The One where I try to Create a Conspiracy Theory

This piece was supposed to be ironic. And it still is. But while working on it, I learned something about the slippery nature of the human mind and its insatiable desire for intrigue and deceit and control. What began as a lark, an intellectual exercise to see if I could create my own conspiracy theory, soon devolved into a full-blown conspiracy, complete with shadowy figures and their plots and machinations. As I continued writing this piece, I found myself resisting the pull of my own fake conspiracy theory, and I finally began to understand the visceral thrill conspiracies offer. I liked the narrative I was spinning—that I alone understood something, something that was overlooked by everyone else because everyone else wasn't as brilliant and canny as me. It became clear to me that the allure of conspiracies isn’t to be found in a desire for truth. The allure of conspiracies is to be found in a desire for power.

Two weeks ago, President Biden met with China’s Xi Jinping in a highly anticipated summit at the Filoli in Woodside, California, about 25 miles south of San Francisco. The meeting between the two leaders came after months of mounting tension between the U.S. and China. Over the course of their discussion, Biden and Jinping agreed to resume contact between the heads of their militaries, a channel of communication that had been dormant for over a year.

Biden and Jinping appeared to find common ground in the dangers posed by AI and fentanyl. They spoke about the fentanyl crisis plaguing the U.S., and China's role in perpetuating it, and both leaders expressed a desire to curtail the production of the synthetic opioid in China.

They also discussed Taiwan. Jinping announced that he had no intention to invade the country, a position that’s belied by the build up of Chinese troops and weapons directly across the strait. Biden, in his turn, voiced his unflinching support for Taiwan’s sovereignty and said that the U.S. would continue to arm Taiwan as a deterrent to a Chinese invasion.

The wars in Ukraine and Gaza were mentioned. Jinping wishes to be regarded as an active and influential player in international affairs. He wants to sit at diplomacy's adult table and shape global outcomes. Biden aimed to exploit this desire by asking Jinping for his help in containing the conflict in Gaza, which would require China urging Iran not to broaden the war.

Jinping is at the heart of both wars, and because China is the strongest member of its coalition with Iran and Russia, he can play a vital role in brokering peace agreements. It remains to be seen if Jinping will use his unique position for the international commonweal. It also remains to be seen if he is truly committed to stamping out fentanyl production in his country. As Xi knows, fentanyl-related overdoses are crippling America, a harrowing fact that is to his advantage. With an aging population of his own, Jinping might determine that it is not in his best interest to deal with fentanyl.

Despite the diplomatic stumble that followed when Biden insisted before the press that Jinping was a dictator—a remark that made Secretary of State Antony Blinken wince—the summit was a relative success, and it brought much-needed relief to strained relations.

Because the summit was so high stakes, and because it showcased two global powers vying for supremacy (the U.S. seeking to maintain its dominance, China hoping upend it), perhaps the water bottles the two delegations were provided with didn’t catch your eye.

But cobalt-blue water bottles stood on the table in two neat rows, almost as lines of demarcation between the American and Chinese parties.

Upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that the water bottles are Saratoga Spring. But why bottles instead of glasses? Isn’t this unusual? The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that the inclusion of water bottles was queer and not an accident. When I remembered past American visits by heads of state, I thought of the same thing—glasses of water, with the water always appearing a perfect 21 degrees Celsius (room temperature), as if the president and his team were so scrupulous in creating a hospitable environment that any water too hot or too cold would be perfectly offensive.

This past Thanksgiving break, with nothing better to do, I reviewed pictures from every visit by a foreign head of state to determine whether or not something was amiss. I decided to get to the bottom of this Saratoga Spring Affair (as I now call this conspiracy).

It should be noted that at this point the project was still an ironic one, undertaken in a spirit of light-hearted contempt for conspiracies.

It wasn’t until April 16, 2021, when the White House hosted Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, that President Biden began meeting with other world leaders in person. Prior to this point, Covid had frustrated any attempt to meet in person, and summits and meetings had been conducted virtually. President Biden and the Japanese Prime Minister and their cabinets sat across from each other at a long conference table. The table was laden with glasses of water.

