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- 2026-06-13T0107 · [[Agency for International Development]]
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- 2026-06-20T0304 · [[_manifest]]
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- 2026-06-13T0107 · [[Anti-Defamation League]]
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- 2026-06-20T0303 · [[Thiel Influence Network]]
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- 2026-06-13T0107 · [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]]
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- 2026-06-20T0303 · [[Robert Maxwell]]
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- 2026-06-13T0107 · [[Watergate]]
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- 2026-06-20T0303 · [[PROMIS]]
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- 2026-06-13T0107 · [[Standard Oil]]
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- 2026-06-20T0303 · [[Bill Clinton]]
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- 2026-06-13T0106 · [[Joint Chiefs of Staff]]
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- 2026-06-20T0303 · [[Ari Ben-Menashe]]
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- 2026-06-13T0106 · [[Johns Hopkins University]]
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- 2026-06-20T0303 · [[Esalen Institute]]
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- 2026-06-13T0106 · [[Harvard University]]
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- 2026-06-20T0303 · [[Aldous Huxley]]
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- 2026-06-13T0106 · [[McGill University]]
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- 2026-06-20T0303 · [[Timothy Leary]]
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- 2026-06-13T0102 · [[NSA]]
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- 2026-06-20T0303 · [[Stanford Research Institute]]
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- 2026-06-13T0102 · [[New Orleans]]
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- 2026-06-20T0302 · [[DATAVIEW - MOC - New Right]]
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- 2026-06-13T0102 · [[State Department]]
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- 2026-06-20T0302 · [[DATAVIEW - MOC - AI & Effective Altruism]]
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- 2026-06-13T0102 · [[Department of Justice]]
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- 2026-06-20T0302 · [[DATAVIEW - MOC - Technologists]]
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- 2026-06-13T0102 · [[Harry S. Truman]]
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- 2026-06-20T0238 · [[Jonathan Levin]]
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- 2026-06-13T0102 · [[Gerald R. Ford]]
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- 2026-06-20T0238 · [[EtherSec]]
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- 2026-06-13T0102 · [[Robert S. McNamara]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Curtis Lind]]
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- 2026-06-13T0102 · [[George Hunter White]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Teresa Youngblut]]
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- 2026-06-13T0102 · [[Office of Strategic Services]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Michelle Zajko]]
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- 2026-06-13T0102 · [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Maximilian Snyder]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Hungary]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Jack LaSota]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Golden Triangle]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Felix Bauckholt]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Budapest]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Jes Staley]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Soto Cano Air Base]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Leon Black]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Dimona]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Steven Hoffenberg]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Skinwalker Ranch]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Tom Pritzker]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Panama Canal]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Virginia Giuffre]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Turkey]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Prince Andrew]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Taiwan]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Leslie Wexner]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Syria]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Jean-Luc Brunel]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Switzerland]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Ghislaine Maxwell]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Singapore]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Jeffrey Epstein]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Philippines]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Jonathan Buma]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Pakistan]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Denise George]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Liechtenstein]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Alexander Acosta]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Laos]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Alexus Grynkewich]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Kuwait]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[William Burns]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Jordan]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Ehud Barak]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Fiji]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Cecile de Jongh]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Cyprus]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Ted Cruz]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Music Corporation of America]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Leonard Leo]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Meridian International Logistics]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Jim Himes]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Management Science For Health]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[JD Vance]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Joel Silver Productions]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Jared Polis]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Genovese Crime Family]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Jared Kushner]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Gambino Crime Family]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Donald Trump]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship International]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Cory Booker]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[First Intercontinental Development Corporation]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Dustin Moskovitz]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Euramae Trading Company]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Cari Tuna]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[D.I.G. (Decency in Government)]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Stewart Brand]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Burns & Roe, Inc.]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Sam Harris]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Michael Murphy]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[United States Army Special Forces]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[John Brockman]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[United States Army Criminal Investigation Division]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Alan Watts]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[UAP Task Force]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Rene Girard]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Financial Crimes Enforcement Network]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Peter Singer]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Criminal Investigation Division]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Peter Attia]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[Collins Elite]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Norbert Wiener]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[California Highway Patrol]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Marvin Minsky]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[California Attorney General's Office]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Martin Nowak]]
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- 2026-06-13T0059 · [[All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Leo Strauss]]
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- 2026-06-13T0056 · [[Sam Giancana]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Julian Savulescu]]
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- 2026-06-13T0044 · [[William Xenakis]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Julian Huxley]]
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- 2026-06-13T0044 · [[R. Gordon Wasson]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Gregory Bateson]]
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- 2026-06-13T0044 · [[Leslie Ronald Young]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Francis Galton]]
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- 2026-06-13T0044 · [[Leonid L. Vasilev]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Derek Parfit]]
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- 2026-06-13T0044 · [[Karl Maria Wiligut]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Carl Schmitt]]
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- 2026-06-13T0044 · [[Jack Vorona]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Steve Sailer]]
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- 2026-06-13T0044 · [[Elmo Zumwalt]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Steve Bannon]]
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- 2026-06-13T0044 · [[Walter Schellenberg]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Richard Lynn]]
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- 2026-06-13T0044 · [[Richard G. Stilwell]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Nick Land]]
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- 2026-06-13T0044 · [[James Randi]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Mike Solana]]
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- 2026-06-13T0044 · [[Herbert Pollack]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[John Tanton]]
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- 2026-06-13T0044 · [[Gertrude Schmeidler]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[J. Philippe Rushton]]
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- 2026-06-13T0044 · [[Garrison Rapmund]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Curtis Yarvin]]
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- 2026-06-13T0044 · [[Claiborne Pell]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Charles Murray]]
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- 2026-06-13T0044 · [[Ariel Sharon]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Charles C. Johnson]]
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- 2026-06-13T0044 · [[Andrea Stocco]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Blake Masters]]
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- 2026-06-13T0044 · [[William Richard Higgins]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[William MacAskill]]
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- 2026-06-13T0044 · [[Ninel Kulagina]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Toby Ord]]
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- 2026-06-13T0044 · [[Kenneth A. Kress]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Scott Alexander]]
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- 2026-06-13T0044 · [[John Marsh]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Sam Bankman-Fried]]
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- 2026-06-13T0044 · [[Douglas B. Hudson]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Nick Bostrom]]
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- 2026-06-13T0044 · [[Charles Frank Jordan]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Michael Vassar]]
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- 2026-06-13T0044 · [[Brian D. Josephson]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Max More]]
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- 2026-06-13T0044 · [[Robert Gates]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Igor Kurganov]]
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- 2026-06-13T0044 · [[Rob Cowart]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Holden Karnofsky]]
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- 2026-06-13T0044 · [[Richard S. Cesaro]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Eliezer Yudkowsky]]
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- 2026-06-13T0044 · [[Lincoln D. Faurer]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Amanda Askell]]
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- 2026-06-13T0044 · [[Lew Allen]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[maia arson crimew]]
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- 2026-06-13T0044 · [[James L. Dozier]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Timothy May]]
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- 2026-06-13T0037 · [[Yuri Nosenko]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Wei Dai]]
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- 2026-06-13T0037 · [[Ted Gunderson]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Trae Stephens]]
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- 2026-06-13T0037 · [[Richard Helms]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Scott Belsky]]
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- 2026-06-13T0037 · [[Sidney Gottlieb]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Sam Altman]]
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- 2026-06-13T0037 · [[Project MKUltra]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Reid Hoffman]]
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- 2026-06-13T0037 · [[Project Camelot]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Phil Zimmermann]]
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- 2026-06-13T0037 · [[Project Bluebird and Project Artichoke]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Peter Thiel]]
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- 2026-06-13T0037 · [[Operation Midnight Climax]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Palmer Luckey]]
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- 2026-06-13T0037 · [[Office of Technical Service]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Nick Szabo]]
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- 2026-06-13T0037 · [[Morse Allen]]
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- 2026-06-20T0229 · [[Neal Mohan]]
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50
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Adam Back.md
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---
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category: "Technologists"
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tags:
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- Person
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- AdamBack
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- Cryptography
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- Cypherpunks
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- Bitcoin
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- Hashcash
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- Blockstream
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alias:
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- Adam Back
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summary: "Adam Back is a British cryptographer who invented the Hashcash proof-of-work scheme cited in the Bitcoin white paper, was the first person Satoshi Nakamoto is known to have emailed, co-founded the blockchain company Blockstream, and is a recurring Satoshi candidate that he denies."
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born: 1970-07
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location: "Malta"
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created: 2026-06-20
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updated: 2026-06-20
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---
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Adam Back (born July 1970) is a British cryptographer and one of the original [[Cypherpunks]] who in 1997 devised [[Hashcash]], the proof-of-work scheme cited in the 2008 [[Bitcoin]] white paper, and who co-founded and runs the blockchain company [[Blockstream]]. He holds a PhD in computer science from the University of Exeter. He was the first of the two people [[Satoshi Nakamoto]] is known to have emailed before the white paper, and he is one of the figures most often named as a Nakamoto candidate, which he denies.[^1][^2][^3]
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### Hashcash
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Back proposed Hashcash in 1997 as a measure against email spam and denial-of-service attacks, building on the proof-of-work concept that Cynthia Dwork and Moni Naor had set out in 1992. Hashcash required a sender to compute a partial hash collision, a value whose hash begins with a set number of zero bits, before a message would be accepted; finding such a value takes a predictable amount of processor work while checking it is instant, so the cost falls on the sender and a mass spammer faces a prohibitive aggregate burden. Back circulated the scheme on the cypherpunks mailing list and published the design in a 1997 announcement and a 2002 paper, "Hashcash - A Denial of Service Counter-Measure."[^2][^4]
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The asymmetry at the center of Hashcash, work that is hard to produce and trivial to verify, became the mechanism Nakamoto used to govern coin issuance and to secure the Bitcoin ledger. The white paper cites Back's scheme directly, and Nakamoto's description of the system to the cryptography mailing list said new coins are made from "Hashcash style proof-of-work." Back's earlier cypherpunk work also included a 1998 implementation of an anonymous remailer and writing on the export-control politics of cryptography, including printing the RSA algorithm on T-shirts and other items to test the rule that classified strong cryptography as a munition.[^5][^4]
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### Contact With Satoshi Nakamoto
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The earliest known message from Satoshi Nakamoto to any named individual was an email to Back on 20 August 2008, asking how Hashcash should be cited and sending an early description of the project. Back has recounted that he pointed Nakamoto toward [[Wei Dai]]'s b-money proposal, which Nakamoto then cited after emailing Dai on 22 August 2008. Back has said he did not engage deeply with the project at the time, having seen many digital-cash schemes fail, and did not return to Bitcoin until years later.[^1][^6]
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Back co-founded Blockstream in 2014 and serves as its chief executive; the company develops Bitcoin infrastructure including the Liquid sidechain and the c-lightning implementation of the Lightning Network, and employs several core Bitcoin developers. Back is among the people Nakamoto cited by name in the white paper and one of the few still publicly active in Bitcoin.[^3][^7]
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### Satoshi Speculation
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Back has been named as a Nakamoto candidate repeatedly and has denied it each time. The case rests on his authorship of Hashcash, his place as the first person Nakamoto emailed, his British background and 1990s cypherpunk activity, and stylistic and biographical overlaps. In April 2026 a New York Times investigation by the reporter John Carreyrou named Back as the most likely candidate, citing his nationality, his cypherpunk archive, the Hashcash citation, more than a hundred matching words and phrases between his posts and Nakamoto's, his C++ and distributed-computing background, and a 2002 question he had raised about the 1933 United States gold seizure that surfaced in Bitcoin's design.[^8][^3]
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Back answered the New York Times investigation with a flat denial, telling reporters "I'm not Satoshi" and adding that his heavy posting volume on the cypherpunks lists naturally produced extensive evidence of his interests and made him an easy target for that kind of pattern-matching, which he characterized as confirmation bias. He has also said that the absence of a known creator is good for Bitcoin because it leaves the network looking like "a mathematically scarce digital commodity" rather than any individual's project. Back has consistently declined to provide cryptographic proof either way, as have the other living candidates.[^3][^9]
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: "Who is Adam Back? The impact of Hashcash on Bitcoin explained," *Finst,* on his cypherpunk membership, the Hashcash invention, the Exeter PhD, and Satoshi's 2008 contact. https://finst.com/en/learn/articles/who-is-adam-back
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[^2]: "Who is Adam Back?," *Bitstamp,* on Hashcash, the 1997 origin, and his cypherpunk role. https://www.bitstamp.net/learn/people-profiles/adam-back/
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[^3]: "Latest investigation into bitcoin founder ties identity to Blockstream CEO Adam Back," *CNBC,* 8 April 2026, on Blockstream, the New York Times investigation, and Back's denial. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/08/latest-investigation-of-bitcoin-founder-ties-identity-to-blockstream-ceo-adam-back.html
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[^4]: Back, Adam. "Hashcash - A Denial of Service Counter-Measure," 2002, on the partial-hash-collision design and the proof-of-work mechanism. http://www.hashcash.org/papers/hashcash.pdf
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[^5]: Nakamoto, Satoshi. "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System," 2008, citing Adam Back's Hashcash. https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
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[^6]: "Previously Unpublished Emails of Satoshi Nakamoto Present a New Puzzle," *CoinDesk,* 26 November 2020, on the 20 August 2008 email to Back and his pointing Nakamoto to Wei Dai. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2020/11/26/previously-unpublished-emails-of-satoshi-nakamoto-present-a-new-puzzle
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[^7]: "Adam Back on Satoshi Emails, Privacy Concerns and Bitcoin's Early Days," *Cointelegraph,* on Blockstream and his early correspondence with Nakamoto. https://cointelegraph.com/news/adam-back-on-satoshi-emails-privacy-concerns-and-bitcoins-early-days
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[^8]: "A new investigation now suggests Adam Back invented Bitcoin - but he firmly denies it," *Dallas Express,* on the New York Times case and the 1933 gold-seizure question. https://dallasexpress.com/business-markets/could-blockstream-ceo-adam-back-be-the-70-billion-man-behind-bitcoin/
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[^9]: "Adam Back Denies Being Satoshi Amid NYT Probe," *CryptoPotato,* on "I'm not Satoshi," the confirmation-bias framing, and the "mathematically scarce digital commodity" remark. https://cryptopotato.com/adam-back-denies-being-satoshi-amid-nyt-probe/
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75
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Alexander Acosta.md
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---
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category: "Law Enforcement & Legal"
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tags:
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- Person
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- AlexanderAcosta
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- JeffreyEpstein
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- NonProsecutionAgreement
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- CrimeVictimsRightsAct
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- DepartmentOfJustice
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- SecretaryOfLabor
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alias:
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- Alex Acosta
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- Rene Alexander Acosta
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summary: "Alexander Acosta is the US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida who negotiated Jeffrey Epstein's 2008 non-prosecution agreement, later found by a federal judge to have violated the Crime Victims' Rights Act and by the DOJ to reflect poor judgment, and who resigned as US Secretary of Labor in July 2019."
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born: 1969-01-16
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location: "Miami, Florida (born)"
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created: 2026-06-20
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updated: 2026-06-20
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---
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Alexander Acosta (born January 16, 1969) is an American lawyer who served as United States Attorney for the [[United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida|Southern District of Florida]] from 2005 to 2009 and as United States Secretary of Labor from 2017 to 2019. As US Attorney he supervised the office that negotiated the 2008 non-prosecution agreement with [[Jeffrey Epstein|Jeffrey Epstein]], an arrangement under which Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges in Florida, served a 13-month jail term with work release, and obtained federal immunity for himself and named co-conspirators. A federal judge later ruled that prosecutors violated the [[Crime Victims' Rights Act|Crime Victims' Rights Act]] by concealing the deal from victims, and Acosta resigned as Secretary of Labor in July 2019 amid renewed scrutiny of the agreement.[^1][^2]
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### The 2008 Non-Prosecution Agreement
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Federal investigators in the Southern District of Florida identified roughly 30, and ultimately more than 30, minors whom Epstein was alleged to have sexually abused, after the Palm Beach Police Department referred the case to the FBI on concerns that the local prosecution would be too lenient. By May 2007 government lawyers had prepared an 82-page prosecution memorandum and a 53-page draft federal indictment charging Epstein with multiple federal sex offenses. Acosta decided in 2007 to negotiate with Epstein's defense team rather than seek that indictment.[^1][^3]
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||||||
|
The non-prosecution agreement, negotiated through 2007 and executed in stages, required Epstein to plead guilty in Palm Beach County court, which he did in June 2008, to state charges including soliciting prostitution and procuring a person under 18 for prostitution. He was sentenced to 18 months, of which he served roughly 13, under conditions that allowed extensive work release, permitting him to spend up to 16 hours a day, six or seven days a week, away from the county jail. Epstein's defense team included high-profile lawyers such as [[Alan Dershowitz|Alan Dershowitz]], [[Kenneth Starr|Kenneth Starr]], and [[Roy Black|Roy Black]], who pressed the office for concessions.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The agreement extended immunity from federal prosecution to Epstein, to four named co-conspirators, and to unnamed "potential co-conspirators," language read as shielding others who helped recruit or conceal the abuse. The terms were not disclosed to the identified victims while the deal was being finalized, and the agreement was sealed. The breadth of the immunity provisions, the sealing, and the leniency of the sentence became the basis for years of subsequent litigation and official review. The attorney [[Bradley Edwards|Bradley Edwards]], representing victims, led the legal challenge to the agreement.[^1][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Crime Victims' Rights Act Ruling
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In the case styled Doe v. United States, No. 08-80736, brought by victims including [[Courtney Wild|Courtney Wild]] and [[Jane Doe 2|Jane Doe 2]] to enforce their rights, United States District Judge [[Kenneth Marra|Kenneth Marra]] ruled on February 21, 2019, that the government had violated the Crime Victims' Rights Act by failing to confer with the victims before entering the non-prosecution agreement. Marra wrote that "particularly problematic was the government's decision to conceal the existence of the" agreement and to "mislead the victims to believe that federal prosecution was still a possibility," finding that prosecutors had counseled the victims to have "patience" while the deal was being finalized.[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In a later ruling, Marra declined to invalidate the non-prosecution agreement itself, noting that Epstein had died and that rescission would not restore the victims' position, and he held that the victims were not entitled to monetary damages from the government under the statute. The decisions established the CVRA violation as a finding of fact while leaving the underlying agreement in place.[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The victims' broader effort to overturn the agreement ultimately failed at the appellate level. In April 2021 the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, sitting en banc, ruled in Wild's case that the CVRA's protections did not attach before the government filed formal charges, and that because no federal charges had been filed against Epstein, the statute did not give the victims a remedy to set aside the pre-charge agreement. The ruling left the CVRA finding of a conferral failure intact while denying the victims the relief they had sought.[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility Report
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Justice Department's [[Office of Professional Responsibility|Office of Professional Responsibility]] released a report on November 12, 2020, examining the conduct of Acosta and his subordinates in the Epstein matter. The report concluded that Acosta exercised "poor judgment" in resolving the federal investigation through a state plea agreement, but it did not find professional misconduct, stating that his decision to decline federal prosecution was within the scope of his authority and that there was no evidence the decision was based on corruption or other impermissible considerations.[^2][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
OPR located the "poor judgment" specifically in Acosta's failure to ensure that the state would notify the federally identified victims of Epstein's plea hearing, leaving victims uninformed about the proceeding that resolved an investigation about which the office had communicated with them for months. The report described the non-prosecution agreement as "a flawed mechanism for satisfying the federal interest" that had prompted the investigation, and it documented extensive concessions made to Epstein's lawyers.[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The report also recorded internal dissent. The line prosecutor [[Ann Marie Villafana|Ann Marie Villafana]] had objected to the access granted to Epstein's defense counsel and to meeting with them, and was overruled by supervisors; a footnote recorded her belief that an email from her supervisor [[Matthew Menchel|Matthew Menchel]] was meant to "put [her] in [her] place," while Menchel described her as having a history of resisting supervisory authority. OPR declined to refer Acosta or other prosecutors for disciplinary action on professional-responsibility grounds, a conclusion that victims' advocates characterized as a whitewash.[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Secretary of Labor and Resignation
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
President [[Donald Trump|Donald Trump]] nominated Acosta as Secretary of Labor, and he was confirmed by the Senate and sworn in in April 2017, having previously chaired the National Labor Relations Board and served as dean of Florida International University's law school. The Florida agreement drew scrutiny during his 2017 confirmation but did not derail it.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
After the November 2018 Miami Herald investigation "Perversion of Justice" by [[Julie K. Brown|Julie K. Brown]] revived attention to the agreement, and after Epstein's July 2019 federal arrest in New York on new sex-trafficking charges, Acosta held a July 10, 2019, press conference defending his handling of the case, arguing that the state alternative had at least secured Epstein's registration as a sex offender and some jail time where the state had been prepared to offer less. He resigned on July 12, 2019, two days later, saying he did not want the controversy to distract from the administration's work and that it would be "selfish" to remain.[^1][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In September 2025 Acosta appeared for a closed-door deposition before the [[House Oversight Committee|House Oversight Committee]] as part of its renewed inquiry into the federal handling of the Epstein and Maxwell cases, testifying for roughly six hours; the committee released the transcript on October 17, 2025. Chairman [[James Comer|James Comer]] said Acosta had cooperated, and the committee separately sought records and testimony from other former officials.[^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Intelligence Claim
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In a July 2019 article for [[The Daily Beast|The Daily Beast]], journalist [[Vicky Ward|Vicky Ward]] reported that, according to an anonymous former senior White House official, Acosta had explained the lenient Epstein deal during his Labor Secretary vetting by saying he had been told that Epstein "belonged to intelligence" and to "leave it alone" because the matter was above his pay grade. Ward's report attributed the account to a single unnamed source, and commentators noted the source could not be independently confirmed. Ward had reported on Epstein for years and had earlier written a 2003 profile of him for Vanity Fair.[^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Acosta disputed the characterization. Asked about the reporting at his July 2019 press conference, he said he would "hesitate to take this reporting as fact." Under oath to Justice Department investigators he answered "no" when asked whether he had knowledge of Epstein being an intelligence asset, and the OPR review reported that none of the subjects it interviewed believed Epstein to have been an intelligence asset.[^11][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
At his September 2025 House Oversight deposition, Acosta again denied the intelligence account. Asked whether anyone had told him Epstein could not be prosecuted because he was an asset, he said "No one approached me and said that," and he stated that if there had been classified or secure information bearing on the case, established procedures would have been triggered that were never triggered. The intelligence claim remains an attributed, disputed assertion sourced to a single anonymous account rather than an established finding.[^9][^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Alex Acosta: Trump labour chief defends Jeffrey Epstein plea deal," *Al Jazeera,* July 10, 2019. https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2019/7/10/alex-acosta-trump-labour-chief-defends-jeffrey-epstein-plea-deal
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "US Attorney Alex Acosta showed 'poor judgment' when giving Jeffrey Epstein state-based plea deal in 2008: DOJ," *ABC News,* November 12, 2020. https://abcnews.com/US/us-attorney-alex-acosta-showed-poor-judgment-giving/story?id=74178029
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Jeffrey Epstein 2008 plea deal: poor judgment," *Global News,* November 2020. https://globalnews.ca/news/7460232/jeffrey-epstein-2008-plea-deal-poor-judgment/
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "How Bradley Edwards fought Alex Acosta's nonprosecution agreement with Jeffrey Epstein," *Slate,* July 2019. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/07/bradley-edwards-jeffrey-epstein-alexander-acosta.html
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Doe v. United States, No. 08-80736 (S.D. Fla. Feb. 21, 2019), opinion of Judge Kenneth Marra finding a Crime Victims' Rights Act violation. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-flsd-9_08-cv-80736/pdf/USCOURTS-flsd-9_08-cv-80736-2.pdf
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Epstein accusers won't receive damages and plea deal won't be tossed, judge rules," *CNN,* September 16, 2019. https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/16/us/jeffrey-epstein-florida-accusers-judge-ruling
|
||||||
|
[^7]: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Professional Responsibility, "Investigation into the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida's Resolution of Its 2006-2008 Federal Criminal Investigation of Jeffrey Epstein," November 2020. https://www.justice.gov/opr/page/file/1336471/dl
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "Trump's Labor Secretary Alex Acosta resigns after criticism over Epstein deal," *Euronews,* July 12, 2019. https://www.euronews.com/2019/07/12/trump-s-labor-secretary-alex-acosta-resigns-after-criticism-over-n1029226
|
||||||
|
[^9]: "Alex Acosta, former US attorney who negotiated Epstein's plea deal, appears before House Oversight Committee," *ABC News,* October 2025 (September 2025 closed-door deposition; transcript released October 17, 2025). https://abcnews.com/Politics/alex-acosta-former-us-attorney-negotiated-epsteins-plea/story?id=125731737
|
||||||
|
[^10]: "Did Jeffrey Epstein 'Belong to Intelligence'?," *Skeptic,* analyzing Vicky Ward's July 2019 Daily Beast report. https://www.skeptic.com/article/did-jeffrey-epstein-belong-to-intelligence/
|
||||||
|
[^11]: "Acosta once said Epstein 'belonged to intelligence,'" *Newsweek,* July 2019. https://www.newsweek.com/alex-acosta-epstein-sex-trafficking-department-labor-1448568
|
||||||
46
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Alexus Grynkewich.md
Normal file
46
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Alexus Grynkewich.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,46 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Military"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- AlexusGrynkewich
|
||||||
|
- NATO
|
||||||
|
- SACEUR
|
||||||
|
- USMilitary
|
||||||
|
- Dialog
|
||||||
|
- AirForce
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Alexus Grynkewich
|
||||||
|
- Alexander V. Grynkewich
|
||||||
|
summary: "Alexus Grynkewich is a United States Air Force general serving as NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) since 2025, a four-star command that oversees all NATO military operations, and who has attended Peter Thiel's secret Dialog retreats since 2021 per WIRED."
