Kremlin Cash Behind Yuri Milner’s Twitter and Facebook Investments
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
In essence, Putin used Browder's investigations of Gazprom and other oligarch-controlled Russian businesses (huge national orgs that were privatized after the collapse of the Soviet Union) to jail the richest man in Russia, effectively making all the oligarchs his bitches.
Milner is investing oligarch money. These people will kill you (see: Sergei Magnitsky). How bad do you want Milner' money now?
https://www.amazon.com/Red-Notice-Finance-Murder-Justice/dp/...
https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins...
Also, any book on past and current colonialism (say, current actions of the US military in Africa).
How do you like your illegitimately rich country?
DST Global and its affiliates have (or had in formative years) significant stakes in Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, ZocDoc, Planet Lab, Xiaomi, Stripe, Alibaba, WhatsApp and Airbnb [1]. Milner has close ties to Y Combinator [2]. It's been a deal-terms setting, behind-the-kimono peeking major investor for a decade.
This is immensely scary. We've utterly failed, as an industry, to self regulate.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Milner
[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venture-milner-ycombinato...
The additional Kremlin state ties seem only an additional technicality. (I mean the formalized acknowledgement of what I presumed existent.)
The line between investing for potentially-corrupt interests and acting at the behest of a geopolitical competitor is night and day. DST didn't just hand cash over to companies. They conducted extensive diligence and sat on Boards.
What will be interesting here is how fast it falls off HN.
Remember your priors.
You assumed wrong. A moderator changed it because the submitted title ("Yuri Milner's money is from Putin (via Gazprom, oligarchs, et al)") was an obvious violation of the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
We often put individual names back in HN titles when the audience here can be expected to recognize the name. I've done so above. That's a rather specialized moderation practice, which not everyone who edits HN titles knows about. The basic edit was valid and routine.
However I do have the feeling that Russia's current behaviour is quantitatively if not qualitatively different.
In it's scale, it's cynicism and in it's deliberate single mindedness. I'm not a great believer in good vs evil on the geopolitical stage but a move this blatant needs to be resisted because if it succeeds it will become the new normal.
And yet here you are discussing "cynicism and [...] deliberate single mindedness".
As a lefty, you fail to put things in perspective... But I guess it's just not convenient, sometimes, is it?
PS - I'm from the UK - not US if that changes things.
I think you may be arguing with an imaginary straw man version of me. I'm not sure I stand for the things you're railing against.
As a language, it's a disaster. I better worry about more important things, and not waste more time with it.
"If there's one mistake this story makes, it's in trying to come up with complicated theories about why Yuri does well. He's simply smart."
> Come now, Paul. Yes, Yuri is smart. But he also has huge sacks of money to throw around, most of which comes from oligarch Alisher Usmanov
> It's kind of sad, to me at least, the extent to which a sort of amorality has really taken hold in Silicon Valley. It's nice that he's helped your investments out, Paul, but where does Yuri's money come from? Have you looked into him and Usmanov? I mean, the sad thing about Yuri Milner to me isn't that he's an ostentatious outsider, it's that he fits in so darn well in Silicon Valley. I wish this was the sort of place that looked completely alien to someone from Moscow or Wall Street. Every year, it seems that's less and less the case, at least in terms of culture.
For what it's worth said oligarch, Alisher Usmanov, is also a major shareholder of Arsenal Football Club, one of the English Premier League's top clubs. Most of the club supporters don't care one bit from where the transfers money comes.
It doesn't have to be effective.
We're on something of an economic and technological roll, what with profit-motivated private investors who don't face political backlash when they shut down failing endeavors building on government-funded basic research.
My guess: The US government has no stomach for the power-law economic outcomes associated with innovation. Our politicians cannot stomach 9 Solyndras for every 1 SpaceX... so they opt instead to turn away from high-tech investing. It will be a problem.
Russians are single handedly contributing to economic growth worldwide, better than the US counterparts who brag about it.
The US has found itself in a position where it wishes to tell people which transactions are good and which transactions can't contribute to the financial ecosystem, in order to deter behaviors it doesn't like.
