When Power Fails Our Children: From Epstein to Big Tech [031]

Perverts, Pedophiles, and Power: From the White House to Silicon Valley, Power and Money Are More Important Than Our Children

Here is the uncomfortable truth that no one in a boardroom or a corner office wants to say out loud: the most powerful men in America have a pattern of failing the most vulnerable people in the room. And the most vulnerable people in the room are almost always children.

Jeffrey Epstein built a sex trafficking operation that exploited underage girls for years. The flight logs, the court documents, the DOJ files released just days ago paint a picture that should sicken every leader in this country.

Bill Clinton flew on Epstein's private jet at least 26 times between 2002 and 2003, according to flight records unsealed in federal litigation. (Source: FactCheck.org, August 2019; https://www.factcheck.org/2019/08/the-epstein-connections-fueling-conspiracy-theories/)

Donald Trump socialized with Epstein throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, attended parties together at Mar-a-Lago, and was documented on Epstein's planes at least eight times between 1993 and 1996. In 2002, Trump told New York Magazine: "I've known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy." (Source: NPR, December 2025; https://www.npr.org/2025/12/23/nx-s1-5653302/more-epstein-files-released-trump-mentioned)

Bill Gates met repeatedly with Epstein between 2011 and at least 2014; all of those meetings took place after Epstein's 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor. Gates has since called those meetings a "huge mistake" and said he regrets "every minute" spent with Epstein. (Source: ABC News, February 2026; https://abcnews.go.com/US/foolish-bill-gates-denies-wrongdoing-after-latest-release/story?id=129845144). What’s fascinating to me is that Melinda Gates was all over the issue.  Melinda told Bill she was uncomfortable with Epstein after meeting him in 2013. Bill kept the relationship going. She eventually left the marriage and their foundation. That is a powerful leadership data point; when the person closest to you tells you something is wrong, and you ignore it.

All three men deny knowledge of Epstein's crimes, and of course, there is no proof that any of them committed a crime. After all, the only person charged or convicted was, wait for it, a woman.

That is not the point.

The point is this: power has always attracted those willing to look the other way. A president. A future president. One of the richest men on the planet. All were documented in close orbit around a convicted sex offender, and none of them saw anything, heard anything, or asked any questions. That is not just a failure of character. That is a complete failure of leadership.

And it is not ancient history. It is a pattern. A centuries-old pattern of powerful men treating the vulnerable as expendable when money, access, and influence are on the table. From monarchs and clergy to industrialists and now technologists, the story is always the same: profit over ethics, power over people, and children as the easiest victims.

They Knew. They Profited. They Looked Away.

The first jury trial against social media companies for deliberately designing platforms to addict children opened yesterday in Los Angeles. Meta and YouTube are in the courtroom, finally. TikTok and Snapchat already settled before the trial began.

Note: Meta and Alphabet have a combined market capitalization of $5.6 trillion; more than the entire annual economic output of Japan, the world's fourth largest economy, are sitting in a Los Angeles courtroom being told their products work like slot machines for children.

Two of the wealthiest corporations in human history are sitting in a courtroom being accused of engineering addiction into the brains of children. The plaintiff's attorney, Mark Lanier, said the case boils down to something he calls "ABC": addicting the brains of children. He called Instagram and YouTube "digital casinos" and compared every swipe of the screen to pulling the handle of a slot machine; except, instead of money, kids are gambling with their mental health. (Source: CBS News, February 9, 2026; https://www.cbsnews.com/news/meta-google-youtube-social-media-addiction-trial-los-angeles/)

The core issue is simple and damning: these companies knowingly borrowed techniques from the gambling and tobacco industries to hook young users, driving depression, self-harm, and eating disorders; all to maximize advertising revenue.

This is a story about ethics and disgustingly bad leadership, not just a legal one.

More than 1,600 plaintiffs (victims) are represented in this consolidated action, including hundreds of families and more than 250 school districts. The lead plaintiff, a 20-year-old woman identified as KGM, started using YouTube at age six and Instagram at age nine. Before she finished elementary school, she had posted 284 videos on YouTube. By her teen years, she says she was consumed by the platforms to the point where she developed anxiety, body dysmorphia, and suicidal thoughts.

Her mother tried to block the apps. It did not matter. Meta's own internal research, a study they called "Project Myst," found two things: first, that children who had experienced trauma and stress were particularly vulnerable to addiction on their platforms; and second, that parental controls and supervision made almost no difference. They knew parental controls were window dressing. They shipped the product anyway.

Think about that for a minute.

The data showed that their product was particularly dangerous for the most vulnerable children.

The data told them the safety features they were promoting publicly were ineffective.

And they kept going. Sound familiar?

The Wall Street Journal ran a landmark investigative series, "The Facebook Files," beginning in September 2021, that blew the doors off this story years before it reached a courtroom. The series, based on internal documents leaked by whistleblower Frances Haugen, exposed everything from Facebook's knowledge that Instagram was harming teens' mental health, to its "XCheck" system that exempted 5.8 million VIP users, including celebrities and politicians, from the content rules everyone else had to follow. An internal Facebook review of XCheck included an admission that should haunt every leader in America: "We are not actually doing what we say we do publicly." (Source: The Wall Street Journal, "The Facebook Files," September 2021; https://www.wsj.com/tech/facebook-files-xcheck-zuckerberg-elite-rules-11631541353)

Internal documents presented in the courtroom this week painted an even more disturbing picture. Google's own documents likened YouTube to a casino. Internal Meta communications included an employee stating that Instagram is "like a drug" and that employees are "basically pushers." Not my words. Theirs.

Mark Zuckerberg is expected to testify in person this week. So is Instagram head Adam Mosseri and YouTube CEO Neal Mohan. People are already drawing comparisons to the Big Tobacco trials of the 1990s, which resulted in a $206 billion settlement and permanent restrictions on marketing to minors. The parallels are obvious: companies that knew their product caused harm, suppressed or downplayed the evidence, and fought accountability every step of the way. (Source: NPR, January 27, 2026; https://www.npr.org/2026/01/27/nx-s1-5684196/social-media-kids-addiction-mental-health-trial)

The Pattern Is the Problem

Here is what connects Epstein's world to Silicon Valley's courtroom: in both cases, the most powerful people in the room chose to prioritize what they wanted over who they were hurting. The mechanisms are different. One involved private jets and private islands. The other involves algorithms and infinite scroll. But the leadership failure is identical: when the people at the top know harm is being done and choose not to act, they are complicit. Period.

Leaders set the tone. Every product decision, every algorithm tweak, every metric that gets prioritized sends a signal about what the organization actually values, regardless of what the mission statement says. In the case of Big Tech, leaders made billions by setting the tone, and the tone they set was: kids do not matter, money does.

The justification always sounds reasonable in the moment: we need to hit our numbers; the market demands growth; our competitors are doing it. But there is a line. And whether you are a president flying on a convicted predator's jet or a CEO shipping an addictive product to nine-year-olds, crossing that line is not a gray area. It is a choice.

Purpose-driven leadership means asking one basic question before every major decision: "Who does this serve, and at what cost?"

When your growth strategy depends on the vulnerability of children, you have lost the thread. You are no longer leading. You are extracting.

The real question this trial raises is not just for Big Tech. It is for every leader: Are your incentive structures aligned with your stated values? Or are you optimizing for a metric that quietly harms the people you claim to serve?

I’ll have more to say about incentive structures in upcoming notes, but for now keep this in mind:  people do what you pay them to do.

I think about The 51% Rule here. Every day, every leader has the opportunity to tip the balance in favor of doing the right thing, even when it is hard, even when it costs something. The leaders at Meta, YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat had that opportunity thousands of times over the past decade. The powerful men who orbited Jeffrey Epstein had that opportunity every time they boarded the plane, accepted the dinner invitation, or looked the other way. They chose the wrong side of the equation every time.

More bellwether trials are coming.

The Epstein files keep getting released.

But the leadership lesson is already clear.

Your culture is not what your mission statement says. Your culture is what you tolerate. And if you tolerate systems that harm the people you serve, whether those systems are algorithms designed to addict children or social circles designed to protect predators, you are not leading. You are presiding over extraction.

The country's top leaders, business and government, have failed in their most basic responsibility: protecting the most vulnerable among us.

That failure is not partisan. It is not limited to one industry. It is a crisis of leadership itself.

What is your take? I would love to hear how you are thinking about the responsibility leaders carry when their products and their power touch millions of lives.

Watch the trial coverage: https://youtu.be/uPwS9aYk_-U (on YouTube, that’s irony for you).

Be well,

Ron

Sources:

FactCheck.org, "The Epstein Connections Fueling Conspiracy Theories," August 2019: https://www.factcheck.org/2019/08/the-epstein-connections-fueling-conspiracy-theories/

NPR, "Justice Department releases more Epstein files and some mention Trump," December 2025: https://www.npr.org/2025/12/23/nx-s1-5653302/more-epstein-files-released-trump-mentioned

ABC News, "Bill Gates denies wrongdoing after latest release of Epstein files," February 2026: https://abcnews.go.com/US/foolish-bill-gates-denies-wrongdoing-after-latest-release/story?id=129845144

CNN, "Bill Gates faces fresh scrutiny for Epstein ties following Justice Department's document release," February 2026: https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/05/politics/kfile-gates-scrutiny-justice-department-documents

CBS News, "Social media companies accused of 'addicting the brains of children' as trial begins," February 9, 2026: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/meta-google-youtube-social-media-addiction-trial-los-angeles/

NPR, "Social media giants face trial over claims they harm kids," January 27, 2026: https://www.npr.org/2026/01/27/nx-s1-5684196/social-media-kids-addiction-mental-health-trial

The Wall Street Journal, "The Facebook Files: Facebook Says Its Rules Apply to All. Company Documents Reveal a Secret Elite That's Exempt," September 13, 2021: https://www.wsj.com/tech/facebook-files-xcheck-zuckerberg-elite-rules-11631541353

Rolling Stone, "This Trial Could Hold Big Tech Accountable for Kids' Social Media Addiction," February 2026: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/meta-google-social-media-addiction-trial-opener-1235510038/

Courthouse News Service, "'Engineered addiction': Landmark trial over social media's effect on kids boots up in downtown LA," February 9, 2026: https://www.courthousenews.com/engineered-addiction-landmark-trial-over-social-medias-effect-on-kids-boots-up-in-downtown-la/

CNN, "What 3 million new documents tell us about Trump's ties to Jeffrey Epstein," January 2026: https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/31/politics/new-documents-trump-epstein

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/05/watch-facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugens-senate-testimony.html

https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/FC8A558E-824E-4914-BEDB-3A7B1190BD49

(c) 2025, Ron Boire, and The Upland Group LLC. Lead with Purpose and The 51% Rule are trademarks of Ron Boire

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