|
||||||
|
born: 1970
|
||||||
|
location: "United States"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-17
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-17
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Alexus Grynkewich is a [[U.S. Air Force]] general serving as NATO [[Supreme Allied Commander Europe]] (SACEUR) since 2025, the four-star command that exercises operational authority over all NATO military forces in Europe. A fighter pilot by background, Grynkewich previously held senior command and staff positions in the [[U.S. Central Command]] area of responsibility, including director of operations at CENTCOM, and his career has spanned the post-[[September 11 attacks|9/11]] counterterrorism operations, the [[Iraq]] and [[Syria]] campaigns against [[ISIS]], and the post-2022 European defense posture following [[Russia]]'s full invasion of [[Ukraine]]. The June 2026 *WIRED* reporting on the [[Dialog]] leak identified Grynkewich as a long-standing Dialog attendee, with attendance since 2021.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The SACEUR is the operational commander of NATO's military forces and the principal U.S. four-star command in the European theater. [[Peter Thiel]] (chairman of [[Palantir Technologies]], a major defense and intelligence contractor) and [[Auren Hoffman]] (chairman of [[SafeGraph]], the location-data broker) run the Dialog network that Grynkewich has attended since 2021.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Career and Path to SACEUR
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Grynkewich graduated from the [[United States Air Force Academy]] and was commissioned into the Air Force as a fighter pilot, flying combat missions in the post-9/11 period. His career progressed through operational and command assignments, with repeated rotations through the CENTCOM area, including senior positions in the air campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. His staff assignments included the Joint Staff and the CENTCOM director of operations role, the latter placing him at the operational center of U.S. military activity across the Middle East and Central Asia.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Grynkewich was nominated for his fourth star and assigned as SACEUR in 2025, in the first year of the second [[Donald Trump|Trump]] administration. The SACEUR assignment is dual-hatted as commander of [[U.S. European Command]] (EUCOM), which means the officeholder commands both the NATO alliance forces and the U.S. forces in the European theater. The position is the senior U.S. military command in Europe, and its holder is the principal military interlocutor with the European allies on Russia, Ukraine, and the broader NATO posture. The 2025 appointment placed Grynkewich at the operational head of the alliance at a moment of sustained high-intensity European security crisis.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Dialog Attendance
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The *WIRED* report on the 2026 Dialog leak identified Grynkewich as having attended Dialog retreats since 2021. The 2021 onset of his attendance predates his SACEUR assignment by four years but overlaps with his senior CENTCOM and Joint Staff positions, the operational and policy roles closest to the intelligence and defense-contracting community that Dialog convenes. The onset also coincides with the first year of the Biden administration, indicating the Dialog attendance spans administrations rather than tracking a single party, consistent with the leak's broader finding of bipartisan government-side attendance.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Grynkewich's SACEUR command and his continuing Dialog attendance place an active four-star military commander in the same off-the-record setting as the executives whose firms contract to the Department of Defense and the intelligence community. [[Anduril Industries]] (the Palantir-adjacent defense firm backed by Thiel's [[Founders Fund]]) joins Palantir Technologies and SafeGraph as the commercial principals whose interests in Pentagon procurement and intelligence-agency data sourcing intersect with the SACEUR's command authority. The Dialog convening is where that intersection occurs in person and off the record.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Procurement and Convening Overlap
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The SACEUR/EUCOM command is a major consumer of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms, of data-fusion software, and of autonomous systems, which are the product categories supplied by the Thiel-network defense-tech cluster (Palantir's data-fusion platforms, Anduril's autonomous systems, the broader 8VC portfolio). The Dialog convening places the commander who consumes those platforms in a recurring, off-the-record setting with the principals of the firms that supply them. Whether any specific procurement decision was discussed at Dialog is not alleged; the 2026 leak is the first primary record of the cross-attendance.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The 2026 Dialog registrants named by *WIRED* include [[Jim Himes|Representative Jim Himes]] (the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee), [[Cory Booker|Senator Cory Booker]] (Democrat, New Jersey), and [[Ted Cruz|Senator Ted Cruz]] (Republican, Texas), alongside Grynkewich, whose military command is formally nonpartisan but whose appointment was made by the Trump administration. The cross-party roster shows the convening network reaches across the oversight, legislative, and operational-military tiers of the U.S. national-security apparatus rather than filtering by party.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Cameron, Dell, and Yulia Almazova. "Leak Exposes Members of Peter Thiel's Secretive 'Dialog' Society." *WIRED,* June 16, 2026. https://www.wired.com/story/leak-exposes-members-of-peter-thiels-secretive-dialog-society/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: For Grynkewich's military career and SACEUR appointment, see U.S. Department of Defense biographical records, NATO official biography for the SACEUR, and contemporaneous reporting on the 2025 appointment.
|
||||||
45
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Amanda Askell.md
Normal file
45
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Amanda Askell.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,45 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "AI & Effective Altruism"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- Anthropic
|
||||||
|
- ArtificialIntelligence
|
||||||
|
- EffectiveAltruism
|
||||||
|
- Philosophy
|
||||||
|
- AISafety
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Amanda Askell
|
||||||
|
- Amanda Hall
|
||||||
|
summary: "Amanda Askell is the philosopher who leads the team shaping the character of Anthropic's Claude and is the principal author of its Constitution, an NYU-trained ethicist from the effective-altruism movement who was formerly married to its cofounder William MacAskill."
|
||||||
|
born: 1988
|
||||||
|
location: "San Francisco, California"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Amanda Askell (born Amanda Hall, 1988) is a British-American philosopher who leads the team responsible for the "character" of [[Anthropic]]'s Claude models and is the principal author of the document Anthropic calls Claude's Constitution. Trained as an analytic philosopher with a doctorate from [[New York University]], she came out of the [[Effective Altruism]] movement, worked at [[OpenAI]] before joining Anthropic, and was for two years married to the movement's cofounder [[William MacAskill]].[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Education and Effective Altruism
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Askell was born Amanda Hall and raised in Prestwick, Scotland, attending school in Clackmannanshire. She took an MA in philosophy and fine art at the University of Dundee in 2009 and a BPhil in philosophy at the [[University of Oxford]] in 2011, then moved to the United States for doctoral work. She completed a PhD in philosophy at New York University in 2018 with a dissertation titled "Pareto Principles in Infinite Ethics," supervised by Cian Dorr and the philosopher of mind David Chalmers, addressing how to compare outcomes in a universe that may contain infinitely many morally relevant beings.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Askell was part of the effective-altruism community during its growth in the early 2010s, a member of Giving What We Can, and connected to its network of philosophers at Oxford. She married William MacAskill, a cofounder of effective altruism, in 2013; the two adopted the shared surname MacAskill, taken from her grandmother's maiden name, and after their 2015 divorce she reworked it to Askell. MacAskill went on to write the longtermist book *What We Owe the Future* and to recruit [[Sam Bankman-Fried]] into the movement, while Askell moved into AI.[^1][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### OpenAI and Anthropic
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Askell joined OpenAI in 2018 as a research scientist working at the intersection of policy and safety, where she was among the co-authors of the May 2020 GPT-3 paper and worked on questions of how to govern competitive "races" in AI development. She left with the group that founded Anthropic in 2021, part of the same departure of OpenAI staff who said the company was not weighting safety heavily enough, and became a member of the technical staff at the new lab.[^2][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
At Anthropic she leads what the company calls personality or character alignment, the work of deciding what kind of entity Claude should be and training those traits into the model. She helped develop the "Constitutional AI" method, in which a model is trained against a written set of principles rather than solely against human-labeled examples, and she is the primary author of the system prompts and the longer "Constitution" that define Claude's values. Askell has described her approach as rooted in virtue ethics rather than rigid rules, arguing that "if you try to specify everything as a series of rules, you really put a lot of pressure on those rules," and that a model given a coherent character can exercise judgment where rules would be brittle. She has framed the goal as making Claude something like a "well-liked traveler," a figure whose traits are valued across cultures while keeping independence of thought.[^6][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Anthropic published a roughly 20,000-word public version of Claude's Constitution in January 2026, describing the values, character, and ethical framework used in training the model, with Askell named as its lead author. She has spoken publicly about the unresolved question of AI moral status, calling the problem of machine personhood "an extremely hard problem," and about her view that building a model with good character is compatible with, rather than opposed to, the company's commercial interests. She was named to the Time 100 AI list in 2024.[^7][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "The Philosopher Trying to Give AI a Conscience," *The Wall Street Journal,* on Askell's birth name Amanda Hall, the Scottish upbringing, the Dundee and Oxford degrees, the NYU philosophy PhD on infinite ethics, and the marriage to William MacAskill. https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anthropic-amanda-askell-philosopher-ai-3c031883
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Anthropic's In-House Philosopher on How to Give Claude Its Character," *Fast Company,* on Askell's OpenAI background, her Anthropic character-alignment role, and the Constitution. https://www.fastcompany.com/91479037/anthropic-claude-amanda-askell-constitution-ai-chatbot
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Amanda Askell, "Pareto Principles in Infinite Ethics," PhD dissertation, New York University, 2018; NYU Department of Philosophy graduate placement record. https://as.nyu.edu/departments/philosophy/graduate/philosophy-department-graduate-placement-record.html
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "William MacAskill" and "Amanda Askell," on the 2013 marriage, the adopted surname taken from her grandmother's maiden name, and the 2015 divorce after which she became Amanda Askell. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/topics/william-macaskill
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Tom Brown, Benjamin Mann, Nick Ryder, Amanda Askell, et al., "Language Models are Few-Shot Learners," arXiv, May 28, 2020, the GPT-3 paper co-authored during Askell's OpenAI tenure. https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.14165
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Scaling Laws: Claude's Constitution, with Amanda Askell," *Lawfare,* February 20, 2026, on her role as head of personality alignment, the virtue-ethics-over-rules approach, the "well-liked traveler" framing, and the rules quote. https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/scaling-laws--claude's-constitution--with-amanda-askell
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Anthropic Publishes Claude AI's New Constitution," *TIME,* January 2026, on the roughly 20,000-word document, Askell's lead authorship, and the character-based training approach. https://time.com/7354738/claude-constitution-ai-alignment/
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "Claude's Constitution," Anthropic, January 2026, the published document defining Claude's values and character, authored primarily by Amanda Askell. https://www.anthropic.com/news/claudes-constitution
|
||||||
|
|
@ -1,72 +1,94 @@
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
category: "Intelligence & Government"
|
category: "Intelligence & Government"
|
||||||
created: 2024-04-25
|
|
||||||
updated: 2026-05-01
|
|
||||||
tags:
|
tags:
|
||||||
- Person
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- AriBenMenashe
|
||||||
- Israel
|
- Israel
|
||||||
|
- Mossad
|
||||||
- Military
|
- Military
|
||||||
- PROMIS
|
- PROMIS
|
||||||
- INSLAW
|
- INSLAW
|
||||||
- October Surprise
|
- OctoberSurprise
|
||||||
summary: "Ari Ben-Menashe is a self-proclaimed Israeli military intelligence officer who submitted affidavits to the House Judiciary Committee alleging Earl Brian sold PROMIS to Israeli intelligence and Singapore, then recanted to the Bua Report, admitting he had allowed investigators to assume he was referring to INSLAW's PROMIS to promote his book."
|
- IranContra
|
||||||
|
- RobertMaxwell
|
||||||
|
- JeffreyEpstein
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Ari Ben-Menashe
|
||||||
|
- Ari Ben Menashe
|
||||||
|
summary: "Ari Ben-Menashe is an Iranian-born Israeli-Canadian who describes himself as a former military-intelligence official and became a recurring source for claims about U.S.-Israeli arms dealing, the October Surprise, PROMIS, Robert Maxwell, and Jeffrey Epstein, claims repeatedly found uncorroborated and, by a congressional task force, not credible."