This article is showing how that these fictional limitations on fungibility are futile and have been a colossal waste of US and US partner's resources and public money, perpetuated by excessive pride, unilateral claims on morality, and rampant unique paranoia against the Russian state for historical reasons which are irrelevant.
OH MY GOD This was all part of a ploy to undermine democracy! Orrrr make amazing returns helping fueling an unprecedented growth of the tech sector since the US government did the same thing funding the Fairchilds.
I work for an American company in San Francisco that has Tencent (practically an arm of the Chinese government) as a major investor. The number of times our CEO came in and told me that we need to implement features that benefit our geopolitical competitor is exactly zero.
What precisely do all the commenters that are panicking here think happens at companies where the investors are people who became rich with the help of the governments of Russia and China?
Why would anyone told you that? Clearly, someone would told you to implement X because Y when the real reason is Z.
EDIT: to clarify, I used FB here as a generic example, I am not alleging that Milner got that sort of access at Facebook specifically - although it is possible, as others point out downthread. Corporate espionage certainly gets much easier when you have a seat on the board and/or you can do due diligence.
Have you conducted early-stage due diligence? I have. We signed an NDA and got to review source, plans, blueprints; spoke with engineers; jockeyed with management on what it should prioritize, what it should not; made introductions; et cetera. Board members get a lot of latitude at young companies.
https://techcrunch.com/2009/05/26/facebook-takes-that-200-mi...
Facebook was not a young company when it got the DST investment, and DST didn't get a board seat.
When did I claim this? Not every investment is troubling, though I expect Facebook's counsel will be reviewing what advice, requests, introductions, et cetera Milner and his team made over the years.
I think people with money want to invest in order to make more money. Unless people can point to Russian money somehow having an obvious pattern on startup investing, there just doesn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary (rich people trying to get richer).
There are Boards, today, realizing that suggestions that were made over the years may have been compromised. They sounded like they were for furthering the company's financial interests. In truth, they may have been about compromising the company, and through it, American geopolitical goals.
You're moving goalposts. Nobody is worried about someone being friendly with the Kremlin. Acting at their behest, however, is new and troubling.
(I agree that this should have been obvious. Unfortunately, when dollars start dancing people tend to rationalize.)
Again, you're moving the goalposts.
Others [1][2][3] have directly responded to you on this point. Arguing that there is no need for alarm until some undefined threshold of red-handed evidence is attained is silly.
If a state-backed investor invests in your company, and you don't know about it, that's cause for alarm in itself. It means you need to review, very carefully, what you told whom, when, and what actions you took at their behest. From a corporate level, it's similar to what e.g. SpaceX would be expected to do if it discovered Lockheed Martin invested in it through a front. At a national level, state involvement adds extra dimensions.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15631661
> If a state-backed investor invests in your company, and you don't know about it, that's cause for alarm in itself.
Is the only difference between today and yesterday is that yesterday there was no direct evidence that rich people associated ("backed by", "working in" - I am not sure what terminology you prefer to suggest nefariousness) with the Kremlin gave Milner cash to invest? If that's the concern, then, once again - anyone who believed yesterday that Milner was not $funded (once again, insert preferred terminology) at least partially by the Kremlin is an idiot. All they had to do was ask someone who is an immigrant from the Soviet Union.
Then more of us are idiots than you give credit for :). At the very least, I was an idiot and pg was an idiot [1][2].
Self-restraint is required at such moments. We all need to contribute our share of this if we want HN to survive as a place for substantive discussion.
The best response to that would be this [1] from that same thread. It's not money laundering if it's just how post-Soviet laissez-faire capitalism does things.
One point is that it should be obvious where the money came from (etc); the other point is that that origin should not be cause for concern.
Is that accurate?
If so I would agree with you on the first point but not the second: the same logic that eg allows one to make the inferences in the first point would also lead one to infer certain things about Yandex (analogous to the situation with Kaspersky).
Do you honestly think that the funding under discussion—and the personal relationships that subsequently developed—had no impact on either Twitter or Facebook deciding to establish their respective partnerships with Yandex?
