It's pretty amazing that they don't know this.
Of course they know this. That’s EXACTLY why they’re doing it.
In "The Gulag Archipelago" Solzhenitsyn said that even Shakespeare's most evil villains stopped their killing at about a dozen souls. To exceed this ideologues are required. The ideology is the justification, the get out of jail free card that allows wholesale evil to exist and perfuse.
They know exactly what they are doing or want to do and they know it is wrong but justified by their ideology. They are saving mankind in their minds but they are also leaving more for themselves. They are also frightened little men with too much power and money.
The problem in a world gone mad is there is just too much ME and hardly any YOU, US or WE.