Browse Conspiracy Theories

Facebook discovered in December 2015 that Aleksandr Kogan's 'thisisyourdigitallife' app had harvested data from approximately 87 million users and transferred it to SCL Group/Cambridge Analytica. Facebook contacted Cambridge Analytica, obtained certifications of data deletion, and did not notify affected users. Internal documents produced in the 2018 FTC investigation showed Facebook had identified the policy enforcement gap but treated it as resolved by the deletion certifications. Christopher Wylie's whistleblower disclosures to the New York Times and The Guardian (17 March 2018) revealed that the data had not been deleted. Facebook paid a $5 billion FTC settlement (24 July 2019) and a $100 million SEC fine. The claim that Facebook knowingly concealed this data harvest from regulators and users is partially supported by the documentary record.

On 19 March 2020 President Trump called hydroxychloroquine a 'game-changer' for COVID-19 at a White House press briefing. The FDA granted an Emergency Use Authorization on 28 March 2020. Off-label prescribing spiked and Mehmet Oz promoted the drug on television. Two high-profile observational studies — in The Lancet (22 May 2020) and NEJM (1 May 2020) — appeared to show harm from HCQ; both were retracted on 4-5 June 2020 after the Surgisphere database underlying them was found to be fictitious (Sapan Desai, CEO). The FDA revoked the EUA on 15 June 2020. Large randomised trials — RECOVERY and WHO Solidarity — subsequently confirmed no meaningful benefit. The conspiracy framing is that HCQ was suppressed for political or commercial reasons; the reality is more complex: early fraudulent data damaged the evidentiary base, then rigorous trials ruled out benefit.

On 8 March 2020, Anthony Fauci told CBS 60 Minutes "people should not be walking around with masks." On 3 April 2020, the CDC reversed course and recommended universal cloth-mask use. Fauci later acknowledged in a December 2020 letter to Sinclair — and in a January 2021 BBC interview — that the initial messaging was shaped by concern that N95 supplies would be depleted for healthcare workers. The WHO made a similar reversal in June 2020. The episode is a documented public-health-communication failure debated in peer-reviewed literature (Brennan and Saad-Roy, Health Affairs, 2021). The conspiracy framing — that masks were always known to be useless and officials lied to control the public — conflates a real supply-driven communication decision with fabricated intent to deceive.

The Great Barrington Declaration (4 October 2020), signed by epidemiologists Jay Bhattacharya, Sunetra Gupta, and Martin Kulldorff, advocated 'focused protection' of the vulnerable over broad population lockdowns. The John Snow Memorandum (14 October 2020) offered a counter-statement signed by Devi Sridhar, Trish Greenhalgh, and others. Sweden's Anders Tegnell pursued a less restrictive approach. A Johns Hopkins meta-analysis (Herby, Jonung, and Hanke, January 2022) found lockdowns had minimal effect on COVID mortality in Europe and the US. The Royal Society published a competing evidence review in August 2023. Jay Bhattacharya was appointed HHS Director in 2025. This is a legitimate ongoing scientific and policy debate, distinct from conspiracy claims that lockdowns were designed for population control.

Beginning in the mid-1950s, an exchange programme between the University of Chicago economics department and the Catholic University of Chile sent Chilean students to study under Milton Friedman and Arnold Harberger. The resulting cohort — nicknamed the "Chicago Boys" and including Sergio de Castro, Pablo Baraona, Álvaro Bardón, and Jorge Cauas — implemented sweeping free-market reforms after the September 11 1973 coup that brought Augusto Pinochet to power. The reforms included mass privatisation of banking (1976-78) and pensions (1981 AFP system), steep tariff reductions, and central-bank independence. Their record is disputed: initial successes were followed by the severe 1981-83 recession and 1982 banking crisis. Naomi Klein's 'The Shock Doctrine' (2007) argued the reforms required authoritarian repression to implement; critics of Klein argue she overstated the causal link.