|
||||||
born: 1951-12-04
|
born: 1951-12-04
|
||||||
location: "Tehran, Iran"
|
location: "Tehran, Iran; Montreal, Canada"
|
||||||
|
created: 2024-04-25
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
[[Ari Ben-Menashe]] is a self-proclaimed [[Israel|Israeli]] military intelligence officer, born in Tehran, [[Iran]] in 1951 to affluent Iraqi Jewish parents. He is multilingual, speaking Arabic, English, French, Farsi, Hebrew, and Spanish. His father, Gourdji, was involved with [[LEHI]] (Stern Gang) and knew [[Yitzhak Shamir]].[^3]
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Ben-Menashe moved to Israel in 1966 at age 14. In 1969, while on Kibbutz Mishmar Hasharon, he was involved in the [[Michael Dennis Rohan]]/[[El Aqsa Mosque]] arson incident. He was recruited by [[SHABAK]] in 1972 but declined a spying role. He was drafted into military service in 1974, assigned to [[Unit 8200]] (Signals Intelligence) on the Iranian desk, where he claims to have broken the Iranian diplomatic code. In 1976, he claims involvement in uncovering a [[Lockheed Aircraft Company|Lockheed]] bribe scandal involving [[Shimon Peres]]. After refusing an assignment to the Rome listening station in 1977, he was court-martialed and released from military service.[^3]
|
Ari Ben-Menashe is an Iranian-born Israeli-Canadian businessman, author, and lobbyist who describes himself as a former official of Israel's military intelligence, and who became a recurring source for claims about covert United States and Israeli arms dealing, the [[October Surprise]] theory, [[PROMIS]] software, [[Robert Maxwell]], and, in later years, [[Jeffrey Epstein]].[^1] He was born on December 4, 1951, in Tehran, [[Iran]], to an affluent Iraqi Jewish family; his father Gourdji was involved with [[LEHI]] (the Stern Gang) and knew [[Yitzhak Shamir]].[^3][^5] His allegations have been influential in conspiracy literature while being repeatedly assessed as unreliable by courts, congressional investigators, and journalists.[^2]
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### Intelligence Career
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### Claimed Intelligence Background
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The claims in this section are drawn from Ben-Menashe's own account in *Profits of War* and have not been independently verified. Multiple congressional investigations found Ben-Menashe's testimony "totally lacking in credibility" and "demonstrably false from beginning to end."[^2]
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By his own account, Ben-Menashe moved to Israel in 1966 at age 14, and in 1969, while on Kibbutz Mishmar Hasharon, was involved in the [[Michael Dennis Rohan]] [[El Aqsa Mosque]] arson incident. He says he was recruited by [[SHABAK]] in 1972 but declined a spying role, was drafted in 1974 and assigned to [[Unit 8200]] (signals intelligence) on the Iranian desk where he claims to have broken the Iranian diplomatic code, and that in 1976 he was involved in uncovering a [[Lockheed Aircraft Company|Lockheed]] bribe scandal involving [[Shimon Peres]]. After refusing an assignment to the Rome listening station in 1977, he says he was court-martialed and released from military service.[^5] He states that he then worked from 1977 to 1987 as a civilian in the External Relations Department of the Israeli [[Military Intelligence Directorate (Israel)|Military Intelligence Directorate]] (Aman), a role he has portrayed as giving him access to high-level arms-transfer and covert-operations decisions.[^1]
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In August 1977, he joined the External Relations Department of Israeli Military Intelligence (IDF/MI/ERD) as a civilian, serving as a liaison with Iranian intelligence ([[SAVAK]]) and exchanging technical information including details on [[Chobham armor]]. He claims to have met [[Mahmoud Amirian]] (Tudeh Party) and [[Sayeed Mehdi Kashani]] (Shi'ite opposition) at Tehran University in 1977 and to have warned Israeli intelligence of an impending Iranian Revolution in 1978. In March 1978, he claims to have undertaken a mission to [[Nicaragua]] to establish communication with the [[Sandinistas]], where he met [[Marie Fernanda]] (Freddie), who later became pregnant with their daughter, Herut. The [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] dismissed his warnings about Iran in April 1978.[^3]
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Critics dispute the seniority he claims. Israel has generally characterized him as a low-level translator rather than a policy insider, and the journalist [[Steven Emerson]], writing in 1991, argued that Ben-Menashe had inflated a minor translating job into a record of "key positions."[^3] The Israeli government acknowledged that he had worked for military intelligence in a translation capacity but denied that he had held the senior operational role he described.[^7] The disagreement over his rank has shaped the reception of all his later claims, because his accounts of arms deals, the October Surprise, and Israeli operations rest on his asserted firsthand access rather than on corroborating documents or witnesses.[^2][^3]
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In December 1978, he claims involvement in a plan to assassinate [[Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini]] alongside [[Rafael Eitan|Rafi]] and Col. Assaf Heftez. [[Ruth Ben-David]] acted as an emissary between [[Menachem Begin]] and Khomeini in December 1978. The Shah left Iran in January 1979, and F-14 jets were flown out by Israeli aircrews. He attended an Israel-U.S. intelligence exchange conference in September 1979 at which he criticized the U.S. attitude, including that of [[Jack Varona]], [[Robert Gates]], and [[Stansfield Turner]]. Following the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis in November 1979, he observed [[Jimmy Carter]]'s handling of the situation and the involvement of the Hashemi brothers in arms-for-hostages contacts.[^3]
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### Arms Case and Acquittal
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### October Surprise Allegations
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Ben-Menashe first drew wide public attention when he was arrested in the United States in November 1989 and charged under the Arms Export Control Act with attempting to broker the sale of three Israeli-owned Lockheed [[C-130 Hercules]] transport aircraft to Iran, a deal valued at about 36 million dollars, using false end-user certificates.[^4] The prosecution was brought in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, where the related rulings carried the caption United States v. Menashe.[^14] He spent nearly a year in custody before a jury acquitted him and a co-defendant on November 28, 1990, after his defense argued, and the jury accepted, that he had been acting under the authority of the Israeli government in a transaction tied to Israel's arms dealings with Iran.[^4]
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The claims in this section are Ben-Menashe's own account from *Profits of War* and are presented as he recorded them. The House October Surprise Task Force found no evidence to substantiate his specific allegations.[^2]
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Israel denied that he had been authorized to act for it in the transaction, repeating the position that he had been only a translator.[^4] The acquittal nonetheless rested on the jury's willingness to credit his Israeli-agent defense, and he afterward cited the verdict as vindication of his broader account, even though the bodies that later examined his substantive claims rejected them.[^2][^6] The acquittal gave him a platform from which he expanded a series of claims about secret United States and Israeli arms networks, set out in his 1992 book [[Profits of War]].[^5]
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[[Miles Copeland]]'s group of CIA-connected officers, along with [[William J. Casey]], [[Robert McFarlane]], and [[Earl Brian]], became involved in secret negotiations with the Iranians. [[David Kimche]] (Mossad Tevel) initiated a secret arms supply to Iran via [[South Africa]] in September 1979. [[Rafael Eitan|Rafi]] established a network with Senator [[John Tower]], McFarlane, and Brian.[^3]
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### October Surprise and Iran-Contra Claims
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The first Madrid meeting (March 1980) involved [[Mehdi Karrubi]], Kashani, [[Ahmed Omshei]], Casey, McFarlane, and [[Donald Gregg]]. [[Shimon Peres]] also secretly met with Karrubi. The sale of tires to Iran in April 1980 led to [[Jimmy Carter]]'s anger. The [[Operation Eagle Claw]] rescue mission failed in April 1980. A second Madrid meeting in May 1980 included Karrubi, Kashani, Omshei, [[Khosro Fakhrieh]], Casey, Gates, McFarlane, and Brian, where Republicans were observed delaying hostage release for political gain. The [[KGB]] made inquiries about Israeli intelligence in 1980. The Israeli Cabinet issued a directive in August 1980 to cooperate with the Republican camp.[^3]
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In Profits of War and in congressional testimony, Ben-Menashe alleged that Israeli officials, working with figures around the 1980 [[Ronald Reagan]] presidential campaign, arranged arms sales to Iran in exchange for delaying the release of American hostages until after the November 1980 election, the scenario known as the October Surprise.[^5] He claimed to have witnessed a Paris meeting in October 1980 attended by [[George H.W. Bush]], the campaign manager [[William J. Casey|William Casey]], and Iranian representatives.[^6]
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An Amsterdam meeting in August 1980 involved Kashani, Iranian officials, and [[Cyrus Husseinzadeh]] (SAVAMA), where an Iranian arms shopping list was presented. The Iraqi invasion of Iran occurred in September 1980. A fourth Madrid/Barcelona meeting involved [[George H.W. Bush]] and Karrubi.[^3]
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His detailed account named a sequence of secret meetings. He described [[Miles Copeland]]'s group of CIA-connected officers, Casey, [[Robert McFarlane]], and [[Earl Brian]] entering negotiations with the Iranians, and [[David Kimche]] of Mossad initiating an arms supply to Iran via [[South Africa]] in 1979. He placed first and second Madrid meetings in March and May 1980 involving [[Mehdi Karrubi]], Casey, McFarlane, [[Donald Gregg]], [[Robert Gates]], and Brian; an Amsterdam meeting in August 1980; and the October 1980 Paris meeting at which he says the hostage-release deal was sealed and after which he received 56 million dollars in [[Guatemala]] in December 1980, with 4 million for Brian and 52 million for the Iranian intermediary Kashani. The hostages were released on Reagan's inauguration day, January 20, 1981.[^5] He further alleged a 1980 to 1981 [[Iran-Israel Joint Committee]] arms pipeline, a role in the June 7, 1981 [[Israel Air Force]] strike on Iraq's Tammuz nuclear reactor, the recruitment of Daily Mirror foreign editor [[Nicholas Davies]] by Mossad, and the use of a slush fund (the [[Ora Group]]) to finance the [[Likud Party]] and "black" operations including, in his telling, the 1985 [[Achille Lauro]] hijacking.[^5]
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A Paris meeting in October 1980 included Bush, Casey, Karrubi, Gates, [[George Cave]], Gregg, Kimche, [[Shmuel Morieh]], [[Uri Simchoni]], Rafi, Ben-Menashe, and [[Simon Gabbay]], where the hostage release deal was sealed. Ben-Menashe received $56 million in [[Guatemala]] in December 1980 from a Saudi ambassador ([[Faissal Ghows]]), with $4 million designated for Brian and $52 million for Kashani. He met Gates at Miami airport for the money transfer. Profits from tire and wheelbase sales ($956,000) were used to initiate a slush fund. The hostages were released on [[Ronald Reagan]]'s inauguration day, January 20, 1981.[^3]
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No official body endorsed this account. The [[House October Surprise Task Force]], chaired by Representative [[Lee Hamilton]], published its joint report on January 3, 1993, and rejected it, saying it had conclusive evidence from travel and passport records that Ben-Menashe was not in Paris when he claimed to have witnessed the meeting, and describing his testimony as "totally lacking in credibility," "demonstrably false from beginning to end," and "a total fabrication."[^6] A separate review of the Iran-Contra-related allegations conducted under Attorney General [[William Barr]] likewise found no credible basis for his key claims, and an earlier Senate examination reached similar conclusions.[^6][^7]
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In the fall of 1980, the [[Iran-Israel Joint Committee]] was formed to supply arms to Iran, with initial members including Kimche, Morieh, Simchoni, [[Moshe Hebroni]], Rafi, and Ben-Menashe. In February 1981, at a Vienna arms supply conference, a $1 billion deal was struck for F-4 parts, artillery shells, mortars, AK-47s, air-to-surface missiles, Chieftain tank engines, and C-130s. Ben-Menashe made his first trip to post-revolutionary Tehran in February 1981 under the alias "William Grace," meeting Iranian Defense Ministry officials and the Air Force commander. Concerns about the Iraqi nuclear reactor ([[Tammuz 17]]) led to a Mossad operation to plant a homing device.[^3]
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A meeting in southern France in March 1981 between [[Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr]] and [[Moshe Arens]] fixed June 7 for the reactor attack. The [[Israel Air Force]] attacked Tammuz 17 on June 7, 1981, with pilots including Col. [[Yoram Eitan]] and [[Yair Shamir]]. Weapons flights from Ben-Gurion Airport to Tehran via Argentinean charters began in March 1981. A [[KGB]] inquiry about the flights led to a Soviet shootdown of a cargo plane in July 1981.[^3]
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The [[Ora Group]] was formed as a flagship for the slush fund. A New York operation on John Street was established for electronic equipment but was compromised when a Swiss woman leaked information to [[Leslie M. Gelb]] of the New York Times. Rafi used South African intelligence to deal with the Swiss woman.[^3]
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A strategic U.S.-Israeli agreement involving [[Ariel Sharon]], Gates, and McFarlane allowed the resale of older U.S. arms. Money from arms sales was routed through U.S. banks including Chicago-Tokyo Bank, Chemical Bank, Bank One, and Valley National Bank of Arizona. Smokescreen operations involved private arms brokers including [[John Hortrich]] (alias John de Laroque) and [[Bernard Velliot]]. [[Nicholas Davies]], foreign editor of the London Daily Mirror, was recruited by Mossad.[^3]
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A [[TOW missile]] deal in 1983 involved [[Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani]] and Kashani, with a deception campaign involving [[Arieh Jacobson]] and [[Abraham Bar David]]. A T-80 tank was acquired from Iran in 1985. The slush fund financed the [[Likud Party]] (under [[Yitzhak Shamir]] and [[Ehud Olmert]]) and "black" operations.[^3]
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[[Mohammed Radi Abdullah]], a former Jordanian Army Colonel, was involved in "black" operations selling arms to Palestinian groups including [[Abu Nidal]] for intelligence purposes. The [[Achille Lauro]] hijacking in 1985 is described by Ben-Menashe as an Israeli "black" propaganda operation. Contributions were made to [[AIPAC]] and the Jewish Reform Movement. The Mossad European headquarters moved to London in 1982.[^3]
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During the [[Falklands War]], Israel froze arms sales to [[Argentina]], and the [[United Kingdom]] reimbursed Israel. [[Australia]] was used for "parking purposes" for C-130s from [[Vietnam]], artillery shells from [[North Korea]], TOW missiles, and [[Silkworm missile]]s from [[China]].[^3]
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A contribution was made to the West Australian Labor Party in February 1987, involving [[Richard Babayan]], Brian, [[Hadron]], [[Yosef Goldberg]], [[Alan Bond]], [[John Curtin Foundation]], [[Robert Maxwell]], and the Pergamon Press Trust Fund.[^3]
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### PROMIS Affidavits and INSLAW
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### PROMIS Affidavits and INSLAW
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After [[Danny Casolaro]]'s death in August 1991, Ben-Menashe called [[Bill Hamilton]], president of [[INSLAW]], and claimed that two FBI agents from Lexington, Kentucky - including one named E.B. Cartinhour - had been en route to Martinsburg to give Casolaro evidence that the FBI was illegally using PROMIS software. He stated one agent was disaffected because his superiors had refused to indict senior Reagan officials for their October Surprise role.[^1]
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After the journalist [[Danny Casolaro]]'s death in August 1991, Ben-Menashe called [[Bill Hamilton]], president of [[INSLAW|Inslaw]], and claimed that two FBI agents from Lexington, Kentucky, had been en route to Martinsburg to give Casolaro evidence that the FBI was illegally using PROMIS software, one of them disaffected because his superiors had refused to indict senior Reagan officials over the October Surprise.[^19] In affidavits submitted to the bankruptcy court in February and March 1991, he claimed personal knowledge of Earl Brian's involvement in international PROMIS distribution, alleging that Brian made a 1987 presentation to Israeli Military Intelligence claiming ownership of PROMIS rights, that [[Rafael Eitan]] received PROMIS from Brian and McFarlane in 1982 for Israeli signals intelligence, and that enhanced PROMIS was sold to the Israeli intelligence community, the Singapore Armed Forces, the Soviet Union, and Canada.[^20] These PROMIS-distribution claims were later amplified by [[Seymour Hersh]] in [[The Samson Option]] and [[Gordon Thomas]] in [[Gideon's Spies]].[^8][^9]
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In two affidavits dated February 17 and March 21, 1991, submitted to the Bankruptcy Court, Ben-Menashe claimed personal knowledge of Brian's involvement in international PROMIS distribution. He alleged Brian made a 1987 presentation to Israeli Military Intelligence's External Relations Department claiming ownership of PROMIS rights and stating that the CIA, NSA, DOJ, and Israeli intelligence had been using the software since 1982. He further alleged a 1982 meeting at which [[Rafael Eitan]] received PROMIS from Brian and McFarlane for the Israeli Defense Force Signals Intelligence unit. He claimed knowledge of the 1987 sale of Enhanced PROMIS to the Israeli intelligence community and the Singapore Armed Forces, a public-domain version sold by the Israeli government to the Soviet Union, and an enhanced version sold to Canada.[^2]
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The special counsel [[Nicholas Bua]], in his 1993 report on the Inslaw affair, rejected these claims. When interviewed, Ben-Menashe gave a substantially different account, stating that he had no knowledge of the transfer of Inslaw's proprietary software, and that the "PROMIS" in his affidavits referred not to Inslaw's product but to an NSA program he called "Milon," a dictionary-compilation tool developed independently before Inslaw existed; he admitted he had allowed the Hamiltons and others to assume he meant Inslaw's PROMIS "to promote his book."[^20] The NSA confirmed that its own internal Product Related On-line Management Information System, also called PROMIS, was written in M204 rather than COBOL and was wholly unrelated to Inslaw's software. The House October Surprise Task Force, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and the special counsel all found his testimony fabricated and unsupported.[^10][^20]
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### Credibility Assessment
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### Claims about Robert Maxwell
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Special Counsel [[Nicholas J. Bua]]'s investigation found Ben-Menashe's claims unsupported by credible evidence. When interviewed, Ben-Menashe provided a substantially different account: he stated he had no knowledge of the transfer of INSLAW's proprietary software by Brian or DOJ. He claimed the "PROMIS" in his affidavits referred not to INSLAW's PROMIS but to an NSA program called "Milon" (phonetic), a dictionary-compilation tool developed independently of INSLAW before the company existed. He admitted he allowed the Hamiltons and others to assume he meant INSLAW's PROMIS "to promote his book." The NSA confirmed its internal Product Related On-line Management Information System, also called PROMIS, was written in M204 rather than COBOL, served entirely different functions, and was wholly unrelated to INSLAW's software.[^2]
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Ben-Menashe alleged that the publisher Robert Maxwell and Nicholas Davies were long-time assets of Israeli intelligence and that Maxwell had close ties to the prime minister's office.[^5] One specific claim concerned the 1986 case of the nuclear technician [[Mordechai Vanunu]], whose account of [[Dimona]] reached the Maxwell-owned [[Sunday Mirror]]; Ben-Menashe said Davies alerted Israeli intelligence to the approach and introduced him to Vanunu's intermediary [[Oscar Guerrero]], and that a Vanunu photograph published by the Sunday Mirror had been flown in from Israel, although the photograph in question had in fact been taken by the [[Sunday Times]] journalist [[Peter Hounam]], undercutting that detail.[^15] Hersh's 1991 book and the parliamentary statements that followed brought the Maxwell allegations into the open shortly before Maxwell's death, and Maxwell sued Hersh for libel before the action lapsed.[^8] No declassified material has confirmed the allegations.[^2]
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The House October Surprise Task Force, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and the Special Counsel all found Ben-Menashe's testimony "totally lacking in credibility," "fabricated," and "demonstrably false from beginning to end." The October Surprise Task Force found no evidence for his specific allegations regarding a Casey-Brian trip to Iran. The Special Counsel concluded that Ben-Menashe's account offered no evidentiary support for the allegation that DOJ and Brian conspired to steal and distribute INSLAW's software.[^2]
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### Epstein and Maxwell Allegations
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Beginning in 2019, Ben-Menashe gave interviews, including to the journalist [[Whitney Webb]] of MintPress News and to the outlet Narativ, in which he claimed that he had met Jeffrey Epstein and [[Ghislaine Maxwell]] in the 1980s, that he had seen Epstein in Robert Maxwell's offices, and that Maxwell had recruited Epstein for Israeli intelligence and introduced him as pre-approved by figures in Aman.[^11] He characterized the later Epstein operation as a "honeytrap" that gathered sexual blackmail material on powerful figures for Israeli intelligence.[^11]
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No corroborating witness, document, or official admission has been produced to support these specific claims, and reviewers have noted that they rest solely on his own assertions against a documented record of unreliability.[^2][^12] His account also conflicts with the established chronology of Epstein's career, since Epstein's documented entry into Ghislaine Maxwell's circle is generally dated to the period after Robert Maxwell's 1991 death rather than to the 1980s meetings Ben-Menashe described.[^12] He has continued to make related claims, including a 2025 assertion that [[Benjamin Netanyahu]] held Epstein-related files, that likewise remain unverified.[^12]
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### Lobbying and Consulting
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After his intelligence-related notoriety, Ben-Menashe built a lobbying and consulting practice through the [[Montreal]]-based firm [[Dickens & Madson]], representing controversial governments and figures.[^13] His involvement with the government of [[Robert Mugabe]] in [[Zimbabwe]] featured in the treason prosecution of the opposition leader [[Morgan Tsvangirai]], built on a videotape in which prosecutors said Tsvangirai discussed the "elimination" of Mugabe with Ben-Menashe; Tsvangirai was acquitted of high treason on October 14, 2004, by Judge [[Paddington Garwe]] of the Harare High Court, who found no proof of the alleged request, ruled that Ben-Menashe's testimony had to be treated with caution, and called some of it clearly false.[^16]
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He later registered a 2 million dollar contract in March 2021 to lobby for the [[Myanmar]] military junta after its coup, agreeing to advise on evading United States sanctions, and took on engagements connected to [[Sudan]] and its militia leader [[Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo]], a roughly 12 million dollar Zimbabwe land transaction funded by the criminal financier [[Paul Le Roux]] in 2007 and 2008 in which the promised farmland was never delivered, a reported 1 million dollar arrangement with [[Kyrgyzstan]], and work tied to [[Libya]], the [[Republic of the Congo]], [[Venezuela]], and the [[Tigray]] conflict in [[Ethiopia]].[^13][^17] Washington figures quoted in profiles of his career described his reputation as "poisonous."[^13]
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### The McFarlane Libel Suit
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The former national security adviser Robert McFarlane sued Ben-Menashe and the publisher of Profits of War, Sheridan Square Press, for libel over passages that linked McFarlane to the covert dealings Ben-Menashe described.[^18] The case, McFarlane v. Sheridan Square Press, reached the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which ruled in 1996. Applying the [[actual malice]] standard required for a public figure, the court held that McFarlane could not show the publisher had acted with reckless disregard for the truth merely because Ben-Menashe was a doubtful source, and it affirmed dismissal of the suit. The outcome turned on the high bar a public-figure plaintiff must clear rather than on any finding that Ben-Menashe's account was true.[^18]
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### Footnotes
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro's Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal.* TrineDay, 2010.
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[^1]: "Ari Ben-Menashe - Biography," *JewAge.* https://www.jewage.org/wiki/en/Article:Ari_Ben-Menashe_-_Biography
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[^2]: U.S. Department of Justice. *Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua to the Attorney General of the United States Regarding the Allegations of Inslaw, Inc.* March 1993.
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[^2]: "Who is Ari Ben-Menashe, what is his track record as a source," *Factually,* 2025. https://factually.co/fact-checks/media/ari-ben-menashe-track-record-israeli-intelligence-source-epstein-claims-evaluation-ec9ba6
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[^3]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network.* TrineDay, 1992.
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[^3]: Emerson, Steven. "The Samson Option, by Seymour M. Hersh," *Commentary,* 1991. https://www.commentary.org/articles/steven-emerson/the-samson-option-by-seymour-m-hersh/
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[^4]: "2 Acquitted of Trying to Sell Military Cargo Planes to Iran," *The Washington Post,* 1990. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1990/11/29/2-acquitted-of-trying-to-sell-military-cargo-planes-to-iran/2918bfd6-89a7-441a-a124-3b1916e90321/
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[^5]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network.* Sheridan Square Press, 1992.
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[^6]: "Probe by House finds no 'October surprise,'" *The Baltimore Sun,* 1993. https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1993-01-13-1993013111-story.html
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[^7]: "Espionage: Con Man or Key to a Mystery?," *Time,* 1991. https://time.com/archive/6718038/espionage-con-man-or-key-to-a-mystery/
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[^8]: "Fact or fiction? The claims of Ari Ben-Menashe," *Green Left,* 1992. https://www.greenleft.org.au/1992/42/fact-or-fiction-claims-ari-ben-menashe
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[^9]: Pipes, Daniel. "Gideon's Spies by Gordon Thomas," *Commentary,* 1999. https://www.commentary.org/articles/daniel-pipes/gideons-spies-by-gordon-thomas/
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[^10]: "No wrong-doing in Inslaw affair, report says," *UPI,* 1993. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1993/06/17/No-wrong-doing-in-Inslaw-affair-report-says/5482740289600/
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[^11]: "Former Israeli Spy Ari Ben-Menashe on Israel's Relationship with Epstein," *MintPress News,* 2019. https://www.mintpressnews.com/ari-ben-menashe-israel-relationship-jeffrey-epstein/263465/
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[^12]: "What did Ari Ben-Menashe claim about Jeffrey Epstein," *Factually,* 2025. https://factually.co/fact-checks/media/ari-ben-menashe-claims-jeffrey-epstein-mossad-d56c30
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[^13]: "The Man of Mystery Hustling Myanmar," *Washington Monthly,* 2021. https://washingtonmonthly.com/2021/03/13/the-man-of-mystery-hustling-myanmar/
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[^14]: United States v. Menashe, 741 F. Supp. 1135 (S.D.N.Y. 1990).
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[^15]: "The Vanunu affair and the Sunday Mirror photograph," contemporaneous press reporting noting the photograph was taken by Sunday Times journalist Peter Hounam, undercutting Ben-Menashe's account.
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[^16]: "Tsvangirai acquitted of treason in Zimbabwe," *The Globe and Mail,* 2004. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/tsvangirai-acquitted-of-treason-in-zimbabwe/article18275151/
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[^17]: "The Curious Case of Bishkek's $1 Million Deal With Ex-Israeli Intelligence Worker," *Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty,* 2021. https://www.rferl.org/a/the-curious-case-of-bishkek-s-1-million-deal-with-ex-israeli-intelligence-worker-/31033365.html
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[^18]: McFarlane v. Sheridan Square Press, Inc., 91 F.3d 1501 (D.C. Cir. 1996).
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[^19]: Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro's Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal.* TrineDay, 2010, on Ben-Menashe's call to Bill Hamilton after Casolaro's death.
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[^20]: U.S. Department of Justice. *Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua to the Attorney General of the United States Regarding the Allegations of Inslaw, Inc.* March 1993, on the PROMIS affidavits, the "Milon" recantation, and the finding that Ben-Menashe's account offered no evidentiary support for the Inslaw allegations.
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@ -1,32 +1,89 @@
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---
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---
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title: Bill Clinton
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aliases:
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- Bill Clinton
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- William Jefferson Clinton
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created: 2026-05-17
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updated: 2026-05-17
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category: "Intelligence & Government"
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category: "Intelligence & Government"
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tags:
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tags:
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- Person
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- Person
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- Politician
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- Politician
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- BillClinton
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- Arkansas
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- DarkAllianceInvestigation
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- DarkAllianceInvestigation
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- ContraWar
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- ContraWar
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- Arkansas
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- STARGATE
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summary: "William Jefferson 'Bill' Clinton was the 42nd President of the United States (1993-2001) and Governor of Arkansas during the period when Barry Seal operated his CIA-connected cocaine smuggling operation at Mena airport."
|
- JeffreyEpstein
|
||||||
|
- ClintonFoundation
|
||||||
|
- FlightLogs
|
||||||
|
- LolitaExpress
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Bill Clinton
|
||||||
|
- William Jefferson Clinton
|
||||||
|
- William Jefferson Blythe III
|
||||||
|
summary: "Bill Clinton was the 42nd President of the United States and Governor of Arkansas during the Mena CIA-linked drug-smuggling period, whose administration terminated Project Stargate in 1995, and who took multiple flights on Jeffrey Epstein's aircraft for Clinton Foundation work in 2002-2003 while denying any knowledge of Epstein's crimes."
|
||||||
born: 1946-08-19
|
born: 1946-08-19
|
||||||
location: "Hope, Arkansas"
|
location: "Hope, Arkansas"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-05-17
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton was the 42nd President of the United States, serving from 1993 to 2001. His administration oversaw the declassification and termination of the [[STARGATE PROJECT]] in 1995.[^1] While the *Remote Viewers* text does not detail Clinton's direct involvement with the project, it notes that [[William Perry]], who served as Clinton's Secretary of Defense, had previously been involved in funding decisions for the program during the Carter administration.[^1]
|
Bill Clinton (born William Jefferson Blythe III on August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as Governor of [[Arkansas]] and as the 42nd President of the [[United States]] from 1993 to 2001. After leaving office he established the [[Clinton Foundation]] and traveled internationally on its behalf, including on aircraft owned by [[Jeffrey Epstein]]. Flight logs entered into civil litigation list Clinton on flights aboard Epstein's Boeing 727, the aircraft journalists later nicknamed the "[[Lolita Express]]." Clinton has denied knowledge of Epstein's sexual offenses and has denied visiting Epstein's private island, [[Little St. James]]. No court, prosecutor, or official investigation has produced evidence that Clinton committed a crime in connection with Epstein.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Governor of Arkansas and the Mena Drug Operations
|
### Governor of Arkansas and the Mena Drug Operations
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
As Governor of [[Arkansas]], Clinton presided over the period when [[Barry Seal]] operated his [[Central Intelligence Agency]]-connected [[cocaine]] smuggling operation at Mena airport. Clinton's close friend [[Danny Ray Lasater]] was convicted as part of a major drug ring in Little Rock, raising questions about what the governor knew about the activities at [[Mena, Arkansas|Mena]].[^2]
|
As Governor of Arkansas, Clinton presided over the period when [[Barry Seal]] operated his [[Central Intelligence Agency]]-connected [[cocaine]] smuggling operation at Mena airport. Clinton's close friend [[Danny Ray Lasater]] was convicted as part of a major drug ring in Little Rock, raising questions about what the governor knew about the activities at [[Mena, Arkansas|Mena]].[^16]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Arkansas state trooper Larry Patterson testified that troopers were aware "that there was large quantities of drugs being flown into the Mena airport" and that "it was a CIA operation." Despite the scale of Seal's operations, which a letter from the Arkansas attorney general to U.S. Attorney General [[Ed Meese]] valued at $3 billion to $5 billion in smuggled drugs, the state government took no action to shut down the operation. Clinton's administration in Arkansas presided over the period when the Mena airport served as a hub for both drug trafficking and Contra supply operations.[^3]
|
Arkansas state trooper Larry Patterson testified that troopers were aware "that there was large quantities of drugs being flown into the Mena airport" and that "it was a CIA operation." Despite the scale of Seal's operations, which a letter from the Arkansas attorney general to U.S. Attorney General [[Ed Meese]] valued at 3 billion to 5 billion dollars in smuggled drugs, the state government took no action to shut down the operation. Clinton's administration in Arkansas presided over the period when the Mena airport served as a hub for both drug trafficking and Contra supply operations.[^16]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Project Stargate
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
As president, Clinton's administration oversaw the 1995 declassification and termination of the [[STARGATE PROJECT]], the government's remote-viewing program, after a CIA-commissioned review concluded the program had no demonstrated intelligence value. The *Remote Viewers* account does not detail any direct involvement by Clinton in the program, but notes that [[William Perry]], who served as Clinton's Secretary of Defense, had earlier been involved in funding decisions for the program during the Carter administration.[^15]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Epstein Contacts and Flight Logs
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Epstein donated 1,000 dollars to Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign and contributed to later Democratic fundraising, and Clinton Foundation records show a 25,000 dollar contribution from an Epstein-linked foundation in 2006, according to a timeline compiled by [[ABC News]]. Epstein and [[Ghislaine Maxwell]] were recorded as visitors during Clinton's presidency and were photographed at White House events. Clinton's spokesman has said the former president met Epstein privately on two occasions after leaving office, once at Epstein's Manhattan townhouse and once at the [[Clinton Global Initiative]] offices in Harlem.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Flight logs released in civil litigation and later in document tranches list Clinton on flights aboard Epstein's Boeing 727, registration N908JE. Reporting on the logs in 2016 noted Clinton appearing on at least 26 flight "legs," a figure that counts individual segments of multi-stop trips rather than distinct journeys, and noted that he traveled on at least some legs without his [[United States Secret Service|Secret Service]] detail. Maxwell, recorded in the logs by the initials "GM," appears on the trips, as do entries read as the initials of Epstein assistant [[Sarah Kellen]]. The logs record who boarded which aircraft and when; they do not, on their face, establish what occurred at any destination.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[[FactCheck.org]], reviewing the manifests, counted six trips comprising the 26 flights between February 2002 and November 2003, the discrepancy between trip and leg counts arising from whether each take-off and landing is tallied separately. The documented segments included a February 2002 Miami-to-Westchester hop, a round trip from New York to London in March 2002, a May 2002 sequence through Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Brunei, a July 2002 stop tied to a wedding in Morocco, the September 2002 Africa tour, and a November 2003 routing through Brussels, Oslo, Hong Kong, and Beijing. President [[Donald Trump]] in 2025 claimed Clinton flew on the plane "27 or 28 times," a characterization FactCheck.org described as conflating the leg total with the number of trips; the same review found no flight log placing Clinton on an aircraft bound for the U.S. Virgin Islands.[^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Maxwell, deposed in the Giuffre litigation, stated of the island that "just so we are clear, the allegations that Clinton had a meal on Jeffrey's island is 100 percent false." On one of the 2003 legs, from Oslo to the Russian city of Novosibirsk, the manifest listed Clinton, Epstein, the aide [[Doug Band]], and individuals identified by the initials "GM" and "SK." No court, prosecutor, or official investigation has produced a finding that Clinton witnessed or participated in any crime aboard the aircraft.[^12][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### 2002 Africa Trip
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Clinton departed on September 21, 2002, on a roughly nine-day trip through several African nations to advance the Clinton Foundation's early work on the HIV/AIDS epidemic, including efforts to expand access to antiretroviral medication for mothers with HIV. The itinerary ran through Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, Mozambique, and South Africa and included a day spent with former South African President [[Nelson Mandela]]. FactCheck.org and reporting on the manifests counted this single trip as accounting for roughly 11 of the 26 logged flight legs.[^4][^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The manifest for the outbound leg from New York to the Azores listed Clinton, the actors [[Kevin Spacey]] and [[Chris Tucker]], Epstein, Maxwell, and roughly a dozen others including Doug Band, the investor [[Ron Burkle]], [[Casey Wasserman]], former Transportation Secretary [[Rodney Slater]], and Clinton aides. Chris Tucker appears in the records on the outbound and subsequent legs of the African routing. Spacey, named on the flight log, later said he had flown with Epstein and a group described as young women and characterized his presence as incidental to the Foundation trip; he was never accused of wrongdoing in connection with it.[^4][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The trip was arranged in part through Doug Band, who served as a central organizer of Clinton's post-presidential travel and of the Foundation's network of donors and contacts during this period. Clinton said through a spokesman in 2002 that he regarded Epstein as "both a highly successful financier and a committed philanthropist with a keen sense of global markets." After Epstein's 2019 arrest, Clinton's spokesman said the trips "included stops in connection with the work of The Clinton Foundation."[^5][^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Denials and Statements
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
After Epstein's July 2019 federal arrest, Clinton's spokesman Angel Urena issued a statement saying Clinton "knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York." The statement said Clinton had taken trips on Epstein's plane in 2002 and 2003 in connection with Foundation work, that staff and his Secret Service detail traveled on every leg, that Clinton had not spoken to Epstein "in well over a decade," and that Clinton "has never been to Little St. James Island." The reference in that statement to Secret Service traveling on every leg sits alongside reporting on the logs indicating Clinton flew at least some segments without his detail, a discrepancy his office has not separately reconciled in public.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In his 2024 memoir *Citizen*, Clinton wrote that he wished he had never met Epstein, that traveling on Epstein's plane "was not worth the years of questioning afterward," and that he and Epstein discussed only "politics and economics." Clinton again denied visiting Little St. James and wrote that he had stopped contact with Epstein by the time of Epstein's 2005-2006 legal troubles in Florida. Clinton wrote that he had thought Epstein "odd" but had no knowledge of his crimes.[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In a deposition compelled by the [[House Oversight Committee]], conducted behind closed doors in late February 2026 near the Clintons' home in Chappaqua, New York, Clinton again denied any knowledge of Epstein's offenses, stating "I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong" and "I saw nothing that ever gave me pause." It was the first time a former president had been compelled to testify before a congressional panel. In his opening remarks Clinton objected to the committee's separate deposition of his wife [[Hillary Clinton]], saying she "had nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein" and "has no memory of even meeting him." Hillary Clinton was deposed and said she had no information relevant to the inquiry. Video of both depositions was released in early March 2026. Neither has been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein.[^13][^14]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### References in Unsealed and Released Documents
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Documents unsealed in January 2024 in the defamation case [[Giuffre v. Maxwell]] included deposition testimony from [[Johanna Sjoberg]], given in 2015, in which she testified that Epstein had once said "Clinton likes them young," which she clarified referred to "girls." Sjoberg attributed the remark to Epstein as something he said and not as a statement of her own knowledge about Clinton, and said she understood Epstein to have had "dealings" with him. The same filings referenced a 2011 account in which [[Virginia Giuffre]] said she had seen Clinton on Epstein's island; Giuffre later said she did not witness a helicopter flight she had earlier described, and she made no allegation of wrongdoing by Clinton. Reporting on the January 2024 release noted that the documents did not implicate any previously unnamed person and contained no accusation of a crime by Clinton. A judge in the Maxwell litigation had previously denied a request to depose Clinton.[^7][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Materials released in 2025 by the House Oversight Committee and the [[United States Department of Justice|Department of Justice]] included flight records, estate documents, and a "birthday book" assembled by Maxwell for Epstein's 50th birthday in 2003. The committee made the contents public in September 2025, and the panel released more than 33,000 pages from the Justice Department on September 2, 2025. The book contained an entry attributed to Clinton, the wording of which, as released by the committee, included the line "It's reassuring isn't it, to have lasted as long, across all the years of learning and knowing, adventures and [illegible], and also to have your childlike curiosity, the drive to make a difference and the solace of friends," signed "Bill Clinton." Outlets reporting on the documents noted that the materials did not implicate Clinton in any crime.[^9][^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On December 19, 2025, in accordance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which set that date as the deadline for Attorney General [[Pam Bondi]] to publish the unclassified federal records, the Justice Department released several hundred thousand documents, many heavily redacted. Across the 2025 and 2026 releases, totaling more than 60,000 pages by late 2025, no document established a criminal allegation against Clinton, and reporting consistently noted that his name appeared in connection with the flight logs, social contacts, and the birthday book rather than any accusation by a survivor.[^10][^14]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Footnotes
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
[^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers*. Dell, 1997.
|
[^1]: "Timeline: Bill Clinton's interactions with Jeffrey Epstein," *ABC News,* 2025. https://abcnews.com/US/timeline-bill-clintons-interactions-jeffrey-epstein/story?id=130567229
|
||||||
[^2]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 7: "Something happened to Ivan"
|
[^2]: "Flight logs show Bill Clinton flew on sex offender's jet much more than previously known," *Fox News,* 2016. https://www.foxnews.com/us/flight-logs-show-bill-clinton-flew-on-sex-offenders-jet-much-more-than-previously-known
|
||||||
[^3]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 7: "Something happened to Ivan"
|
[^3]: "Report: Bill Clinton Flew on Disgraced Donor's Jet 26 Times," *Roll Call,* 2016. https://rollcall.com/2016/05/13/report-bill-clinton-flew-on-disgraced-donors-jet-26-times/
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "How well did Bill Clinton know Jeffrey Epstein?," *ABC News,* 2025. https://abcnews.com/Politics/bill-clinton-jeffrey-epstein/story?id=127629827
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Kevin Spacey admits to flying with Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Clinton and a group of young girls," *AOL,* 2025. https://www.aol.com/kevin-spacey-admits-flying-jeffrey-195850925.html
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Bill Clinton denies visiting Epstein island in new memoir and wishes he 'had never met him'," *Fox News,* 2024. https://www.foxnews.com/us/bill-clinton-denies-visiting-epstein-island-new-memoir-wishes-he-had-never-met-him
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "The Biggest Names from Jeffrey Epstein's Unsealed Documents," *Time,* 2024. https://time.com/6552063/jeffrey-epsteins-unsealed-court-documents/
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Giuffre v. Maxwell, No. 15-cv-07433 (S.D.N.Y.), unsealed exhibits, January 2024. https://www.justice.gov/multimedia/Court%20Records/Giuffre%20v.%20Maxwell,%20No.%20115-cv-07433%20(S.D.N.Y.%202015)/
|
||||||
|
[^9]: "Bill Clinton letter in Epstein 'birthday book' among new files released by House Oversight Committee," *Fox News,* 2025. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bill-clinton-letter-epstein-birthday-book-among-new-files-released-house-oversight-committee.amp
|
||||||
|
[^10]: "Epstein files totaling more than 60,000 pages have already been released this year. Here's what we've seen so far," *CBS News,* 2025. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/epstein-files-released-2025-so-far/
|
||||||
|
[^11]: "The Epstein Connections Fueling Conspiracy Theories," *FactCheck.org,* 2019, counting six trips and 26 flights, February 2002 to November 2003. https://www.factcheck.org/2019/08/the-epstein-connections-fueling-conspiracy-theories/
|
||||||
|
[^12]: "The Biggest Names from Jeffrey Epstein's Unsealed Documents," *Time,* 2024, on the Maxwell deposition statement about the island. https://time.com/6552063/jeffrey-epsteins-unsealed-court-documents/
|
||||||
|
[^13]: "Bill Clinton defends himself at House deposition on Epstein: 'I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong,'" *CBS News,* 2026. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bill-clinton-epstein-house-oversight-committee-deposition/
|
||||||
|
[^14]: "Videos of Clinton depositions in Epstein investigation released," *The Washington Post,* 2026. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/03/02/bill-hillary-clinton-deposition-videos/
|
||||||
|
[^15]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies.* Dell, 1997, on the 1995 declassification and termination of the Stargate remote-viewing program and William Perry's earlier funding role.
|
||||||
|
[^16]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998, chapter 7, on the Mena airport operations, Barry Seal, Danny Ray Lasater, and the Arkansas trooper testimony.
|
||||||
|
|
|
||||||
48
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Cory Booker.md
Normal file
48
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Cory Booker.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Political Figure"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- CoryBooker
|
||||||
|
- DemocraticParty
|
||||||
|
- NewJersey
|
||||||
|
- Senate
|
||||||
|
- SiliconValley
|
||||||
|
- Waywire
|
||||||
|
- Dialog
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Cory Anthony Booker
|
||||||
|
- Senator Cory Booker
|
||||||
|
summary: "Cory Booker is a U.S. Senator from New Jersey whose name appeared on the leaked 2026 roster of Peter Thiel's Dialog society and whose political rise was financed in part by Silicon Valley figures including Eric Schmidt, who backed his 2012 video startup Waywire."
|
||||||
|
born: 1969-04-27
|
||||||
|
location: "Washington, D.C. (born); Newark, New Jersey (political base)"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Cory Anthony Booker (born April 27, 1969, in [[Washington, D.C.]]) is an American politician who served as mayor of [[Newark]], [[New Jersey]], from 2006 to 2013 and has been a U.S. Senator from New Jersey since 2013. In June 2026 Booker was named by *WIRED* among the figures surfaced in the leak of [[Dialog]], the invitation-only society cofounded by [[Peter Thiel]] and [[Auren Hoffman]]. His political career has been entwined with [[Silicon Valley]] money since his Newark mayoralty, most visibly through the 2012 video startup [[Waywire]], whose backers included former [[Google]] chairman [[Eric Schmidt]].[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Education and Newark Mayoralty
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Booker earned bachelor's and master's degrees from [[Stanford University]], won a [[Rhodes Scholarship]] to [[Oxford University]], and graduated from [[Yale Law School]]. He moved to Newark and won a seat on the city council before being elected mayor in 2006, holding the office until he entered the Senate. His mayoralty cultivated a national donor and media profile unusual for a mid-sized-city mayor, including a much-publicized relationship with technology-industry philanthropists; in 2010 he secured a 100 million dollar gift from [[Mark Zuckerberg]] for the Newark public schools, announced on the [[Oprah Winfrey]] program.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In October 2013 Booker won a special election to fill the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by the death of [[Frank Lautenberg]], and he has been reelected to full terms since. In the Senate he has aligned with the [[Democratic Party]] establishment while maintaining the Silicon Valley fundraising base he built as mayor, drawing campaign contributions from technology executives and venture capitalists including [[Marc Andreessen]] and [[Reid Hoffman]].[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Waywire and the Silicon Valley Backers
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 2012 Booker cofounded Waywire, a video-sharing and curation startup, with Nathan Richardson, formerly of Gilt City, and Sarah Ross. The venture raised roughly 1.75 million dollars in seed funding from a roster of backers that included Eric Schmidt, [[LinkedIn]] chief executive [[Jeff Weiner]], Oprah Winfrey, and the talent manager [[Troy Carter]]. The site launched publicly in April 2013, while Booker was simultaneously mayor of Newark and a declared Senate candidate.[^2][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
A New York Times investigation by Nicholas Confessore, published August 7, 2013, reported that Booker held an equity stake in Waywire that his disclosure filings valued at between one million and five million dollars, and that several of the startup's investors had also donated to his Senate campaign. The reporting drew conflict-of-interest scrutiny because the same Silicon Valley figures financing his commercial venture were financing his political one. Amid the controversy, the company's underage profile of a media executive's teenage son drew criticism, and Waywire was sold to Magnify.net in October 2013; Booker pledged to give his proceeds from the stake to charity.[^2][^4][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The 2026 Dialog Leak
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The June 16, 2026 *WIRED* report identified Booker on the Dialog roster as "Senator (D-NJ)," listing him among the sitting U.S. senators of both parties surfaced when the hacktivist [[maia arson crimew|crimew]] located a member directory in the source code of Dialog's website and a separate source provided the publication with the 222-name registration list for the society's August 2026 retreat near [[Dublin]]. *WIRED* placed Booker alongside fellow senator [[Ted Cruz]] and Colorado governor [[Jared Polis]] among the political figures on the list.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Dialog was cofounded by Thiel and Auren Hoffman, the data broker behind [[SafeGraph]] and [[LiveRamp]]. The roster listed Booker among the society's technology, finance, and political registrants.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Cameron, Dell, and Yulia Almazova. "Leak Exposes Members of Peter Thiel's Secretive 'Dialog' Society." *WIRED,* June 16, 2026. https://www.wired.com/story/leak-exposes-members-of-peter-thiels-secretive-dialog-society/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Examining Cory Booker's Tech Ties." *Inc.,* 2013. https://www.inc.com/christine-lagorio/examining-cory-bookers-tech-ties.html
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "About Cory." Office of U.S. Senator Cory Booker. https://www.booker.senate.gov/about-cory
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Confessore, Nicholas. "Cory Booker, in Senate Race, Stresses Ties to Web Start-Ups." *New York Times,* August 7, 2013. Summarized in "Cory Booker's Silicon Valley cash." *Columbia Journalism Review,* 2013. https://www.cjr.org/the_audit/nyts_excellent_booker_startup.php
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Cory Booker's Role In Startup Waywire Is Shady, Unsurprisingly." *The New Republic,* 2013. https://newrepublic.com/article/114197/cory-bookers-role-startup-waywire-shady-unsurprisingly
|
||||||
49
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Daniela Amodei.md
Normal file
49
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Daniela Amodei.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Technologists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- Anthropic
|
||||||
|
- ArtificialIntelligence
|
||||||
|
- EffectiveAltruism
|
||||||
|
- OpenAI
|
||||||
|
- OpenPhilanthropy
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Daniela Amodei
|
||||||
|
summary: "Daniela Amodei is the cofounder and president of Anthropic, who ran operations and people functions at Stripe and OpenAI before starting the company with her brother Dario, and who is married to Open Philanthropy cofounder Holden Karnofsky."
