Conspiracy Theories of the 2010s

The April 20, 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 workers and released ~4.9M barrels of oil — the largest marine oil spill in history. BP, Transocean, and Halliburton's cost-cutting and safety failures are documented; allegations of regulatory capture and concealment of spill volume are partly supported.

A sophisticated computer worm discovered in 2010 that sabotaged centrifuges at Iran's Natanz uranium enrichment facility — later confirmed to have been developed jointly by the US (NSA/CIA) and Israel (Unit 8200) under Operation Olympic Games.

Claims that an advanced Tartarian civilization was erased and that mud floods buried old-world architecture.

Claims that private equity ownership degrades hospital care, sometimes inflated into total health-system control narratives.

Claims that Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and the Japanese government systematically understated radioactive contamination from the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.

In October 2011, newly appointed Olympus CEO Michael Woodford was fired after questioning $1.7 billion in advisory fees paid on the Gyrus acquisition and three smaller deals. An independent committee report in December 2011 confirmed a $2 billion fraud: a 'tobashi' scheme concealing investment losses accumulated since the 1990s bubble. President Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, executive VP Hisashi Mori, and auditor Hideo Yamada were convicted in March 2013 with three-year suspended sentences. Olympus paid a record ¥700 million fine to the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Silk Road was a Tor Hidden Service darknet marketplace launched in February 2011 by Ross Ulbricht, operating under the pseudonym 'Dread Pirate Roberts.' By October 2013 it had facilitated approximately $1.2 billion in Bitcoin-denominated transactions, primarily drug sales. FBI agent Christopher Tarbell arrested Ulbricht on 1 October 2013 at a San Francisco public library after Ulbricht left his laptop logged in. Ulbricht was convicted on 4 February 2015 in the Southern District of New York on seven counts including money laundering conspiracy and drug-trafficking conspiracy, and sentenced to life without parole on 29 May 2015. Two federal agents — DEA's Carl Force IV and USSS's Shaun Bridges — were convicted of embezzling over $1.1 million in Bitcoin during the investigation. President Trump commuted Ulbricht's sentence on 21 January 2025.

On July 22 2011 Anders Behring Breivik detonated a car bomb in Oslo's government quarter killing 8, then shot dead 69 people at a Workers' Youth League (AUF) summer camp on Utøya island — 77 killed in total. His 1,500-page manifesto '2083: A European Declaration of Independence' claimed he was acting as a commander of a fictional Knights Templar Europe network. The Norwegian government commission (Gjørv Commission, Aug 13 2012) found he acted alone with no operational network. An initial psychiatric evaluation finding paranoid schizophrenia was overturned by a second panel; Breivik was found criminally sane and convicted of terrorism and premeditated murder on Aug 24 2012, sentenced to 21 years preventive detention (extendable).

UN Security Council Resolution 1973 (March 2011) authorised all necessary measures to protect Libyan civilians and established a no-fly zone. NATO's Operation Unified Protector was subsequently criticised by Russia, China, and the African Union for exceeding that mandate by conducting operations that effectively enabled Gaddafi's removal. Hillary Clinton's leaked emails and her on-camera "we came, we saw, he died" remark became emblematic of the regime-change critique. A 2016 UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee inquiry concluded that the intervention led to political and economic collapse and the rise of armed groups. The scope-creep claim is partially true.

Jimmy Savile, a BBC presenter and celebrity fundraiser who died in October 2011, was subsequently confirmed by Operation Yewtree (Metropolitan Police, 2012–2016) to have been one of the most prolific sexual offenders in British criminal history, with 450 formal complaints covering offences across BBC studios, NHS hospitals, Broadmoor psychiatric hospital, and Stoke Mandeville Hospital. The Dame Janet Smith Review (2016, commissioned by the BBC) found that senior BBC managers had received complaints about Savile over decades and had failed to act. The Kate Lampard NHS review (2015) documented similar failures across NHS trusts. The BBC's own Newsnight programme had prepared an investigation into Savile's offending in 2011 that was shelved by editors. This is a confirmed institutional cover-up across multiple British public institutions.

On 1 August 2012, Knight Capital Group lost approximately $440 million in 45 minutes due to an algorithmic trading misconfiguration during the NYSE's Retail Liquidity Program launch. New SMARS routing software had been deployed to only 7 of 8 production servers; the eighth still ran legacy Power Peg code from 2003 that misinterpreted the RLP flag, triggering millions of erroneous market orders. Knight accumulated over $7 billion in unwanted positions before the error was detected and halted. The firm was acquired by Getco LLC in December 2012. The SEC fined Knight $12 million in 2013 and introduced Regulation SCI in 2014.

Facebook secretly manipulated the news feeds of 689,003 users for one week in January 2012 to test whether emotional contagion could be achieved through social media. Published in PNAS in 2014 without informed consent from subjects.

Whitney Houston was found unresponsive in a bathtub at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on 11 February 2012 and pronounced dead at age 48. The Los Angeles County coroner ruled the cause of death accidental drowning with cocaine use and atherosclerotic heart disease as significant contributing conditions. Within hours of the announcement, online conspiracy communities advanced the claim that Houston had been an Illuminati 'sacrifice' — killed by the music industry or a shadowy elite cabal. The claim has no forensic, documentary, or testimonial basis.

In March 2012, the NGO Invisible Children released a 29-minute documentary calling for the arrest of Lord's Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony. The video reached 100 million views in six days — the fastest a YouTube video had spread to that point. Underlying LRA atrocities (child soldiers, abductions, killings) are extensively documented by the UN, ICC, and human-rights organisations. Critics raised substantive objections: the information was outdated (Kony had left Uganda by 2006), the framing oversimplified a complex conflict, Invisible Children's spending breakdown drew scrutiny, and the campaign's "white savior" framing was widely criticised. A US Congress bill supporting deployment of military advisers to assist the African Union mission passed before the video; the campaign amplified public and legislative attention to the LRA. The underlying claim about LRA war crimes is solidly documented; the campaign's proposed solution and framing are legitimately contested.

The false claim, most prominently promoted by Alex Jones and Infowars, that the December 14, 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut was staged by "crisis actors" to justify gun control legislation. The shooting killed 20 first-graders and 6 adults.

Claims that officials ordered US forces to stand down during the 2012 Benghazi attack or deliberately abandoned personnel for political reasons.

The MUSCULAR programme, revealed by the Washington Post in October 2013 based on Snowden documents, showed that the NSA and GCHQ had secretly tapped the unencrypted fibre-optic links connecting Google's and Yahoo's data centres to one another. Unlike PRISM, which used legal orders to compel disclosure, MUSCULAR accessed data in transit on private backbone infrastructure without the companies' knowledge. The disclosure prompted both companies to encrypt their internal links. MUSCULAR is confirmed by NSA slides published by the Washington Post.

Revealed in September 2013 by a joint ProPublica, New York Times, and Guardian investigation using Snowden documents, Bullrun was a classified NSA programme to covertly undermine encryption standards, introduce backdoors into commercial products, and work with or coerce technology companies to weaken their cryptographic implementations. The most specific confirmed element was the NSA's role in promoting Dual_EC_DRBG as an NIST standard with a likely built-in backdoor. A December 2013 Reuters report revealed that RSA Security had received $10 million from the NSA to make Dual_EC the default random number generator in its BSAFE toolkit.

The claim that Bitcoin was secretly built by the NSA (or another intelligence agency) as a surveillance tool, honeypot, or stepping stone to a controllable cashless currency. Proponents point to two real facts: the NSA designed the SHA-256 hash function Bitcoin uses, and NSA cryptographers co-authored a 1996 paper on anonymous electronic cash. But no evidence connects the agency to Bitcoin's creation, the technology it uses is public and standardized, and the code and history point to an independent cypherpunk lineage.

Between 27 November and 18 December 2013, attackers stole 40 million payment-card numbers and 70 million records of personal information from Target's point-of-sale systems. Entry was gained via stolen credentials belonging to Fazio Mechanical Services, an HVAC vendor with network access. BlackPOS RAM-scraping malware was installed on Target's POS terminals. Journalist Brian Krebs first disclosed the breach publicly on 18 December 2013, the same day Target confirmed it. CEO Gregg Steinhafel resigned on 5 May 2014; CIO Beth Jacob resigned in March 2014. Target reached an $18.5 million settlement with state AGs in May 2017. Total costs exceeded $300 million.

On 6 June 2013, the Washington Post (Barton Gellman) and The Guardian (Glenn Greenwald) simultaneously published NSA PowerPoint slides leaked by contractor Edward Snowden revealing PRISM — a Section 702 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act program that compelled direct upstream data collection from Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and PalTalk. NSA Director Keith Alexander testified to Congress. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) issued a detailed 2014 report confirming the program's scope. Companies denied 'direct access' but acknowledged compliance with court orders. The program is confirmed.

On 21 June 2013, The Guardian published reporting by Ewen MacAskill, Julian Borger, and Nick Hopkins revealing TEMPORA — a GCHQ program operating from the Bude facility in Cornwall that tapped more than 200 transatlantic fiber-optic cables and buffered up to 21 petabytes of data per day on a rolling 3-day storage window. Related programs included INCENSER, MUSCULAR (shared with NSA), and CARBOY. The Investigatory Powers Act 2016 codified UK bulk collection powers. The European Court of Human Rights ruled in Big Brother Watch v UK (2018, 2021) that some UK interception practices violated ECHR Article 8. Confirmed.

The false claim that the April 15, 2013 Boston Marathon bombing was staged by the US government or involved "crisis actors" rather than being conducted by the Tsarnaev brothers. The real bombing killed 3 people and injured 260+.

XKeyscore is a global NSA analytic system that allows analysts to search across vast repositories of intercepted internet content and metadata by selector — email address, phone number, IP address, or keyword. Revealed by the Guardian in July 2013 using Snowden training documents, XKeyscore was described in NSA materials as the agency's 'widest-reaching' signals intelligence analytic tool. Analysts could query billions of records covering email, chat, browsing history, and search queries without prior court approval for individual searches.

One prominent hypothesis for the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 on 8 March 2014 is that Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah deliberately depressurised the cabin, incapacitated or killed the passengers and crew, and flew the aircraft south into the remote Indian Ocean until fuel exhaustion. This hypothesis — most publicly argued by journalist William Langewiesche in The Atlantic in 2019 — is consistent with some evidence but is not supported by conclusive proof. No motive has been established, no suicide note was found, and the recovered debris does not definitively establish pilot intent.

Claims that NFL referees systematically favour specific teams — particularly the New England Patriots and Dallas Cowboys — or that the league directs officiating to produce desired outcomes circulate widely in sports media. The documented reality is more nuanced: officiating inconsistencies are real and historically significant (the catch rule pre-2018 reform, the 2018 NFC Championship missed pass-interference call, the pass-interference reviewable era 2019). Statistical analyses confirm a small but real home-team officiating advantage consistent with crowd noise affecting referee judgment. The leap from documented inconsistency to coordinated league-directed favoritism toward specific franchises is not supported by the evidence.

Claims that Euromaidan violence was staged or orchestrated by Western intelligence rather than arising from Ukrainian political conflict and security-force actions.

Recurring claims — circulating most intensely during Kim Jong-un's extended absence from public view in 2014 and again during a two-week disappearance in 2020 — assert that one or more body doubles routinely substitute for the North Korean leader in public appearances. Evidence cited includes perceived variations in facial features across years (particularly ear-shape analysis and apparent weight-gain/loss cycles), gait changes, and a general argument from the known authoritarian-leader tradition of using doubles for security. South Korean intelligence (NIS) has not confirmed the claim; NK News, Reuters, AP, and BBC cover the gaps in what can be verified. The theory is treated here as plausible-but-unverifiable speculation.

At the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, the Russian state operated a urine-substitution system using a tampered sample container passed through a concealed hole in the Sochi anti-doping laboratory wall — the "Disappearing Positive Methodology." RUSADA director Grigory Rodchenkov defected in 2015 and cooperated with investigators. A New York Times exposé by Rebecca Ruiz in May 2016 triggered a WADA independent investigation led by Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren. The McLaren Report (July and December 2016) confirmed a state-orchestrated doping system across more than 30 sports affecting over 1,000 athletes. Russian athletes competed as neutrals at subsequent Games.

The Marriott Starwood breach exposed approximately 339 million guest records — including passport numbers, encrypted payment card details, and travel history — from a database that had been compromised since 2014. Marriott acquired Starwood Hotels in September 2016 without discovering the intrusion, which continued for more than two years post-acquisition. The breach was disclosed on 30 November 2018. US and UK intelligence attributed the attack to APT10, a hacking group linked to China's Ministry of State Security, based on tools and techniques. The UK's ICO issued an initial GDPR fine of £99.2 million in July 2019, subsequently reduced to £18.4 million in October 2020. Seven million UK records were affected.

On 24 November 2014 a group calling itself the 'Guardians of Peace' launched a wiper attack against Sony Pictures Entertainment, destroying approximately 70% of the company's corporate data. Around 100 terabytes of internal data were exfiltrated prior to the wipe, including executive emails, employee salary data, personal information, and unreleased films. The attack was linked to Sony's forthcoming comedy 'The Interview', which satirised North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The FBI attributed the attack to North Korea on 19 December 2014. A 2018 DOJ indictment named Park Jin Hyok, a member of North Korea's Lazarus Group (Unit 180), for the Sony attack and also for WannaCry and the Bangladesh Bank heist.

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine on 17 July 2014, killing all 298 people on board. The Dutch Safety Board (October 2015) determined the aircraft was destroyed by detonation of a 9N314M warhead carried by a 9M38 Buk surface-to-air missile. The Joint Investigation Team (JIT) concluded in 2016 and 2019 that the Buk launcher belonged to the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade of the Russian Armed Forces based in Kursk. Russia has consistently denied involvement. In November 2022, a Dutch court convicted three individuals — two Russians and one Ukrainian — in absentia of murder. The verdict is confirmed by multiple independent investigations.

Mt. Gox, once the world's largest Bitcoin exchange, collapsed in February 2014 after announcing the loss of approximately 850,000 BTC (then ~$450M; worth billions at later prices). CEO Mark Karpelès initially claimed transaction malleability attacks were responsible. Independent blockchain forensics firm WizSec attributed the losses to systematic key theft beginning in 2011. Karpelès was convicted in March 2019 for data falsification — not theft. Alexander Vinnik, operator of BTC-e (a money laundering exchange), was indicted in 2017 for receiving proceeds of the Mt. Gox theft. The true mechanism remains partially contested.

A UK-based political consulting firm that harvested Facebook data of up to 87 million users through a personality quiz app, then used the data for psychographic targeting on behalf of the Trump 2016 campaign and Leave.EU.

The recurring claim that polling stations hand out pencils so that the state, MI5, or a hidden 'establishment' can secretly rub out and rewrite votes. It is true that UK polling stations traditionally supply pencils and that voters may bring their own pen. But ballots are sealed, transported, and counted the same night under the direct scrutiny of candidates' agents and observers, no evidence of pencil-enabled vote-switching has ever been found, and election authorities across the UK, Canada, Australia and the US have repeatedly debunked the idea. Pencils are used for mundane practical reasons, not for tampering.

On April 16, 2014, the MV Sewol capsized off Jindo Island, South Korea, killing 304 people — 250 of them high school students from Danwon High School on a class trip to Jeju Island. The immediate causes were documented: cargo overloaded to three times the legal limit, illegal vessel modifications that reduced stability, crew incompetence, and an instruction to passengers to stay in place rather than evacuate. Captain Lee Jun-seok abandoned ship and was later convicted of murder. The conspiracy claim at issue is not about the sinking itself but about the government's response: the Park Geun-hye administration's delayed and disorganised rescue operation, her unaccounted-for seven-hour absence during the crisis, and subsequent pressure on media to downplay criticism were confirmed by a 2017 Special Investigation Commission established after Park's impeachment. Park was impeached and convicted partly over Sewol-related conduct. A more extreme framing — that the Park administration deliberately sank the Sewol — is not supported by evidence.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (Boeing 777) vanished on March 8, 2014, carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Primary-radar, satellite ping, and debris analysis place the crash in the southern Indian Ocean, but the main wreckage has never been located.

The 2014-2019 lead contamination of Flint, Michigan's drinking water following a cost-saving switch from Detroit water supply to the Flint River, and the systematic suppression of evidence by state officials.

The July 17, 2014 destruction of Malaysia Airlines flight 17 (Boeing 777) over eastern Ukraine, killing 298 people. The Dutch Safety Board investigation and Joint Investigation Team (JIT) concluded the aircraft was shot down by a Russian-owned Buk surface-to-air missile system from a field in Russian-separatist-controlled Donbas.

Claims circulate that pharmaceutical companies or medical institutions suppress Repatha (evolocumab, a PCSK9 inhibitor approved by the FDA in 2015) or effective alternatives to statins. The claim has no documentary basis. Repatha is FDA-approved, actively marketed by Amgen, and available by prescription in more than 60 countries. Its limited uptake relative to statins reflects cost, insurance coverage, and prescribing guidelines — not suppression. Statins remain the first-line standard of care because they are proven, inexpensive, and widely effective; PCSK9 inhibitors are used as second-line or add-on therapy for high-risk patients who cannot tolerate or do not respond adequately to statins.

JUUL Labs launched its e-cigarette in 2015 with marketing that regulators and litigants found deliberately targeted underage users: bright colours, social media influencers, flavoured pods, and campaigns that mirrored cigarette advertising strategies proven to recruit teen smokers. Between 2017 and 2019, teen e-cigarette use surged to epidemic levels — the FDA called it a "youth vaping epidemic." In June 2022, the FDA denied JUUL's marketing authorisation, citing inadequate safety data. In December 2022, JUUL settled a 33-state attorney general investigation for $462 million. Separate settlements with school districts and individual states totalled additional hundreds of millions. The targeting of minors is confirmed by internal documents, regulatory findings, and legal settlements.

Germanwings Flight 9525, an Airbus A320 registration D-AIPX, was deliberately crashed into the French Alps on 24 March 2015 by co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, killing all 150 on board. Captain Patrick Sondenheimer was locked out of the cockpit; Lubitz set the autopilot to 100 feet and held the descent until impact. The BEA final report (March 2016) confirmed deliberate action. Lubitz had concealed a history of depression treatment and suicidal ideation from aviation medical authorities, enabling him to hold an unrestricted licence. The crash drove major changes to cockpit access rules and medical disclosure requirements across European and global aviation.

Avid Life Media's extramarital-affair dating site Ashley Madison was breached by a hacker group calling itself the 'Impact Team,' which exfiltrated more than 32 million user records and 25GB+ of data. The Impact Team issued a first leak on 19 July 2015 and released the full dump on 18 August 2015 via BitTorrent and Tor. The data included names, email addresses, home addresses, sexual preferences, and partial payment details. At least two suicides were documented in direct connection with the exposure — a Texas pastor and a San Antonio police captain. Avid Life Media CEO Noel Biderman resigned on 28 August 2015. The FTC and state attorneys general reached a $11.2 million civil settlement and a $1.66 million fine in July 2016. Subsequent analysis found approximately 95% of female profiles were bots, and legacy systems had stored passwords in plaintext.

On 23 December 2015, cyberattackers disrupted electricity supply to approximately 230,000 customers in Ukraine's Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast for one to six hours — the first publicly confirmed successful cyberattack on civilian power grid infrastructure anywhere in the world. US-CERT (IR-ALERT-H-16-056-01), the Ukrainian SBU, and security researchers attributed the attack to Sandworm (GRU Unit 74455), who used spear-phishing to compromise three Ukrainian regional electricity distribution companies, deployed the BlackEnergy malware and KillDisk wiper, and launched a telephony denial-of-service to hamper restoration. A follow-on attack on 17 December 2016 (Industroyer/Crash Override) struck the Kiev transmission substation.

Claims that the Jade Helm 15 military exercise was preparation for martial law or hostile takeover of US states.

The claim that Vladimir Putin uses one or more body doubles — lookalike stand-ins who appear at public events in place of the real president — has circulated persistently since at least 2015 and intensified after Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Proponents point to perceived variations in ear shape, facial proportions, gait, voice cadence, and posture across photographs and video appearances. Former Russian political science professor Valery Solovei has publicly made the claim in numerous interviews. The Kremlin denies it. No documentary evidence — photographic, biometric, or testimonial from a confirmed insider — has been produced that definitively establishes the existence of an operational double programme. The claim remains plausible-but-unverified given the opacity of the Russian presidency and the precedent of Soviet-era deception practices.

The concealment by Boeing of the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) from pilots and regulators, which caused two fatal crashes — Lion Air 610 (October 2018, 189 killed) and Ethiopian Airlines 302 (March 2019, 157 killed) — and led to a 20-month global grounding.

The April 2016 leak of 11.5 million documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca revealed an international network of offshore shell companies used by politicians, celebrities, and criminals for tax evasion, money laundering, and concealing ownership.

Claims that smartphones constantly record conversations to serve ads or feed government surveillance.

Operation Crossfire Hurricane was the FBI counterintelligence investigation opened July 31 2016 into possible Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election and possible coordination by Trump campaign associates. The Mueller investigation (2017-2019) found extensive Russian interference but did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with Russia in a manner meeting the criminal standard. DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz's December 2019 report found 17 significant errors and omissions in FISA warrant applications targeting Carter Page. Special Counsel John Durham's May 2023 report (306 pages) found that the FBI opened the investigation with an insufficient factual predicate and exhibited confirmation bias. The conspiracy framing — that the investigation was a fully orchestrated Deep State frame-up — has partial documentary support (FISA errors) but the "completely fabricated" version exceeds the evidence.

Claims that Ukraine, rather than Russia, hacked the DNC or hid a physical server to frame Russia in 2016 election interference investigations.

Between August 2016 and April 2017, an anonymous group calling itself the Shadow Brokers released a series of files containing what appeared to be NSA Equation Group/Tailored Access Operations (TAO) cyberweapons, including the EternalBlue, EternalRomance, EternalSynergy, and DoublePulsar exploits. Microsoft patched the primary vulnerability (MS17-010) on 14 March 2017 after a pre-disclosure from the NSA; within two months the exploits were weaponised in WannaCry (May 2017) and NotPetya (June 2017). The identity and affiliation of the Shadow Brokers has never been definitively established; leading theories include Russian intelligence theft, an NSA insider, or both.

A cluster of unexplained neurological symptoms reported by US diplomats and intelligence personnel beginning at the US Embassy in Havana, Cuba in 2016, and subsequently at US facilities in China, Russia, Vietnam, Austria, and elsewhere.

Pegasus is a commercial surveillance software package developed by the Israeli firm NSO Group and sold exclusively to government clients. Its existence and capabilities were first definitively confirmed by Citizen Lab (University of Toronto) forensic analysis beginning in 2016. The 2021 Pegasus Project — a coordinated investigation by Forbidden Stories with Amnesty International and 80 journalists across 17 media organisations — documented over 50,000 phone numbers in a data leak, identifying journalists, human rights activists, lawyers, heads of state, and associates of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi as apparent surveillance targets. NSO Group disputes characterisations of misuse; the US Commerce Department added NSO to its Entity List in November 2021; Apple and Meta both filed lawsuits against NSO. The surveillance capabilities are forensically confirmed; the scale of alleged misuse is documented; the specific authorisations for each target remain contested.

On the night of July 15–16, 2016, a faction of the Turkish military seized the Bosphorus bridges, bombed the Grand National Assembly, and flew F-16s over Ankara in an attempt to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Approximately 250 civilians died defending democratic institutions after Erdoğan's televised FaceTime call urged citizens into the streets. The Turkish government attributed the coup to the Gülen movement (designated FETÖ), demanded the extradition of Fethullah Gülen from the United States (denied), and launched mass purges dismissing or arresting over 150,000 people. A minority of independent analysts — notably economist Dani Rodrik — raised unanswered questions about pre-coup intelligence and Erdoğan's foreknowledge, generating a contested alternative framing. The coup itself is confirmed; the attribution of orchestration solely to FETÖ with possible US support remains contested.

The theory that social media platforms deliberately design their algorithms to maximize division, radicalization, and addiction for profit, with full knowledge of the psychological and social harm they cause.

Prince Rogers Nelson was found unresponsive in an elevator at Paisley Park on 21 April 2016. The Midwest Medical Examiner ruled the cause of death accidental fentanyl toxicity. The fentanyl was in counterfeit Vicodin pills. The FBI investigated whether any party could be held criminally responsible for supplying the pills; the investigation closed in 2018 without charges. The counterfeit-fentanyl supply chain was real and responsible for many deaths in 2016. The claim that Prince was specifically, deliberately targeted for murder via poisoned pills has no evidentiary support.

Claims that unelected bureaucratic, intelligence, or security networks secretly control elected governments.

In June 2020, Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum (WEF) published "The Great Reset" agenda — a real document proposing a COVID-19 recovery framework centred on sustainability, stakeholder capitalism, and digital infrastructure. The conspiracy framing holds that "The Great Reset" is a coordinated globalist plan for world takeover, secretly being implemented by governments and corporations in concert with the WEF. What is true: the document and agenda exist, WEF does convene world leaders and executives at Davos, and specific policy proposals within it (central bank digital currencies, digital ID frameworks, ESG disclosure mandates) are active real-world policy debates. What is not supported: the existence of a secret implementation timeline, the claim that governments are covertly executing a WEF master plan, or that Schwab secretly controls heads of state. The ADL has documented that some variants of the WEF conspiracy invoke antisemitic-adjacent framings around Schwab's identity.

The false claim that a child sex-trafficking ring linked to Democratic Party officials operated out of Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington DC, based on misreadings of John Podesta's hacked 2016 emails.

Claims that large-scale noncitizen voting changes U.S. election outcomes.

The October 1, 2017 mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival in Las Vegas, which killed 60 and wounded over 400 — the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history. Various conspiracy theories claim multiple shooters, ISIS involvement, MGM/security cover-up, or government-directed false-flag operations.

GLP-1 receptor agonists (semaglutide/Ozempic/Wegovy, tirzepatide/Mounjaro) are the fastest-growing drug class of the 2020s. Real adverse event reports exist in FDA FAERS data — including thyroid concerns, pancreatitis, and suicidal ideation reports — and are publicly available. Large peer-reviewed clinical trials (NEJM SELECT 2023, SURMOUNT-1 2022) have found these side effects either absent at statistically significant levels or outweighed by cardiovascular benefit. The conspiracy claim that pharma is deliberately hiding life-threatening side effects contradicts the publicly available clinical-trial data and FDA post-market surveillance, which are accessible to any researcher.

Claims that cashless payments or central bank digital currencies are designed to surveil, freeze, or socially score all citizens.

On 27 June 2017 a destructive malware campaign — publicly branded NotPetya — erupted from Ukraine and spread globally within hours, masquerading as ransomware while in reality being a pure wiper designed to maximise damage. US CISA, UK NCSC, and Five Eyes partners attributed the attack to Russian GRU Unit 74455 (Sandworm) in February 2018; the US DOJ indicted six GRU officers in October 2020. The supply-chain entry point was a trojanised update to M.E.Doc, a Ukrainian accounting software package used by roughly 80 percent of Ukrainian businesses. Global losses exceeded $10 billion, making it the costliest cyberattack in recorded history.

On 5 November 2017 the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), Süddeutsche Zeitung, and 95 media partners published findings from 13.4 million documents leaked from Appleby (a Bermuda-based offshore law firm), Asiaciti Trust, and 19 corporate registries. The disclosures exposed Apple's tax-minimisation restructuring in Jersey after the EU's 2013 ruling against its Irish structure; Glencore's Democratic Republic of Congo operations; Nike's Bermuda subsidiary arrangements; US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross's undisclosed financial ties to Navigator Holdings and its Russian clients; Queen Elizabeth II's Duchy of Lancaster investments; and Bono's investment in a Lithuanian shopping mall via an offshore vehicle. Approximately 120 politicians were implicated.

The theory that cryptocurrency markets are systematically manipulated by whales, exchanges, and stablecoin issuers, with Tether (USDT) allegedly printing unbacked tokens to artificially inflate Bitcoin's price.

A sprawling conspiracy movement originating on 4chan and 8chan in October 2017, centered on anonymous "Q" posts alleging that a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophile elites controls government, media, and finance, and that Donald Trump is leading a secret war to expose them.

Claims that mummified remains promoted from Peru are non-human alien bodies.

A satirical movement launched in 2017 by Peter McIndoe claiming that all birds in the United States were exterminated by the CIA between 1959-2001 and replaced with surveillance drones. Designed as parody, it was widely shared without the satire being recognized.

Since approximately 2017, the Chinese government has operated a system of mass-detention facilities in Xinjiang targeting Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities. China initially denied the facilities existed, then described them as voluntary "vocational education and training centres." The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) August 2022 report found that "serious human rights violations have been committed" and that they "may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity." The Australian Strategic Policy Institute has documented 380+ individual camp facilities. The 2022 Xinjiang Police Files leak provided internal Chinese government documentation. The CCP cover-up and suppression of reporting is confirmed by multiple authoritative sources; the specific characterisation as "genocide" under international legal definitions remains the subject of academic and political debate.

Tether Limited, issuer of the USDT stablecoin, claimed for years that each USDT was backed 1:1 by US dollars held in reserve. Investigations by the New York Attorney General (settled February 2021, $18.5M) and the CFTC (settled October 2021, $41M) confirmed that Tether had misrepresented its reserves — backing was at times composed of commercial paper, loans to Bitfinex, and other non-cash assets rather than pure dollar reserves. Tether produces periodic attestations but has never undergone a full independent audit. The stablecoin continues to operate and is the largest by market cap.

The Equifax breach exposed the personally identifiable information of 147.9 million Americans — Social Security numbers, dates of birth, addresses, and driver's licence numbers — via an unpatched Apache Struts vulnerability (CVE-2017-5638). The patch was available on 8 March 2017; the breach began on 13 May 2017 and was discovered internally on 29 July 2017. Equifax did not disclose publicly until 7 September 2017. In the interim, the company's CFO and three other executives sold approximately $1.8 million in stock. Two officers — Jun Ying and Sudhakar Bonthu — were later charged with insider trading. CEO Richard Smith resigned on 26 September 2017. The $700 million FTC and state AG settlement in July 2019 remains one of the largest data-breach settlements in US history.

Maltese investigative journalist and blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed by a car bomb on 16 October 2017 near her home in Bidnija, Malta. Her 'Running Commentary' blog had exposed Pilatus Bank, the Electrogas gas power station deal, and the Malta angle of the Panama Papers. Yorgen Fenech, an Electrogas businessman, was charged with complicity in murder in November 2019. Vincent Muscat pleaded guilty in February 2021 (sentenced to 15 years); Alfred and George Degiorgio were convicted in October 2022 (sentenced to 40 years). A public inquiry concluded in July 2021 that the state bore responsibility for the conditions that enabled the killing. Prime Minister Joseph Muscat resigned in January 2020 following related revelations.

Internal Google project codenamed Dragonfly was built to create a China-compliant censored search engine that would blacklist politically sensitive queries and link search activity to users' phone numbers. The Intercept reporter Ryan Gallagher disclosed the project on 1 August 2018 based on leaked internal documents. More than 1,400 Google employees signed an open letter demanding transparency. Google CEO Sundar Pichai testified before the House Judiciary Committee on 11 December 2018, declining to confirm Dragonfly was dead. Google VP Karan Bhatia told the Senate on 16 July 2019 the project had been 'terminated.' Two employees — Jack Poulson and Liz Fong-Jones — resigned in protest. The project was real, internally documented, and the subject of government testimony. The core claim is confirmed.

Jahseh Dwayne Ricardo Onfroy (XXXTentacion) was shot and killed during a robbery outside a motorsports dealership in Deerfield Beach, Florida, on 18 June 2018. Four men were convicted of first-degree murder and armed robbery in October 2023: Dedrick Williams, Michael Boatwright, Trayvon Newsome, and Robert Allen. The prosecution established a robbery motive — the perpetrators targeted XXXTentacion for cash he was known to be carrying. The claim that a rival record label orchestrated the killing has no evidentiary basis and contradicts the conviction record.

Claims that smart meters caused or intentionally triggered major wildfires.

The October 2, 2018 assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. The US Intelligence Community's February 2021 declassified assessment concluded Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved the operation.

Claims that wildfires are caused by directed-energy weapons rather than weather, fuel, power lines, arson, or climate conditions.

Malcolm McCormick (Mac Miller) died on 7 September 2018 at his Studio City, California home from acute mixed drug toxicity — fentanyl, cocaine, and alcohol. The Los Angeles County coroner ruled the manner of death accidental. Three individuals were subsequently prosecuted for their roles in the fentanyl supply chain: Cameron Pettit (pleaded guilty 2021), Ryan Reavis (pleaded guilty 2022), and Stephen Walter (convicted 2023). The 'industry sacrifice' claim has no basis; the counterfeit-pill-supply-chain prosecution is real.

Two opposing suppression narratives circulate about pediatric gender-affirming care. The first holds that established, evidence-based care is being suppressed by transphobic state legislation (partially supported: more than 20 US states have enacted restrictions or bans since 2021). The second holds that the evidence base for pediatric transition interventions is itself weaker than advocacy bodies have claimed, and that clinicians and medical associations have suppressed this uncertainty (partially supported: the UK's independent Cass Review, published April 2024, found the evidence base "remarkably weak" and recommended a more cautious, individualized approach). This is a contested, ongoing medical-evidence debate with real factual stakes on multiple sides.

Claims about commercial data brokers collecting, selling, or exposing location data in ways that enable surveillance.

