old works, i sometimes imagined a group of invisible people who ran everything. they turned red lights, green dissolve, traffic jams made sure there's running tap water. once i got older, i realized there was no global cabal running the world. but there are management consultants. a lot of them, they design hospitals and prisons, advice governments on the climate crisis and map out the cities. they even help build up entire economies, but they aren't elected politicians to most people. they remain in the shadows, but they work for many of the world's most powerful governments, and some say they're gaining more and more influence. so let's explore this hitting the world and look at how consultants have captured the government sector and what it means for societies around the world that's coming up on business beyond consultants have become a big deal over the past decades. you might already know some of them estimates, say the consulting industry expanded from $100000000.00 to $1.00 trillion dollars

in the past 2 decades. but what is our consultants? garrett and lovely used to be one. ready ready ready it was the most depressed i remember being in my adult life more than that later, the term consultant as broad and essentially just means someone who has higher to give professional advice like how to improve a company's profits. consultancies themselves promise nothing less than to make the world a better place. so you want to advance the world. give it a push, lose it in the right direction. there are many different types of consultancies, but in this explain or we will look at management, consultancies, mackenzie, boss, and consulting group, b, c, g, and pain and company. the 1st 2 we will be focusing on. they are the most prestigious firms in the industry. the firms that do management consulting pitch themselves to young college students at the top schools is like the place to go to

solve hard problems and work with the smartest people. i think they also pitch themselves as like more out trista can more publicly interested. then, you know, goldman sachs, or bridgewater, or some other lead financial institution, and among their biggest customers, are governments. rosie calling to and wrote a book about this exact phenomenon. we know that spending on consulting companies pretty much everywhere and by governments has steadily increasing for the past few decades. management consultants have been hired to solve and economic crisis and costa rica design the smart city in kenya, or roller cove and vaccines. in france, an impressive track record, but some experts are warning, but the consulting industry isn't all it promises to be the consulting industry. it has expanded, not necessarily because it is able to create value for economies and societies for organizations. but actually, because it invested in the ability to create a,

to create the illusion of bobby, to create the perception that is creating value. before we dive deeper, let's take a quick look at how we even got here late 18 hundreds. the 2nd industrial revolution companies like general electric start to employee engineers on a short term basis. the contracting model spreads so called consult and started optimizing manufacturing processes across the us and europe. by the mid 19 twenty's, even lennon and trotsky ask in american consultant to develop the national industries of the soviet union. but that's just the beginning. after the 2nd world war consultants start carving out more space in the public sector and one organization in particular, the us space agencies, nasa, people, we're going to go to the move and the question was, did you want to hire an enormous number of people to work in the american federal

government, when this was politically unpalatable, or did you want to find some sort of structure literally. how are we going to do that? how is the statement do that? 3 years after it was founded, 85 percent of mass s. $1000000000.00 budget went outside contractors, one of the main recipients, mckinsey hiring consultants became attractive to governments for 2 main reasons. firstly, they have expertise. steven funded by looks into how the public sector can be reformed and we can actually work with people who do this all the time. rollins, having the civil servants who will work on such but it just wants to apply for the lifetime. and secondly, they are flexible. i need someone here and now what can i find that i can the highest one of the public sector? this takes way too long. in the 1980s consulting found a new fuel, some governments began slashing what they believed for bloated ranks of civil

servants aiming to make the public sector more business like heres former us president ronald reagan talking about it outside of its legitimate functions. government does nothing as well, or they cannot make late as the private sector of the economy reg and then the u. s . and time minister, margaret thatcher, in the u. k. outsourced more and more government work to consultancies. in 1979, the u. k. government was spending around 6000000 pounds on consulting, 11 years later that amount was more than 40 times larger. that has been this, you know, again since the 1980s. i kind of growth in the assumption. oh oh, and imagine some entrenchment of the assumption that simple 7 saw, you know, not necessarily the most innovative people pay up, up, pay for pushes, and then you know, that, that idea is like home trusted with the idea of, of the management consultant who is,

who represents the kind of private sector ingenuity and an innovative potential. the dissolution of the soviet union in the ninety's opened a whole new market for consultancies and those international monetary fund and the world bank spread new liberal policies across the globe. so the public sector consulting so to summarize, behind the consulting goal is this idea of government should not do things, which would see if it's government sets the policy. all this is to manage the execute policy. we don't do policy, we do execution is also lined that consultancy stress in 2017 mckenzie was doing just that for the us immigration office ice then us president. at the time, donald trump has the string of executive orders, they significantly increase the number of immigrants eligible for deportation.