|
||||||
|
born: 1987
|
||||||
|
location: "San Francisco, California"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Daniela Amodei (born 1987) is an American technology executive who cofounded and serves as president of [[Anthropic]], where she runs the company's operations, hiring, finance, legal, and policy functions. The younger sister of chief executive [[Dario Amodei]], she built operations and people organizations at Stripe and [[OpenAI]] before the siblings left OpenAI to start the company in 2021. She is married to [[Holden Karnofsky]], cofounder of [[Open Philanthropy]], an early Anthropic funder from the [[Effective Altruism]] movement.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Background and Early Career
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Amodei was born in San Francisco, four years after her brother, to an Italian-American father and a Jewish-American mother. She took a bachelor's degree in English literature with a politics minor from the University of California, Santa Cruz, graduating in 2009, and began her career outside technology, including work as a congressional campaign staffer and at a global-health nonprofit. She joined the payments company Stripe as an early employee around 2013, where she worked in risk and operations and grew teams as the company scaled.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 2018 Amodei moved to OpenAI, where she held senior operations and people roles and became vice president of safety and policy, overseeing the organization's recruiting, human resources, and parts of its policy and safety work during the period her brother led research. Profiles describe her as having run the "people" and operational side of OpenAI while Dario ran the technical side, the division of labor the two later reproduced at their own company.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Anthropic
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
When Dario and a group of OpenAI colleagues resigned in late 2020 over disagreements about the company's direction and safety posture, Daniela left with them, and the siblings incorporated Anthropic in early 2021 as a public-benefit corporation. As president she owns the non-research surface of the company: finance, legal, human resources, communications, policy, and the operational scaling of a firm that grew from a few dozen people to thousands within a few years. She and Dario were jointly named to the inaugural Time 100 AI list in 2023, and the firm's rising valuation made her one of the wealthiest self-made women in technology, with Forbes estimating her stake in the billions of dollars.[^1][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Anthropic drew much of its early capital from the effective-altruism world. Open Philanthropy, cofounded by her husband, was an early funder; in 2022 [[Sam Bankman-Fried]] invested roughly 500 million dollars through [[Alameda Research]] months before [[FTX]] collapsed; and later rounds drew Amazon and Google. Both Amodeis have publicly distanced themselves from the effective-altruism label even as critics noted the density of the ties, and Dario has said the company kept Bankman-Fried off the board and limited him to non-voting shares.[^2][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Governance and the Long-Term Benefit Trust
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Amodei oversaw the construction of Anthropic's unusual governance, the Long-Term Benefit Trust, formally established in September 2023 and holding a special class of stock that lets a body of trustees insulated from shareholders elect and remove a growing share of the board over time, an arrangement intended to weight safety over investor returns. The structure echoed the nonprofit-control design that produced OpenAI's 2023 board crisis, and as president she manages the relationship between that trust, the board, and the company's commercial investors.[^6][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Amodei married Holden Karnofsky in August 2017 in a ceremony its guests later described as effective-altruism themed, and the two had earlier lived in a shared house with figures from the [[Rationalist Community]] and the early effective-altruism scene, in which Karnofsky and Dario were among the housemates. Karnofsky co-led Open Philanthropy, the largest sustained funder of AI-safety work, before taking a leave to focus on AI strategy and joining Anthropic in January 2025 to work on the company's responsible-scaling and safety policies. He had previously held an OpenAI board seat tied to a 2017 Open Philanthropy grant, which he resigned in 2021 after his wife cofounded the competing lab.[^8][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Daniela Amodei," *Bloomberg* executive profile, and "Dario and Daniela Amodei," *TIME* 100 AI 2023, on the 1987 San Francisco birth, the UC Santa Cruz literature degree, the Stripe and OpenAI background, and the Anthropic presidency. https://time.com/collections/time100-ai/6309047/daniela-and-dario-amodei/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Who Funds the AI Safety Watchdogs," Inside The Black Box, on Daniela Amodei's OpenAI safety-and-policy role, the marriage to Karnofsky, and Open Philanthropy as an Anthropic funder. https://itbb.substack.com/p/who-funds-the-watchdogs
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Daniela Amodei: Helpful, Honest, Harmless AI," Stanford eCorner / STVP podcast, on her Stripe risk-and-operations work, her OpenAI operations and people roles, and the operational scope of her Anthropic presidency. https://stvp.stanford.edu/podcasts/daniela-amodei-anthropic-helpful-honest-harmless-ai
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Anthropic co-founders become billionaires after massive funding round," *Bloomberg,* March 4, 2025, on the founders' wealth following Anthropic's valuation increase. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-04/anthropic-co-founders-become-billionaires-after-massive-funding-round
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "FTX estate selling majority stake in AI startup Anthropic for $884 million, with bulk going to UAE," *CNBC,* March 25, 2024, on the 2022 Bankman-Fried investment via Alameda Research and the later Amazon and Google rounds. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/25/ftx-estate-sells-majority-stake-in-startup-anthropic-for-884-million.html
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "The Long-Term Benefit Trust," Anthropic, September 2023, on the special Class T shares and the trustees' authority to elect and remove directors. https://www.anthropic.com/news/the-long-term-benefit-trust
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Anthropic, OpenAI's biggest rival, has a weird structure too," *Slate,* December 2023, on the Long-Term Benefit Trust and the parallel to OpenAI's nonprofit-control crisis. https://slate.com/technology/2023/12/anthropic-openai-board-trust-effective-altruism.html
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "Karnofsky and Daniela Amodei married in an effective-altruism-theme ceremony," widely circulated account of the August 2017 wedding; "Holden Karnofsky," on the marriage and the shared rationalist-scene household with Dario Amodei. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/53Gc35vDLK2u5nBxP/anthropic-is-not-being-consistently-candid-about-their
|
||||||
|
[^9]: "Anthropic Hired President Daniela Amodei's Husband to Work on Its AI Safety Plan," *Fortune,* February 13, 2025, on Karnofsky's January 2025 move to Anthropic, his Open Philanthropy leadership, and his earlier OpenAI board seat resigned in 2021. https://www.fortune.com/2025/02/13/anthropic-hired-president-daniela-amodei-husband-ai-safety-responsible-scaling
|
||||||
48
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Dario Amodei.md
Normal file
48
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Dario Amodei.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Technologists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- Anthropic
|
||||||
|
- ArtificialIntelligence
|
||||||
|
- AISafety
|
||||||
|
- EffectiveAltruism
|
||||||
|
- OpenAI
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Dario Amodei
|
||||||
|
summary: "Dario Amodei is the cofounder and chief executive of Anthropic, a physicist and computational neuroscientist who led GPT-2 and GPT-3 as OpenAI's vice president of research before leaving in 2020 with a group of colleagues to build a rival AI lab."
|
||||||
|
born: 1983
|
||||||
|
location: "San Francisco, California"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Dario Amodei (born 1983) is an American AI researcher and entrepreneur who cofounded and serves as chief executive of [[Anthropic]]. Trained as a physicist and computational neuroscientist, he led the development of GPT-2 and GPT-3 as vice president of research at [[OpenAI]], then left in late 2020 with his sister [[Daniela Amodei]] and a group of OpenAI colleagues to found a competing lab built around the thesis that advanced AI should be developed under strict safety constraints. He emerged from the [[Effective Altruism]] milieu, took the Giving What We Can pledge, and is the author of the October 2024 essay "Machines of Loving Grace."[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Education and Early Career
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Amodei was born in San Francisco to Riccardo Amodei, an Italian-American leather craftsman from Tuscany, and Elena Engel, a Jewish-American library project manager from Chicago. He attended Lowell High School, began his undergraduate study in physics at Caltech, and transferred to [[Stanford University]], where he took a bachelor's degree in physics in 2006. He completed a PhD in biophysics at [[Princeton University]] in 2011 as a Hertz Foundation Fellow, with a thesis titled "Network-Scale Electrophysiology: Measuring and Understanding the Collective Behavior of Neural Circuits" supervised by Michael Berry and William Bialek, and won the Hertz thesis prize. He then did postdoctoral work at the Stanford University School of Medicine.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
His move into machine learning ran through industry research labs. He worked at the Chinese search company Baidu from November 2014 to October 2015 under Andrew Ng, where his work on the relationship between model performance, data, and compute contributed to the empirical "scaling laws" that later became central to his worldview, and then at Google Brain as a senior research scientist. In 2016 he joined OpenAI, where over the next four years he rose to vice president of research and helped pioneer reinforcement learning from human feedback, the alignment technique that underpins modern conversational models.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### OpenAI and the Departure
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
At OpenAI, Amodei directed the team that built the GPT-2 and GPT-3 language models, the latter consuming a reported 50 to 60 percent of the company's compute and tens of millions of dollars to train. He also ran the safety team and co-authored the 2020 "Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models" paper, which formalized the observation that model capability grows predictably with size, data, and compute. That empirical result became the foundation of his conviction that simply scaling up models would keep producing more powerful systems, a thesis he carried into Anthropic.[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
A faction around Amodei came into conflict with OpenAI's leadership over the direction of the company, the pace of commercialization, and the 2019 [[Microsoft]] investment and capped-profit restructuring. One colleague later described the period as one in which roughly half the team's time went to arguing internal disagreements rather than research. In December 2020 Amodei resigned, and over the following months he and a group of senior OpenAI staff, including his sister Daniela, departed to start their own lab; the company has been described as founded by seven former OpenAI employees, with the broader founding cohort including [[Jared Kaplan]], [[Jack Clark]], [[Chris Olah]], Tom Brown, Sam McCandlish, and Ben Mann.[^1][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Anthropic and the Scaling Thesis
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Amodei incorporated Anthropic in early 2021 as a public-benefit corporation, with Daniela as president, and the two raised money from funders tied to effective altruism, including [[Open Philanthropy]], whose cofounder [[Holden Karnofsky]] is married to Daniela. In 2022 the company took a roughly 500-million-dollar investment from [[Sam Bankman-Fried]] through [[Alameda Research]] months before the [[FTX]] collapse, and later raised tens of billions from [[Amazon (company)|Amazon]] and Google. Amodei has positioned Anthropic publicly as the safety-conscious frontier lab, championing a "Responsible Scaling Policy" of capability thresholds even as the company competes directly at the frontier.[^2][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Amodei is a prominent voice on both AI risk and AI optimism. In October 2024 he published "Machines of Loving Grace," a roughly 14,000-word essay arguing that "powerful AI," which he likens to "a country of geniuses in a datacenter," could compress decades of progress in biology, neuroscience, economic development, governance, and the meaning of work into five to ten years; he opened it by stating that "most people are underestimating just how radical the upside of AI could be, just as I think most people are underestimating how bad the risks could be." He has separately warned that AI could eliminate a large share of entry-level white-collar jobs, testified and written on the danger of authoritarian misuse, and argued for export controls to keep advanced chips from China. Forbes estimated his net worth at roughly 15.5 billion dollars in mid-2026 as Anthropic's valuation climbed.[^6][^7][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Steven Levy, "How Anthropic's Dario Amodei Is Building the AI of the Future," *Wired,* and contemporaneous profiles, on the 1983 San Francisco birth, parents Riccardo Amodei and Elena Engel, Lowell High School, Caltech and Stanford physics, the Princeton biophysics PhD, and the Baidu, Google Brain, and OpenAI career. https://www.wired.com/story/anthropic-dario-amodei-ai/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Anthropic, OpenAI's biggest rival, has a weird structure too," *Slate,* December 2023, on Anthropic's effective-altruism origins, the public-benefit incorporation, and the founding by former OpenAI researchers. https://slate.com/technology/2023/12/anthropic-openai-board-trust-effective-altruism.html
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Dario Amodei et al., "Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models," arXiv, January 2020; Hertz Foundation fellow and thesis-prize records, on the Princeton PhD and the scaling-laws work. https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.08361
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Alex Kantrowitz, "The Making of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei," on the GPT-2 and GPT-3 leadership, the compute share for GPT-3, the internal OpenAI conflict, and the December 2020 departure with colleagues to found Anthropic. https://kantrowitz.medium.com/the-making-of-anthropic-ceo-dario-amodei-449777529dd6
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "FTX estate selling majority stake in AI startup Anthropic for $884 million, with bulk going to UAE," *CNBC,* March 25, 2024, on the 2022 Bankman-Fried investment via Alameda Research and Anthropic's later valuations. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/25/ftx-estate-sells-majority-stake-in-startup-anthropic-for-884-million.html
|
||||||
|
[^6]: Dario Amodei, "Machines of Loving Grace," darioamodei.com, October 2024, on the "country of geniuses in a datacenter" framing, the five-to-ten-year timeline, and the opening claim about underestimating upside and risk. https://www.darioamodei.com/essay/machines-of-loving-grace
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warns AI could wipe out half of entry-level white-collar jobs," contemporaneous press coverage of his Axios interview, 2025. https://www.axios.com/2025/05/28/ai-jobs-white-collar-unemployment-anthropic
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "Dario Amodei," *Forbes* profile and real-time net-worth listing, on the mid-2026 net-worth estimate as Anthropic's valuation rose. https://www.forbes.com/profile/dario-amodei/
|
||||||
68
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/David Chaum.md
Normal file
68
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/David Chaum.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,68 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Technologists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- DavidChaum
|
||||||
|
- Cryptography
|
||||||
|
- DigitalCash
|
||||||
|
- DigiCash
|
||||||
|
- Privacy
|
||||||
|
- Cryptocurrency
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- David Lee Chaum
|
||||||
|
- David Chaum
|
||||||
|
summary: "David Chaum is the American cryptographer who invented anonymous digital cash, devised the mix network and the blind signature, wrote a 1982 dissertation that anticipated the blockchain, and built the DigiCash eCash system whose 1998 bankruptcy left the cypherpunks to pursue trustless money."
|
||||||
|
born: 1955
|
||||||
|
location: "United States"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
David Lee Chaum (born 1955) is an American cryptographer who founded the field of anonymous digital cash and privacy-preserving cryptography. In a series of papers beginning in 1981 he introduced the mix network for untraceable communication, the blind signature for untraceable payment, and the dining cryptographers protocol for unconditional sender anonymity, and his 1982 doctoral dissertation set out a system that anticipated much of the later blockchain. Through his company [[DigiCash]] he built [[eCash]], the first working electronic-money system, which depended on a bank as a trusted issuer and went bankrupt in 1998. The [[Cypherpunks]] built directly on his work, and the trustless designs that became [[Bitcoin]] were in part an effort to remove the central issuer his system required.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Mix Networks and the Dining Cryptographers
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Chaum earned a doctorate in computer science from the [[University of California, Berkeley]], and taught there and at [[New York University]] before moving his research to the [[Netherlands]]. His 1981 paper "Untraceable Electronic Mail, Return Addresses, and Digital Pseudonyms," published in Communications of the ACM, introduced the mix network, a chain of relay servers each of which receives a batch of encrypted messages, decrypts one layer, shuffles the order, and forwards them, so that no single relay and no outside observer can link a message entering the chain to one leaving it. The design is the conceptual ancestor of later anonymity systems including the onion-routing network Tor.[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 1988 Chaum published "The Dining Cryptographers Problem: Unconditional Sender and Recipient Untraceability" in the Journal of Cryptology, which posed a puzzle: three cryptographers at dinner want to learn whether one of them paid the bill or whether their employer did, without revealing which of them paid. The protocol he derived, in which each participant shares a secret coin flip with a neighbor and announces the parity, lets the group compute whether any member sent a message while hiding which one did, with anonymity that holds even against an adversary with unlimited computing power. The construction, known as a DC-net, became a foundation of research into anonymous communication.[^5][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Blind Signatures
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Chaum presented "Blind Signatures for Untraceable Payments" at the CRYPTO '82 conference, published in the proceedings in 1983, building on the idea he had set out in his 1982 dissertation. A blind signature lets a signer certify a message without seeing its contents. In Chaum's payment scheme a customer generates a digital banknote with a serial number, multiplies it by a random blinding factor so the bank cannot read it, and sends the blinded value to the bank; the bank signs it and debits the customer's account, the customer divides out the blinding factor to recover a valid signed note, and when a merchant later deposits that note the bank sees its serial number for the first time and cannot connect it to the withdrawal.[^2][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The result was electronic money that was anonymous like physical cash yet unforgeable like a bank-signed instrument, since the bank's signature could not be reproduced without its private key and any attempt to spend the same note twice could be detected at deposit. The blind signature solved the central problem that had blocked anonymous digital payment, and it became the cryptographic core of every system Chaum built afterward. His 1985 paper "Security Without Identification: Transaction Systems to Make Big Brother Obsolete" extended the approach into a broader scheme of pseudonymous credentials.[^2][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The 1982 Dissertation
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Chaum's Berkeley dissertation, "Computer Systems Established, Maintained, and Trusted by Mutually Suspicious Groups," completed in 1982, described how a group of parties who do not trust one another could jointly operate a record-keeping system whose integrity none of them could subvert. The design specified a data structure in which entries were chained together by cryptographic references and replicated across the participants, so that the history could be audited and could not be altered after the fact without detection, and it included the code to implement the protocol.[^9][^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Commentators who later compared the dissertation to the 2008 Bitcoin white paper observed that it contained most of the structural elements of a blockchain, including a chained, tamper-evident ledger maintained by a set of mutually distrustful participants, and that the principal element it lacked was proof-of-work, the mechanism by which an open, permissionless network reaches consensus without a fixed membership. The Satoshi Nakamoto Institute republished the dissertation in its library as an antecedent of the blockchain.[^9][^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### DigiCash and eCash
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Chaum founded DigiCash in [[Amsterdam]] in 1990, after his cryptographic group at the CWI research center, to commercialize anonymous electronic cash. Its product, eCash, used Chaum's blind signatures to issue digital coins that a customer withdrew from a participating bank, stored on a personal computer, and spent at merchants, with the bank unable to trace where its issued coins were spent. DigiCash also ran a free trial currency called CyberBucks. In October 1994 the company demonstrated the first live payment over the World Wide Web.[^1][^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Adoption never reached the scale the system needed. The Mark Twain Bank of St. Louis became the first licensee to offer eCash in 1995, followed in 1996 and afterward by [[Deutsche Bank]], [[Credit Suisse]], [[Bank Austria]], and a handful of others, but by 1998 the Mark Twain program had signed only about 300 merchants and 5,000 users. Reported negotiations with larger partners fell through, including a Visa investment and a Microsoft proposal to bundle eCash with Windows 95 over which Chaum and [[Bill Gates]] reportedly could not agree on terms. DigiCash filed for bankruptcy in November 1998. Chaum told Forbes the following year, "It was hard to get enough merchants to accept it, so that you could get enough consumers to use it, or vice versa."[^1][^12]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
eCash differed fundamentally from the cryptocurrencies that followed. A customer's payment was anonymous, but a bank had to issue every coin, validate it, and maintain the account ledger, so the system could not operate without a trusted central institution and could be shut down by removing that institution. The proof-of-work currencies that the cypherpunks went on to design, beginning with [[Adam Back]]'s [[Hashcash]], [[Wei Dai]]'s b-money, and [[Hal Finney]]'s reusable proof-of-work and culminating in [[Satoshi Nakamoto]]'s Bitcoin, replaced Chaum's trusted issuer with an open network that mints and validates its own units, removing the single point of control that had defined eCash.[^13][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Later Work
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
After DigiCash, Chaum continued to work on cryptographic systems, concentrating heavily on verifiable election technology. He designed end-to-end verifiable voting schemes including Punchscan and the in-person system Scantegrity, which was used in a binding municipal election in Takoma Park, Maryland, in 2009. In the cryptocurrency era he returned to digital money with the Elixxir and Praxxis projects and the xx network, and he proposed eCash-style privacy designs for central bank digital currencies, work in which his original blind-signature approach reappeared decades after DigiCash.[^14][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "The Genesis Files: How David Chaum's eCash Spawned a Cypherpunk Dream," *Bitcoin Magazine,* April 2018, on Chaum's biography, DigiCash founded 1990 in Amsterdam, eCash, the Mark Twain and Deutsche Bank licensees, the Visa and Microsoft talks, and the 1998 bankruptcy. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/genesis-files-how-david-chaums-ecash-spawned-cypherpunk-dream
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Chaum, David. "Blind Signatures for Untraceable Payments," *Advances in Cryptology: Proceedings of CRYPTO '82,* Springer, 1983, pp. 199-203, on the blind-signature payment scheme. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4757-0602-4_18
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Chaum, David. "Untraceable Electronic Mail, Return Addresses, and Digital Pseudonyms," *Communications of the ACM,* vol. 24, no. 2, February 1981, on the mix network. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/358549.358563
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "David Lee Chaum: The Pioneer of Digital Anonymity," *GNcrypto,* on the Berkeley doctorate, the mix network as ancestor of Tor, and his later election and currency work. https://www.gncrypto.news/news/david-lee-chaum-the-pioneer-of-digital-anonymity/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Chaum, David. "The Dining Cryptographers Problem: Unconditional Sender and Recipient Untraceability," *Journal of Cryptology,* vol. 1, no. 1, 1988, pp. 65-75. https://chaum.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/chaum-dc.pdf
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "The Dining Cryptographers Problem," *Futility Closet,* on the 1988 protocol and DC-nets. https://www.futilitycloset.com/2018/10/03/the-dining-cryptographers-problem/
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Blind Signatures for Untraceable Payments," *Springer Nature Link,* citation record for the CRYPTO '82 paper published 1983. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4757-0602-4_18
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Chaum, David. "Security Without Identification: Transaction Systems to Make Big Brother Obsolete," *Communications of the ACM,* vol. 28, no. 10, October 1985, on pseudonymous credentials. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/4372.4373
|
||||||
|
[^9]: Chaum, David. "Computer Systems Established, Maintained, and Trusted by Mutually Suspicious Groups," University of California, Berkeley, June 1982, on the chained, replicated, tamper-evident record maintained by mutually distrustful parties. https://nakamotoinstitute.org/library/computer-systems-by-mutually-suspicious-groups/
|
||||||
|
[^10]: "Computer Systems Established, Maintained, and Trusted by Mutually Suspicious Groups," Satoshi Nakamoto Institute library entry, characterizing the 1982 dissertation as containing the elements of a blockchain except proof-of-work. https://nakamotoinstitute.org/library/computer-systems-by-mutually-suspicious-groups/
|
||||||
|
[^11]: "DigiCash Idea Finds New Life in More Flexible eCash," *American Banker,* on the eCash system, the bank trials, and the demonstration of web payment. https://www.americanbanker.com/news/digicash-idea-finds-new-life-in-more-flexible-ecash
|
||||||
|
[^12]: "'82: The Birth of Digital Cash," Till Antonio Mahler, *blockwhat?,* on the Mark Twain Bank, the limited adoption figures, the Microsoft and Visa negotiations, and the November 1998 bankruptcy. https://medium.com/blockwhat/82-the-birth-of-digital-cash-ea08b53379d8
|
||||||
|
[^13]: "The Extropian Roots of Bitcoin," *CCN,* on the digital-cash precursors that removed the trusted issuer. https://www.ccn.com/extropian-roots-bitcoin/
|
||||||
|
[^14]: "Understanding David Chaum: Pioneer of Digital Privacy and Cryptography," *CoinStats,* on Scantegrity, the Takoma Park election, and the xx network. https://coinstats.app/news/0e7c5927f0be24286a2140761b3fb115289bd6e241174487562250ab1aef2645_Understanding-David-Chaum-Pioneer-of-Digital-Privacy-and-Cryptography/
|
||||||
44
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Denise George.md
Normal file
44
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Denise George.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Law Enforcement & Legal"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- JeffreyEpstein
|
||||||
|
- VirginIslands
|
||||||
|
- JPMorganChase
|
||||||
|
- GovernmentCapture
|
||||||
|
- AttorneyGeneral
|
||||||
|
- SouthernTrust
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Denise N. George
|
||||||
|
- Denise George-Counts
|
||||||
|
summary: "Denise George was the U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General who sued Jeffrey Epstein's estate and JPMorgan Chase, and who was fired by the governor days after filing the JPMorgan suit."