Boeing's 737 MAX was involved in two fatal crashes: Lion Air Flight JT610 (29 October 2018, 189 killed) and Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET302 (10 March 2019, 157 killed), totalling 346 deaths. Investigations identified the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) as the cause. MCAS relied on a single angle-of-attack (AOA) sensor, a design feature not fully disclosed to airlines or pilots in training materials. Internal messages from Boeing test pilot Mark Forkner, revealed in 2019, described manipulating FAA regulators — "jedi mind tricks" — to avoid simulator-training requirements. Boeing paid $2.5 billion under a January 2021 DOJ deferred prosecution agreement for conspiracy to defraud the FAA. Forkner was indicted in October 2021 but acquitted by a Texas jury in March 2022. A January 2024 door-plug blowout on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 renewed scrutiny; the DOJ found Boeing in breach of its DPA in May 2024.

Claims that Disease X preparedness is proof of a planned pandemic or world-government takeover.

A Reuters investigation published in December 2018 found that Johnson & Johnson knew for decades that its baby powder talc sometimes tested positive for asbestos, a known carcinogen, and did not disclose this to regulators or the public. Internal J&J documents dated from the 1970s through the early 2000s showed awareness of asbestos contamination in talc sourced from mines in Vermont and elsewhere. In 2018, a Missouri jury awarded $4.69 billion to 22 women who alleged asbestos-contaminated talc caused their ovarian cancer (Ingham v. Johnson & Johnson). J&J discontinued US and Canadian baby powder sales in 2020 and global sales in 2023. Two attempts to resolve talc liability through bankruptcy of a subsidiary (LTL Management) were rejected by federal courts in 2023.

Former GRU officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with novichok nerve agent in Salisbury, England on 4 March 2018. Both survived. Dawn Sturgess died on 8 July 2018 after her partner found a discarded perfume bottle containing the novichok and she applied it to her wrist. UK investigators identified the perpetrators as GRU Unit 29155 officers Anatoliy Chepiga (travelling as 'Boshirov') and Alexander Mishkin (travelling as 'Petrov'), with a third, Denis Sergeev ('Sergey Fedotov'), acting as handler. OPCW confirmed novichok A-234. The two suspects gave an implausible TV interview claiming they had visited Salisbury to see its cathedral.

Rapper Jarad Higgins (Juice WRLD) died at Chicago's Midway Airport on 8 December 2019 after swallowing multiple Percocet pills. The Cook County Medical Examiner ruled the cause of death oxycodone and codeine toxicity. Federal agents were present, boarding his private jet as part of a firearms and drug search. Conspiracy framings range from "the encounter caused panic that led to the fatal swallow" (partially supported, but contested) to "agents deliberately murdered him" (no evidentiary basis). The intermediate claim — that the enforcement encounter was a proximate contributor — is partially coherent; the murder claim is not.

The claim that 5G cellular technology causes harm to human health — cancer, COVID-19 infection, or population control — popularized during COVID-19 pandemic and amplified by social media.

Russian SVR foreign intelligence (APT29 / Cozy Bear / Nobelium) compromised the build pipeline of SolarWinds' Orion IT-monitoring platform in late 2019, inserting a trojanized DLL (SUNBURST) into a signed software update distributed to approximately 18,000 customers. Of those, roughly 100 high-value targets were enumerated for deeper intrusion, including nine US federal agencies — Treasury, Commerce, State, DHS, and others — as well as Microsoft, FireEye, and Mimecast. FireEye disclosed the attack on 8 December 2020 after discovering its own breach. CISA issued Emergency Directive 21-01 on 13 December 2020. The operation is one of the most significant intelligence-gathering cyber-intrusions ever documented against the United States government.

On March 15 2019 Brenton Harrison Tarrant (28, Australian) attacked Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Avenue Mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 51 people. He livestreamed 17 minutes on Facebook and distributed a 74-page manifesto titled 'The Great Replacement' echoing French author Renaud Camus. The New Zealand Royal Commission of Inquiry (Nov 26 2020) found Tarrant was a 'single self-radicalised individual' who used international online networks including 8chan and far-right forums. Tarrant was convicted Aug 27 2020 of 51 murders, 40 attempted murders, and one terrorism charge — the first terrorism conviction under the NZ Terrorism Suppression Act 2002 — and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, the first such sentence in New Zealand history.

TikTok, owned by ByteDance (a Chinese-headquartered company), has been the subject of US government concern since at least 2019. CFIUS and congressional investigations have documented real data-collection concerns. Studies have found algorithmic differences in how sensitive political topics (Xinjiang, Tibet, Tiananmen Square) are surfaced on TikTok compared to competitor platforms. Whether these differences represent coordinated CCP propaganda operations or organic content-policy choices remains contested. The ban-and-reversal cycle through 2024-2025 reflects genuine unresolved institutional uncertainty.

FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange founded by Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), secretly transferred billions in customer deposits to its affiliated trading firm Alameda Research, which used the funds for investments, loans to executives, and political donations. When Alameda's balance sheet leaked in November 2022, a bank run ensued and FTX collapsed. SBF was convicted on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy in November 2023 and sentenced to 25 years. Testimony from co-conspirators Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang confirmed the Alameda auto-liquidation exemption and the deliberate nature of the commingling.

The collection of theories around convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's 2019 death in federal custody (officially ruled suicide) and the identity of powerful associates implicated in his trafficking network.