In 1989, economist John Williamson coined the term "Washington Consensus" in a paper listing ten policy prescriptions he observed as common ground among the IMF, World Bank, and US Treasury for Latin American reform: fiscal discipline, trade liberalisation, privatisation, deregulation, and capital-account openness. The policies were applied as conditions on IMF and World Bank loans through the 1990s and 2000s. Critics including Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz ("Globalization and Its Discontents," 2002) argued the conditionality was harmful and ideologically driven. The Asian financial crisis (1997-98) and Argentina's 2001-02 collapse became central exhibits. Williamson himself argued in 2004 that his original list was misrepresented as "neoliberalism" in its critics' use.

Inslaw Inc, owned by William and Nancy Hamilton, licensed its PROMIS case-management software to the US Department of Justice in 1982. The DOJ stopped payments, forcing Inslaw into bankruptcy in 1985. Two federal judges subsequently found the DOJ had taken the software "by trickery, fraud, and deceit," though these rulings were later overturned on jurisdictional grounds. A 1992 House Judiciary Committee report found "strong evidence" of misappropriation. Conspiracy claims — most associated with journalist Danny Casolaro, found dead in August 1991 — allege PROMIS was secretly backdoored and sold to foreign intelligence services via intermediaries including Robert Maxwell and Earl Brian. The theft is partially confirmed; the backdoor-and-foreign-sale claims remain unproven.

Pope Albino Luciani (John Paul I) died on 28 September 1978, after a 33-day pontificate — the shortest in modern history. Sister Vincenza Taffarel found him unresponsive in bed at 5 a.m. The Vatican announced death by heart attack 'while reading Imitation of Christ'. No autopsy was performed, as Vatican law prohibits papal autopsies. David Yallop's 'In God's Name' (1984) alleged poisoning orchestrated by the P2 Masonic lodge and Vatican Bank insiders — Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, banker Roberto Calvi, and Licio Gelli — who feared Luciani's planned financial reforms. John Cornwell's counter-investigation 'A Thief in the Night' (1989), commissioned by the Vatican, found no evidence of murder and attributed death to an undiagnosed pulmonary embolism.

In January 2021, retail investors coordinating on Reddit's r/WallStreetBets forum drove GameStop (GME) shares from $17.25 to an intraday peak of $483 on January 28, squeezing Melvin Capital's estimated $5.5 billion short position. On January 28, Robinhood and eight other brokers restricted buying in GME, citing DTCC margin-call requirements. Retail investors alleged that Robinhood's payment-for-order-flow relationship with Citadel Securities — which also provided a $2.75 billion rescue to Melvin Capital — constituted a conflict of interest. The SEC published a 45-page market volatility report in October 2021. Congressional hearings in February 2021 featured Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev, Citadel's Ken Griffin, Reddit's Steve Huffman, and Keith 'Roaring Kitty' Gill.

Simian Virus 40 (SV40) was discovered in 1960 in rhesus monkey kidney cells used to produce both the Salk inactivated polio vaccine and early Sabin oral polio vaccine. An estimated 10-30 million Americans and up to 100 million people globally received SV40-contaminated polio vaccines between 1955 and 1963. NIH virologist Bernice Eddy detected the contamination in 1960 but stockpiles continued to be used. SV40 causes sarcomas in hamsters and was subsequently detected in human tumours. The IOM 2002 review concluded the biological mechanism was plausible but epidemiologic data were inconclusive. Contamination is documented fact; cancer causation in humans remains contested.

A myocarditis safety signal following mRNA COVID-19 vaccines was detected by Israeli health authorities in April 2021. The CDC ACIP confirmed elevated risk in young males at its June 2021 meeting, and FDA + manufacturer labels were updated by July 2021. Peer-reviewed studies (Patone et al Nature Medicine 2022; Le Vu et al Nature Communications 2022) confirmed the signal. Israeli Ministry of Health internal documents released via FOI in 2022 showed earlier internal awareness than public statements. The myocarditis risk in young males (approximately 1-10 per 100,000 doses) and its generally favourable recovery profile are not disputed. Whether the disclosure timeline constitutes 'concealment' or 'appropriate regulatory process' is the contested framing question.

