Recently, mention of a little-known conference that took place in Tucson, Arizona nearly a year ago caused a flurry of postings on Twitter. The conference, titled "'Smart Cities,' The Transhumanist Game and 'Lifelong Learning'" was spearheaded by activist, researcher, and blogger Alison McDowell of Philadelphia. McDowell's central message, supported by a dizzying body of credible information, indicates that a global digital police state is in the offing and that a short-term goal is "to have the masses fight each other and not look upwards to the people who are controlling the system."

McDowell's purpose then and now is to change this by blowing the whistle on as many of the architects and their plans as possible through meetings such as the Tucson conference, as well as talks and updates posted since then on her website. "We are not powerless," she says, "but we must be willing to look at the reality of what is happening."

McDowell's conference laid out the various pieces of the global digital puzzle, some of which are familiar but most of which are largely unknown to the average American citizen. At best, even if one is aware, it is difficult to penetrate all the layers and connect the many dots. She contends that human beings will become capital assets, controlled by a cradle-to-grave digital tracking and monitoring system.

Personal data as a new asset class

"The last global crash was based on securitized debt of housing and real estate," McDowell pointed out. "A couple hundred billionaires needed a place to put their money and so they would create synthetic debt products to make that happen. In the decade plus since then, the wealth has only become more concentrated and the technology more sophisticated."

As if to illustrate McDowell's point, Wall Street has recently been in the news as Goldman Sachs-backed investors are using two funds, Growth eREIT VII and Fundrise Interval Fund, to buy up entire tracts of homes for rental property in warmer areas of the country, including the Cypress Bay housing development in Brevard County, Florida, and similar developments in South Carolina, Mississippi, and Texas. McDowell charges that during the last economic crash the investment giant Blackstone, "bought up the real estate and is now the largest private homeowner, and is being very repressive in its landlord practices."

She contends that "the only thing bigger than real estate to create a synthetic debt product about is human beings... The means to securitize people as debt products are being developed, based on the consideration that people are a debt burden on society to this or that degree." She explained that before a baby is even born, data analytics will be used to create an artificial "debt" to society based on genomics, where the child lives, the parents' educational achievements, their salaries, and/or their health profiles. "People have been pushed out of their jobs, so more people are living in poverty," she said. To monetize them, [the controllers] need to work on poverty management, which with digital identity and digitized debt, is going to be possible.

"Many people never got out of the gig economy," she continued, "which is freelance work or short-term contracts as opposed to permanent jobs. Many people lost all of their assets. It cleared the decks for mass dispossession, which opens the doors to smart cities where people are tracked and manipulated on a level that we cannot even imagine. The plan is embedded in managing poverty and economic dispossession."

Personal data then, is a new asset class, such as the World Economic Forum has been talking about, which is also where the term "the great reset" originated. "Fortunes will be made up of people," McDowell predicted. "It's about creating markets and the markets are in data. They have to have a means to track a person as an asset and that's what the vaccine passports are for. They need interoperable data and they need to track each of us as an asset."

A Twitter user commenting on McDowell's presentation earlier this month noted: "The Chinese demonstrate how the 'vax passport' is an immensely powerful tool that can unlock or restrict people from accessing anything: bank accounts, transportation, commerce, food... AI (artificial intelligence) can be programmed to lock 'dissidents' out of society for 'bad behavior.'

"What 'passports' really do," the Twitter feed continues, "is create a perpetual surveillance state that tracks all online and offline behavior, leveraging AI, facial and gait recognition, and even other citizens to contribute to your personal 'compliance' record..."

The World Economic Forum admits on its website that "the Covid-19 crisis, and the political, economic and social disruptions it has caused, is fundamentally changing the traditional context for decision-making. The inconsistencies, inadequacies, and contradictions of multiple systems — from health and financial to energy and education — are more exposed than ever amidst a global context of concern for lives, livelihoods, and the planet. Leaders find themselves at a historic crossroads, managing short-term pressures against medium-and long-term uncertainties."

Even more telling is what the forum calls "THE OPPORTUNITY." It reads: As we enter a unique window of opportunity to shape the recovery, this initiative will offer insights to help inform all those determining the future state of global relations, the direction of national economies, the priorities of societies, the nature of business models, and the management of a global commons. Drawing from the vision and vast expertise of the leaders engaged across the Forum's communities, the Great Reset initiative has a set of dimensions to build a new social contract that honours the dignity of every human being."

The reader might logically wonder what this "set of dimensions" might be as well as how the Great Reset initiative will honor every human being's dignity. Will it be by paying to euthanize "people who are 'too poor to continue living with dignity,'" as the Canadian government is now offering to do for its citizens, according to reports by Tucker Carlson Tonight and The Gateway Pundit.

