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Sep 23, 2025
Welcome back to Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu. In today’s episode, Tom sits down with Mike Benz for a conversation that will fundamentally reshape the way you see the machinery behind global influence, media, and soft power. If you’ve always assumed that NGOs and international aid organizations are purely philanthropic, prepare to have your mind blown. Mike Benz peels back the curtain on how NGOs, government agencies, hedge funds, and massive corporate interests intersect and often operate as extensions of intelligence work, narrative control, and economic opportunism on a global scale.

From the evolution of media manipulation since the days of the printing press to the explosion of AI-powered censorship and narrative shaping, Mike explains the historical playbook and the modern tactics that shape elections, revolutions, and public sentiment. Tom and Mike dig deeply into headline-grabbing examples, like the Ukraine conflict, U.S. foreign policy, and even the true impact of Elon Musk’s takeover of X (formerly Twitter) on the global censorship apparatus.

This episode doesn’t shy away from tough questions—how do the interests of global elites and hedge funds dictate policy? Are uprisings and political polarization just collateral damage of soft power warfare? And can transparency and public oversight reign in institutions that have grown more secretive than the CIA?

Get ready for a riveting, eye-opening discussion that will challenge everything you thought you knew about media, power, and the forces shaping our world today.

00:00 – "Intro"
01:00 – “How the U.S. Buys Global Influence—One Newsroom at a Time”
15:54 – “Corporations Are Writing U.S. Foreign Policy”
26:55 – “Coups or Revolutions? Who’s Really Pulling the Strings”
39:14 – “Protests Are Being Engineered—Here’s How”
44:39 – “Teachers Union + Ukraine = WTF?”
58:25 – “Elon Musk Just Shattered the Censorship Machine”
01:05:32 – “Citizen Journalists Are Beating the Media—Badly”
01:24:03 – “Wall Street’s Quiet Takeover of U.S. Foreign Policy”
01:28:18 – “Social Media Is Powering a Global Uprising”
01:35:52 – “Fake Allies: The Hidden Politics You’re Not Supposed to See”
01:47:14 – “Ukraine: The Shocking Alliance of NGOs and Foreign Fighters”
01:58:41 – “The CIA Has a Shadow Playbook—And No Oversight”