By Yiğit Saner
The most gripping detail in the Epstein files was, unsurprisingly, the witness accounts describing the horrifying perversions of Western elites. But what’s come spilling out of the files points to a decay far broader than individual perversions. It suggests that the crimes alleged in the documents and testimonies – pedophilia, murder, sex trafficking, rape, even infant mutilation — were all pieces of a global web of blackmail, influence and operations.
Once the documents released by the US Department of Justice have been fully digested, the real question to be discussed is about the geopolitical and financial architecture underlying all the parties, the planes, the islands and the victims.
More than a scandal: A mechanism
The files point to a zone where states, intelligence agencies, billionaires, politicians, and organized crime intersect. Sex trafficking, child abuse, and the rest of the allegations are ways to control and steer powerful figures through networks of compromise and blackmail.
These kinds of networks represent the dirty back kitchen behind the West’s carefully polished storefront. What emerges from the files is that decision-makers in the very centers that lecture the world about democracy, human rights, and the rule of law are controlled and managed through their personal weaknesses.
Mossad and CIA
Claims in the files tying Epstein to Mossad and the CIA shift the story out of the realm of “elite perversion” and into the terrain of intelligence warfare. It looks like Epstein wasn’t just a supplier for the pleasures of the rich, but a mediator for dirty business as well.
And here lies another fact. In the Western world, intelligence agencies often legitimize operations that stretch beyond the law in the name of “national security”, and relationships with shadowy figures then stop being an exception and rather become a part of the system. Epstein appears to be the “subcontractor” of that mechanism.
Geopolitical dimension
One of the most striking aspects of the files is that the Epstein network also showed a keen interest in crisis zones, not just sex trafficking. Plans to gain access to state assets in Libya for “reconstruction,” the framing of the chaos after the Maidan events in Ukraine as an “opportunity,” and the treatment of regions like Somaliland as future hubs for investment and influence…
Taken together, the picture once again shows that Western power circles view collapsing or fragmented states as “markets” waiting to be tapped. Wars, coups, and internal unrest aren’t just geopolitical flashpoints, they also present rent-seeking opportunities. The Epstein file cracks open a small but critical window onto the backstage of these rent-seeking networks.
“Blackmail state”
Video footage, hidden cameras, and alleged “archives” in the files strengthen the suspicion that blackmail may have been the network’s core function. Politicians, business executives, bureaucrats, whoever stepped into that web risked becoming a potential hostage.
The mechanism paints a grim portrait of how Western democracies actually operate. Voters cast their ballots, but the possibility that certain decisions are quietly shaped by blackmailing and secret recordings undermine the rhetoric of “representative democracy.” The files suggest an architecture of “blackmail state”.
Institutional rot
Western media and politicians often prefer to frame the Epstein scandal as “bad apples”: a handful of pervert billionaires, a couple of wicked politicians. But what the files point to is less about individual perversion and more about institutional rot.
This wasn’t a network stitched together by chance. It expanded for years, untouched and shielded when necessary. The fact that Epstein could operate so brazenly for years says a lot about how the system makes room for figures like him.
West-centered criminal space
Also, the Epstein case is a serious blow to the West-centered global system’s claim of “moral superiority”. For the very centers that try to lecture the world through human rights discourse to have generated a crime-and-blackmail space on this scale shakes the system’s legitimacy at its core.
What really deserves discussion today is the system that made Epstein possible. It’s a system built on an architecture that turns crises into opportunity, runs intelligence operations through shadowy intermediaries, and weaponizes sex trafficking as a form of influence.