Wisemen's Committee

The Wisemen's Committee was the first group of The Philosophers.

Origins
The Wisemen's Committee was a secret group of the most wealthy and powerful minds from the United States, Russia, and China formed after the first World War. By the time of the second World War began, the power and reach of the Wiseman's Committee had grown exponentially and were the unquestioned force behind each government. They ran independent political forces, had their own agents, and trained schools of operatives that would undermine seats of power throughout other governments.

To fight the war more efficiently, the individuals that composed the Committee pooled their resources, an estimated total of one hundred billion dollars - a fortune unmatched by any that preceded or followed it. This money was used to develop entirely new forms of warfare that would dominate global affairs for decades to come; rocketry, nuclear weapons, and superhuman soldiers.

Meanwhile, Boris Volgin, the Wisemen Committee's financial manager, was able to maintain complete control of the finances when their leadership died, thus later his son inherited the finances.

Apparently, there was possibly an internal struggle for power or traitorious members within the Wisemen's Committee. During this internal struggle within the organization, one of the members revealed his comrades' traitorious nature to his daughter and was killed shortly afterward, making his daughter an orphan. With the deaths of the Wisemen's Committee, tensions rose between the nations and among the Philosophers, tearing the group and the world in three; America, Russia, and China. Cause and effect were as one; the tension between the three feuding remnants of the Philosophers was the hidden face of the Cold War as each group attempted to concentrate power in their own nation.

Decades later, Solidus Snake originally planned to steal the data from Arsenal Gear for information on the "Wisemen's Committee", the twelve members of The Patriots. Later, Philanthropy retrieved information from Arsenal Gear about the "Wisemen's Committee", but Otacon discovered that all twelve members of had been dead for at least a hundred years, and that "one of them was their (Philanthropy) biggest contributor." Solid Snake deduced that the information retrieved from the Arsenal Gear was false and was only a fake lead, most likely orchestrated by the "successor" of the Patriots. The names of the "pseudo-Wisemen's Committee" were most likely the original Wisemen's Committee that founded the Philosophers.