Are We ALREADY Living in a Technocracy? An Interview with Patrick Wood

By Michael Ashley

Patrick Wood has been called “The living expert on technocracy.” He is a recognized thought leader on Sustainable Development, the Green Economy, and Agenda 21. The author of Technocracy Rising: The Trojan Horse of Global Transformation, he co-authored Trilaterals Over Washington with Antony C. Sutton. A frequent speaker, his work explores how technocracy, transhumanism, and scientism are reshaping our world—and not for the better.

You can watch the full interview on YouTube.

MA: I'm honored to speak with you, Patrick. As a veteran journalist covering technocracy for nearly 50 years, how has the mass media brainwashed the public so effectively that people not only accept things like the JFK cover-up but even advocate for their own subjugation?

PW: It began with the Trilateral Commission. That’s the genesis of modern globalization. They were very cagey in inducting several media outlets into their organization. The media could attend all the meetings, of course, but they couldn’t report what they heard. So, they wrapped them into this cone of silence. When they did mention anything about the Trilateral Commission, it was always in glowing terms. That was the start of this business of censorship way back then.

MA: Who were some of the major media outlets involved and how does this affect media today?

PW: In the beginning, it was the Wall Street Journal, TIME, Newsweek, and, I think, Barron's too. Basically, they were the crème de la crème of media at the time. So now, looking back 25 years or more, there's no real reporting on these things.

When historians sift through records, they go to the media, looking for articles, but there’s nothing there because it was all kept secret. This has perpetuated over time, and today we see a full-blown example of it—mainstream media has been completely co-opted. We have to remember that the pillars of media back then were only five or six major outlets, and they were all co-opted. What we see today is essentially the same—these outlets can’t get a handle on the truth of anything, unfortunately.

MA: Can you elaborate on how these prestigious publications influence public opinion?

PW: You can't shape a view without information. I don't care who you are—if you don't have information, you can't do it. You have to have some kind of stimulus, some type of truthful information to actually form an opinion. People are starved for any reliable information right now so they can't form a real opinion.

MA: Would you say the issue is even worse with the so-called educated classes who tend to read The New York Times as opposed to someone that reads no publications?

PW: Yes, those people are doubly deceived. And what can I say? Everybody in Washington, and indeed all the leaders of the world, read those publications—you know, the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and all these elite publications.

This is where the mind cult starts. They have a circular thought pattern, constantly reinforced in that thought pattern. For example, the concept of global warming—if you’re in that circle, that’s all you’re going to hear, 24/7. Anybody outside of that narrative will think more clearly and realize that, basically, the whole thing is a scam. But the people in it really don’t understand what’s going on. They can’t see outside of their blinders.

MA: Is there any mainstream publication, TV show, or channel that hasn't been co-opted?

PW: Honestly, I don’t know of anyone who's still on the mark. I don’t think any of them have escaped it. They’re basically parroting the globalist line at this point. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. Global warming is central to it. The United Nations too. So is The World Economic Forum and all the stuff they’re putting out there. It all revolves around their narrative, not the one you or I set.

MA: We've seen what's going on with Diddy in the past few weeks. How has popular culture eroded the family unit and the principles that underlie our constitutional republic?                                                                         

PW: You have to be really cynical at this point when you look at people like Diddy or Epstein. Their actions are demoralizing. At this point, the world has such a cynical view of evil. We’ve become desensitized to it. It leads to the kind of thinking that suggests, ‘If they can do it, we can do it too.” This is sick, I realize, but that's what it boils down to.

MA: Can you give an example of how such moral decay has shaped public behavior?                                                                                                              

PW: You might remember Bill Clinton was president in the 90s. He had an affair with Monica Lewinsky. It was a big scandal. He got impeached but wasn’t removed from office. He should have been, but he wasn’t. Clinton basically justified oral sex as being okay. He got away with it, with impunity, saying, "What do you mean by 'is' when talking about sex?" He normalized oral sex from the office of the president down. The societal impact was huge.

MA: How so?

PW: Since 2000, we’ve seen an epidemic of STDs, mouth cancer, throat cancer, etc. Young people today think, "If I have oral sex, I don’t have to worry about anything." An entire generation has been physically affected by the president's actions.

How did they fall into this moral decay? Well, the president got away with it. We gave him a free pass. So people thought, "If he can do that in the Oval Office, I can do what I want too.

MA: Each generation only knows the time they grew up in, unless they’ve taken the time to learn history. Would you say this changes their sense of right and wrong?

PW: Exactly. Most young people today don't study history. It's not in the curriculum. It's not taught in schools. There’s no appreciation for all the books and scholarship that have been produced over the years. Where do they get their information? They can't get it from osmosis, for sure, so they're ignorant. Unfortunately, they're doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, 100%.