On the second point: the source of the money should not be cause of concern if it's "just money."
If it's money and a very strong suggestion that you partner with a (obvious, even if explicitly unstated) foreign, state-controlled entity, then it's a cause for concern. If it's just money, and then when you want to partner with a foreign, state-controlled entity, that same money gives you an introduction to the foreign, state-controlled entity, then it's not a cause for concern, because that's the point of business relationships and investments.
The question of Russian influence is really a separate question, in my mind, and I think that's what bugs me about this entire thing the most. The implication somewhere here is that the leaders of Facebook and Twitter, and other startups that take Milner money were somehow duped, and allowed Russia to walk free in their systems and influence the election. I will be very surprised if that's true; Zuckerberg and Dorsey are too smart for that.
What seems obvious to me is that the systems they created are giant, targeted megaphones, by design. They were successfully used by the Obama campaign, and everyone was very happy for democracy then. Then a foreign state decided that they were going to give Trump help on these megaphones, and now everyone is very unhappy for democracy. Would we have this much hand-wringing if we discovered that Saudi Arabia was helping Hilary?
In re: your broader point I don’t think they are “that smart” per se; or perhaps better put, I think they are smart enough to be aware their platforms are used by all kinds of agents for all sorts of purposes 24/7/365...but up until now also deemed it prudent to turn a rather universal blind eye towards those activities unless they were, say, so obviously fake that ordinary users could identify them as such.
Whether that universal blind eye was smart is tbd, but nothing in their response since then has seemed very clever.
The story seems to be something like this:
[1] Yandex builds an app to crawl Facebook without Facebook's permission [2] Facebook blocks Yandex [3] Yandex gets licensed access to Facebook's firehose
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2013/01/11/yandex-wonder/ [2] http://www.reuters.com/article/net-us-yandex-facebook/yandex... [3] https://techcrunch.com/2014/01/13/yandex-facebook/
There's certainly a plausible Kremlin long con here - fund Milner to invest in Facebook, ask Yandex to build a crawler for Facebook, expect that Facebook would shut it shut down, then suggest via Milner that there should be a partnership between Yandex and Facebook, thus gaining official access to Facebook's firehose, to be sent directly to Kremlin for analysis of message proliferation, and further influence of the American public.
The fundamental mistake there (the final move that allows you to be checkmated) is the firehose deal, not the investment.
In any case, thanks for making me think through the possible attack vector here. Your comment is the first one that was specific enough that made me think through why this could be a cause for concern.
Not very plausible if compared to other things Kremlin does. Too long, too complicated, too hollywood. The modus operandi is much simpler - you do not need complex cons if you control everything. If you can come to Yandex and demand any data you want, anytime. You just have to keep Yandex alive, they'll find a way to get data (because it's their lifeblood, they are a data organization company, like Google) and when they do, you get the data too. Simple.
Depending on how you qualify "where". The specific way the money got there can be very complicated. The answer to the question "is that connected to Putin's interests somehow" is not - it is always "yes" given the source is in Russia and the sum is large enough.
> the other point is that that origin should not be cause for concern.
That is very subjective question. Some are ok with foreigners with questionable records (Chinese, petro-monarchies, Russians, etc.) investing in US economy. Some are worried about it. It is a personal choice. But there's no law preventing such people from buying any stock offered to public or entering into any investment deal they'd like, so this is a normal thing to happen. And it happens literally all the time.
> Do you honestly think that the funding under discussion—and the personal relationships that subsequently developed—had no impact on either Twitter or Facebook deciding to establish their respective partnerships with Yandex?
I don't see how we could have any idea about whether it did. Certainly, common investors can influence decisions, but Twitter and Facebook have various investors, with varied interests, so why would you think this particular deal is only influenced by one of them?
I think you are being intentionally ignorant. Maybe you have rationalized that it doesn't matter if the money comes from authoritarian regimes because it pays your bills.
I believe that every American VC fund has objectionable limited partners even when they are not authoritarian regimes and no VC-funded company has clean money coming in. All those Monsanto and Goldman pension funds have to be parked somewhere. The obvious response is that I am deflecting or that "two wrongs don't make a right" or something like that.
