Jeffrey Epstein's Deception Project
Epstein cultivated a vast network of prestigious academics, technologists and businesspeople around an area that fascinated him: deception.
By Eliezer Sherman
Sometime in 2013, disgraced financier and convicted human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein became obsessed with deception.
For several years, until his second arrest, Epstein cultivated relationships with dozens of prominent scientists, technologists, and investors, with the goal of “understanding deception to understand the brain.”
Epstein organized meetings, exchanged emails, shared papers and books, and hosted dinners in New York and on his island, Little St. James, with researchers affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard, Oxford, and Silicon Valley. In 2016, he hosted a group at Harvard discussing the topic.
For a man who amassed his vast fortune through fraud and deceit and manipulated dozens of underage girls and apparently hundreds of women into sexual exploitation, Epstein’s academic promotion of deception is both appropriate and tragically ironic.
Whether Epstein possessed self-awareness about what he was doing or had deceived himself while deceiving others remains a mystery.
He died by hanging in August 2019 in a Manhattan jail cell, taking his motivations with him and leaving behind only the tranche of correspondences known as the Epstein files.
The topic of deception appears there hundreds of times, as Epstein attempted to convene elite scientists around the idea that deception is fundamental to society and even life itself.
Epstein was most active on the topic of deception between 2013 and 2014.
A frequent correspondent of his during this time was Joichi Ito, a Japanese entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and then-director of the MIT Media Lab.
In July 2013, Epstein emailed Ito: “how much of your daily conversation , attitude, posture in a social setting is really true ,as opposed to laced with deception, appearing interested?, not saying what you really think? pretending , ?”
Ito replied the same day: “I feel like most of my daily conversation involves hiding or some sort of deception … because most of the people I interact with are part of an ecosystem where I am motivated to direct the conversation or the person I’m interacting with to a particular belief or action as part of an overall strategy…”
Ito stepped down from his job at MIT in 2019 after attempting to conceal the extent of funding he received from Epstein and claims he had no knowledge of Epstein’s “horrific conduct.”
Joscha Bach, a German cognitive scientist and AI researcher, also developed a relationship with Epstein in 2013 over the topic of deception. The two wrote lengthy letters to each other on the topic.
Epstein funded Bach’s research stay between 2013 to 2019, and Bach was the last to correspond with Epstein on the subject of deception. Bach also visited Epstein’s island in the Carribbean.
Over the years, Epstein and Bach discussed the “benefits” of deception in biology and its role in psychology, communications, game theory, and technology.
“deception and self- deception , need better definitions,” Epstein wrote Bach in November 2013. “Recent work suggests that denial. is localized in the brain. A restrictor of harmful information.- when knocked out. deception increases."
When denial is reduced or incapacitated, depression also increases, Epstein suggests.
“…we should be working from clear definitions!” Bach responds.
“Deception does not only include malicious lying and exploitation, but also humor, didactics, politeness, tact, consideration of possible fallacies in my own current beliefs and so on, and thus plays many beneficial roles in human interaction and cooperation.”
Veering from psychology to sociology, Epstein responds: “A nation needs heros. I [sic] hero is someone who is dead, for the benefit of the group.”
While Bach had accepted funding from Epstein after the sex trafficker pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor in Florida in 2008, the scientist later told Die Zeit he “had never observed any hint of such crimes or legally questionable behavior” while the two were involved—essentially claiming he was deceived by Epstein.
Epstein attempted to organize real-world meetings over deception a handful of times, particularly in 2013 and 2014.
In September 2013 he organized a Skype meeting devoted to deception.
On March 14, 2014, Epstein double-booked his evening. He had tentative dinner plans in New York with Microsoft founder Bill Gates but also scheduled a dinner with MIT’s Neil Gershenfeld, neuroscientist Ed Boyden, Harvard computer scientist Judith Donath, and Princeton computer science professor Sebastian Seung to discuss deception.
Emails suggest that the Gates meeting never happened and that the March 2014 deception dinner encountered scheduling problems at the last minute. Gershenfeld emailed that day suggesting Boyden dial in remotely.
It remains unclear if Boyden dialed in to that dinner or if the dinner happened at all, though Epstein did apparently reimburse Donath’s travel expenses. Boyden later attended another private dinner with Epstein, Hoffman, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel in August 2015. Epstein described that dinner as “wild.”
Epstein then apparently went on to “coach” Boyden through 2016 on how to “rich pitch” his ideas to investors.
After the 2014 dinner, Donath never appeared in the Epstein files again.
Seung has since distanced himself from Epstein, claiming he had “no relationship” with him.
Epstein may have discovered Seung via French model scout and sex trafficker Jean-Luc Brunel, whose talent agency Epstein financed. In June 2012, Brunel recommended to Epstein Seung’s neuropsychology book Connectome: How the Brain’s Wiring Makes Us Who We Are. The word, “connectome,” would appear in later correspondences about deception.
Like Seung, many of the scientists who interacted with Epstein during this period would claim they were unaware of the extent of Epstein’s shady activities.
Epstein once opined to Gershenfeld, the MIT media scientist, that “like chocolate milk, : a little chocolate makes it chocolate milk, a few lies makes one a deceiver, where a few truths do not make one a truthteller.”
Epstein’s basic hypothesis on deception appears in an email he apparently sent to himself in April 2015 after the enthusiasm around the topic subsided.
“I postulate that Biology and biological systems differ from mathematics because [they] need deception to survive,” Epstein—who was a mathematics degree dropout—wrote.
Because predators require external sources of energy to survive, prey have developed techniques to avoid being eaten.
Deception — “camouflage, surrounding itself in junk, mimicry, misdirection, misinformation, etc.” — is the method biological systems use to avoid becoming lunch.
Deception, he believed, was intrinsic to life itself. In 2016, he told Thiel he thought deception was “a tool to protect or conquer free energy.”
Epstein also joked once that he wanted a “deception primer for dealing with women.”
Writing to a redacted sender who never responds, Epstein builds on that idea: “I want to build a computer that will lie to me.” Separately, he had said the computer’s inability to lie implied its lack of vitality.
In perhaps his final mention of the topic, Epstein writes to Bach in June 2018: “smiles are honest signals. in general . diffictul [sic] to fake well.”
Disclaimers: ChatGPT was used in the copy-editing of this article. Email copy from the DOJ Epstein files left as-is.