I was fortunate enough to visit their HQ in Belmont, MA in the 1970s and meet several members of their leadership team.
These were some of the most intelligent, well read, thoughtful people I met in my entire life.
The lesson—if you are smart enough it is not that hard to see the future.
In ‘66 at a JBS meeting I recall a guy asking if the organization thought MLK was a Communist.
The answer was very measured - he was described as “pink”, but not a Communist outright.
At the time that was almost heresy. It was not just controversial but would have been seen as an outrageous insult.
Unfortunately we now know it was not just true, but didn’t go far enough. MLK was far beyond just “pink”. But he couldn’t say it himself back then. The JBS people had done their homework on him.
That sticks with me to this day.