to resolve the 2 plot holes of

1) impossible prestige-for-cash if Epstein's involvement is kept secret

2) the weird way in which Gates is involved

check out my interpretation at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20904781

As Churchill once said, mankind occasionally stumbles over the truth, but picks itself up and carries on.

I'd like to suggest that y'all are almost tripping over the connection that Epstein was possibly trying to get compromising material on researchers working on US military technology projects and then looking at it, going 'huh?' and wandering off again.

I don’t have a citation, but MIT and the defense/energy industry are definitely intertwined and everyone on campus knows it.

Most universities don’t have something like Lincoln Labs, which is literally a DoD research center: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Lincoln_Laboratory

MIT restricts sharing funding info with non-MIT people. So you aren’t likely to find a concrete source. But this is very true.