"The Financialization of the human herd" by Daniel Broudy

“The Financialization of the human herd” by Daniel Broudy

Download the presentation slides HERE!

The final presentation, titled “The Convergence of Data in Flesh: The Financialization and Transformation of the human, quote unquote, herd,” was delivered by Daniel Broudy, a professor of rhetoric and applied linguistics and a former imagery analyst with the US Army.

The presentation addressed the fundamental question of whether humanity consists of sovereign individuals with rights or is “livestock to be managed in this central technocratic control grid”.

Core Thesis and Framework

Daniel Broudy’s talk discussed the historical roots of a form of technocracy that operates partly hidden from conscious awareness, shaping contemporary views of human beings as “beasts of burden” whose populations must be controlled, surveilled, and sometimes reduced by self-appointed owners.

The march into a “post-human world of captivity” requires technological “upgrades to biology” designed to diminish human sovereignty, autonomy, and agency. The theoretical foundation for this analysis is rooted in Walter Lippmann’s early 20th-century analysis of the mass public and the social history of eugenics. Eugenics involved controlling societies and social practices like reproduction, with early proponents advocating for forced sterilization of the “feeble minded, physically disabled, or, quote, criminal, mystic or otherwise flawed,” and stressing the need to keep “stock pure”.

The Rise of the Technocratic Giants

The presentation argues that the power yielded by the aristocratic classes over the last 250 years has been regained in the form of a “global technocracy”—a vast network of transnational financiers and corporate giants (“the Giants”).

This global network operates to manage and protect concentrated global wealth and ensure capital growth.
The United States, United Kingdom, and Canada are described as “Plutonomies” governed by a “managerial, technocratic aristocracy”.
Since the Covid-19 narrative was globally rolled out, the pretenses of national sovereignty, democratic governance, and due processes of law have been undermined.

The human body and biosphere are depicted as entering a high-tech corral toward “total captivity”. The assaults on the biosphere are viewed as a war on the people, utilizing camouflaged weapons disguised as “false promises” of efficiency and ease in the “bio nano age”.

Convergence: Data, Flesh, and Finance

Brody highlighted the technological predictions made by political figures and the integration of technology and biological systems:

Early Warnings: In 2005, then-Senator Joe Biden predicted that consequential decisions in the 21st century would involve ruling on whether a microscopic tech could be implanted in a person to track every movement, or if brain scans could determine criminal inclination.
The Financialization of the Body: Technocratic tools of power are evident in the new “cryptocurrency system using body activity data”. This system points to a convergence of transhumanist goals: micro and nano-electronics, networking, connectivity, and the health/lifestyle industries.
The Covid Era Context: The patent for this cryptocurrency system was filed in March 2020, coinciding with the pandemic and the emerging bio-nano age. Klaus Schwab, addressing the World Economic Forum (WEF), pointed out that Covid-19 represented a key moment when “our physical, digital and biological identities can merge”.
Data as the New Gold: Data is fast becoming the new gold and the foundation of new technology and communication. If humans are resources, their DNA is instrumentalized and financialized, necessitating biometric identities.

Control Mechanisms: CBDCs and Surveillance

The presentation detailed how Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) serve as a primary mechanism of control:

Absolute Control: The CEO of the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), Agustin Carstens, stated that CBDCs would enable the central banking system to acquire “absolute control” over rules and regulations governing the use of the currency, backed by technology to enforce those rules.
Control/Permit System: The effort to push CBDCs is suspected to be about power, monitoring, controlling, and restricting transactions, functioning as a “control mechanism or a permit system” (like the old Soviet Union).
Consequences for Non-Compliance: This foolproof system of technocratic permission is central to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, where offenses (e.g., criticizing the system, consuming beyond quotas, honouring the “wrong object of worship”) could result in digital currencies being switched off, social scores diminished, or “existence erased”.
Implantable Technology: The ultimate goal, according to a central banker cited by Richard Verner, is an implantable CBDC (like a small grain of rice), potentially preceded by Universal Basic Income (UBI).
The Mark of Compliance: The Microsoft patent application for a cryptocurrency system using body activity data aroused attention for its similarity to a passage in the Book of Revelation, suggesting a future where no one may buy or sell without the mark. The CBDC will serve as the “mark of compliance,” extracting necessary digital information.

Historical Parallels and Dystopian Outcome

Broudy drew parallels between current technocratic goals and historical oppression:

IBM and the Holocaust: The historical precedent for using technology for mass control is detailed in Edwin Black’s work on IBM and the Holocaust. IBM’s Hollerith machine (a prototype of the microprocessor) enabled the Nazis to categorize people by punching holes in paper cards, reducing human beings to “points of statistical data” and facilitating the identification and extermination of the “undesirables”.
Modern Captivity: If isolation and slavery began with concentration camp inmates tattooed with an analog number, the new forms of slavery involve humanity being “microchipped and the global matrix with a digital number”.
The “Last Man”: Schwab’s declarations echo the prophecies of Friedrich Nietzsche, who described the “last man” as happily absorbed in a hyper-rational life of servitude, unthinking, amoral, and focused only on creature comforts and security.
The Loss of Ownership: The WEF predicted a dystopian 2030 future where ownership is replaced by service, and people “owe nothing” and “have no privacy”.

The presentation concluded with the observation that humanity risks capitulating control over its natural privileges and birthright, potentially reducing nations to “nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd,” echoing the words of Alexis de Tocqueville.

Watch also: