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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

Holy crap.

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...

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Why is this surprising? When Milner came virtually out of the blue (or red, as the case may be) a few years ago, it seemed obvious that he was a conduit/laundry for oligarch cash at least. I even remember telling someone at the time that if we were chosen for YC, we didn't want Milner's dirty money.

The additional Kremlin state ties seem only an additional technicality. (I mean the formalized acknowledgement of what I presumed existent.)

> The additional Kremlin state ties seem only an additional technicality

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.

Maybe that wasn't good phrasing. I'm trying to say that I never saw the division between those corrupt interests and the nation state they belonged to. I always felt they were acting in their national interests.

What will be interesting here is how fast it falls off HN.

Already the title has been changed to take his name off.

I often see links on HN renamed to reflect the original title.

Sigh. HN has always done this to reduce editorializing in headlines. You're an oldtimer; how are you unaware of this?

Remember your priors.

> to take his name off

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.

This doesn't make sense. What makes money 'dirty'? What about banks like Goldman Sachs? Is their money 'clean'? What about the Saudi and UAE investment funds? How does one decide what is 'dirty' and 'clean' money and identify it?

I'm conflicted on this. The good old-fashioned lefty in me wants to agree and say "yes - follow the money. Power has tendrils everywhere and they are annoyingly predictable and persistent".

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.

It is normal (be it "lefty" democratic, or republican US presidents) for the US government to use its power to destroy other countries and steal its resources...

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?

You might have to reword that - I'm honestly having difficulty parsing it.

What I mean is exactly what I said: start by looking at the dirt your own country may have BEFORE looking at someone else's dirt. You may learn a thing or two about your government, the upper classes in your country, the racism and xenophobia they use as a way to get more power elsewhere, the reasons the other governments have to do what they do, etc.

I'm pretty conversant in the shitty things "my" country has done. How does that relate to the matter at hand?

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.

Hey turfer, take another English course.

I forgot, the one and only language spoken in the whole world is english... And everyone should know it, even the small details.

As a language, it's a disaster. I better worry about more important things, and not waste more time with it.

I wonder if they are just being opportunistic post ‘Russian Reset’. Seems like most Americans didn’t take issue at the time. Many US companies take large investments from Saudi Arabia too and we could make similar arguements about the potential risks/rewards.

The only thing that makes money dirty is the US's overinflated idea of whitelisting transactions to deter behaviors they don't like

He "purposely" overpaid by $50m for a house in Los Altos -> http://www.businessinsider.com/yuri-milners-100-million-sili...

Los Altos Hills, actually.

I'd say he "purposefully" undervalued it.

It seems obvious now, but you only have to look at an HN thread 6 years ago discussing Yuri Milner to see that many people in tech (or at least on HN), including pg, did not believe Yuri was an extension of the Russian state: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3143604. (Of course, many also recognized this as obvious at the time).

Paul Graham on Yuri Milner at the time:

"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."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3143894

At least the top reply at the time, by @mapgrep, addressed the concern:

> 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.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3143960

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his livelihood depends on his not understanding it.” Upton Sinclair & also Charlie Munger.

YC, the VCs with ethics only when it is at the expense of others.

> it seemed obvious that he was a conduit/laundry for oligarch cash at least

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.

The thing we should really be asking: Why is startup investment by the US Govt so inept & ineffectual by comparison? What options do startups have to get government funding... the broken SBIR process?

> Why is startup investment by the US Govt so inept & ineffectual by comparison?

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.

Meanwhile, the Chinese & Russian governments are investing heavily in US tech companies (par for the course). But China is also investing heavily in domestic Robotics, AI, Energy, etc. in a way that is unfathomable by American standards. Technology dominance isn't a right... it's earned.

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.

No you are forgetting US defense spending which is investment.. DoD, DARPA, and all of the big defense companies.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel

Gov money is better spent on fundamental science and research than small business loans, well at least in the sense that if a private investor is very interested in an investment, that means it's too safe for the government. The gov should provide a different role than private money does

This might burst the second dotcom bubble as others SV resources have similar background.

Yes this is presented for your consumption to be viewed as a pejorative, but think for yourself, what is the problem here?

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.

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