Posted on X By @DataRepublican

When it comes to the World Economic Forum (WEF), there are two caricatures of the attendees – or “weffers” they like to call themselves.

In one version, they are mustache-twirling elites huddled in smoke-filled rooms, plotting a one-world government, mass surveillance, and “you will eat ze bugs!”

In the other, they are cast as saviors: the most powerful people on the planet convening in good faith to solve humanity’s biggest problems.

This week, @DataInterpretr and I spent quality time with the attendees. We took a different approach than most journalists – we did not ambush them with gotcha questions. Instead, we simply sat at tables, started conversations with staffers and speakers, and asked questions – lots of them.

What we got was neither caricature, but something much darker – a first-hand perspective of how tyranny is imposed from a ruling class that will swear up and down that they are not part of any ruling class–and that it controls nothing.
How can that be?

It is undeniably true that the WEF has been a source of coercive power. The clearest example came during COVID, when Klaus Schwab, working alongside the Big Four accounting firms, used the crisis to roll out ESG metrics. These frameworks stripped influence from ordinary stakeholders and concentrated it in the hands of activists and technocrats, while redirecting corporate capital toward left-wing causes.

To understand how that dynamic works, we must enter the mind of a weffer.

First, nearly all of them are either extremely wealthy or employed by people who are. Hotels cost $25,000 a night. Gucci is the default for handbags. Coats fall to the floor, trimmed with mink. And despite the sustainability rhetoric, the menus advertise meat proudly, with few vegetarian options in sight.

They do not understand that they are perceived as hypocrites. They are aware that some people see them as evil, controlling overlords… and they laugh at the idea, because in their own minds it is absurd.

Yet in another sense, it is true.

Alex Soros became an object of ridicule after his WEF remarks:

“So, um, you know, so, um, you know… but when I see this, you know, when I look at this, um, you know, um, you know, uh, more globally regarding, regarding, you know, regarding democracy, I also say to myself, “When was this great time that everybody got along so well, and, you know, things were going so, so great?” I mean, I think, you know, um, uh, um, you know, the, um, you know, I think that we really have to be careful here in, you know, in this nostalgia, uh, for a time, uh, you know, for a time past, because a lot of the reactions we’re seeing in society are actually reactions to positive, uh, to positive things like, i- you know, like equality, uh, for women, um, you know, uh, and, um, uh, you know, and greater diversity.”

For all that word salad, the key to remember is: Alex is representative.

They all speak this way. Every panel, every “dialogue,” follows the same pattern. Few people are trying to land a clear argument or persuade an audience. They speak to signal belonging, to demonstrate fluency in a shared language, and to impress one another.

@DataInterpretr and I learned this firsthand. We made it a point to ask every weffer we could find what they actually did and what they actually believed. We spoke with senior WEF staffers working directly alongside co-host André Hoffmann, with philanthropy idealists, and with corporate employees. We asked the same simple questions again and again:

• What is your vision for AI?
• Why all the focus on AI?
• What has your organization done to help humanity?
• What concrete implementations do you think will happen?

Not a single person could answer with specifics. Every response relied on the same vague abstractions Alex Soros had used. They spoke at length about “AI safety” without defining it. They talked about “helping companies” without explaining how. They talked about “sustainability” without being able to explain how that was implemented.

They were unfailingly friendly. They were eager to talk, eager to be seen as important, eager for our attention. But when pressed for substance, there was nothing beneath the language; only more language.

Some common, and surprising threads, however, did emerge.

First, they do not think in political terms.

That may seem odd, given the viral clips of figures like Newsom or Macron attacking Trump. But those moments are the exception, not the rule. Most of the people we spoke to do not experience the world as political at all.

They see the world as small and borderless. They do not think in terms of nations, elections, or sovereignty. They see humanity as a single, undifferentiated mass. And because they think this way, they fail to recognize how consequential their actions are downstream.

Now imagine a president who arrives and insists on the opposite. One who says: borders exist. Nations exist. Cultures exist. Individuals exist, and they have agency.

This is the moment politics intrudes. And this is when their hostility toward Trump begins.
Not because they disagree with his policies, but because he rejects the frame that allows them to see themselves as above politics and beyond accountability. Trump forces them to confront the fact that they are actors with power. And they despise him for making that impossible to ignore.

Second, they genuinely do not believe they are controlling anything.

That may seem implausible, given their infamous “eat the bugs” rhetoric. But in their own minds, they are not issuing directives. They see themselves as tossing ideas into a shared space, a platform where the world’s economic leaders gather to exchange thoughts and explore possibilities.

This is where the conspiracy theorists get it wrong. The power that flows out of the WEF is not centrally planned. It is emergent.

No one gives orders. No one needs to. A set of ideas is floated. The same language gets repeated across panels. The same concepts get picked up by consultants, NGOs, and corporate strategy teams. Eventually, those ideas harden into frameworks, metrics, and expectations that shape real-world behavior, without anyone ever feeling responsible for the result.

We saw this clearly when we asked people what had happened to the intense focus on climate change. Most responded with blank or puzzled looks. That was the moment it clicked. They had never truly believed in climate change as a fixed commitment. Those were yesterday’s topics. Today’s topic is AI.

In their minds, there is no contradiction here, because none of these ideas were meant to be taken literally in the first place. The WEF, to them, is just a platform. But when the same platform sets the agenda year after year, its “conversations” become policy, whether anyone claims ownership or not.

This is how tyranny looks in the modern world. It arrives dressed as dialogue, consensus, and expertise. It is imposed by people who sincerely believe they are doing nothing at all.

The real danger is not that they think they rule the world. It is that they do not realize they already rule it, and feel no responsibility for the effects. They float from topic to topic, from climate to AI to whatever comes next, leaving hardened systems in their wake, while insisting they were only ever talking.

No masterminds. Just a ruling class that refuses to see itself as one, and a system that converts its casual conversations into permanent constraints on everyone else.

And that, more than any mustache-twirling fantasy, is what should worry us.