The only implication would be that I rationalized away all ethics by working in the industry.
I suspect that this Red Scare is trying somehow to present doing any business with Russians as a crime, while a) avoiding to explain how it is different from doing business with Saudis, Chinese, Pakistanis, Qatarians or any other countries with centralized power structures and questionable records in freedom & human rights department; and b) trying to expose specific dealings as nefarious while neglecting to mention same dealings in other areas at all and explain why those are OK.
Since it is in fashion to bash SV now, here is an article how SV is basically owned by Putin. Do you want to look at other Russian investments, maybe? At all people getting investments linked to Russia or lobbying for Russians or having business linked to any part of Russian money? Nah, that probably would upset to many people. Let's concentrate on Silicon Valley now.
No wonder Facebook and Twitter didn’t stop Russia’s influence during the elections and offered RT ad space... It’s the same reason Fox News is always screaming about Islam and jihad but carefully tiptoes around Saudi’s Arabia because one of their biggest investors after the Murdoch’s is a Saudi Prince.
This is how democracy fails. It’s like hitting a boulder with a hammer. The first ten thousand times not much happens, but eventually it collapses all at once.
America has allowed itself to be manipulated through political divisions, politicization of facts and science, cultures wars, dividing us by race (encouraged by Trump’s actions), campaign finance reform failures, gerrymandering, voter suppression, and our Supreme Court selling us all out and allowing corporations (including foreign corporations) to spend unlimited amounts of money in our elections. We are destroying ourselves and allowing this to happen because big oil, the Christian Y’all Qaeda, and racists have formed an alliance on the right to refuse to acknowledge reality and have then the right into a cult ideology. I hope this is a cultural bottom, but it seems like things will just continue to get worse.
Back when Milner invested in Facebook I viewed it as potential money laundering and didn't think about it too much.
The issue here is companies didn't treat Milner et al as an extension of the Russian state. They treated them as private individuals who made money in Russia. The difference is night and day. The latter want to make money like other investors. The former may want things other than money. Transparency allows one to be wary about suspicious requests, requests which may not seem suspicious without context.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. Speak to a lawyer before accepting, or making, investments.
Your larger point, that we should have been more cautious, stands. We should have figured this out. But dollars danced, and even the best of us started rationalizing [1].
I just don't want to see a McCarthy witch hunt when a lot of the money floating in Wallstreet and the Valley is of dubious origin.
I would equally oppose taking money from one of the CIA VC firms, even that one where Dan Geer works. And I kinda have this idea that by now enough money is floating around valley from the money made in the valley that it should be possible to use that "pre-laundered" (if we may call it that) capital.
That said, I have no idea how a startup would vet the VC's capital backers, or what they should do when they find out some of it came from beijing, moscow, tel aviv, and you want to give it back to disassociate your startup.
Facebook's advisor on its $19B acquisition of Whatsapp was a "privately held boutique investment bank" called Allen & Company, which at the time was led (maybe it still is, it doesn't show up at all on his personal wiki page) by former CIA director George Tenet. Not 6-months had passed since this acquisition and Putin started talking in the media about how the Internet is controlled by the US 3-letter agencies. Shortly after that his cronies fully took control of VKontakte.
There are plenty of Western businessmen who have political agendas of their own - who do things for reasons besides money. Rupert Murdoch, the Koch Brothers, etc. They are incredibly open about their goals, and none of them are good for the rest of us.
(The Koch's are actually more complex than Murdoch. The latter is just a scumbag while the former have beliefs and values. Which probably makes them more worrying.)
But seriously, let's put these reactions in perspective. Supposs the same was revealed the other way, about a US company having ties to the US government investing in Russian technology. We wouldn't bat an eye. This hysteria about Russian collusion makes us waste our energy and attention which is necessary to pay attention to the real issues (which I list below.)
I am not surprised that a Russian billionaire has ties to Putin, or invested in US companies. His company has since sold his stake and moved on, and nothing scary happened.
