Oligarchy
The PayPal Mafia, the architecture of power and the Rothschild connection
Margherita Furlan [via Naked Capitalism 06-06-2026]
The link between these key figures is no coincidence: it is organic. [Elon] Musk and [Peter] Thiel co-founded PayPal. The network that emerged from this – known as the PayPal Mafia – now holds key positions in the Trump administration: David Sacks is in charge of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies; Vice President J.D. Vance’s political career was launched by a $15 million donation from Thiel; Michael Kratsios, Thiel’s former chief of staff, is an adviser to Trump. Thiel also founded, with Vivek Ramaswamy, a financial firm explicitly designed to challenge the responsible investment model promoted by BlackRock.
Documents relating to the Epstein case, made public by the US Congress in 2026, revealed that Thiel’s Valar Ventures fund accepted $40 million from Jeffrey Epstein and that Thiel corresponded with Epstein for five years prior to his death.
The inclusion of the Rothschild dynasty in this investigation is not driven by conspiracy theories. It stems from an analytical necessity. The Rothschilds represent four things simultaneously.
First: the historical model….
Second: the current operational presence….
Third: the link with BlackRock….
Fourth: the link with Israel….
The Rothschilds do not “control the world”. But they represent the source code of the system that BlackRock has industrialised, that Palantir has digitised, and that the Israeli ecosystem has militarised. To ignore them would be like studying a programme without knowing the language in which it is written. To understand the system, we must stop thinking of it as a conspiracy and start thinking of it as an architecture. A four-storey building, where each floor needs the others to stand, where the tenants of one floor are often the owners of another, and where those on the outside—that is, citizens and their elected governments—have no keys to any of the entrances….
If the first level is the body and the second is the brain, the third is the blood that nourishes them. The money that finances the construction of satellites, the development of software, the operation of data centres, the acquisition of strategic companies, and the restructuring of sovereign debt. Here there are three names, known in the world of finance as the “Big Three”: BlackRock with its $14 trillion in assets under management, Vanguard with around $9 trillion, and State Street with nearly $4.5 trillion. Together, these three funds hold significant stakes in almost every major listed company on the planet. According to various academic studies, the “Big Three” are the largest or among the top three shareholders in over 90% of the companies in the S&P 500 index, which comprises the 500 largest US companies. But their holdings do not stop at the United States: they are present in Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa. In Italy, as we have documented, BlackRock alone holds over €17 billion in stakes in the main listed companies.
These funds do not govern in the sense that a President or Prime Minister governs. They do not issue orders, sign decrees or command armies. Their power is different and, in some ways, more profound: they shape the gravitational field within which all other players operate. When BlackRock decides to overweight a sector in its portfolios, billions of Dollars flow in that direction and the sector grows. When it decides to underweight it, the flow reverses and the sector contracts. When it publishes its sovereign risk index and the assessment of a country is negative, the cost of that country’s debt rises, because the market follows the lead of the world’s largest investor. There is no need to ring ministers. There is no need to bribe anyone. All it takes is to move capital, and the rest follows. The historical template for this model of power is the Rothschild dynasty, which in the nineteenth century invented the fundamental principle of modern finance: whoever controls information before others do controls the markets, and whoever controls the markets influences governments without needing to govern….