garrisoned lovely wasn't analyst on the project and the mckenzie project i fully got behind this and all hands on deck to figure out how to comply with the executive orders. mackenzie's mission, hiring more ice officers, speeding up deportations and cutting costs. their recommendations included cups and spending on food for detained migrants. some stuff on the side of things were actually concerned about the severity of, of the recommendations coming from mackenzie, because you can do lots of things and like spreadsheets. and it's like optimizing and turning dobson widgets and everything to, to like make some process like cheaper or faster, whatever the metric is to optimize for and you know, it, when the metric is like the putting more people faster or more cheaply. you can imagine how that has like really negative repercussions. mckenzie stopped consulting ice in 2018. some of its recommendations were never implemented,

but the case still opens a question when you're working for immigration and customs enforcement and the administration changes to the trump administration. and then you go full in on helping the trump administration implement. it's very harsh, you know, immigration policies. how can that not be political? so i'm also worried that living profit driven companies execute government policies can mean a clash of values. mackenzie makes the public sector more if the private sector there is a potential there for, for a clash of values. uh huh. i'm all convinced that that, but if it's, if it's so wouldn't be able to take those decisions itself. so governments also have a pretty bad record in making probably the value driven decisions. mackenzie declined to provide a comment for this video. and there's another issue that's being flagged. consultancies don't just make deals with democracies. mackenzie has consulted

ukrainian oligarchy, kremlin linked russian companies and the south african government. under former president, jacob summa, one of mackenzie's and pc, g, is largest clients, saudi arabia, in 2023. the kingdom spent nearly 2000000000 euros and consulting services compared to the rest of the world. the tasks, mackenzie, and co take on in the kingdom reach much deeper into governing territory. including advising the kingdom, sovereign wealth fund, worth more than $900000000000.00, and helping to construct a mega city in the desert. saudi arabia's ministry of economy and planning has even been dropped. the ministry of mackenzie says siri for like, mackenzie work in saudi arabia where at least like that, that kind of justification that will be given as something like a will be a liberalizing force will help them like open up and, you know, help empower women and modernize the economy and,

and do all these things. but there is evidence that their work goes further in 2016 . it can be prepared to report for the saudi government to investigate the popularity of their policies. it included a power point, slide identifying 3 people had been critical of the regime. you're one of those people was arrested and other people, the person of the account disappeared. i and another person of his brothers were arrested. so there's, you know, bad things happened after mackenzie made this slide deck. mckenzie defended itself by stating the slide was prepared for internal use only. and this is not the only time they've come under fire. if you have like a b as a client, you have to like, be deferential to saudi arabia, to some extent, to continue, continue working there. in 2018 saw the american journalist stomach how strongly was assassinated by agents of the saudi government. the killing put

a strain on traditionally strong us ties was a kingdom in the aftermath. many us firms boycotted an investment summit in the country, but mackenzie and b. c. g, stayed on and even less paneled discussions at the event. according to the new york times. both firms have state, if a decline, work in the country, it linked to military and defense. but still, critics say what mckenzie is doing and saw your ravia isn't in line with an image of projects like their code of conduct, which says we have the duty to speak up and to never engage in harassment or discrimination. mckenzie itself, likes to think of itself as a moral company with values um, it's a, it's got all these values, you know, and it takes them very seriously. rosie also pointed out possible conflict and consulting governments across the democratic spectrum. in countries that are less democratic, which have both or it's higher in government sense that and the consultancy

companies might be built a to or, or in theory, could be wielded in ways that further of escape the power and decisions of those. um, making these decisions earlier this year, the us congress question the cdn. mackenzie for failing to declare details about their work for the kingdom. and this isn't the only time consultant fees have advised both sides of the geo political table at the beginning of this year. and mckenzie c o. bob stern, phelps was questioned about its work for chinese companies. looks looks like most of your clients, like the china communications construction company. this is a firm that is blacklisted by the united states government. this is a state owned enterprises that is responsible for building artificial islands in the south china sea. probably indirect contravention of international law. certainly in direct contribution to united states security interest. you help them develop their 5 year plan. my question is,

why should you be able to get any contracts? so united states government, if you're going to advise for a nation's who are hostile to us and make gobs of money off of them, why should you be getting us government contracts? sen, we've never worked with the chinese communist party or the central government and china to the best of my knowledge you're working with. state owned enterprises. this is, this is the time is not a democracy. mackenzie's work in saudi arabia and china shows a concerning side of government, consulting, their profit driven company advising governments and their rivals. and until now they've gone largely unchecked. mckenzie works with all the most of the biggest companies in the world, works with governments around the world works with nonprofit's around the world. we can't buy the idea of that because these for profit seeking company and as a moral the

.