MA: I’ve been thinking about recent events like COVID and 9/11, and how history seems to be rewritten in real time—especially through partisan sites like Wikipedia, even textbooks. In our digital age, with so much video documentation, is it still possible for world history to be altered to fit the goals of elites?

PW: Absolutely. We see many examples where sections of history have been rewritten to fit a specific narrative. Fortunately, a lot of it doesn’t make it into print, but that doesn’t really matter to people who mostly consume information online.

They read electronic books or articles, and this kind of content can easily be altered. This highlights why it’s so important to have physical books that can’t be modified. Once something is printed, you have a copy no one can change. But in the digital world, changes can be made, and people won’t even know unless they go back to compare earlier versions, maybe through the Wayback Machine.

MA: Can manipulation happen with printed books once they’re published?

PW: For sure. There are cases like The Catcher in the Rye, a classic book. It was modified due to pressure from Woke authorities who wanted to change the narrative around racism and sex. But you shouldn’t do that—it is what it is.

If you don’t like someone’s thoughts, don’t buy the book. That’s an example where they actually reprinted the book with changes. So, if you buy a new copy today, you may not see what the old text said. But if you have the original, you’ll have the real deal. This is happening with printed and electronic books now.

MA: I was at the airport recently and noticed how casually people dress today compared to the 1920s or 1930s, when even farmers wore suits and ties. Do you think there’s a connection between how we dress now and the values we hold compared to a few decades ago?

PW: That's a good observation. Culture evolves, and its expression always changes. This has been observed by many people over the years. For instance, art reflects culture.

You can look at art over the past 2,000 years and see exactly how culture changed through the expression of art. Art didn’t cause anything to change, but it expressed what was going on at the time.

The same goes for how people dress today—it’s a form of art, a reflection of their inner thoughts and how they see the world. If people dress like slobs, it tells you something about them and society. You also see it in today’s art, especially with AI; it’s often sloppy and exaggerated. This reflects the attitude of society as a whole. This isn't just happening locally either; it's a global trend.

MA: You’re well known for being an expert on transhumanism. How can we wake up enough young people to care about this, especially the idea that the organic human might soon become an endangered species?

PW: That's tough. Most people, unfortunately, never think about what it means to be human in the first place. That’s where it has to start. When people want to change you from who you are or manipulate your mind to where you can’t even conceive of what it means to be human, you’ve lost it.

It’s really a battle for the mind because that’s where it begins. If people can’t grasp what it means to be human, they'll fall for anything or anyone that wants to change them into something else. Does that make sense?

MA: Makes perfect sense. Along these lines, we’re being coaxed daily into accepting AI as a new economic growth engine. It reminds me of the Internet boom in the 1990s. Should we be alarmed that AI is learning daily as it gets more integrated into our lives?

PW: First, I don’t believe we should use the term "artificial intelligence" because it’s an oxymoron. Intelligence is only for humans. This marketing term fools people into thinking AI is truly intelligent, maybe even capable of sentience someday, or becoming fully human—but that’s never going to happen.

AI, as a computer program, can do amazing things with the data it’s fed, but we must remember that it collects massive amounts of data—whether it's static data from books, papers, history, or real-time data from smart devices, financial transactions, etc. Wherever data is collected, it's always used to manipulate the object of collection—whether that’s society, behavior, or something else.

MA: Can you explain how that manipulation plays out?

PW: Absolutely. Let’s take a smart city as an example. It has sensors everywhere, collecting data on all the people, what they do, where they go, and so on. AI processes all that data to create what's called a "digital twin" of the city—a virtual model on a computer screen that mirrors reality.

The point of gathering all that data is to analyze the digital twin, make changes, then apply those changes back to the real city. Whether it’s flipping a switch on an air conditioner or influencing behavior, the data collection is all about manipulating the object it was gathered from in the first place. That’s always the case—data is collected to turn around and manipulate the subject it was taken from.

MA: Over the years, I’ve heard that the origins of social media, including platforms like Facebook, weren’t as organic as we were told. Instead of being dorm room projects, were these platforms originally part of a government surveillance initiative?

PW: Yes, exactly right. If you trace the Internet back from day one, it was always—and remains—a military operation. We forget that because it doesn’t look like it. There aren’t people running around in jackboots, you know—it’s coming, probably, but it’s not here yet.

It was all spawned by the military in the first place, and all the tech giant businesses we have today began with money from the military or the CIA. The CIA says they’re not supposed to operate on domestic soil, but they have a venture capital firm known as In-Q-Tel, funded by the CIA. Its purpose is to invest in companies that show promise.

MA: With platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and apps like Telegram and Signal having ties to intelligence agencies like In-Q-Tel, do these organizations still maintain influence over them? Are they being used for surveillance without our knowledge?