A little over a month later, Biden hosted South Korean President Moon Jae-in, and they appeared to drink from the same glasses of water.

This trend was troubling. I continued to dig and found that on the few occasions when water bottles were served, they usually bore the presidential seal and were therefore somewhat featureless. For the majority of visits, though, glasses of water dominated the table.

Of course, this past summit between Jinping and Biden didn’t take place at the White House, and so the same rules governing the serving of water at the White House might not govern the serving of water at the Filoli in Woodside. But when you consider that it can take up to six months to prepare for a state dinner, it seems likely that the water wasn’t an impromptu decision, but the corollary of some diplomatic calculus.

It’s right at this point that my blog began to drift away from the tongue-in-cheek, and it became unmoored from any kind of irony. I started to believe my own conspiracy.

Xi Jinping met with Biden, in part, because he is experiencing economic turmoil back home. Western investors have scrambled to pull out of China. On this visit, Jinping sought to mollify western investors, to reassure them that China, in spite of the state’s chokehold on industry, was still a safe place to invest their money. Later that same day, Xi Jinping attended a $40,000-a-plate dinner attended by the likes of Apple CEO Tim Cook and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink.

Maybe by drinking Saratoga Spring water, a Western brand that began exporting its products to China in 2010, Jinping hoped to signal that he was still open to Western companies and their money.

I continued looking through pictures of different state visits from the Biden administration. None of them included pictures of Saratoga Spring water bottles. Instead I was met with picture after picture of glasses of water, and the glasses were always sleek, and the water was always limpid and cool-looking, and the level of the water was always nearly the same, as if they made sure that the bottom of the meniscus wavered at the same point in every glass. Occasionally, I’d stumble on a picture of Biden and some dignitary drinking tea, and this was a real treat for me, insofar as it provided some variety.

When I finished looking at pictures from President Biden’s different bilateral and trilateral meetings and summits, I started reading about Saratoga Spring water and learned that it was a subsidiary of BlueTriton Brands, a beverage company whose impressive portfolio boasts Arrowhead, Deer Park, and Poland Spring. The CEO of BlueTriton Brands was a Greek-American billionaire by the name of Dean Metropoulos. After a bit more digging, I learned that this same Dean Metropoulos was a modest donor to both Kamala Harris’s and Biden’s campaigns. I speculated that maybe the summit, which was a high-profile affair, had been supplied with Saratoga Spring water as a thank you to Mr. Metropoulos for his campaign support, however modest.

Then it occurred to me that maybe the Filoli in Woodside, California, just happened to be stocked with Saratoga Spring water. Or maybe there was some other benign reason explaining why they drank out of bottles instead of glasses. Maybe there was no conspiracy, and no perfidious scheme was afoot.

I recovered my senses, and my piece became ironic again. I took the pictures of the possible perpetrators down from my wall and rolled up the red yarn that had zig-zagged between them.

Why Biden and Jinping drank Saratoga Spring water is still unclear—perhaps it will become the great mystery of this decade—but the question, as well as its answer, is ultimately moot.

I know fully well that there is nothing wicked at play here, that there is no ulterior motive in selecting Saratoga Spring water as the water for the summit. And yet, a part of me is loath to concede this point, and this reluctance shows me the quiet danger of conspiracies. Conspiracies seduce you with the possibility that you are right, that you are privy to a great secret.

And conspiracies seduce you by whispering in your ear that accidents and coincidences are not accidents and coincidences but events freighted with meaning, that tenuous links between people aren’t tenuous at all but strong connections, and that these people are part of a vast and byzantine network whose single aim is to deceive you.

And conspiracies seduce you by flattering your ego, by telling you that you, and you alone, know the truth.

But conspiracies, like my water bottle one, or the Saratoga Spring Affair as I prefer, are usually (not always) distractions. By insisting that something is happening in the shadows, we miss the depravity and sordid actions taking place in broad daylight.