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I have thought on the hypothesis that Older males are acting in ways that inhibit up and coming young bucks because they instinctively(?) view them as competition for resources and, yes, mates that could unseat them from positions they very much feel they have earned and are entitled to keep.
Is it purposeful but maybe not 'intentional' behavior, throwing up obstacles for up-and-comers, giving them half-baked or outdated advice, and gleefully implementing social policies that systemically exclude such men under the veneer of 'equality', all in the name of keeping those possible competitors from threatening their current grasp on power.
I can think of multiple events in the Bible, for instance, where an older male in power seeks to inhibit or literally kill a younger upstart 'rival' to keep him from unseating him. You know why Saul wanted David (i.e. the dude who slew Goliath) dead? There was a literal prophesy that David would be king. And Saul wanted his son to be King. Even though his son liked David. Oh, keeping things relevant to the season, Jesus' birth caused King Herod to slay every single male under age two in Jerusalem for fear of being unseated decades later.
I could see this dynamic playing out writ large on the civilizational scale.
But there's little research on this point, and I don't think anyone has admitted to feeling this way or using this to guide their decisions, so I don't feel I can prove this with any strength.
Part of the evidence I've seen in favor of this hypothesis is that nepotism is still clearly a way to get ahead for white males. Note that I do not consider nepotism inherently a bad thing. That is, older men still clearly favor their progeny for advancement, they aren't throwing their own sons to the wolves... but it would then stand to reason that they are being much more suspicious of males they aren't related to and would feel fewer qualms about kicking out the ladder that those kids might use to advance.
Being a little bit petty, notice that Alexander Soros gets to be the heir apparent of his father's massive empire. The same father who has spent B-I-L-L-I-O-N-S of dollars implementing the exact policies and pushing the exact ideas that led to the issue the OP article identified.
It would stand to complete reason that George Soros might elevate a proud woman of color to take over his empire. But he chose his own male child, and said son, despite claiming to share his father's priorities, happily accepts. WHAT GIVES? (This is not an antisemetic dogwhistle, for those who have already instantly thought along those lines.)
So yeah, there's the real possibility this is all just an evolutionary arms race with the genes that favor their own kin implementing a cultural superweapon to generate an advantage in the great game of environmental fitness.
Just had to watch out for MeToo accusations. I noted that some evidence against my hypothesis is that older men were still getting sniped with being sex pests, and no matter how much power they had this was often enough to get them removed and unable to return to their former glory.
You can ascribe some of that to intra-elite competition.
Plenty of young dudes caught up in it as well, but if this were an 'intentional' play by older males to thin out the competition, it surely backfired on many of them, and hurt their overall ability to use their own power to procure sex from young women, which they certainly would not prefer to happen.
This likely also plays into the whole Epstein debacle, but I will leave that aside.
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