Compared to what the USA does on a regular basis, Russia is a pretty good actor when it comes to external dealings.
What's much more worrying is internal Russia policies. I personally know some people who started VKontakte (the Russian facebooj). They all sold their stake or were later pressured to do so by the Russian government after refusing to cooperate with the equivalent of the FBI's NSL + gag orders. and of course the Mail.ru conglomerate wanted to take it over. Not easy to maitain a business in Russia.
(Note: the US has just as much spying and NSL+gag orders but far, far greater freedom of speech and property protections so we don't feel it as much.)
But outside? Look US firms regularly make investments in companies around the world. The actual influence comes not from investment but from things like:
The CIA approaching VK founder and developers hoping to install backdoors in Telegram
Microsoft Windows new versions phoning home or cooperating with the CIA. There is a reason many nations including Russia have built and are now promoting ther own operating systems instead of Windows.
It's just so sloppy to talk about "ties" to something. The hysteria cheapens the impact ahen something real happens. Like backdoors and hacking.
It has been a while since the United States forcibly annexed another country's territory [1].
In any case, this argument is irrelevant. Irrespective of whether Russia is a "good actor" or not, they are a geopolitical competitor who surreptitiously exercised control over, or at least non-public purview into, sensitive American companies.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_territorial_acqu...
Guantanamo?
Norriega?
Contras?
How long is a while? Or is only annexation considered the red line here?
If you want to blame Russians, you should blame the USSR for deporting the Crimean Tatars after WW2 as collective punishment. Being outraged at an annexation of a territory that was unilaterally given away 50 years earlier where not a single gunshot was fired while giving a free pass to an invasion of sovereign countries resulting a million deaths is not an argument everyone can agree with.
The US occupation of Guantanamo bay for example, is contested by Cuba, who protests continuously. However the Russian annexation of Crimea was at least supported by the inhabitants. They’re both crimes of imperialism but the former is far worse.
You mean wishes of Asad? Given that Syria hasn't been a democracy since... well, I don't know, bronze age? "wishes of that country" is kinda nebulous term, especially right in the middle of a civil war.
Incidentally the US has supported far worse dictatorships, it has a terrible record in that regard.
> One cannot discount the government of a country just so easily.
It's not "so" easily. It's a brutal strongman that uses WMD against people he's supposedly representing. It's not just some disagreement on taxes or policies. It's routinely using the military against people. And if you think ISIS is the only organization that opposes Asad, you are woefully misinformed - opposition to Asad is much wider and ISIS just used the chaos to get a stronghold, they did not initiate the civil war. And of course Asad has absolutely no problem with "extremist terrorist forces" - as long as they threaten not him but say US or Israel.
> Incidentally the US has supported far worse dictatorships
Not "far" worse, as it's not very easy to go far worse than Asad (maybe Idi Amin who was rumored to literally eat people? Or Papa Doc Duvalier, who at one time ordered to have all black dogs in a country killed because he thought his fugitive opponent turned himself into one?). But yes, it did. But doing a bad thing once is not a reason to do it ten times more.
By that logic, the USSR didn't annex Afghanistan either. It just invaded, occupied it, and participated in a bloody civil war. Why did everyone get all worked up about that war, anyways? Why did the Soviets not have a moral high hill to make a stand on in that conflict?
BTW, you are forgetting more recent events in which the US govt. has been involved, directly or indirectly:
Iraq (war)
Afghanistan (war)
Syria (war)
Libya (war)
Honduras (coup d'etat)
Brazil (soft coup d'etat)
Paraguay (soft coup d'etat)
Venezuela (economic blockade)
Mali (war)
Nagorny Karabakh (war)
Chechnya (2x 'official' wars and still going)
Georgia (war)
Ukraine (war)
Montenegro (coup d'etat)
And as for economical blockades, they've did that to almost all their neighbours:
Belarus
Estonia
Georgia
Lituania
Latvia
Poland
Ukraine
And why is this should be considered of any importance?
