Klaus Schwab and the Men Who Molded Him (Part Six)

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light” - Plato

While for most of us, a world of injectable microchips, DNA databases, state-mandated gene therapies, and minds uploaded to the cloud might sound like a dystopia too hellish to fathom, at its core, transhumanism is (or at least, likes to present itself as) an ideology rooted in liberation.

Of course, this is not ‘liberation’ in the traditional sense. If anything, the technological advances which have made this worldview viable have also provided government and corporations the ability to surveil and curtail our behavior right down to the chromosomal level – a power which the last two and a half years of COVID tyranny have shown them disturbingly eager to wield. By now, we should all shudder to think how the same institutions responsible for lockdowns, mask mandates, and compulsory vaccinations would exploit the level of control afforded by a biomedical police state; nevertheless, according to their transhumanist cheerleaders, this looming digital serfdom is but a small price to pay in order to free ourselves from the shackles of biological constraint.

In some respects, their argument is hardly revolutionary. Ever since our ancestors first chiseled stone into more effective weaponry and later with the refinement of the wheel, mankind has sought to use its unique capacity for rational thought to transcend the limits of our physical form. This aptitude has facilitated everything from the domestication of animals to the development of the written word; from the invention of the printing press, gunpowder, and the compass to the creation of satellites, hydrogen colliders, and nanobots. But no matter how rigorously transhumanists might promote their doctrine as the inevitable next step along this trajectory, what is becoming ever clearer, at least to those who’ve been paying attention, is that the algorithm-ruled society they espouse has been planned by, and for the sole benefit of, a shadowy and unaccountable class of elites.

And at the head of this class – or perhaps more accurately, the man appointed its spokesperson – is the now infamous Klaus Schwab. As many readers are likely aware, the video above shows the World Economic Forum chairman fielding a question about how long it will be before brain implants, one of his organization’s flagship proposals, at last become a reality. Speaking in his careful but competent French, Schwab assures the interviewer:

"Certainly in the next ten years. And at first we will implant them in our clothes and then we could imagine that we will implant them in our brains, or in our skin. And in the end, maybe, there will be a direct communication between our brains and the digital world. What we see is a kind of fusion of the physical, digital, and biological world.”

Naturally, this is not a genuine prediction. Although Schwab and his ilk may like to market themselves as vast geopolitical mega-minds, oracles whose vision extends far beyond that of the bewildered masses, in truth, the only reason they can convey such certainty while making these prophetic proclamations is because they are the ones in the process of implementing them.

Over the course of this series, I have tried to piece together a portrait of Schwab by first examining the men known to have influenced him. In Parts One and Two, I focused on Klaus’s Nazi-collaborating father as well as a Brazilian archbishop often described as his “spiritual mentor”, while in the third installment, I turned to Henry Kissinger whose dual role as Harvard professor and member of the Council on Foreign Relations would grant his young German protégé access to the world of Anglo-American policymakers. Moving within these circles, Schwab soon found himself introduced to both economist John Kenneth Galbraith and archetypal futurist Herman Kahn, the subjects of parts four and five helping establish and then expand his fledgling WEF project. Still today, their voices can be heard echoing in each of the organization’s frequent multimillion-dollar PR campaigns, and yet by far the most resonant now belongs to a man heralded as the chief architect of, and intellectual powerhouse behind, Schwab’s Fourth Industrial Revolution.