PW: Money from In-Q-Tel was invested in companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. Nobody seems to remembers that, but these organizations still have hooks into the creations they funded in the first place. That just makes sense—why wouldn’t they keep a hook? They would.

We see this popping up over and over again. It’s not always visible, but when you really scratch your head, look back at where these things came from—messenger programs like Telegram and Signal, for example—these services were creations of the intelligence community. They’re not going to be kind to us. These aren’t our friends.

MA: So when people willingly share everything on social media—from personal photos to preferences—how valuable is that data for companies like Google or Facebook?

PW: It now informs an entire social media complex. People willingly give everything they have—pictures of their kids, their preferences, everything to it. This data is a gold mine for companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and others. The value of this data is enormous and, for instance, in Google’s case, it’s made them billions over the years. They’re still collecting more, even today.

MA: You’ve talked about how much personal data is being collected, especially through social media and online platforms. Could this data be used to exert control over people on an even larger scale?

PW: Yes. It’s not just social media; it even includes commercial transactions. And when you add financial transactions—especially with the rise of central bank digital currencies—it becomes a tool to manipulate every human on Earth.

The goal is to collect all data. Once they have it, they control everything. Klaus Schwab at the World Economic Forum said it: “Whoever controls the data will be the master of the universe.” People like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk—they all understand this. Sam Altman too. Whoever controls this data-sucking beast will eventually become Master of the Universe.

MA: Technocrats seems to run the country behind the scenes. Are we really seeing a shift where unelected, unaccountable individuals are the ones in control, even more than our elected leaders?

PW: It could be. Think about the government. Who's running the government right now? Obviously, it's not Biden. Even Democrats are asking the question: Who’s running the country? I saw one article recently, not even from a conservative source, suggesting that technocrats are running the country.

They're not elected, and they’re unaccountable for the policies they put in place. I think that’s an accurate observation. The technocrats behind the scenes are running everything. Let me give you an example with Sam Altman. Altman is clearly unplugged from reality in some sense, with an ego as big as the Empire State Building. He sees himself as the one who will conquer AGI—Artificial General Intelligence. He’s also aiming for ASI—Artificial Super Intelligence.

Altman is so focused on achieving AGI that he’s willing to do whatever it takes. He knows that whoever gets there first will be the master in the field. After AGI, he aims for ASI, and he’s run off almost all his safety team, including his former Chief Technology Officer. He’s left with a shell of a company but still has many programmers. He was kicked out last year by the nonprofit board because they believed he wasn’t being truthful with them or paying attention to safety. Microsoft then adopted him as their protégé, hoping to make him their chief of AI development, essentially trying to steal ideas from OpenAI.

MA: Do you think there’s more going on behind the scenes with key figures like Altman?

PW: Altman clawed his way back to power, dismissing the board members who opposed him. He replaced them with people who would follow his lead—Yes Men. One interesting figure on his new board is Larry Summers, a former bigwig at Harvard, Secretary of Treasury, and economic advisor to multiple presidents.

More importantly, Summers is a member of the Trilateral Commission, the group we talked about earlier that was key in shaping modern globalization. Why would Sam Altman, a young man, choose Larry Summers for his board? I can’t imagine it was his choice alone. Someone likely approached Altman and made sure he knew what would happen if he didn’t follow orders. This shows there’s another layer behind Altman, pulling strings and controlling the system.

MA: Going back to Hollywood, do you think blackmail is a driving force behind much of society, especially with figures like Diddy and Epstein?

PW: Yes. You must ask: Who's orchestrating it really? Was it just Diddy by himself or Epstein by himself? Were they operating in a vacuum? Were they just evil people doing evil things and that was the end of it?

Not really. There's been a lot of investigation into Epstein that he was part of a larger network. And remember, he was also a member of the Trilateral Commission. He was a blackmailer, enforcer for the Trilateral Commission.

MA: Given that blackmail can be a powerful tool, do you think it's used to control society’s leaders to push certain agendas?

PW: Absolutely. The people who went on Epstein’s excursions weren’t necessarily members of the Trilateral Commission, but they were surrounded by society’s leaders. The purpose was blackmail—to get those people to do what they were told.

And they did it with ruthless precision. You’ll never see Epstein’s black book or all the videos; the IT guy said all the data was uploaded to servers outside the island. It's all out there, but you’ll never see it. These people were terrified of being exposed for their corruption and criminal acts, which would have destroyed them.

MA: Growing up, I was influenced by Noam Chomsky. Do you think intellectual figures like him might be gatekeepers, saying certain things to criticize, but also avoiding certain topics too?

