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Jeffrey Epstein’s network of money and influence often intersected with scientific and academic communities. The disgraced financier spent years cultivating relationships with researchers at elite universities, frequently dangling the promise of funding. Some of the work he supported has had, and may still have, direct and indirect impacts on Silicon Valleys most powerful technologies. Epstein was first convicted in 2008 on charges of soliciting a minor for prostitution, yet he continued to maintain a web of relationships across the worlds of technology and academia until he was indicted on federal sex-trafficking charges in 2019. The Department of Justices latest release of the Epstein files includes emails that reveal new names and details about those connections that had not previously been made public. Joscha Bach One striking example is Epsteins patronage of German AI scientist and executive Joscha Bach. Known in academic and AI circles for his work on cognitive architectures, computational models that aim to replicate aspects of human cognition, Bach received extensive financial support from Epstein while completing postdoctoral work at MIT. According to emails reviewed by SFGate, Epstein covered Bachs rent, flights, medical bills, and even private school tuition for his children in Menlo Park between 2013 and 2019. Bach is now the executive director of the California Institute for Machine Consciousness, a small, independent research organization focused on whether machines could ever become conscious. According to SFGate, Epstein met Bach through other AI and psychology researchers and began financing his work at the MIT Media Lab and the Harvard Program for Evolutionary Dynamics in 2013. The files show no indication of sexual impropriety on Bachs part, and he has never been accused of such conduct. Bach told SFGate that MIT approved the funding and said many prominent scientists maintained relationships with Epstein. He added, The prevailing view was that Epstein, having served his sentence, was complying with the law. Antonio Damasio Epstein also corresponded with Antonio Damasio, the director of USCs Brain and Creativity Institute. In 2013, Damasio asked Epstein to fund a new line of robotics and neuroscience research. Damasio, the Dornsife Chair in Neuroscience, and another USC researcher hoped to study the origins of emotion in the brain, and sought a nontraditional funding source so they could retain greater control over the direction of the work. Damasio presented the proposal to Epstein in February 2013 at Epsteins New York City home, but Epstein ultimately declined to fund the research. Damasio told Annenberg Media that he did not know Epstein was a convicted sex offender at the time, and said he would never have contacted him had he known. I was looking for a prestigious philanthropist, not a criminal, Damasio said. Damasios primary field is neurobiology, though he also teaches psychology and philosophy, with a focus on the neural systems that underlie emotion, decision-making, memory, language, and consciousness. He is best known for an influential theory arguing that emotions and their biological foundations, not just reason, play a central role in decision-making, even when the decision-maker is not consciously aware of it. He also theorized that emotions provide the scaffolding for social cognition, shaping how people process, store, and apply information about others and social situations. Damasio argues that current AI models that power robots lack a sense of biological “vulnerability” that drives survival instincts and intelligence in living organisms. He theorises that training a robot to be “concerned” about its own preservation might help the robot solve problems more creatively. David Gelernter The DOJ document release also revealed that Epstein corresponded between 2009 and 2015 with Yale computer science professor David Gelernter, an early pioneer of concepts now associated with digital twins and metaverse-style overlays, which he calls computed worlds. Gelernter is the author of the book Mirror Worlds, which outlines much of that research. In 2001, Gelernter helped found a company called Mirror Worlds Software based on those ideas, but the venture failed to gain traction and shut down in 2004. In his correspondence with Epstein, Gelernter sought business advice rather than research funding, according to the New Haven Register. The files also revealed no evidence of wrongdoing by Gelernter. He has said he did not know Epstein was a convicted sex offender and was never aware of Epsteins sex-trafficking operation. In 1993, Gelernter was severely injured by a mail bomb sent by the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, which destroyed four of his fingers and permanently damaged one of his eyes. He is also known for controversial views, including claims that liberal academia has a destructive influence on American society, that women, especially mothers, should not work outside the home, and for rejecting the scientific consensus that humans are driving climate change. Marvin Minsky The most direct link between Epstein and the AI world ran through MIT professor and pioneer Marvin Minsky, who died in 2016. Minsky helped establish artificial intelligence as a formal research discipline in the 1950s and later co-founded the field at MIT with John McCarthy, training generations of AI scientists. Epstein donated $100,000 to MIT to support Minskys research in 2002, before Epsteins first criminal conviction. That gift was the first in a series of donations to MITs Media Lab that ultimately totaled $850,000 between 2002 and 2017. Minsky died in 2016. In 2019, court documents from a deposition by victim Virginia Giuffre were unsealed, revealing her allegation that Ghislaine Maxwell directed her to have sex with Minsky during a visit to Epsteins compound. Minskys wife said the allegation was impossible because she was with him the entire time they were on the island. Minsky