reSee.it Podcast Summary
Whitney Webb and Johnny Vedmore discuss how elite institutions that steered COVID-19 policies are moving to shape a post-COVID world, focusing on Welcome Leap and the Trinity Challenge, and tracing their ties to the Wellcome Trust, the Gates Foundation, DARPA, and Silicon Valley. They note Welcome Leap’s deep links to the Wellcome Trust, which was involved with the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, and highlight a framework in which philanthropy blends with biotech and for‑profit entities. They quote a Sunday Times profile describing Wellcome as a vehicle where “what Henry Welcom set out was a double edged scheme to run a business and a charity together. The flagship would be a philanthropic body, now the Wellcome Trust, enjoying the image and tax benefits of magnanimous public spirited generosity. But behind this would operate, industrial organizations and, straight up and down for profit corporations.” They ask who holds more sway over public policy—Bill Gates or the Wellcome Trust?—noting overlap between Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust in the developing world.
They discuss Welcome Leap’s leadership: Regina Dugan, who began at DARPA in 1996, leading a program that won awards for identifying land mines, then headed a counterism task force, and later created a defense‑focused tech firm Red X Defense that contracted with the military. Dugan “greenlighted DARPA's investment in mRNA vaccine technology” and, after leaving DARPA, was recruited by Google to lead Building 8, with projects including “digital tattoo” and “digital authentication pill,” and a focus on neural wearables and transhumanist aims. Dugan’s association with the Clinton Global Initiative and Bilderberg, and her role in Google’s DARPA‑like efforts, are cited as part of a broader transhumanist trajectory. Ken Gabriel, COO of Welcome Leap, is described as a DARPA veteran who led MEMS research, worked with both the FBI and CIA, and later joined Draper Labs before becoming involved with the Wellcome Trust; he sits on the Galvani Bioelectronics board, linking GlaxoSmithKline, Google, and Verily. Jay Flatley, Illumina’s longtime chief, is highlighted as a genomics power broker tied to the World Economic Forum and a push to gene‑tested populations from birth to grave.
The four Welcome Leap programs are introduced. HOPE stands for human organs, physiology, and engineering, with aims to grow and translate organ systems that “will have a functional immune system,” potentially replacing animal trials and advancing bioengineering for transplantable organs and synthetic hybrid organs. The second program, the “first thousand days,” targets infants from three months to three years, outlining “wearables, constant twenty four seven surveillance of children,” including respiratory rate, heart rate, eye tracking, and ambient data to build an “in silico” AI model of a child’s brain, with the goal of having “eighty percent of children” matched to the synthetic model within ten years. The third program, Delta Tissue, is described as precision medicine to map cells and tissues for cancer prediction and prevention, potentially enabling AI‑driven interventions. The fourth, Multi Channel Psych, aims to study “anhedonia” and to develop brain stimulation interventions to shape behavior, including mood quantification, and to create scalable measurement tools via wearables that monitor mood, sleep, social interactions, and reward processing.
They turn to the Trinity Challenge, chaired by Dame Sally Davies, with founding members including the University of Hong Kong, Cambridge, Northeastern, Imperial College London, and corporations such as Microsoft, Facebook, Google, GlaxoSmithKline, and McKinsey, plus the Gates Foundation, Tencent, Aviva, and a Global Virome Project linked to EcoHealth Alliance and USAID. The grand prize went to POD (participatory one health disease detection) led by Open Dream in Thailand, with Matt Parker connected to Salesforce; Jane Sexbot (a child sex‑education chatbot) was another project. Founding members include the Skull Global Threats Fund, tied to Jeffrey Skoll, and its leadership connected to Google, Salesforce, the WEF, and CFR, underscoring the convergence of tech, pharma, and policy elites in shaping surveillance, data analytics, and predictive health, framed as preventing pandemics but described as moving toward surveillance, eugenics, and transhumanism. They warn that post‑COVID agendas are being advanced behind distractions about variants, urging pushback and accountability.