PW: Absolutely, I believe that. I can't fully connect all the dots, but logically, it makes sense. Looking at the patterns, it fits. I don't think we'll ever know all the details, but it's evident.

Even trusted news services like Fox News or Newsmax have areas they won't go. You can't get them to cover certain topics, no matter what. Over the years, I've encountered situations where people just shut me down, saying, "You're not going to talk about that." So I move on and talk about it elsewhere.

MA: I recently read about Tavistock, which wasn’t on my radar before. Could you explain what it is and how it relates to mass manipulation of minds and thoughts?

PW: Whenever you talk about the Tavistock organization, it takes me back to 1933–34 when the technocracy movement started. Besides discussing economic issues and controlling society—their focus was on what they called "the science of social engineering." That set the tone for technocracy from the start. Whatever this "science of social engineering" is, we see it everywhere today, whether through propaganda, mind control, experiments like MK-Ultra in the ’70s, or even current research on neural implants aimed at taking over the brain.

MA: So Tavistock played a major role in shaping these ideas?

PW: Yes, exactly. Tavistock sat in the middle of a continuum of organizations refining the art or science of social engineering—pure and simple. That's all they were about. And we see the results today. Take China, for instance, with their social credit scoring system—they are perfecting this art of psychological control over people. While we can escape it, many people are already captive to it, without realizing they're being manipulated by policies like these.

MA: The more I learn, the more I realize how little I know. Growing up, bands like The Doors, The Beatles, and The Rolling Stones were seen as a celebration of life. But now, learning about the Tavistock Institute, it seems they may have been used to break down social cohesion and American culture. What are your thoughts?

PW: That was part of the program. To perfect the science of social engineering, you need to break down society, especially one based on liberty and freedom like ours. It's hard to break people down when they have support, like trees in a forest—if one stands alone, it dies quickly, but together they protect and support each other. America was like that—a society that stood together.

MA: So, by breaking down this cohesion, do you think that made us vulnerable to outside forces trying to tear us apart?

PW: Yes, by breaking down social cohesion, they tore society apart, which made perfect sense from a globalist perspective. This wasn't necessary in other countries that didn’t have that strong societal bond in the first place. But for us, we were sitting ducks. They couldn’t conquer us unless they broke down the barriers of our society.

MA: The name of my podcast is The Great Wake Up. It seems like the way to defeat everything we've been discussing is by changing people's minds. You said it’s a war for the mind. How do we wake up more people?

PW: Good question. I think about that every day, all day. How do you springboard people out of their current mindset? One thing I’m convinced of is that the frontal approach will not work. If you just walk up to someone and slap them in the face with information, they won’t listen. They're already pre-programmed to reject you. That’s a sign of a cult—they set up defenses before you even arrive. So, a direct confrontation is hard.

Families have discovered this over the years when they try to confront their kids, for example. A parent might say, "You need to change your thinking on this," but the child won’t listen because it’s too direct. Instead, if we care about someone, we should ask thoughtful, engineered questions that lead them to think about things for themselves. You can’t argue someone out of their position by presenting your own. But by asking questions that make them think, you start to break through. They’ll realize, "I never thought about it that way." That’s how you get into their thinking process.

MA: Can you give an example of how this approach works in practice?

PW: Sure. Take Jesus from the Bible as an example. When his disciples came to him with questions, he seldom answered them directly because their heads were in the wrong place. Instead, he’d turn the question around, ask what he wanted to address, and give the answer they really needed. It’s clever, not manipulative, and effective in helping people shift their thinking. However, one person can only reach so many others in this way—maybe a dozen or so per year. But if more people did this, we’d see results much faster.

MA: I have two young boys. We teach them to think for themselves. But I see other boys who are into video games, and older ones are into things like porn and influencer YouTube culture. Do you have any suggestions for guiding boys, especially in today’s environment?

PW: They need to guard their minds first. They need to be trained to have discernment about what they allow into their minds—whatever they absorb through their eyes or ears. You can’t unsee things once they come in, and if you take it in without critical thinking, it will eventually sink into your emotions and become part of your belief system. Once it gets that far, you’ll start acting on it. The key is not to let it in from the start.

MA: You mentioned how important it is to protect what comes into their minds. So how do parents manage that with all the gaming, screen time, and other distractions kids are drawn to?

PW: If you want to protect your kids, don’t let them do it. There are other things they can do, but parents need to make choices—like limiting screen time, especially with constant gaming. Everyone knows it’s addictive, and the images that get into their heads are hard to undo. Once they’re there, it’s tough to get them out. The solution is to stop it before it starts. Train your kids that their minds are sacred, and what goes in will affect them long term. If it doesn’t feel right, don’t let it in. It’s that simple.

MA: Great advice. It's been an honor talking with you. It was very informative and very helpful. Thank you again.

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