:-P
No it is not. Russia is a very bad actor when it comes to external dealings, and the reason not many in the US are aware of it is because when USSR crashed and dissolved, Russia emerged from the wreckage much weaker and not yet able to wreak major trouble like USSR could. But where it can (in its immediate vicinity) it is as bad as it always was. True, US is not idea too and does its share of mistakes. But I don't think US - at least now, not 150 years ago - would just grab a chunk of territory of another country and declare it its own because they like it. Russia does that.
But it is currently not a major threat to the US (yet?) and most investments made by it are not for nefarious purposes, at least not in the US. With all their faults, those guys like earning money too.
Was it worth it? C'mon guys, don't hold back now. What's a few murdered dissidents between friends?
Senator Tom Cotton, CIA Director John Brennan, transcript from Senate Intelligence Committee hearings on June 2016:
https://www.cotton.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=414
SENATOR COTTON: I want to discuss cooperation with our Intelligence Community from Silicon Valley, specifically Twitter and a company called Dataminr. According to the Wall Street Journal from May 8th, as well as some other media reports, Dataminr which is owned in part by Twitter and is the only company authorized to access the full real-time stream of public tweets that Twitter has, recently cooperated with the CIA. But just a few weeks ago ended that cooperation. So our Intelligence Community no longer has access to Dataminr's information, could you comment on these reports?
DIRECTOR BRENNAN: It appears as though Dataminr was directed to not provide its service to the CIA Intelligence Community and so therefore, we need to be able to leverage other capabilities in order to make sure that we have the insight we need to protect this country.
COTTON: So those reports are correct?
BRENNAN: I am not going to dispute them.
COTTON: The Wall Street Journal also reported that the CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, directed Dataminr to stop the contract because he was worried about the "optics" of helping intelligence agencies. Do you believe that to be accurate?
BRENNAN: I do not know his motivation for any corporate decision he may have made, but I have no basis to dispute that.
COTTON: The Wall Street Journal also reports that among customers of Dataminr remains RT, Russia Today, a propaganda outlet of Vladimir Putin's government, which Putin has said is "trying to break the Anglo-Saxon monopoly on global information streams." To your knowledge, is Russia Today a client of Dataminr?
BRENNAN: I believe so, I'm not certain of that. But I don't have any information that they have been excluded from their services.
> RT is a Russian propaganda channel, it's not a foreign intelligence service
I wonder if there are National Security Letters and FISA courts (or something comparable) in Russia.
That seems like a dangerous idea.
More broadly, we would need to know if Dataminr is sharing (a) its full fire hose with RT, or just a subset of it and (b) any data with the subcontractors to the Intelligence Community, in which case we can assume they made a policy decision to not work with state intelligence agencies, misguided as that may be in today's hybrid world.
TL; DR Doesn't strike me as specious solely based on what's provided here.
I'm skeptical there would be any practical restrictions in RT's case.
So maybe the question that needs to be asked here is how come people in the US see reputation risks of cooperating with CIA as worse than ones for cooperating with Russians? Is there something that CIA and US government should be doing to fix this shameful situation?
The aspect of "VCs fine like him because he makes fewer requirements" is a very interesting one and I'm not in the least feeling sorry for the VCs
Dammit, this is disappointing. I really thought pg was above saying things like that.
Between this, thiel, and some other things, I am quite bummed out.
What YC companies tell themselves: Milner wants to invest in us because he wants to make money, and if he has enough fingers in enough pies, one or more of his investments will pay out nicely.
What the rest of the world is telling YC companies: Milner wanted to invest in you because Russian oligarchs and the successors of the mf'in KGB wanted to get root at your tools, your data, your users, your insights, your ability to spread their crooked point of view...
Yeah, your company is an investment for them. But not the way you think.
Regardless, it's likely this move was more financially motivated than politically. Diversification is the key to any portfolio and with Russia's economy tanking it was probably to ensure their billions stayed billions and wasn't held in worthless rubles or corrupt state companies.
Also, why are you wanting to remember happier times?
You've opened Internet to share your point of view and so to influence their choice? Expect others to share their views and influence you too. Don't like that? See #1
You've opened your market and asking for investments? You've got them. Don't like color of their money? See #1
Do we have other options realistically speaking?