never faced charges, but the revelations placed his name at the center of a reckoning at MITs Media Lab over the influence of Epsteins money on the labs work. A gray zone In many ways, Jeffrey Epstein operated in a gray zone created by shifting funding models for AI research. Long before the current AI boom, private industry had already overtaken the federal government as the primary backer of foundational AI work. In recent years, government funding has become increasingly tied to defense and intelligence priorities, leaving reearchers in less immediately applicable fields with few viable grant options. At the same time, AI research has grown extraordinarily expensive, requiring elite talent and vast computing resources. As a result, universities and academic labs have become far more dependent on private philanthropy to sustain their work. Funding from wealthy donors often comes with fewer restrictions. It can arrive faster, offer greater flexibility, and require less public disclosure than government grants. This likely explains part of Epsteins appeal to researchers. But the arrangement cuts both ways. Such donations also require little transparency from the donor, meaning beneficiaries may know very little about the source of their funding. Epsteins case is extreme, but it highlights a broader risk: when public research funding is scarce and the costs of advanced AI are high, private money becomes more attractive, along with the ethical and reputational dangers it can carry. And the problem is not easing. Microsoft chief scientist Eric Horvitz warned that U.S. cuts to National Science Foundation research grants during the Trump administration could undermine the countrys AI leadership, the Financial Times reported, noting that more than 1,600 NSF grants worth nearly $1 billion have been scrapped since 2025.
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The Washington Post informed its team on Wednesday morning that it was starting a round of mass layoffs, according to multiple media reports and a memo seen by Fast Company. Multiple sections are being shut down completely, while others are being shrunk significantly. The papers executive editor, Matt Murray, announced the cuts to the newsroom employees, saying that all sections would be impacted by the layoffs. He said the Post would be making a strategic reset, and is also cutting staff on the business side. The New York Times reported that approximately 30% of the Posts employees are being laid off, including more than 300 of the around 800 journalists. News of the layoffs attracted a harsh rebuke from people in the media, including the Post‘s own former editor, who criticized the paper’s owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. This ranks among the darkest days in the history of one of the worlds greatest news organizations, Marty Baron, executive editor of the Post from 2013 to 2021, said in a statement. The Washington Posts ambitions will be sharply diminished, its talented and brave staff will be further depleted, and the public will be denied the ground-level, fact-based reporting in our communities and around the world that is needed more than ever.” Reached for comment, a Washington Post spokesperson sent the following statement: The Washington Post is taking a number of difficult but decisive actions today for our future, in what amounts to a significant restructuring across the company. These steps are designed to strengthen our footing and sharpen our focus on delivering the distinctive journalism that sets The Post apart and, most importantly, engages our customers. Sports and other sections said to be gutted The sports section will reportedly be eliminated entirely, meaning that Washingtons paper of record will not provide day-to-day coverage for any of the citys professional or college sports teams. Murray noted that some of the sports reporters will be moved to the features department to cover the culture of sports. This comes in the wake of controversy surrounding the Posts plans for the Winter Olympics, which start this week. The Times reported on January 24 that the paper axed its plans to send a delegation to the Italy games just two weeks before the opening ceremony, but quickly reversed that decision, sending a team of four after the report came out. The Olympics arent the only major event looming on the sports calendar, as Super Bowl LX will be played in San Francisco this weekend, NCAA March Madness is just about a month away, and the FIFA World Cup, hosted in North America this year, kicks off in June. Meanwhile, the Post is reportedly cutting down its Metro desk, which covers Washington, D.C., and its surroundings, from over 40 journalists to well below half of that. The Post is drastically reducing its international coverage as well, although some international bureaus will stay operational Additionally, the paper is reportedly closing the books section and ending its daily Post Reports podcast. Weeks of speculation regarding the paper’s future The announcement comes after weeks of speculation within the newsroom. The Washington Post Guild made a statement last week, directly attacking Bezos, whose holding company, Nash Holdings, bought the paper for $250 million in 2013 and has owned it ever since. During Donald Trumps first term as president, the Post adopted the slogan Democracy Dies in Darkness and experienced a period of growth thanks to its aggressive coverage of the administration. In 2023, Bezos hired Will Lewis as publisher of the Post, and these layoffs are just the latest in a line of changes made since then. Notably, the paper did not endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential election for the first time in 36 years. In response to the layoffs, the Washington Post Guild released another statement: These layoffs are not inevitable, its first paragraph reads. A newsroom cannot be hollowed out without consequences for its credibility, its reach and its future. This story has been updated with the Post‘s response to our inquiry.