In April 2021, a New York Times investigation revealed that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had exchanged private text messages with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla that were instrumental in driving the EU's €71B vaccine contract signed May 2021. The EU Commission refused FOI requests on the grounds that the texts were not official records. EU Ombudsman Emily O'Reilly found maladministration in January 2022. The European Public Prosecutor's Office opened a criminal investigation in January 2023. The European Court of Justice issued a partial ruling in May 2025 ordering some disclosure. Von der Leyen was re-confirmed as Commission President in June 2024.

Dr David Kelly, a UK Ministry of Defence biological weapons expert, was found dead in Harrowdown Hill woods, Oxfordshire, on 17 July 2003 after being publicly identified as the source who had told BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan that the Iraq WMD dossier had been "sexed up." The Hutton Inquiry (2003) ruled suicide by haemorrhage from a severed left ulnar artery compounded by co-proxamol toxicity and heart disease. A group of doctors challenged the findings from 2010 to 2015, arguing the ulnar artery wound could not have produced fatal blood loss, the co-proxamol level was sub-lethal, and there were no fingerprints on the knife. The Hutton Inquiry's 70-year document seal was later partially overturned. Verdict: partially true — the suicide ruling is contested by credible medical professionals, but no alternative account has been formally established.

EgyptAir Flight 990, a Boeing 767-300ER operating LAX-CAI via JFK, plunged into the Atlantic Ocean 60 miles south of Nantucket on 31 October 1999, killing all 217 people on board. The NTSB concluded in its 2002 final report that the crash resulted from the deliberate action of relief First Officer Gameel Al-Batouti, who was alone at the controls and said 'Tawakkalt ala Allah' (I rely on God) eleven times before and during the dive. Egypt's ECAA disputed the finding, attributing the crash to mechanical failure of the elevator/pitch-trim system. The dispute has never been formally resolved and reflects genuine national and investigatory disagreement.

Virginia Giuffre filed a civil suit against Prince Andrew on 9 August 2021 in the Southern District of New York, alleging battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress arising from alleged sexual abuse while she was trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein. The case settled on 15 February 2022 with no admission of liability. The settlement amount has been widely reported as between $12 million and $16 million, drawn from Queen Elizabeth II's private funds supplemented by Andrew's own contribution. Andrew's HRH titles and military patronages had been removed in January 2022 before the settlement was announced.

On 24 January 2023, US short-seller Hindenburg Research published an 88-question report alleging that the Adani Group — the Indian conglomerate controlled by Gautam Adani — had engaged in stock manipulation, accounting fraud, and illegal parking of shares through a network of offshore entities in Mauritius, the UAE, and the Cayman Islands. The report triggered a market-cap decline exceeding $150 billion across Adani group companies. India's Securities and Exchange Board (SEBI) opened an investigation that remained ongoing through 2025. A 2023 OCCRP investigation separately linked offshore entities to Gautam Adani's brother Vinod Adani. Hindenburg itself shut down in January 2025. The verdict is partially true: the market reaction and offshore structure allegations have documented basis; the stock manipulation and accounting fraud charges were neither fully proven nor fully refuted by regulators as of mid-2026.

Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was shot dead on Sveavägen in central Stockholm on 28 February 1986 as he and his wife walked home from a cinema. The case was one of the longest unsolved political murder investigations in modern history. Christer Pettersson was convicted in 1989 but the conviction was overturned by the appeals court. On 10 June 2020, Chief Prosecutor Krister Petersson formally closed the investigation, naming the late Stig Engström — known as the "Skandia man" — as the primary suspect. Engström died in 2000. Theories attributing the killing to SAPO, South African apartheid intelligence, the PKK, or other actors remain in circulation; the June 2020 closure concluded the best-supported suspect was Engström acting alone.

