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It is from Crash Course World History. It is at 10 minute and 26 second. Here is the context:
Also when we ask the question about why the West rules or why western nations suceeded, what are we going to do with the answer. Is it for Westeners to congratulate ourself on a job well done, or to explain away the astonishing inequality in the world as being so deeply rooted in the past as to make any efforts to fix it futile.
Does the host mean fix it so that it is not be futile?
You will find this sort of construction taking two forms:
... (so) as to make {something} {adjective}
... (so) as to make {adjective} {something}
as to make {any efforts to fix it} {futile}
as to make {futile} {any efforts to fix it}
... as to render {any further discussion} {moot}
... as to render {moot} {any further discussion}
Compare also:
... so {qualifier} as to make {something} {adjective}
... so {qualifier} as to make {adjective} {something}
... so undercooked as to make it inedible
NOTE: we cannot move the adjective ahead of a pronoun:
... so undercooked as to make inedible it. NO
... so poisoned with salt as to make inedible the soup we had been so looking forward to all day.
The version where the adjective comes before the noun phrase {something} tends to appear in texts written in a rather more formal style, especially when {something} is a phrase of considerable length:
... as to make the orderly negotiation of problems as they arose impossible
... as to make impossible the orderly negotiation of problems as they arose
It would not be ungrammatical to place the adjective after such a long phrase; moving it forward ahead of the noun phrase is done to help preserve the relationship of verb and adjective {e.g. render moot}, that is, to keep together action and effect.
You have parsed the sentence incorrectly.
The correct parsing is "make [something] adjective", as in "make me beautiful"
The "something" is "any attempts to fix it" Where "it" refers to "inequality in the world". The thing that "makes [fixing inequality] futile" is the fact that "inequality is deeply rooted in the past", or "inequality has existed for so long".
The host is asking "Has inequality existed for so long that fixing it is futile?"