And if we're talking about reddit, as a long-time user I remember that I first encountered political shill accounts and paid posters on reddit, in the summer of 2006, during the Hezbollah vs Israel conflict (the accounts were "rooting" for Israel, of course). Next time I encountered them was 2 years later, in 2008, during the Russia vs Georgia conflict (the shills being on Russia's side). It'd be interesting to hear what a guy like jedberg remembers about all this (not sure if he was working for reddit back in 2006, but I'm pretty sure he was there in 2008).
I also remember reading a one-page story about influencing opinions on geo-political facts on the web in the Financial Times, around November 2011, where a Israeli army colonel or something like that was acknowledging the issue at hand (that opinion on the web should be in part controlled by State actors) and that Israel was already implementing something to meet that goal (I have a screenshot of that article, but it's on my older laptop, too lazy to transfer the photo now). Come 2017 and the US is taken by surprise that one of those State actors has influenced its Presidential election.
http://www.yolandaslittleblackbook.com/blog-1/2017/11/02/yur...
I think the most reliable source of information in this time of spreading "fake news" is personal witness by known people.
"The Paradise Papers is a global investigation into the offshore activities of some of the world’s most powerful people and companies.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and 95 media partners explored 13.4 million leaked files from a combination of offshore service providers and the company registries of some of the world’s most secretive countries.
The Paradise Papers documents include nearly 7 million loan agreements, financial statements, emails, trust deeds and other paperwork from nearly 50 years at Appleby, a leading offshore law firm with offices in Bermuda and beyond."
I wish more money was deployed into software development. Russia seems to be a positive influence here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitsky_Act#Individuals_affe...
Government’s are neither all bad nor all good. You can cherry pick nasty incidents from any government throughout human history (including the US — of course). That doesn’t mean that every action they take is “evil”.
On the grand scheme of things investing in startups is pretty progressive.
Let's not forget, the US govt., both Republicans and Democrats, have directly or indirectly killed millions of people in the last decade...
I don't see you complaining about that "blood money" here or anywhere, though.
Funny how many Russian apologists are here all of a sudden.
This breaks the HN guidelines in two major ways: it's a personal attack and it's an insinuation of astroturfing or shillage without evidence. Those are poison to substantive discussion and we ban accounts that do them, so please follow https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't comment like this again.
The rest of the internet may be insane right now but that doesn't mean we have to imitate it here.
wrong.
this is, in extension, saying it's okay to take money from a currently sanctioned state actor. as long as they want to pay cash and half-ass obfuscated the state actors behind the paycheck you're so concerned about.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/us/politics/russia-2016-e...
The played each side off of the other and, in some cases, even encouraged each side to violently engage the other:
http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/31/media/russia-facebook-violen...
Just how do you think all of that will end up? The Russian government should not have any say or influence in these companies since they have clearly demonstrated that they are a bad actor.
By the way, C Corporations are not prevented from taking foreign investment; though S Corporations are.
In contrast to Facebook and Twitter, The Times writes articles and headlines and picks which ones to publish.
What I think is happening is - Russia by bring up these topics in news (in outlets like nytimes) so that it can de-emphasize it's partnership with Trump government and the role it played in bringing that egoist to power.
I also find it ironic that the Chinese Communist Party, an institution which is at least on par with Russia in terms of shadiness and social repression, receives barely an iota of the flak that Russia receives in the American media.
Imagine if Germany found out that Rocket Internet, a large European venture capital firm, was actually CIA backed. It would be a scandal and a lot of people would need to, rightly, question whether they had been compromised.
The problem isn't solely the identity of the backer. It's the surreptitious deployment of state power deep into another country.
Disclaimer: Hypotheticals are hypothetical. I am not a lawyer. None of this is legal advice.
You are going to need some more meat other than James Bond language and a lot of money.
I’d like to buy into the “nothingburger” case on Russian interference,but how do you explain the growing weight of released evidence that the Russians actively worked to interfere in the election? Were the Russians wasting their resources trolling? Is all the evidence fabricated?