir, which is basically you know, as I've noted in my work,
essentially a CIA front that is basically total information
awareness, privatized and so Palantir basically has access
and has been running a lot of the COVID-19 health data and
other health data held by HHS and also in the United Kingdom.
Basically, all NHS data is being managed by Palantir is Well, and
then you have Google having this this big role. For example, they
host the FDA is my studies program, and how on Google Cloud
and they have for some time, and you have a lot of these, you
know, this revolving door, like we talked about earlier, sort of
between the, the regulatory agencies and Google and verily
is being used for a lot of these new remote trials to get some of
these, you know, more novel devices, I guess, and like
neuromodulation devices on the market more quickly, without,
you know, in person monitoring and, you know, completely
electronically conducted fully remote clinical trials in
they're teamed up with the Pentagon. I mean, there's all
sorts of crazy stuff going on here. And I think some of that
overlap is interesting in the context of this whole, like, you
know, misinformation trying to stop people from spreading
what's deemed as misinformation about about health and how that
also is, you know, one of the main objectives of the supposin
war on domestic terror, because Robert Califf has been very vocal,
since he came in to art it's came into this position last
year about the need for the FDA as an agency to preempt and
debunk misinformation, which is kind of ironic, because some of
their efforts on that front have actually involve the FDA
spreading the misinformation, for example, claiming that
ivermectin is not like, able to be used in human beings that
it's like a horse and cow medicine exclusively. And
regardless of what you think about its validity as an early
treatment of COVID, or whatever, well, before the COVID era, it
was being used in people. So to frame it, as you know, a horse
to warmer exclusively, like had been done on CNN is not
accurate. And the FDA obviously knows this. So it's just
interesting that you'd have you know, Google Palantir, they're
big players in the healthcare secure system getting more and
more tied up with the FDA. And they're a big part of this
misinformation, crackdown and profiling of people spreading
misinformation as well. And I think people, you know, might be
might want to see that there's that degree of overlap there.
Because once you're surveilling people, whether it's under the
guise of healthcare, or under the guise of stopping domestic
terrorism, I mean, ultimately, I think the end result is the same
essentially. And I've also kind of argued, and in some of my
work on, on the creation of ARPA H, under the Biden
administration, which sort of goes back to this Cures Act
stuff you were talking about during the Obama administration,
I mean, essentially, that's also about getting the mass use of
wearables for this, you know, predictive health paradigm and
precision health paradigm and all of this stuff. So, you know,
it may be it's being framed as you know, a boon for public
health. But ultimately, it seems to me like the four IR is just
about an insane paradigm of mass surveillance, and they're just
trying to see what sort of justifications they can make for
it, you know, what sticks and what people, you know, need to
believe and need to feel in order to start using that type
of technology on and in their bodies.
MB: Yeah, I think that's the fourth industrial revolution,
you know, well, Klaus Schwab. And, you know, the people who
are as true believers, they describe it as the merging of
our personal and digital selves, right, or quantify cells. But
it's really about the last frontier, which is the mind,
right, and also, including genetics. So they're looking to
somehow be able to predict, and they've been, you know, the US
government, at least for a long time has been created, create a
artificial artificial models of the world and tried to use that
to predict how military conflicts would go, or certain
the certain release of information would go, they
created a computer generated models of the world and people
to the finest detail possible, hoping that they can predict the
future. And really, they need a comprehensive understanding of
how people think. And I think that's really what it's about
the mind is really the last frontier, and genetics for
capitalism and in any in governments and surveillance and
control. So that seems to be to be the primary target by merging
people's physical and digital selves. And while you know, they
frame it as that's something that will happen eventually. And
inevitably, the private market and the public private market
are kind of already doing that intentionally. So they're, you
know, whether or not that would have happened otherwise, is
another question, but they're kind of making that happen now.
And as far as, as far as the surveillance stuff goes, this is
why I think artificial intelligence is so important is,
you know, considered to be an arms race at the moment between
the US you know, and They're competitors. Because it's a lot
of information, that's a lot of data, it's impossible to go
through all of that and assign patterns with any sort of
efficiency. So you need to apply an algorithm machine learning
algorithm or an artificial intelligence to that, to find
what you're looking for, or to at least flag what it thinks it
might, you might be looking for. And as far as, you know, the
Patriot Act, and the NSA goes there, their current release
their policies were to have a black box where all this you
know, depersonalized information lives until there's reason to go
and look through it. Because a person can't go and just look
through the information to find what they think is a probable
cause to fill it further. But you can't legally have an
artificial intelligence do that, because it's not a person. So
essentially, what is what at least to me, what seems to be
the probable outcome is that there will be many more false
positives, many more flags, and many more issuances of probable
cause to look into people even further. And, you know, to pull
up to the fullest extent, then there was before because there's
going to be many more patterns, or have a sense, you know,
patterns. What is that? Who's Who's writing those artificial
intelligence, intelligence programs? And what did they
consider to be a pattern of, you know, domestic terrorism or
anything that would warrant probable cause. So that I mean,
and something that I read recently from you is about
Gabriel and the artificial intelligence surveillance
software that's being applied through things like cameras and,
and sound. So it's certainly in the realm of technology,
something that is possible, especially if it's all in a
readable format, in text or ENCODE.
WW: Well, thanks for that really great summary about a lot of
really complex issues and how it all ties together. And you know,
a lot of what you know, we're facing, I think people need to
pay a lot more attention to the healthcare space, particularly
people who were opposed to stuff like the Fourth Industrial
Revolution, and its encroachment on our lives and our government
and really society in general, because, you know, they're
trying to get a huge foot in the door through health care. And I
would argue, and I actually have argued, I think, in some
interviews I've done over the past year that Robert Califf is at
the FDA right now explicitly for this purpose, like, as you note
in your piece, he's there to remove a lot of these obstacles
from this for IR paradigm for being ushered in, you know, sort
of in through the healthcare system first, you know, he's the
point man for that. So I think he definitely deserves a lot
more scrutiny. And that's why I was so happy to find your piece
about him. And very happy to have you on today to talk about
him. And these, you know, more broad these broader issues on my
podcast. So thanks so much for coming on Maddie. So where can
people follow your work, and support you.
MB: So you can follow it on the last American Vagabond substack,
which is Te L A vagabond.substack.com. That's
where most stuff is. I also post on manufacturing reality.org,
which is James journeys blog there, where he also
contributes, and stuff like that. So those are really the
main two sources, you can support me by supporting tila.
And, and you can follow me on Twitter, and that space jelly.
If you just search she'll find me eventually.
WW: All right, super. Well, thanks so much, Maddie, for
coming on. Really appreciate your time looking into these
issues. And I'm looking forward to following more of your work
here in the future. And thanks to everyone for listening to
this podcast, and hopefully some people listening will take the
time to look into some of these deeper issues as well, because
they really, you know, as I mentioned in the introduction,
there is a extreme lack of reporting, not just on Robert K
lift, but a lot of the issues we touched on today. And I think we
ignore this kind of stuff at our own peril. So definitely,
there's a lot to dig into. And you know, we really just
scratched the surface about a lot of these issues today. And
of course, as always, a big shout out to unlimited hangout
supporters who make this podcast and pretty much all of my other
work possible as well couldn't do it without you guys. So
thanks so much. And thanks, of course, to everyone who
regularly listens and shares this podcast around. Appreciate
you all as well. So thanks so much everyone for listening and
catch you on the next episode.