"In 2021, the tyrannical Canadian government began offering to pay to euthanize anyone who feels as such," the Pundit wrote. "Like things weren't dystopian enough with the lockdowns and oppressive public health measures... Killing the poor because they lack enough 'dignity' to live? That's a far cry from the typical social programs that are championed by the radical left."

McDowell reported last year that Australia is a testbed for a lot of the ideas presented during her conference. "They have piloted the first smart blockchain social impact bond there, and they've already developed the first sustainable blockchain. The fortune size depends on the quality of the human capital. Australia piloted the first programmable blockchain money for disability benefits."

Blockchain is a system in which a record of transactions made in bitcoin or another cryptocurrency are maintained across a number of computers that are linked in a peer-to-peer network. A blockchain is essentially a digital ledger of transactions that is duplicated and distributed across the entire network of computer systems on the blockchain. According to a Brookings Institute report, a social impact bond is "a form of results-based financing in which an investor provides upfront capital for social services programs, and this investment is repaid—often with interest—based on the program's achievement of predetermined outcomes."

Capturing data from infancy

When and how does all this tracking begin? One example from the University of Chicago provides a clue. The program, called Lena, captures the early "talk" of infants through a digital listening device worn in a onesie or in comfortable clothing on a toddler. Lena translates the recordings of parent-child vocal interaction into data which can be delivered to families, educators, and others in understandable feedback reports. As McDowell pointed out: "The program targets poor families to make sure parents talk to their children enough and that they are using the right words. It's framed as 'caring about these children;' as 'social justice.' But it's really about commodifying the parent-child relationship."

Why would parents agree to such an intrusive and big-brotherly gimmick? While some parents have already done so willingly, believing that the program is the result of an overarching "concern" for "the children," McDowell observed that down the line, as digital capital plans are developed, if jobs are threatened or the monitoring becomes the carrot for being allowed to obtain food, then the initiative is no longer a benign choice but an ominous mandate. In 2022, we can see the potential for such coercion with baby formula shortages and rumors of future food shortages.

Digitizing universal pre-K

The next step is universal preschool, a familiar concept that has become data driven because, McDowell explained, preschool children are "an impact market." The goal is to change and mold their behavior while monitoring and tracking their progress. Key players/planners include Dr. James Heckman, creator of The Heckman Equation at the University of Chicago Economics Department. Heckman's model advocates investment in cradle-to-workforce development, primarily focused on "disadvantaged families" to "nurture early development of cognitive and social skills in children from birth to age five; sustain early development with effective education through to adulthood," with the goal of gaining "a more capable, productive and valuable workforce that pays dividends to America for generations to come."

Early childhood programs stress "socio-emotional learning (SEL)," the proponents of which call for focusing on "attitudes, values, and behaviors" rather than on preparing children for academic learning. SEL is ill-defined and puts early childhood teachers in charge of the moral, ethical, and emotional development of their charges. In 2019, the Pioneer Institute stated: "Educational software developers purport to have created products that can determine a number of sensitive personality traits through students' interaction with digital platforms. Much of this monitoring occurs without the consent of children or their parents. Some software — especially for video gaming — goes beyond assessing traits, and aims to encourage the production of students who are well suited for a workforce development-centered education."

A company called Ripple Effects markets SEL programs for pre-K through grade 12. The company's website defines SEL as follows:

• S is for social
  – strengthening the connective tissue between self and others, both interpersonal relationships and the wider social contexts that impact how people experience themselves and others.


• E is for emotion
  – recognizing feelings, naming them in ways that make personal and cultural sense, understanding their changing nature and how they impact perception — managing their intensity and expressing them in ways that empower the feeler while also respecting others.


• L is for learning
  – specifically learning the non-academic things that enable people to develop a strong sense of themselves, get along, and get ahead in an increasingly diverse and fast changing world.

This explanation confirms that SEL has nothing to do with teaching academics and everything to do with molding the attitudes and feelings of impressionable children according to the doctrine of the progressive left.

In order to make sure the indoctrination is effective, the tracking aspect is key. After all, how are the "impact bonds" to pay off if Goldman-Sachs, billionaire J.B. Pritzker, and other investors cannot obtain the electronic data that can only come from digitally monitoring the behavioral changes of students as they are manipulated through universal pre-K? And yes, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, before he became governor, was a key figure in a $7 million preschool program for at-risk children in the Granite School District in Salt Lake County, Utah. Perhaps as Alison McDowell asserted at her conference: "They are all in on it."

McDowell mentioned Pritzker's involvement in the Utah preschool pilot and noted that he had also "traveled up and down California pushing universal pre-K so [he] could run [his] data bonds. He said, 'what we can actually change is character.'" She added that many child-focused digital apps, such as Sesame Street workshop apps and PBS Kids apps are all about changing behavior.

