A plethora of conspiracies have been floating ever since the world went into a state of lockdown. Some hint at Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft Corporation, to have been secretly endeavoring a plan to reduce and control world population. Reports also claim that Gates, through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has been funding the research and other important projects at the World Health Organization (WHO), leading pharmaceutical, and research companies of the world. Gates is also reported to have been working on a cashless economic system and envisions putting the world under continuous surveillance. This will monitor the human’s online and offline (physical world) activities. To what extent these rumors, reports, concerns, and conspiracies are true is yet to be seen. These news reports though have one connection. In 2015, Bill Gates delivered a Ted Talk citing how a virus would result in a global catastrophe. He said, “If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus.” In October 2019, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with WHO and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted Event 201. It was a high-level pandemic exercise simulating how a corona pandemic will affect the world population and its resources. Event 201 was held nearly four months before WHO officially called Covid-19 a pandemic. The spread of the Covid-19 has presented us with the direction where the world is heading. People have pointed out Gates’ intentions and plans for population control. Reports also cite how he envisions a world where humans’ actions, verbal and physical, are not only closely observed but are also reprimanded – if the need be. The government in Sweden has been implanting its citizens with such high-tech microchips in the skin. It lets the citizen live in a cashless economy and their need to carry a credit card has also been fulfilled. The coming times reveal how much of these conspiracies are real and which are fiction – for the time being Another conspiracy that surfaced when the Covid-19 broke out related to China launching the 5G. Although 5G does not have a direct link with the Covid-19, it does have a connection with the events transpiring regarding global surveillance. China’s law enforcement apparatus has been using artificial intelligence (AI) in unprecedented ways. It has been conducting facial recognition scans of its citizens in real-time. Recently, Forbes reported that China has been using facial recognition to label ethnic groups. The New York Times recently published an in-depth report titled, “One Month, 500,000 Face Scans: How China Is Using A.I. to Profile a Minority.” It says, “The facial recognition technology, which is integrated into China’s rapidly expanding networks of surveillance cameras, looks exclusively for Uighurs based on their appearance and keeps records of their comings and goings for search and review. The practice makes China a pioneer in applying next-generation technology to watch its people, potentially ushering in a new era of automated racism.” Bill Gates’ vision for surveillance, which seems draconian to say the least, resembles pretty much with the kind of surveillance China has been carrying out. Using its high-end communications network, China’s schools share real-time data of the students’ attention levels and their academic activities with teachers and parents. Such a surveillance system targeting the world – or at least the metropolis of countries, will have adverse effects. Secret agencies and technology companies, in particular, will be using such AI-based surveillance methods to monitor all activities of the residents. It will create their profile based on demographics and behavioral data, and race and religion in extreme cases. This monitoring will strip away the humans from their freedom of expression. Conspiracy theorists also claim that Bill Gates is planning to inject humans with microscopic chips. This will be done when people will be injected with the antidote for the Covid-19 virus. This idea seems far-fetched, however, it is not. The government in Sweden has been implanting its citizens with such high-tech microchips in the skin. It lets the citizen live in a cashless economy and their need to carry a credit card has also been fulfilled. The coming times reveal how much of these conspiracies are real and which are fiction – for the time being. Truth be told, we are already living in the fourth industrial revolution or Industry 4.0. What George Orwell narrated in his dystopian novel, 1984, originally published in 1949 will have a factual meaning in our lives. Our data that is based on our demographics and psychographics are already in the hands of the powers that be thanks to social media and digital media. We are already under the radar. The writer is an independent researcher, author and columnist