|
||||||
|
location: "U.S. Virgin Islands"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Denise George was the seventeenth Attorney General of the [[U.S. Virgin Islands]], serving from 2019 to 2023. [[Albert Bryan|Governor Albert Bryan Jr.]] nominated her in March 2019, and she took office in May, weeks before [[Jeffrey Epstein|Jeffrey Epstein's]] July 2019 federal arrest. She brought the territory's January 2020 civil enforcement suit against Epstein's estate and its December 2022 suit against [[JPMorgan Chase]]. Bryan fired her on December 31, 2022, four days after the JPMorgan filing, a sequence that raised questions about whether the litigation prompted her removal.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Litigation Against the Epstein Estate
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
George filed the territory's case against Epstein's estate on January 15, 2020, in the Superior Court of the Virgin Islands, under the Criminally Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, the territory's racketeering statute. The complaint alleged that Epstein created a network of shell companies, charitable organizations, and individuals that participated in a decades-long pattern of trafficking and sexual abuse of girls and young women at his Virgin Islands properties. She later amended the action to add the estate co-executors [[Darren Indyke]] and [[Richard Kahn]], [[Southern Trust Company]], and other Epstein-created entities as co-defendants.[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The case settled on December 1, 2022. The estate agreed to pay the territory more than 105 million dollars in cash, to return roughly 80 million dollars in tax benefits the territory said Southern Trust Company had obtained fraudulently under the [[Economic Development Commission]] program, and to give the territory half the proceeds of the sale of [[Little St. James]]. George stated that the settlement restored the faith of the people of the Virgin Islands that its laws would be enforced against those who break them. In January 2023 the financier [[Leon Black]] agreed to pay the territory 62.5 million dollars to resolve potential Epstein-related claims.[^4][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Suit Against JPMorgan Chase and Firing
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
George filed the territory's suit against JPMorgan Chase on December 27, 2022 in federal court in Manhattan, alleging that the bank knowingly facilitated, sustained, and concealed Epstein's trafficking and benefited financially from the relationship. The complaint invoked the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act, the territory's Criminally Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, and the Virgin Islands consumer-protection statute, and the territory later sought 190 million dollars from the bank. The case settled in September 2023, with JPMorgan paying 75 million dollars to the Virgin Islands and 290 million dollars to Epstein's victims.[^1][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Governor Bryan fired George on December 31, 2022, four days after the JPMorgan filing and roughly four weeks after the estate settlement closed. Bryan said the firing was unrelated to the suit, but acknowledged that George had filed the action against the largest U.S. bank without first informing him, and stated that he could not have an attorney general launching lawsuits he did not know about. Bloomberg's disclosure of the filing preceded the dismissal. Bryan appointed the assistant attorney general Carol Thomas-Jacobs to serve in the role on an acting basis.[^2][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
George later said she felt pressure to resolve the matters quickly and to avoid being part of a cover-up, telling Fortune in November 2023 that her bar license and her integrity were more important to her than the position, and that she would lose her job rather than be part of a conspiracy to conceal anything. The timing of the firing relative to the JPMorgan suit was raised again when the Justice Department's later Epstein file releases renewed attention on her account that she had felt threatened during the litigation.[^1][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Attorney general going after Jeffrey Epstein's estate says she was fired for her dogged pursuit." *Fortune,* November 17, 2023. https://fortune.com/2023/11/17/jeffrey-epstein-us-virgin-islands-jpmorgan-attorney-general-investigation-fired/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Virgin Islands prosecutor fired after accusing JPMorgan of aiding Epstein's sex trafficking ring." *The Washington Times,* January 3, 2023. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/jan/3/virgin-islands-prosecutor-fired-after-accusing-jpm/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Government of the United States Virgin Islands v. Estate of Jeffrey E. Epstein, No. ST-20-CV-14 (V.I. Super. Ct., filed January 15, 2020), brought under the Criminally Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, 14 V.I.C. sections 600 to 614.
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Settles Sex Trafficking Case Against Estate of Jeffrey Epstein and Co-Defendants for Over $105 Million." *Government of the U.S. Virgin Islands Department of Justice,* December 1, 2022. https://usvidoj.com/u-s-virgin-islands-attorney-general-settles-sex-trafficking-case-against-estate-of-jeffrey-epstein-and-co-defendants-for-over-105-million/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Financier and MoMA Trustee Leon Black Agrees to Pay $62.5 Million to Settle Jeffrey Epstein-Related Claims in the Virgin Islands." *Artnet News,* 2023. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/leon-black-62-million-settlement-with-virgin-islands-epstein-claims-2341599
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "US Virgin Islands sue JPMorgan Chase over handling of Jeffrey Epstein accounts." *JURIST,* December 30, 2022. https://www.jurist.org/news/2022/12/us-virgin-islands-sue-jp-morgan-over-handling-of-jeffery-epstein-accounts/ ; Government of the United States Virgin Islands v. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., No. 1:22-cv-10904 (S.D.N.Y. 2022).
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "USVI Attorney General Denise N. George fired." *Virgin Islands News Online,* January 2023. https://www.virginislandsnewsonline.com/en/news/usvi-attorney-general-denise-n-george-fired/
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "DOJ Epstein File Dump Revives Former USVI AG's Claim She Felt Threatened After Suing Epstein's Estate." *Los Angeles Magazine,* 2025. https://lamag.com/crimeinla/doj-epstein-file-dump-revives-former-usvi-ags-claim-she-felt-threatened-after-suing-epsteins-estate/
|
||||||
61
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Ehud Barak.md
Normal file
61
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Ehud Barak.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,61 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Intelligence & Government"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- EhudBarak
|
||||||
|
- Israel
|
||||||
|
- IDF
|
||||||
|
- JeffreyEpstein
|
||||||
|
- Palantir
|
||||||
|
- Carbyne
|
||||||
|
- Intelligence
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Ehud Barak
|
||||||
|
summary: "Ehud Barak is an Israeli former prime minister, defense minister, and military intelligence chief whose documented years-long relationship with Jeffrey Epstein included Epstein brokering an introduction to Peter Thiel over Palantir, an April 2014 email proposing a Thiel meeting, and a 2015 arrangement through which Epstein quietly invested approximately one million dollars in the Israeli surveillance-tech startup Carbyne."
|
||||||
|
born: 1942-02-12
|
||||||
|
location: "Mishmar HaSharon, Mandatory Palestine (born)"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Ehud Barak (born Ehud Brog, February 12, 1942, at [[Mishmar HaSharon|Mishmar HaSharon]], [[Mandatory Palestine]]) is an Israeli military and political leader who served as the fourteenth [[Prime Minister of Israel]] (1999-2001), [[Minister of Defense]] (2007-2013), and chief of the General Staff of the [[Israel Defense Forces]] (1991-1995). Barak's career spans the command of the [[Sayeret Matkal|Sayeret Matkal]] special forces unit (including the documented [[Operation Spring of Youth|1973 Spring of Youth]] operation), the military intelligence directorate ([[Aman|Aman]]), the IDF chief-of-staff tenure, the prime ministership, and the defense ministry under [[Ehud Olmert|Ehud Olmert]] and [[Benjamin Netanyahu|Benjamin Netanyahu]]. Barak's documented relationship with [[Jeffrey Epstein]] ran from the early 2000s through 2016 and included Epstein brokering an introduction to [[Peter Thiel]] over [[Palantir Technologies|Palantir]] and an arrangement through which Epstein quietly invested approximately one million dollars in the Israeli surveillance-tech startup [[Carbyne|Carbyne]] in 2015.[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Sayeret Matkal, Aman, and IDF Command Career
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Barak's military career established his intelligence-community standing. He was commissioned into the Sayeret Matkal general-staff reconnaissance unit in the 1960s and commanded the unit through the operations of the 1970s, including [[Operation Isotope|Operation Isotope]] (the 1972 [[Sabena Airlines|Sabena Flight 571]] rescue) and Operation Spring of Youth (the 1973 [[Beirut|Beirut]] operation targeting the [[Black September|Black September]] leadership, in which Barak led the ground team disguised as a woman). Barak rose to head the military intelligence directorate (Aman) and then served as chief of the General Staff of the IDF from 1991 to 1995, covering the [[Oslo Accords|Oslo Accords]] period and the [[Yitzhak Rabin|Rabin]] assassination aftermath.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The intelligence-community background underlies the subsequent Epstein and Thiel relationships. Barak's Aman tenure and his Sayeret Matkal command placed him at the center of the Israeli intelligence network, and his post-military and post-political career maintained the relationships with the Israeli intelligence and defense-technology sectors that Epstein and Thiel's pitches engaged.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Prime Ministership and the Political Career
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Barak entered politics after the military career and served as Prime Minister from 1999 to 2001. His tenure covered the [[2000 Camp David Summit|2000 Camp David Summit]] with [[Yasser Arafat|Yasser Arafat]] and [[Bill Clinton|Bill Clinton]], at which Barak offered concessions on [[Jerusalem|Jerusalem]] and the [[West Bank|West Bank]] that Arafat rejected, leading to the collapse of the Oslo process. The summit's failure was followed by the outbreak of the [[Second Intifada|Second Intifada]] in September 2000, which ended the negotiated-track framework for Israeli-Palestinian relations.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In May 2000, Barak ordered the unilateral Israeli withdrawal from southern [[Lebanon|Lebanon]], ending the 22-year occupation that had begun under [[Menachem Begin|Menachem Begin]] in 1978. The withdrawal was completed rapidly and produced the documented assessment among Israeli security analysts that the retreat under fire had emboldened [[Hezbollah|Hezbollah]] and established the precedent that armed resistance could force Israeli territorial withdrawals. Barak lost the February 2001 special election to [[Ariel Sharon|Ariel Sharon]] and went into political opposition and the private sector.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Barak returned as defense minister under Ehud Olmert from 2007 and continued in the role under Netanyahu through 2013. The defense-ministry tenure covered [[Operation Cast Lead|Operation Cast Lead]] (the 2008-09 Gaza war), the documented expansion of Israel's cyber-intelligence capabilities in the 2010s, the [[Stuxnet|Stuxnet]] operation against Iranian nuclear facilities (attributed to a joint U.S.-Israeli effort), and the broader growth of the Israeli surveillance-technology export sector documented on the [[NSO Group|NSO Group]] and Carbyne pages.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Epstein Relationship and the Introduction
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[[Shimon Peres|Shimon Peres]] introduced Barak to Epstein in 2002, and the relationship continued through 2016. Barak was photographed entering the Epstein Manhattan residence on multiple occasions, and the [[Epstein Files|Epstein calendars]] document the recurring meetings. The Jacobin reporting (March 2026) and the [[Reason|Reason]] piece on Epstein's spy-industry connections (August 2025) document the substantive content: Epstein attempted to broker an introduction between Barak and Peter Thiel over Palantir, and an April 2014 Epstein email to Barak (documented in the the Epstein Files Transparency Act releases releases) reads "I have Peter Thiel on the 19th in NY, if you like." A DOJ-released audio recording surfaced in which Epstein suggests to Barak that he reach out to Thiel.[^2][^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Barak subsequently described Thiel and Epstein as "owners" of a venture fund, a claim a Thiel spokesman has denied. The discrepancy is unresolved in the public record. Thiel is named over 2,200 times in the Epstein files per Al Jazeera reporting, and the volume of the Thiel-Epstein correspondence, combined with the Barak introduction, documents a sustained effort by Epstein to connect the Israeli-intelligence principal (Barak) with the commercial-surveillance-infrastructure principal (Thiel/Palantir). Epstein's promotional framing of Palantir to Barak ran alongside Barak's own subsequent relationships with Israeli surveillance-tech firms.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Carbyne Investment
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 2015, Barak helped Epstein quietly invest approximately one million dollars in the Israeli police and emergency-response technology startup [[Reporty|Reporty]], which subsequently renamed itself Carbyne. The investment was arranged through Barak, and [[Forbes|Forbes]] reported that it could have grown to be worth up to one hundred million dollars. Carbyne develops 911-emergency-communication and surveillance technology, including systems that integrate smartphone location, video, and incident data into emergency-response platforms. The technology has documented surveillance applications beyond the emergency-response function, and the Reason reporting characterizes the Carbyne investment as part of Epstein's broader effort to enter the surveillance-technology industry in the post-2008-conviction period.[^2][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Through the Carbyne investment, Epstein moved from social-network brokerage to direct commercial investment in surveillance technology, and Barak was the channel through which the investment was arranged. The Reason reporting documents that Epstein and Barak marketed Israeli surveillance technology internationally, including to [[Nigeria]], with technology that had reportedly been tested on Palestinians. The international marketing extended the Barak-Epstein surveillance-tech relationship into the documented export context.[^2][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Palantir-Israel Expansion
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Palantir subsequently became a significant technology partner in Israel's military and intelligence efforts. The documented Jacobin reporting (March 2026) traces the Epstein-Barak-Thiel triangle to the subsequent Israeli procurement of Palantir platforms, though the causal chain from the 2014 introduction to the procurement outcome is not documented in primary form. The Israeli intelligence and defense-technology sector's documented adoption of Palantir data-fusion platforms, and the broader Thiel-network interest in the Israeli cyber-intelligence sector (including the [[Unit 8200|Unit 8200]] alumni network that staffs much of the Israeli cyber-security industry), is the commercial-institutional context in which the Epstein-brokered introduction is situated.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The parapolitical question of whether the 2014 Epstein-brokered Barak-Thiel introduction was the originating channel for the subsequent Palantir-Israel relationship is not documented in the primary sources currently available. What is documented is that Epstein repeatedly and specifically pitched Palantir to Barak over the 2014-2016 period, that Barak and Thiel were connected through the introduction, and that Palantir subsequently expanded its Israeli-government business. The intermediate steps remain an open thread.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: For Barak's military and political career, see the official Israeli government records and the contemporaneous biographical coverage of the Sayeret Matkal command, the Aman tenure, the IDF chief-of-staff period, the prime ministership, and the defense-ministry tenures.