One producer of digital behavior modification tools is Hatch Education, which developed "an interactive play table called WePlaySmart. McDowell described it as "a TV-like flat screen that's parallel to the floor and has two fish-eye lens cameras on either side, and the children are supposed to play together. The cameras record the play and then score the children's social behavior on a rubric. It has facial recognition and [the data] goes to a permanent record."

McDowell's prediction in 2021 that people would increasingly need affordable childcare and be more likely to enroll their kids in corporate-like childcare settings where they will be monitored and recorded, could not have been more prophetic as the economy tanks in 2022. She noted that others are working on universal pre-K initiatives across the country, including for example Tom Luce, who founded Texas 2036 and "is working with the federal government on universal pre-K and has said he'd like his [childcare] companies to have the kids 'from the age of two to college age.'"

Rethinking education

At a Future Education Conference that took place last December, Pavel Luksha, Ph.D., director and founder of Global Education Futures and Professor of Practice at Moscow School of Management — discussed a regenerative economy and digital paradigm shift that requires "rethinking every aspect of our civilization." Pavel said "education must be part of this; we must think of education in terms of creating less hierarchical, more inclusive, more opportunity-based and truly lifelong learning models that encourage everyone to self-actualize but also to be part of larger communities that create that possible future.

"So this is all about the transition that we call in our research the ecosystemic paradigm which of course mirrors the idea of regenerative society on the level of education. It is about personalization, lifelong learning, the use of digital delivery and so on. But it also invites us to think about every facet of our society as a learning opportunity and this is what I think we need to start focusing on, that the delivery bottleneck disappears if we start rethinking the way that our society works, if we truly see that every working opportunity, every social activist opportunity, is a learning opportunity."

Pavel believes in creating "networks and connections between multiple learning institutions to support lifelong learning, both in physical learning spaces and online learning spaces directly engaged with learners, but also communities that influence learners from multiple perspectives." He believes brick and mortar universities should forget about building more campuses and offering more courses or degree programs, and instead see themselves at "the nexus point," at the connection point with every other aspect of society.

"We want to look at the breakup of the existing model [of education] as an invitation to create something totally new, and if we replicate in online space and [traditional] delivery space, the model of the past, this is not viable, and this is not what the future society and future generations" ... he trails off here without completing the thought. What he is not stating is that the existing educational system is not viable for the central planners who want a global digital tracking system for every human being from cradle to grave, to be manipulated as the planners see fit. He then continued: "We need to start thinking about how we learn and what we learn as essentially the same, so the learning delivery models necessarily should embrace the idea of learning spaces that cultivate the future," whatever that means.

'Learning' through gaming technology

Arizona State University President Michael Crow touts technology-based "education through exploration through game-based learning," called the Fourth Realm. "Just imagine this at the end of the game — and we're building this game — you don't take a single test, you don't take a single course, you don't have a single lecturer, and at the end of the game that you play you'll be able to pass any college entrance exam, or what we call Cambridge A-level exams. Anyone that completes the game; doesn't make any difference if it's a boy or girl, will be able to pass an A level exam in math, chemistry, physics, or biology, period." How this will work in practice is anyone's guess since the actual product and processes are likely proprietary, but one wonders if Crow realized that in his politically correct, digital world he only acknowledged the existence of two genders.

Nonetheless, such visions transcend politics, education as most people understand it, and everything else with which the average American citizen is familiar. They represent a global shift to digital life, with gamification the theme of the day.

As McDowell's 2021 conference made clear, we are looking at a new financial structure of human capital, manipulated by those in power who want to financialize all of natural life, including the environment, which is where Agenda 2030 and the environmental movement come in. As McDowell put it: "They want to manage us in relation to the world's resources, tied to sustainable development goals, and so one piece is largely about managing people and one is about managing nature."

The development of technology has come a long way since Phyllis Schlafly warned repeatedly of the dangers of collecting data on schoolchildren before her passing in 2016. She wrote in 2010, for example: "The building of databases that track students from pre-school through entry into the workforce began with the emphasis in the 1990s on testing and standards, and was expanded under 'No Child Left Behind' mandates. This data collection has been proceeding at what observers call a 'breakneck pace' under the Obama Administration because of the offer of federal grants awarded through the Race to the Top competition, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and $250 million in Stimulus funds."

As far back as 1998, she lamented the collection of healthcare information on Americans in her popular Phyllis Schlafly Report: "The hottest issue in America today is our discovery that the Federal Government is trying to tag, track, and monitor our health care records through national databases and personal identification numbers... Americans are accustomed to enjoying the freedom to go about our daily lives without telling government what we are doing. The idea of having Big Brother monitor our life and activities, as forecast in George Orwell's great book 1984, is not acceptable in America."

How right she was that most Americans find such intrusions unacceptable, but our leaders have allowed these efforts to continue anyway. Mrs. Schlafly would be appalled but hardly surprised.

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