Phoebe Gates is facing a fraud scandal with her startup Phia and now reportedly took a secret “Rule the World” class at Stanford

I have to be honest with you, when I started reading about this, I thought it was going to be a simple story about a billionaire’s kid getting into trouble but like clockwork, it has become so much more than that.

There’s a secret class at Stanford about literally taking over the world, and by the end of this I’m genuinely wondering if we need to form our own counter-secret-society to stop these people. Let me take you through the rabbit hole.

First, the Class Itself, Which Rules (Pun Intended)

Here’s the thing. I don’t even mind that colleges offer classes where you learn to control society and rule the world. That part is totally fine with me. College is a rip-off anyway, so you might as well get your full money’s worth and take whatever wild class you want while you’re there.

Attend the world-domination seminar. Live a little.

My only problem is that it’s done in complete secrecy. Who else was in that class? What are they planning? That’s the part that keeps me up at night.

Let’s Talk About Phoebe Gates’ Legal Problems

Before we get to the illuminati stuff, some context, because Phoebe Gates is already in hot water for something else entirely. Bill Gates’ 23-year-old daughter is being accused of a “cookie stuffing” scandal at her AI-shopping startup Phia.

I know, rich people acting like scum bags, shocker, but apparently, it carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison because it’s treated the same as wire fraud. When you deceive your business partners into thinking a consumer clicked your referral link and bought something when they actually didn’t, you’re in trouble.

Phoebe Gates “cookie stuffing”

Bill Gates' daughter Phoebe accused of 'cookie stuffing' scheme that has max penalty of 20 years in prison: reports https://t.co/PlBHx8iq4L pic.twitter.com/22uYgl5y8D

— New York Post (@nypost) August 12, 2026

Phia, co-founded with fellow Stanford alum Sophia Kianni, is an AI shopping assistant that works with retailers like Nike and Nordstrom to find you the best prices and discount codes, basically like Honey. The scheme allegedly opened a background tab and inserted Phia’s own referral code, triggering commission on sales it never actually drove.

Not exactly the shit you want to be involved in at 23, but when your dad is Bill Gates, then why not? It’s not like you will ever have to answer for your crimes. In fact, I bet that Phoebe Gates had absolutely nothing to do with it. Her family probably set all this up and threw it under her name so she could feel like she had something in life when in reality, the only thing she should be doing is laying low and being filthy rich.

Either way, the evidence is comedically incriminating. After Phia disabled the features in July, average daily revenue reportedly cratered from around $80,000 to somewhere between $10,000 and $28,000.

In June, cookie stuffing accounted for about 51% of the merchandise value Phia claimed credit for. It wasn’t a bug, despite that being their initial excuse, because there are apparently Slack messages laying the whole thing out, with the feature literally called “enable coupon auto drop” that they could toggle on and off.

There’s even a December Slack message asking to confirm the cookie drop was live on all sites to make sure they were “monetizing on all gmv.”

No bueno. That doesn’t sound like a glitch at all.

Again, Phoebe Gates should just be rich

This is the part I genuinely don’t understand. If you’re that rich, why even bother?

Just sit back and relax. You don’t need to go to college, you don’t need to launch a scheme-y startup, you don’t need to do anything. Just be rich and keep to yourself.

Phia even lined up high-profile investors like Hailey Bieber, Sydney Sweeney, and Jessica Alba, with an announcement graphic that people online said looked like a Coachella lineup.

All that, and for what? To risk a wire fraud rap over affiliate cookies?

Again, you could also say that it doesn’t matter either way. It’s not like Phoebe Gates is going to prison so who gives a shit. I’d bet she doesn’t serve a single day, because that’s simply how it works for the ultra-rich when it comes to white collar crime.

Dad isn’t dead yet, and I’m sure Bill will have no problem cleaning up his daughter’s mess. Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, I suppose.

The Bill Gates Inheritance Angle

Speaking of Bill, here’s what I remember about the man outside of Microsoft and the Epstein stuff. He famously told his kids they’d get virtually none of his inheritance, with the vast majority going to charity. Bill Gates is worth roughly $108 billion, and he claimed his three kids would each get less than 1% of the pie.