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Low Earth orbit is already getting crowded. Around 14,500 active satellites are circling Earth, and roughly two-thirds of them are run by SpaceX. Now, in filings connected to Elon Musks plan to fold SpaceX and his AI firm xAI together ahead of an IPO, the company has asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for permission to launch up to one million more. The figure is so large it would dwarf the number of satellites currently in orbit. In fact, it is more than every object ever sent into space by every nation combined. So why is Musk planning it, and what would it mean for the rest of us? In a public update posted on the SpaceX website as part of the merger process between SpaceX and xAI, Musk wrote that Launching a constellation of a million satellites that operate as orbital data centers is a first step towards becoming a Kardashev II-level civilization. The Kardashev scale is a measure of technological development first outlined in the 1960s by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev, who died in 2019. While the scale of the proposal may have impressed Kardashev, many experts are far more skeptical. A million new satellites would represent roughly a 67-fold increase over todays orbital population. Proposals on the scale being discussedup to one million satellitesrepresent a step change that deserves the same level of scrutiny we would apply to any other major global infrastructure project,” says Ruskin Hartley, CEO of DarkSky International, a nonprofit focused on preserving night skies and mitigating the impacts of light pollution. Satellite deployment at such a scale would have huge knock-on effects. The consequences extend well beyond astronomy, Hartley says. They include cumulative impacts on the night sky, increased atmospheric pollution from satellite launches and re-entries, and a sharply elevated risk of orbital congestion and collision cascades that could impair access to low Earth orbit for all nations. When satellites burn up, they release metals such as aluminum into the upper atmosphere, a process scientists and the U.K. Space Agency warn is still poorly understood but likely accelerating as megaconstellations grow. There is also the question of safety. Space is already crowded with satellites that power communications, enable GPS navigation, and support countless services we rely on every day. Adding vastly more objects increases the chances of close approaches, which, if not monitored and avoided, can result in collisions and cascading debris. SpaceX will say they can do that stationkeeping successfully, but it doesn’t take many failures to have you end up in a bad situation, says Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer and space sustainability analyst based in London and Boston and formerly at the Center for Astrophysics. The SpaceX satellites will be in the higher part of low Earth orbit where it will take a long time for failed satellites to re-enter. Hartley, for his part, argues that these risks demand far more scrutiny. Decisions made now will shape the near-Earth environment for generations, he says. Not everyone believes the million-satellite figure is even realistic. As to the question of if its practical, I would think not, says Caleb Henry, director of research at Quilty Space. Filing for 1 million satellites is probably a way for SpaceX to push the envelope before accepting whatever fraction regulators deem acceptable. That tactic may already be working. The FCC initially rejected a 2022 SpaceX proposal to launch 30,000 satellites, before later approving it in 25% tranches. The commission authorized another 7,500 satellites this January, for a total approval of 15,000 satellites from that filing, says Henry. SpaceX is also asking the FCC to waive standard deployment milestones, and says the economics of the plan depend on Starship becoming fully reusable, a goal it has not yet reached. In that sense, the million-satellite request is not a signal of imminent growth, but a bid to stake out spectrum and orbital real estate for a future that Musk is already trying to define.
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