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Comment by tlrobinson | Hacker News Reader

By "arms dealer" do they mean "kind of sketchy online pharmacy entrepreneur"? Because I didn't see anything about weapons in this article.

Perhaps that's still to come in part 2, but as of right now the title is extremely linkbaity.

EDIT: title has been unlinkbaitified (previously "Truecrypt was written by a international arms dealer")

EDIT2: title has been reverted to the linkbaity version (previously changed to the original title "He Always Had a Dark Side")

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His name seems to be quite well known at this point, lots of stories about him cooperating with US feds in 2014-2015.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/world/asia/in-real-life-ra...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/02/nyregion/us-reveals-crimin...

He's pretty much a Bond villain from those articles, like the UN claiming he funded militias in Somalia to harvest hallucinogenic plants and shipping arms to Liberia.

Probably would've made the same amount of money charging for TC premium support instead of building a pancontinental empire of mercenaries and arms trafficking.

Lord of War taught us such people won't enter such businesses because the "margins are too small." I'd also guess it's not as exciting and brings in less attention from the ladies.

I think you underestimate how much can be made from arms trafficking!

Clearly the US makes a massive amount of cash selling weapons; yes, US is not an "arms dealer" - but likely comparable.

> US is not an "arms dealer"

> the US makes a massive amount of cash selling weapons

DOES NOT COMPUTE

It is semantics, illegal arms trafficking is a subset of the global market for arms.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_trafficking

nxzero said nothing about legality.

Given he's called a "criminal kingpin" and compared to Viktor Bout, the merchant of death, pretty safe to assume he wasn't selling weapons legally.

I quoted you talking about the U.S.!

Then, I don't understand what you're comment means. Happy to respond again if you'd clarify want you intended.

'Arms dealer': one who sells arms. The point he is making is that, regardless of what is considered legitimate, both this individual and the U.S. government are, by definition, arms dealers.

Or at least that the U.S. is an arms dealer.

No. 'Arms dealer' refers to illegal arms dealers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_trafficking#Notable_arms_...

Agree, US is not a "dealer" they're an "exporter" -- and no one selling weapons for a government would ever offically refer to themselves as an arms dealer.

'Arms dealer' = illegal arms trafficker

> Perhaps that's still to come in part 2

This article is actually part 3, the first two detail his arms dealing a little bit, but like someone else mentioned, he's a very well-known arms dealer with direct links to several murders.

Part 1: https://mastermind.atavist.com/an-arrogant-way-of-killing

Note, this is part 3 already - parts 1 and 2 lay out more of the story.

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