On 7 May 1999, during NATO's Operation Allied Force air campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, US B-2 bombers struck the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese journalists — Shao Yunhuan, Xu Xinghu, and Zhu Ying — and injuring dozens more. The Clinton administration and NATO apologised, attributing the strike to an outdated CIA map that misidentified the building as the Federal Directorate for Supply and Procurement (Yugoimport). In October 1999, The Observer published an investigation claiming the strike was deliberate, targeting the embassy because it was relaying Yugoslav military communications via its antenna. CIA Director George Tenet apologised to Congress. The incident severely damaged US-China relations and triggered protests at US diplomatic missions across China.

On 8 August 2022, the FBI executed a court-authorised search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, Trump's Palm Beach estate, seizing classified documents. Special Counsel Jack Smith indicted Trump on 37 counts under the Espionage Act and obstruction in June 2023, later expanded to 40. Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case in July 2024; the DOJ appealed; Smith dropped the case in November 2024 after Trump's election victory. The raid is factually documented. The contested questions concern legal propriety, selective prosecution, and the strength of the underlying case — not whether it occurred.

Beginning in December 2022, Elon Musk released internal Twitter documents to journalists including Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Lee Fang, and Michael Shellenberger. The releases documented FBI Foreign Influence Task Force weekly teleconferences with Twitter, DHS flagging of content for moderation, and internal deliberations around the Hunter Biden laptop story. The Supreme Court dismissed Murthy v. Missouri on standing in June 2024 without reaching First Amendment merits. The documented FBI-platform communications are real; whether they crossed constitutional lines into unlawful coercion is legally unresolved.

On 14 October 2020, the New York Post published a story based on a laptop dropped by Hunter Biden at a Delaware repair shop operated by John Paul Mac Isaac. Twitter locked the Post's account and blocked sharing of the story; Facebook reduced its reach. On 19 October 2020, 51 former intelligence officials signed a letter calling the story "classic Russian disinformation." The Washington Post and New York Times authenticated the laptop contents in March 2022. The Twitter Files (December 2022 onward) and House Judiciary Committee findings documented the suppression decision-making. The core claim — that a legitimate news story was suppressed through coordinated platform and intelligence-community action — has substantial evidentiary support.

Two peer-reviewed cluster-sample surveys published in The Lancet — Roberts et al. (2004) estimating approximately 98,000 excess deaths, and Burnham et al. (2006) estimating approximately 655,000 excess deaths — were publicly dismissed by US President Bush and UK Prime Minister Blair as not credible. Subsequent investigations raised questions about donor-disclosure transparency and pre-release political briefings. The ORB survey (2007) and the WHO/COSIT Iraq Family Health Survey (2008) produced lower but still substantial estimates. Methodological disputes among epidemiologists remain unresolved.

Air France Flight 447 disappeared over the South Atlantic on 1 June 2009, killing all 228 people on board. The BEA final report (2012) concluded that icing of Thales AA pitot tubes caused unreliable airspeed readings, triggering pilot loss of situational awareness and a sustained aerodynamic stall. Pre-crash documents indicate Airbus and Air France were aware of pitot-tube icing problems and had issued advisories without mandatory replacement orders. Lawsuits alleging corporate concealment of known defects are ongoing. The claim of deliberate industrial cover-up is partially supported by evidence of known pre-crash deficiencies; allegations of criminal concealment remain legally contested.

Air France Concorde Flight 4590 crashed near Gonesse, France, on 25 July 2000, killing all 109 people on board and four on the ground. The BEA concluded that a titanium strip shed by a Continental Airlines DC-10 on the same runway punctured a Concorde tyre, whose debris ruptured a fuel tank, causing an engine fire and loss of control on takeoff. Continental Airlines and maintenance engineer John Taylor were convicted of involuntary manslaughter in 2010; the convictions were overturned on appeal in 2012. Conspiracy claims centre on whether Concorde's known pre-existing structural vulnerabilities were concealed by Air France and Aerospatiale, and whether the Continental debris finding scapegoated a foreign carrier.