The math is the important part because 1% of $108 billion is still over a billion dollars. If you don’t think Phoebe Gates and her brother and sister are all walking away with hundreds of millions, you’re fooling yourself.

Still, Bill said he wanted his kids to forge their own paths and be go-getters.

You know what happens when you encourage your kids to forge their own paths instead of just handing them the money? They go to prison. If you ever fall into a billion-dollar fortune, just give it to your kid. Making them work for it just turns them into cookie-stuffing scammers.

Phoebe Gates opened the flood gates.

Ex-Stanford classmates are piling on too, reportedly saying she wasn’t even a good coder and that computer science students “laughed in their faces” when Phia was announced.

I don’t actually care about Phoebe Gates. What I NEED to know more about is this secret, invite-only Stanford class she reportedly took, nicknamed “Rule,” officially titled “So You Think You Can Rule the World?”

It’s basically a starter pack for becoming a supervillain, right?

The details are insane.

The unofficial 10-week course isn’t publicized, has no enrollment code, and accepts just 12 students at a time, six men and six women. They meet weekly to debate money, power, and “the underlying incentive structures and frameworks that govern how the world works.”

According to former students, the ethics of the class aren’t exactly good-willed, which, shocking, I know, that a secret class called “So You Think You Can Rule the World?” might not have the purest intentions.

One former student told the Stanford Daily the goal was to teach students “how to essentially hack any kind of power structure or bureaucratic structure and get what they want in a system of people.”

Another described the instructor’s philosophy as “hackier” and “more opportunistic,” focused on “identifying the vulnerabilities or loopholes” and “less concerned with the ethics of it all.”

This is just so emblematic of the Epstein class:

"Bill Gates’ Daughter Took Secret Classes on Controlling Humanity"

"a secretive, off-the-books Stanford University course that taught a handpicked group of ultra-privileged elite students how to manipulate and control society." pic.twitter.com/KT5q30DpRX

— Rudy Havenstein, Senior Markets Commentator. (@RudyHavenstein) August 17, 2026

This is straight-up secret-society illuminati stuff that none of us regular people have any access to. I went to West Virginia and wasn’t the best student. I thought it was cool when you could attend a class and talk about Battlestar Galactica and the future of humans and robots way back in 2010.

Meanwhile, over at Stanford, they’re coaching kids up on taking over the world. Really puts it into perspective that the rest of us literally have no chance out there.

The Stories About The Instructor Are Crazy Too

Here’s where it went from funny to genuinely alarming, because the guy who runs this class, Justin Lewis-Weber, is a full-blown supervillain origin story in human form.

He started “Rule” as a junior because he arrived at Stanford expecting brilliant intellectual conversation and found his experience “lacking,” so he decided to hand-pick students based on his personal assessment of their “projected impact on the world.”

One former student described the class as his attempt to bring together “like-minded folks who dared to dream bigger together.”

That line alone is somebody’s villain monologue and it only gets worse from there.

One student, speaking anonymously, said Lewis-Weber represents “the cynical parts of Silicon Valley,” describing him as “power hungry, intellectual, but really focused on profit and power instead of doing good.”

Is there a way to bet on someone becoming a supervillain? Because this guy is a maniac. Growing up in Southern California, he was into space exploration from a young age. At SIX, he built and flew his first helicopter.

At 12, he started an aerial imaging company, one of the first in the world. At 17, he published a peer-reviewed article proposing solar panels be installed on the MOON using lunar materials.

Every single sentence I read about this guy is more villainous than the last.

So Here’s Where I’ve Landed

I started this whole thing mildly interested in Phoebe Gates maybe going to jail over some affiliate cookies. That led me to a secret Stanford class about ruling the world and now I’ve arrived at the conclusion that we, as a society, need to stop this Lewis-Weber guy before it’s too late.

Is nobody else reading this?! Am I the only one sounding the alarm here?!

Anyways. Rich people, amirite?

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