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Inside Jeffrey Epstein's spy industry connections." *Reason,* August 27, 2025. https://reason.com/2025/08/27/inside-jeffrey-epsteins-spy-industry-connections/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Peter Thiel and Jeffrey Epstein Had a Yearslong Relationship." *Jacobin,* March 2026. https://jacobin.com/2026/03/thiel-epstein-barak-ai-israel
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Tommy Carstensen Epstein Files index, "Ehud Barak," cross-referencing the EFTA releases including the April 2014 email. https://tommycarstensen.com/epstein/people/ehud-barak.html
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Former Israeli Politician Helped Epstein Quietly Invest $1 Million In [Carbyne]." *Forbes,* 2020.
|
||||||
39
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Felix Bauckholt.md
Normal file
39
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Felix Bauckholt.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- Zizians
|
||||||
|
- Rationalism
|
||||||
|
- QuantitativeFinance
|
||||||
|
- Violence
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Ophelia Bauckholt
|
||||||
|
summary: "Felix 'Ophelia' Bauckholt was a German national and elite quantitative trader, a former informatics-olympiad gold medalist and Tower Research Capital trader, who became part of the Zizian group and was shot dead in the January 2025 Vermont shootout that killed Border Patrol agent David Maland."
|
||||||
|
died: 2025-01-20
|
||||||
|
location: "Jersey City, New Jersey"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Felix Bauckholt, who used the name "Ophelia," was a German national and quantitative trader who became part of the [[The Zizians|Zizian]] group and was killed in the January 20, 2025 shootout in [[Coventry]], [[Vermont]], in which U.S. Border Patrol agent [[David Maland]] also died. Bauckholt's trajectory from elite mathematics competition to a half-million-dollar Wall Street trading job to a fatal roadside gunfight made the case one of the most widely reported entries into the [[Rationalist Community]]-adjacent cult.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Mathematics and Trading Career
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Bauckholt represented Germany at the [[International Olympiad in Informatics]], a high-school programming competition, winning a gold medal in 2014 and a bronze in 2015, then left Germany on a scholarship to study pure mathematics at the [[University of Waterloo]] in Canada, graduating in 2019. While still in college Bauckholt interned at [[Jane Street Capital]], an elite quantitative trading firm in New York, and after graduating with honors took a job as a quantitative trader at [[Tower Research Capital]]. By early 2023 Bauckholt was earning more than half a million dollars a year and living in [[Jersey City]], [[New Jersey]], on an H-1B visa.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Tower Research role sat at the high end of the quantitative-trading market that the Olympiad and Waterloo pipeline feeds, where firms recruit competition medalists directly into algorithmic trading. The H-1B status tied Bauckholt's lawful presence in the United States to that employment, so the eventual drift away from Wall Street and into the LaSota network also loosened the immigration footing that the job had supplied. Colleagues recalled an exceptional technical mind, and the contrast between the trajectory and the roadside death in Vermont became the hook for much of the early coverage.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Zizian Network and Death
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Bauckholt's Jersey City apartment became a gathering place for a circle of friends, most of them highly educated transgender women who shared a preoccupation with the dangers of artificial intelligence, the same network that formed around [[Jack LaSota]]. By mid-2023 Bauckholt had rented half a duplex in Chapel Hill, [[North Carolina]], and [[Teresa Youngblut]] later took a place nearby, putting the two in the same East Coast cluster of members in the months before the shooting. The firearms the pair carried into Vermont had been bought by [[Michelle Zajko]], the person of interest in the Pennsylvania killing of her parents, according to prosecutors.[^2][^4][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On January 20, 2025, Bauckholt was traveling with Youngblut when Border Patrol agents stopped their vehicle on Interstate 91 in Coventry near the Canadian border. The stop followed several days of surveillance prompted by a Lyndonville hotel employee who reported the pair around January 14 for wearing all-black tactical gear and a holstered firearm. According to the FBI affidavit, Youngblut fired first with a .40-caliber Glock 23 and Bauckholt attempted to draw a weapon before agents shot and killed Bauckholt; Maland died of his wounds and Youngblut was wounded and later charged with his murder. A search of the vehicle recovered multiple firearms, hollow-point rounds, a ballistic helmet, night-vision goggles, and handheld radios.[^4][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Felix Bauckholt: The quant trader on an H1B visa killed by border police," *eFinancialCareers,* 2025. https://www.efinancialcareers.com/news/felix-bauckholt
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "How did a German math genius get drawn into a 'cult' accused in coast-to-coast killings?" *NBC News,* 2025. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/german-math-genius-get-drawn-cult-accused-coast-coast-killings-rcna189309
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Suspect shot and killed in Vermont Border Patrol encounter was German national math/computer whiz," *Vermont Daily Chronicle,* January 23, 2025. https://vermontdailychronicle.com/suspect-shot-and-killed-in-vermont-border-patrol-encounter-was-german-national-math-computer-whiz-source/
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "A timeline of activities of a cultlike group tied to the killing of a Border Patrol agent," Associated Press via PBS NewsHour, 2025; on the Chapel Hill duplex, the marriage license, and the timeline of the East Coast cluster. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/a-timeline-of-cultlike-zizian-group-tied-to-killing-of-a-border-patrol-agent-in-vermont
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Woman charged in killing of Border Patrol agent was in contact with Pennsylvania homicide suspect: prosecutors," CBS News Philadelphia, 2025, on the firearms purchased by Michelle Zajko. https://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/teresa-youngblut-david-maland-pennsylvania-suspect/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Court Docs Provide New Details on Border Patrol Shooting," *Seven Days,* January 2025, on the Lyndonville surveillance, the Glock 23, and the gear recovered. https://www.sevendaysvt.com/news/court-docs-provide-new-details-on-border-patrol-shooting-42735984/
|
||||||
57
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Francis Galton.md
Normal file
57
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Francis Galton.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,57 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Scientists & Researchers"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- Eugenics
|
||||||
|
- Statistics
|
||||||
|
- Biometrics
|
||||||
|
- HumanBiodiversity
|
||||||
|
- Hereditarianism
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Francis Galton
|
||||||
|
- Sir Francis Galton
|
||||||
|
summary: "Francis Galton was the Victorian polymath and half-cousin of Charles Darwin who coined the words eugenics and nature versus nurture, founded biometrics and the statistical concepts of correlation and regression to the mean, pioneered fingerprint identification and composite photography, and endowed the chair of eugenics at University College London."
|
||||||
|
born: 1822-02-16
|
||||||
|
died: 1911-01-17
|
||||||
|
location: "Birmingham, England; London, England"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Francis Galton (February 16, 1822 to January 17, 1911) was an English polymath who founded the [[Eugenics|eugenics]] movement, coining the word "eugenics" in 1883, and who in the course of arguing that human ability is inherited created much of modern statistics, including the concepts of correlation and regression. He was the half-cousin of Charles Darwin, sharing the grandfather Erasmus Darwin, and read Darwin's *On the Origin of Species* (1859) as a license to extend natural selection to the deliberate breeding of human beings. He pioneered fingerprint identification, composite photography, and anthropometric testing, founded the field of biometrics, introduced the phrase "nature versus nurture," and on his death left his estate to the University of London to endow a professorship of eugenics. He was knighted in 1909.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Hereditary Genius and the Hereditarian Program
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Galton's central conviction, that mental and moral capacity is fixed by heredity rather than shaped by circumstance, was set out in *Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into Its Laws and Consequences* (1869). The book tabulated the relatives of judges, statesmen, scientists, poets, and other eminent men, found that distinction clustered in families, and concluded that "genius," meaning exceptionally high and inborn ability, ran in bloodlines the way physical traits did. Galton dismissed the rival explanation, that eminent families pass on advantages of wealth, education, and connection, and treated the statistical clustering of achievement as direct evidence of inherited mental power. He drew the policy inference openly, proposing that the human stock could be improved by encouraging the able to marry early and reproduce.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In *English Men of Science: Their Nature and Nurture* (1874) Galton introduced the antithesis "nature versus nurture" as a compact label for the question of whether inborn endowment or upbringing accounts for human differences, and he leaned consistently toward nature. He developed the twin study as a method for separating the two influences, comparing pairs raised together and apart, and read the results as confirmation of heredity's dominance. The same hereditarian premise, that differences in ability are innate, was shared by the twentieth-century [[Human Biodiversity|race-and-intelligence]] researchers funded by the [[Pioneer Fund]].[^2][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Coining Eugenics
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Galton coined "eugenics" in *Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development* (1883), building the word from the Greek roots meaning "good in birth" or "well born." He defined it as the science of improving human hereditary qualities through selective reproduction, encouraging the propagation of the "fit" (positive eugenics) and discouraging that of the "unfit" (negative eugenics). The 1883 volume gathered some forty essays on the measurement of human faculties, including mental imagery, association, and sensory acuity, and presented the new science as the practical application of his hereditarian findings.[^1][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Galton promoted eugenics as a secular faith for the educated classes, writing that it should be introduced into the national conscience "like a new religion." He funded a research office at University College London that in 1904 became the Eugenics Record Office and in 1907 was renamed the Francis Galton Laboratory of National Eugenics, and he served as honorary president of the Eugenics Education Society founded in 1907. His program supplied the template for the eugenics movements that spread through Britain, the United States, Germany, and Scandinavia in the first decades of the twentieth century, including compulsory sterilization laws and, later, the racial policies of the Third Reich.[^5][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Statistics, Biometrics, and Identification
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The attempt to prove heredity statistically led Galton to invent tools that outlasted the cause they served. Studying the relationship between the heights of parents and their adult children, he found that the offspring of unusually tall or short parents tended to fall closer to the population average, a phenomenon he first called "reversion" and then "regression toward mediocrity," now known as regression to the mean. From the same data he developed the concept of correlation, a numerical measure of the degree to which two variables move together, which his protégé [[Karl Pearson]] formalized as the correlation coefficient. Galton set out this work in *Natural Inheritance* (1889), the founding text of biometrics, the statistical study of biological variation.[^2][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Galton opened an Anthropometric Laboratory at the International Health Exhibition in London in 1884, where for a small fee visitors had their height, weight, reaction time, grip strength, and sensory acuity measured and recorded, building a database of human variation. He placed fingerprint identification on a scientific footing in *Finger Prints* (1892), establishing that the ridge patterns are unique to each person and persist unchanged through life, devising a classification system, and amassing a collection that ran into the thousands of sets. He also invented composite photography, superimposing multiple portraits on a single plate to produce an averaged "type," a technique he applied in an effort to capture the supposed common features of criminals, the ill, and ethnic and family groups.[^4][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Galton Bequest and University College London
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Galton died in 1911 and left the residue of his estate to the University of London to fund a professorship of eugenics, expressing the wish that Pearson hold the first chair. The wish was honored, and Pearson became the inaugural Galton Professor, directing the combined Galton Laboratory and Biometric Laboratory at University College London. The Galton Chair and the laboratory carried his name for more than a century, and the eugenic research conducted under them shaped British social policy and the international eugenics movement through the interwar period.[^6][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
University College London renamed the Galton Lecture Theatre and the Pearson Building and removed Galton's name from its buildings and a professorship in 2020, following an internal inquiry into the institution's history of eugenics, while the Galton Institute, the successor to the Eugenics Education Society, renamed itself the Adelphi Genetics Forum the same year. The bequest had by then funded generations of work in human genetics and statistics at the college, the discipline of biometrics having grown directly out of the apparatus Galton built to demonstrate that ability is bred rather than made.[^6][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Francis Galton," *Encyclopædia Britannica,* on his life, the coinage of "eugenics" in 1883, his statistical work, and his knighthood. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Francis-Galton
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Gillham, Nicholas Wright. "Cousins: Charles Darwin, Sir Francis Galton and the birth of eugenics," *Significance,* Royal Statistical Society, 2009, on Galton as Darwin's half-cousin through Erasmus Darwin, his hereditarianism, and his statistics. https://rss.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1740-9713.2009.00379.x
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Galton, Francis. *Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into Its Laws and Consequences.* Macmillan, 1869.
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Galton, Francis. *English Men of Science: Their Nature and Nurture.* Macmillan, 1874, on "nature versus nurture" and the twin-study method; with the Anthropometric Laboratory and composite photography per galton.org.
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Galton, Francis. *Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development.* Macmillan, 1883, on the coinage and definition of "eugenics."
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "History of Eugenics Inside UCL," University College London, on the Eugenics Record Office, the Francis Galton Laboratory of National Eugenics, the Galton bequest and chair, and the 2020 renamings. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/prejudice-in-power/digital-showcase/history-eugenics-inside-ucl
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Galton, Francis. *Natural Inheritance.* Macmillan, 1889, on regression toward the mean and correlation.
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Galton, Francis. *Finger Prints.* Macmillan, 1892, on the uniqueness and permanence of fingerprint patterns and his classification system.
|
||||||
|
[^9]: "Galton Chair of Eugenics at University College, London," *Nature,* on the bequest and Karl Pearson as first Galton Professor; with University College London's 2020 review of its eugenics history. https://www.nature.com/articles/155197c0
|
||||||
72
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Gregory Bateson.md
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72
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Gregory Bateson.md
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|
|
@ -0,0 +1,72 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Scientists & Researchers"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- GregoryBateson
|
||||||
|
- Anthropology
|
||||||
|
- Cybernetics
|
||||||
|
- SystemsTheory
|
||||||
|
- DoubleBind
|
||||||
|
- HumanPotentialMovement
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Gregory Bateson
|
||||||
|
summary: "Gregory Bateson was the English anthropologist and systems thinker who studied Balinese and Iatmul culture, helped found cybernetics at the Macy Conferences, formulated the double-bind theory of schizophrenia, and spent his last years at the Esalen Institute."
|
||||||
|
born: 1904-05-09
|
||||||
|
died: 1980-07-04
|
||||||
|
location: "Grantchester, England; Big Sur and San Francisco, California"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Gregory Bateson (May 9, 1904 to July 4, 1980) was an English anthropologist, social scientist, and systems theorist whose work crossed anthropology, psychiatry, biology, and communication theory. The youngest son of the Cambridge geneticist William Bateson, who had coined the word "genetics," he was born in Grantchester, near Cambridge, and educated at Charterhouse and St John's College, Cambridge, taking a degree in biology in 1925 before turning to anthropology. He conducted fieldwork in New Guinea and Bali, was married to the anthropologist [[Margaret Mead]], was one of the core participants in the [[Macy Conferences]] that founded [[Cybernetics|cybernetics]], formulated the double-bind theory of schizophrenia, spent his last years at the [[Esalen Institute]], and collected his essays in *Steps to an Ecology of Mind* (1972) and *Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity* (1979). He died at the San Francisco Zen Center on July 4, 1980.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Naven and the Iatmul
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Between 1929 and 1933 Bateson carried out fieldwork in the Sepik River region of the Territory of New Guinea among the Iatmul people, focusing on the naven, an elaborate ceremony in which relatives enacted ritualized role reversals and transvestism to mark a young person's first accomplishments. He published his analysis as *Naven: A Survey of the Problems Suggested by a Composite Picture of the Culture of a New Guinea Tribe Drawn from Three Points of View* in 1936. The book was an unconventional and reflexive study that examined the same body of ritual through ethos, eidos, and social structure and questioned the act of ethnographic description itself.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In *Naven* Bateson introduced the concept of schismogenesis, the process by which interaction between individuals or groups becomes progressively differentiated through cumulative feedback, which he divided into symmetrical schismogenesis, where each side escalates the same behavior such as boasting or rivalry, and complementary schismogenesis, where the behaviors are opposed and mutually reinforcing such as dominance and submission. The idea of self-reinforcing cycles of interaction anticipated the feedback concepts he would later take up in cybernetics and apply to family systems.[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Bali and Margaret Mead
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Bateson married Margaret Mead in 1936, and from 1936 to 1939 the two conducted joint fieldwork in Bali, pioneering the systematic use of still photography and film as primary ethnographic data rather than illustration. They took some twenty-five thousand photographs and produced *Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis* (1942), in which images were arranged in sequenced plates to convey patterns of child-rearing, posture, trance, and emotional life that prose alone could not capture. The collaboration also yielded a series of ethnographic films including *Trance and Dance in Bali*.[^1][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Bateson and Mead had one daughter, the anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson, born in 1939. The couple separated in the 1940s and divorced in 1950, but their intellectual partnership shaped both careers, and Mead drew Bateson into the wartime and postwar American scientific circles, including the group around the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, in which the new science of feedback and communication was being assembled.[^2][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Macy Conferences and Cybernetics
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Bateson was one of the core members of the Macy Conferences on cybernetics, the series of interdisciplinary meetings held in New York from 1946 to 1953 under the chairmanship of [[Warren McCulloch]] that brought together [[Norbert Wiener]], [[John von Neumann]], [[Claude Shannon]], Mead, Heinz von Foerster, and others to build a general theory of control and communication in animals and machines. Bateson and Mead were the conferences' principal anthropologists, and Bateson became one of the most active in pressing the group to apply concepts of feedback, information, and circular causality to human relationships, learning, and culture.[^6][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The cybernetic framework reoriented Bateson's thinking for the rest of his career. He came to treat mind not as a thing located inside a skull but as a pattern of relationships and information distributed across a system of differences, an idea he summarized in the formulation that information is "a difference which makes a difference." Feedback, recursion, and the logical typing of messages drawn from the Macy discussions became the conceptual tools he carried into his study of communication, psychiatry, and evolution.[^6][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Double-Bind Theory
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
After the Second World War Bateson moved to California and drifted out of mainstream anthropology into the study of communication and psychiatry. Working at the Veterans Administration hospital in Palo Alto, he led a research project with Jay Haley, John Weakland, and the psychiatrist Don D. Jackson that produced the paper "Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia," published in *Behavioral Science* in 1956. The paper advanced the double-bind theory, which held that schizophrenic symptoms could arise within patterns of family communication in which a person repeatedly receives contradictory messages on different logical levels and is unable to comment on the contradiction or to escape the relationship.[^8][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In the classic double bind a primary injunction conflicts with a secondary injunction at a higher level of abstraction, often verbal warmth contradicted by nonverbal hostility, while a third, tertiary injunction prevents the victim from leaving the field or naming the trap. Bateson framed the theory in terms of [[Bertrand Russell]]'s theory of logical types, treating the pathology as a disorder of the capacity to discriminate the levels of a message rather than as a purely biochemical disease. The double-bind work made Bateson a major figure in the development of family therapy and the systemic schools of psychotherapy that grew out of the Palo Alto group.[^8][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Steps to an Ecology of Mind and Mind and Nature
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
*Steps to an Ecology of Mind*, published in 1972, collected three decades of Bateson's essays and lectures across anthropology, psychiatry, evolution, epistemology, and what he called the ecology of mind, and it brought his thinking to the wide countercultural audience that had begun reading him in the late 1960s. The volume gathered the schismogenesis work, the double-bind papers, his writing on play, learning, and communication among animals, and his arguments about the cybernetic structure of mind, presenting them as steps toward a unified science of pattern and relationship.[^7][^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In *Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity* (1979) Bateson attempted a synthesis of the ideas, arguing that the same formal patterns of organization, what he called the pattern which connects, run through biological evolution and through mental process, and that mind and living nature obey a common logic of difference, coding, and recursive structure. He had been diagnosed with cancer in 1978 and worked on the book and its unfinished sequel, *Angels Fear: Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred*, completed after his death by Mary Catherine Bateson, during his final years.[^7][^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Esalen Years
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Bateson became a scholar-in-residence at the Esalen Institute at Big Sur from 1978 until his death in 1980, lecturing, leading seminars, and living on the property while he worked on *Mind and Nature*. He had been a presence in the institute's intellectual life for years, and his cybernetic conception of mind and his ecological epistemology became part of the framework of the Human Potential movement that had grown up around [[Michael Murphy]] and Dick Price. His writings were also taken up by [[Stewart Brand]], who excerpted Bateson in the [[Whole Earth Catalog]] and the *CoEvolution Quarterly* and helped carry the ecology-of-mind idea into the San Francisco Bay Area technology culture.[^11][^12]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Bateson held an appointment as a Regents lecturer and later a member of the Board of Regents of the University of California, to which Governor Jerry Brown appointed him in 1976. He died on July 4, 1980, at the guest house of the San Francisco Zen Center at the age of seventy-six.[^1][^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Gregory Bateson," New World Encyclopedia, on his birth on May 9, 1904 in Grantchester, his father William Bateson the geneticist, education at Charterhouse and St John's College Cambridge, the New Guinea fieldwork and *Naven*, the Bali fieldwork with Margaret Mead and *Balinese Character*, schismogenesis, the Macy Conferences, the 1956 double-bind paper, *Steps to an Ecology of Mind* and *Mind and Nature*, and his death on July 4, 1980. https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Gregory_Bateson
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Lipset, David. *Gregory Bateson: The Legacy of a Scientist.* Prentice-Hall, 1980, on his life, his marriage to and divorce from Margaret Mead, and his role in the Macy Conferences.
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Bateson, Gregory. *Naven: A Survey of the Problems Suggested by a Composite Picture of the Culture of a New Guinea Tribe Drawn from Three Points of View.* Cambridge University Press, 1936, on the Iatmul naven ceremony and schismogenesis.
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Gregory Bateson," AnthroBase Dictionary of Anthropology, on symmetrical and complementary schismogenesis. http://www.anthrobase.com/Dic/eng/pers/bateson_gregory.htm
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Bateson, Gregory, and Margaret Mead. *Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis.* New York Academy of Sciences, 1942, on the 1936 to 1939 Bali fieldwork, the photographic method, and *Trance and Dance in Bali*.
|
||||||
|
[^6]: Heims, Steve J. *The Cybernetics Group.* MIT Press, 1991, on Bateson and Mead as the anthropologists of the Macy Conferences, 1946 to 1953, and Bateson's application of feedback and information to human relationships.
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Bateson, Gregory. *Steps to an Ecology of Mind.* Chandler, 1972, on the ecology of mind, "a difference which makes a difference," and the collected essays; and *Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity.* Dutton, 1979, on the pattern which connects.
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Bateson, Gregory, Don D. Jackson, Jay Haley, and John Weakland. "Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia." *Behavioral Science,* vol. 1, 1956, pp. 251 to 264, on the double-bind theory. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/bs.3830010402
|
||||||
|
[^9]: "Bateson Project," on the Palo Alto research group at the Veterans Administration hospital, Jay Haley, John Weakland, and Don Jackson, and the logical-types framing of the double bind.
|
||||||
|
[^10]: "Gregory Bateson," Encyclopaedia Britannica, on the collection of his 1950s and 1960s articles in *Steps to an Ecology of Mind* and his influence on the California counterculture. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gregory-Bateson
|
||||||
|
[^11]: "Gregory Bateson and Esalen," Enacting Ecological Aesthetics, on the 1978 cancer diagnosis, the scholar-in-residence period at Esalen from 1978 to 1980, the work on *Mind and Nature* and *Angels Fear*, and his death at the San Francisco Zen Center. https://www.enactingecologicalaesthetics.com/gregory-bateson-and-esalen/
|
||||||
|
[^12]: Turner, Fred. *From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism.* University of Chicago Press, 2006, on Brand's publication of Bateson in the *Whole Earth Catalog* and *CoEvolution Quarterly*.
|
||||||
65
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Hal Finney.md
Normal file
65
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Hal Finney.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,65 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Technologists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- HalFinney
|
||||||
|
- Cryptography
|
||||||
|
- Cypherpunks
|
||||||
|
- Bitcoin
|
||||||
|
- Cryonics
|
||||||
|
- Extropianism
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Harold Thomas Finney II
|
||||||
|
- Hal Finney
|
||||||
|
summary: "Hal Finney was a cryptographer who developed Pretty Good Privacy and reusable proof-of-work, received the first Bitcoin transaction from Satoshi Nakamoto, and was cryopreserved by Alcor after his death from ALS."
|
||||||
|
born: 1956-05-04
|
||||||
|
died: 2014-08-28
|
||||||
|
location: "Santa Barbara, California"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Harold Thomas Finney II (1956 to 2014), known as Hal Finney, was an American cryptographer and software developer who worked on [[Pretty Good Privacy]], created the first reusable proof-of-work system, and received the first [[Bitcoin]] transaction sent by [[Satoshi Nakamoto]]. He was a participant in the [[Cypherpunks]] movement and the [[Extropianism|extropian]] community, and on his death from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis he was cryopreserved by the [[Alcor Life Extension Foundation]].[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Cryptography and PGP
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Finney graduated from the California Institute of Technology in 1979 and joined APh Technological Consulting, the firm Mattel contracted to develop the Intellivision, where he programmed the console game Space Battle and its Atari 2600 port Space Attack, as well as Astroblast, the 2600 port of Astrosmash. He began volunteering on [[Phil Zimmermann]]'s Pretty Good Privacy in 1991, became a central contributor to PGP 2.0, and when the federal investigation into Zimmermann closed in 1996 Zimmermann hired him as an employee.[^1][^2][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Finney ran one of the early anonymous remailers, servers that stripped routing information so that a message could not be traced to its sender, and he was a frequent contributor to the cypherpunks list, where he introduced the idea of digital cash to the overlapping extropian community. He continued working on PGP under Zimmermann until ALS forced his retirement in 2011, by which point PGP had become the standard tool for encrypting email and the federal effort to suppress it had collapsed.[^3][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Reusable Proof-of-Work
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Finney announced RPOW on August 15, 2004, a reusable proof-of-work system that took an [[Adam Back]] Hashcash token as input and returned an RSA-signed token that could be handed from person to person and exchanged for a fresh token at each step, so that the same proof of work could circulate while each underlying token was spent only once. He described the result as "as rare and 'valuable' as the hashcash that was used to create them," with no way to inflate the supply.[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
RPOW ran on an IBM 4758 PCI cryptographic coprocessor, a tamper-responding device validated to FIPS 140 Level 4 whose onboard key never left the card and was cleared on any change to the running software. The card issued cryptographically signed attestations of its own software configuration, so users worldwide could verify in real time that the server held no back door and would mint a token only against a token of equal value. RPOW was a direct technical precursor to the proof-of-work scheme that Satoshi Nakamoto later used in Bitcoin, which replaced the trusted hardware with a decentralized blockchain.[^9][^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Bitcoin
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Finney was among the first people to engage with Bitcoin after Nakamoto released the software. He posted "Running bitcoin" in January 2009, and on 12 January 2009 he received the first Bitcoin transaction sent by Nakamoto, ten coins recorded in block 170, after which he exchanged emails with Nakamoto reporting bugs. In his 2013 forum essay "Bitcoin and me," written after he was largely paralyzed by ALS, Finney recounted his cryptographic career, his early mining of Bitcoin, and that he had moved his coins into an offline wallet so they might be "worth something to my heirs."[^1][^5][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The speculation that Finney was Satoshi intensified in March 2014 when Leah McGrath Goodman's Newsweek cover story named Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto of Temple City, California, the same town where Finney had lived for about a decade. Andy Greenberg investigated Finney directly for Forbes, commissioning stylometric analysis from Juola and Associates that found his writing the closest match yet to Satoshi's, but the case collapsed against an alibi: at the times Satoshi was sending timestamped emails and confirming a block in April 2009, Finney, an avid runner, was competing in and photographed at a ten-mile road race in Santa Barbara. Greenberg concluded Finney was not Nakamoto, and Finney denied it.[^15][^16]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Cryonics and Death
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Finney was a member of the extropian and cryonics communities and had been an Alcor client for twenty years by the time he disclosed his ALS in the October 2009 LessWrong essay "Dying Outside." He was diagnosed in August 2009 and continued programming with a commercial eyetracker and speech synthesizer as the disease left him almost fully paralyzed, writing in 2013 that he could still code, "probably 50 times slower than I was before," and that he "still love[d] programming."[^11][^12]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Finney died on 28 August 2014 at age fifty-eight in [[Scottsdale]], [[Arizona]], and was cryopreserved by the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, later run by [[Max More]], as its 128th patient on the day of his death. Alcor's case summary records that he chose whole-body preservation, funded by life insurance and bitcoin donated by admirers. In December 2014 an extortionist who had demanded 1,000 bitcoin from the family, worth roughly 400,000 dollars, retaliated for non-payment by placing a false emergency call that sent an armed police team to the Finney home, an attack known as swatting.[^13][^14]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Remembering Hal Finney: A Decade Since His Passing," *Nasdaq,* on his PGP work, the first Bitcoin transaction, RPOW, and his ALS. https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/remembering-hal-finney-decade-his-passing-his-legacy-bitcoin-lives
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "How cryonics and cryptography are related: from Hal Finney to CryoGen," *KrioRus,* on Finney's extropian and cryonics involvement and his Alcor preservation.
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "The Extropian Roots of Bitcoin," *CCN,* on Finney introducing digital cash to the extropians and building RPOW. https://www.ccn.com/extropian-roots-bitcoin/
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Finney, Hal. "RPOW: Reusable Proofs of Work," 2004, on the reusable proof-of-work design.
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Finney, Hal. "Bitcoin and me," Bitcointalk, 19 March 2013. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155054.0
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Hal Finney on Bitcoin: In His Own Words," *CoinDesk,* 29 August 2014, on the first transaction and the Satoshi speculation. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2014/08/29/hal-finney-on-bitcoin-in-his-own-words
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Meet the Cryonics Company Preserving Bitcoin Legend Hal Finney's Body," *Decrypt,* on his Alcor cryopreservation. https://decrypt.co/243997/cryonics-alcor-hal-finney-bitcoin
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "Hal Finney, cryptographer and bitcoin pioneer, dies," *The Boston Globe,* August 31, 2014, on his Caltech degree, APh and Mattel games, and his 1991 PGP work and hiring by Zimmermann. https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/obituaries/2014/08/31/hal-finney-cryptographer-and-bitcoin-pioneer-dies/7aFf8qJ1ixkF98m7QU76RP/story.html
|
||||||
|
[^9]: Finney, Hal. "RPOW - Reusable Proofs of Work," cryptography mailing list, August 15, 2004. https://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2004-August/007362.html
|
||||||
|
[^10]: Finney, Hal. "RPOW - IBM 4758 Security Model," on the FIPS 140 Level 4 coprocessor, the device key, and the real-time attestation of the running software. https://nakamotoinstitute.org/finney/rpow/secmodel.html
|
||||||
|
[^11]: Finney, Hal. "Dying Outside," LessWrong, October 5, 2009, on the ALS diagnosis and his Alcor membership. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bshZiaLefDejvPKuS/dying-outside
|
||||||
|
[^12]: Finney, Hal. "Bitcoin and me," Bitcointalk, March 19, 2013, on the eyetracker, his slowed coding, and moving coins to an offline wallet. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155054.0
|
||||||
|
[^13]: "Case Summary A-1436," Alcor Life Extension Foundation, on the August 28, 2014 death in Scottsdale, the whole-body option, and his status as Alcor's 128th patient. https://www.cryonicsarchive.org/library/complete-list-of-alcor-cryopreservations/case-summary-a-1436/
|
||||||
|
[^14]: "Bitcoin Extortionist Targeted Hal Finney and Others," *NewsBTC,* December 30, 2014, on the 1,000-bitcoin demand and the swatting of the Finney home. https://newsbtc.com/2014/12/30/bitcoin-extortionist-targeted-hal-finney-others
|
||||||
|
[^15]: Goodman, Leah McGrath. "The Face Behind Bitcoin," *Newsweek,* March 6, 2014, naming Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto of Temple City. https://www.newsweek.com/2014/03/14/face-behind-bitcoin-247957.html
|
||||||
|
[^16]: Greenberg, Andy. "Nakamoto's Neighbor: My Hunt For Bitcoin's Creator Led To A Paralyzed Crypto Genius," *Forbes,* March 25, 2014, on the Juola stylometric analysis and the road-race alibi clearing Finney. https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2014/03/25/satoshi-nakamotos-neighbor-the-bitcoin-ghostwriter-who-wasnt/
|
||||||
48
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Jack Clark.md
Normal file
48
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Jack Clark.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Technologists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- Anthropic
|
||||||
|
- ArtificialIntelligence
|
||||||
|
- AIPolicy
|
||||||
|
- AISafety
|
||||||
|
- OpenAI
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Jack Clark
|
||||||
|
summary: "Jack Clark is the cofounder and head of policy at Anthropic, a former technology journalist who ran policy and communications at OpenAI, co-chairs Stanford's AI Index, and writes the Import AI newsletter."
|
||||||
|
born: 1987
|
||||||
|
location: "San Francisco, California"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Jack Clark (born around 1987) is a British technology journalist turned AI executive who cofounded [[Anthropic]] and serves as its head of policy. Before Anthropic he was policy director at [[OpenAI]], and before that a reporter covering computing and artificial intelligence for outlets including *The Register* and Bloomberg. He co-chairs Stanford's AI Index, writes the widely read Import AI newsletter, and has become one of the most visible industry voices in AI governance.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Journalism
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Clark was born in Brighton, England, grew up around London during the early personal-computing era, and studied liberal arts, taking a bachelor's degree centered on English literature and creative writing rather than a technical field, a background he has cited in arguing that the AI era rewards people who can ask the right questions over those who can only code. He entered technology journalism covering enterprise infrastructure, distributed systems, supercomputers, and machine learning. He worked for the British technology publication *The Register*, writing in detail about data centers and emerging neural-network research, before joining Bloomberg as a technology reporter around 2015, where he built a beat on artificial intelligence and was for a period the outlet's dedicated AI reporter.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
His reporting put him in contact with the research community at the moment deep learning was breaking into the mainstream, and he covered the field as a journalist before deciding to work inside it. He has continued writing in a journalistic mode throughout his industry career through Import AI, a weekly newsletter he began in 2016 that summarizes and analyzes new AI research and is read by tens of thousands of subscribers across the field and in government.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### OpenAI
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 2016 Clark left Bloomberg to join OpenAI, where he ran strategy and communications and rose to become the organization's policy director. In that role he managed the company's public messaging and its engagement with governments, and he was involved in some of OpenAI's early decisions about how to release powerful models, including the staged 2019 rollout of GPT-2 that withheld the full model on stated misuse concerns, an episode that became an early test case in debates over AI release norms.[^1][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Clark was also a founding member of Stanford's AI Index in 2017, the annual data-driven report on the state of artificial intelligence produced under the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, and he has continued as a co-chair of the project. He served on the OECD's expert work on classifying AI systems and, from 2021 to 2024, as an inaugural member of the United States National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee, which advises the president on AI policy.[^2][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Anthropic and AI Governance
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
When [[Dario Amodei]] and a group of senior OpenAI staff resigned over the company's direction in late 2020, Clark left with them and cofounded Anthropic in early 2021, taking responsibility for the company's policy and government-relations work. As head of policy he is Anthropic's chief interlocutor with legislators and regulators, advocating for AI safety testing, transparency requirements, and export controls, and he co-authored Anthropic's submissions to government AI consultations. In March 2026 the company launched the Anthropic Institute, a research arm studying AI's effects on society, which Clark leads.[^1][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Clark has used Import AI and public appearances to argue that AI capabilities are advancing faster than institutions can absorb, at one point estimating a high probability that AI systems would begin meaningfully contributing to the design of their own successors before the end of the decade, and he has warned against both unconstrained acceleration and a regulatory vacuum. The company he cofounded raised capital at a pace that made its early staff wealthy: after the 2022 [[Sam Bankman-Fried]] investment of roughly 500 million dollars through [[Alameda Research]], Anthropic drew about 8 billion dollars from Amazon and roughly 3 billion from Google, closed a 13-billion-dollar Series F in September 2025 at a 183-billion-dollar valuation, raised further rounds carrying the valuation toward a trillion dollars, and in mid-2026 filed confidentially for an initial public offering after raising well over 100 billion dollars in total; Bloomberg's billionaires index began tracking Clark as a billionaire on the strength of his founder's stake.[^6][^7][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Jack Clark," *Crunchbase* and contemporaneous profiles, on his cofounding of Anthropic, his head-of-policy role, and his prior OpenAI policy directorship. https://www.crunchbase.com/person/jack-clark
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "About," Import AI / jack-clark.net, Clark's own biography, on the journalism career across *The Register* and Bloomberg BusinessWeek, the OpenAI policy directorship, the Import AI newsletter, the AI Index founding membership (2017–2024), and the National AI Advisory Committee (2021–2024). https://jack-clark.net/about/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "The billionaire Anthropic cofounder who majored in literature says knowing how to ask the right questions beats knowing how to code," *Fortune,* April 14, 2026, on the Brighton birth, the literature and creative-writing degree, and the journalism background. https://fortune.com/2026/04/14/billionaire-anthropic-cofounder-jack-clark-coding-programming-education-gen-z-unemployment/
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Better Language Models and Their Implications," OpenAI, February 2019, on the staged GPT-2 release decision made during Clark's tenure as policy and communications lead. https://openai.com/index/better-language-models/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Jack Clark," Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, on his co-chairing of the AI Index; "Jack Clark," OECD.AI expert community, on his OECD AI-classification work. https://oecd.ai/en/community/jack-clark
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "5 Questions for Jack Clark," *Politico,* March 7, 2025, and reporting on the March 2026 launch of the Anthropic Institute that Clark leads. https://www.politico.com/newsletters/digital-future-daily/2025/03/07/5-questions-for-jack-clark-00218274
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Anthropic raises $13 billion at $183 billion valuation," *CNBC,* September 2, 2025, on the Series F; "Amazon doubles down on Anthropic with another $4 billion," *Reuters,* November 22, 2024, on the roughly 8-billion-dollar Amazon total; and reporting on Google's roughly 3-billion-dollar investment and Anthropic's June 2026 confidential IPO filing after raising more than 100 billion dollars to date. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/02/anthropic-funding-round-183-billion-valuation.html
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "Bloomberg Billionaires Index: Jack Clark," on the tracking of Clark's net worth based on his Anthropic founder's stake. https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/jack-clark/
|
||||||
47
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Jean-Luc Brunel.md
Normal file
47
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Jean-Luc Brunel.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Crime & Abuse Networks"
|
||||||
|
tags: [Person, JeanLucBrunel, JeffreyEpstein, MC2ModelManagement, KarinModels, Modeling, SexTrafficking, France]
|
||||||
|
alias: ["Jean-Luc Brunel"]
|
||||||
|
summary: "French modeling agent and associate of Jeffrey Epstein, co-founder of MC2 Model Management with reported Epstein funding, who was arrested in France in 2020 on charges including rape of minors and died in a Paris prison in 2022."
|
||||||
|
born: 1946-09-18
|
||||||
|
died: 2022-02-19
|
||||||
|
location: Paris, France
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Jean-Luc Brunel was a French modeling agent who ran [[Karin Models]] in Paris and later co-founded [[MC2 Model Management]] in New York with reported funding from [[Jeffrey Epstein]]. He was the subject of decades of abuse allegations within the modeling industry, was arrested in France in December 2020 on charges including the rape of minors and human trafficking, and was found hanged in his cell at [[La Santé Prison]] in Paris in February 2022.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Modeling Career
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Brunel was born on September 18, 1946 in Neuilly-sur-Seine and worked in restaurant public relations before entering modeling as a scout in the 1970s, acquiring the Paris agency Karin Models from its founder Karin Mossberg and running it by 1978.[^1] He claimed to have launched the careers of models including Monica Bellucci, Sharon Stone and Christy Turlington, and his contemporaries in the Paris and New York agency business included [[John Casablancas]], founder of [[Elite Model Management]], and the agent [[Paolo Zampolli]].[^5] Brunel later restructured Karin Models' U.S. division into a new agency.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
A 1988 [[60 Minutes]] investigation titled "American Girls in Paris," reported by Diane Sawyer, interviewed nearly two dozen American models who said Brunel and his fellow Paris agent [[Claude Haddad]] had drugged and raped them.[^2] Around the same time the CBS correspondent Craig Pyes spoke with additional models who made similar claims.[^5] The journalist [[Michael Gross]] documented allegations against Brunel in his 1995 book *Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women,* quoting industry figures who described him as a predator and said he belonged "behind bars."[^5] Brunel consistently denied wrongdoing, saying he "strongly den[ied] having committed any illicit act or any wrongdoing" in his work as a scout and agency manager.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### MC2 Model Management
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Around 2004 to 2005 Brunel founded MC2 Model Management, with operations in New York and Miami, building it out of the restructured U.S. division of Karin Models.[^5] Financial records cited in litigation showed Jeffrey Epstein wired about one million dollars to Brunel in connection with the launch, and Epstein provided MC2 a line of credit; some accounts put his total backing closer to two million dollars.[^5] Maritza Vasquez, MC2's former bookkeeper, testified in a 2010 deposition that Epstein had invested roughly one million dollars in the agency.[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
U.S. prosecutors and investigators reported that they believed MC2 functioned as a cover to recruit and supply women and girls for Jeffrey Epstein.[^4] Flight logs placed Brunel on Epstein's aircraft, including a February 2005 flight with the model [[Nadia Marcinkova]], and visitor records reportedly showed Brunel visiting Epstein dozens of times during his 2008 to 2010 Florida incarceration.[^5] Brunel denied these allegations.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Allegations Connected to Jeffrey Epstein
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Multiple women accused Brunel of drugging and sexually assaulting them in Paris during the 1980s and 1990s.[^1] [[Virginia Giuffre]], who accused Jeffrey Epstein of trafficking her, alleged that Brunel sexually abused her and supplied young women and girls to Epstein, stating in sworn accounts that Epstein had directed her to provide sexual services to Brunel.[^3] In a 2015 court filing she said she had "sexual intercourse with Jean-Luc Brunel many times" between the ages of 16 and 19.[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Giuffre alleged in her filings that Brunel had "many contacts" with young girls and could "get dozens" of them, and she claimed he had an arrangement to obtain passports that allowed him to bring girls "ranging in age from 12 to 24" into the United States.[^5] In one filing she said Epstein had boasted of sleeping with more than 1,000 of Brunel's girls.[^1] U.S. prosecutors and investigators reported that they believed Brunel was used to recruit and supply women and girls for Jeffrey Epstein, and Brunel denied the allegations.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Arrest and Death
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Brunel was detained on December 16, 2020 at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris as he prepared to board a flight to Senegal, part of an investigation French authorities had opened in 2019 after Epstein's death.[^4] He was charged with the rape of minors over 15 and sexual harassment, and was placed under formal investigation in a case encompassing rape and sexual assault of minors under and over 15, sexual harassment, criminal association and human trafficking of minors for the purposes of sexual exploitation.[^6] He was held in pre-trial detention and maintained his innocence.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On February 19, 2022 Brunel was found hanged with bedsheets in his cell at La Santé Prison in Paris at around 1:30 a.m.; he was 75.[^3] French authorities treated the death as a suicide, and a medical examiner reported death by hanging.[^6] He died in custody before facing trial, leaving the allegations unadjudicated.[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The French investigation into the wider network of allegations against Brunel and others connected to Epstein remained open after his death, with French prosecutors continuing to examine the trafficking and abuse claims.[^4] His death, the second of a central Epstein figure to occur in custody and be ruled a suicide after Epstein's own 2019 death, drew renewed scrutiny from lawyers for the alleged victims.[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Jean-Luc Brunel," summarizing reporting on his career, MC2 Model Management, the Epstein funding, the 1995 Michael Gross book *Model,* and his denials. https://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-scoops/former-model-agent-close-to-jeffrey-epstein-found-hanged-1235085929/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "American Girls in Paris," *60 Minutes,* CBS, reported by Diane Sawyer, December 1988. https://www.kqed.org/arts/13887034/fashion-is-about-to-have-its-metoo-moment-and-its-long-overdue
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Jean-Luc Brunel, Jeffrey Epstein associate accused of rape, supplying girls, found hanged in prison," *Washington Post,* 2022. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/02/19/jean-luc-brunel-hanged-epstein/
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel arrested in Paris in Epstein probe," *NBC News,* 2020. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/modeling-agent-jean-luc-brunel-arrested-paris-epstein-probe-n1251589
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Jean-Luc Brunel: The French Modeling Honcho at the Center of Jeffrey Epstein's Web," *The Fashion Law,* on Karin Models, the 1988 60 Minutes report and Claude Haddad, the Michael Gross book, the MC2 founding and Epstein funding, Maritza Vasquez's deposition, and Virginia Giuffre's allegations. https://www.thefashionlaw.com/jean-luc-brunel-at-the-center-of-jeffrey-epsteins-web-of-underage-girls/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Jean-Luc Brunel, French modeling agent and associate of Jeffrey Epstein, found dead in prison cell," *CNN,* 2022, on the charges, the Senegal flight, the suicide ruling and the open investigation. https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/19/europe/jean-luc-brunel-jeffrey-epstein-death-intl
|
||||||
141
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Jeffrey Epstein.md
Normal file
141
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Jeffrey Epstein.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,141 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Crime & Abuse Networks"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- JeffreyEpstein
|
||||||
|
- SexOffender
|
||||||
|
- SexTrafficking
|
||||||
|
- Intelligence
|
||||||
|
- Blackmail
|
||||||
|
- Mossad
|
||||||
|
- RobertMaxwell
|
||||||
|
- GhislaineMaxwell
|
||||||
|
- LesWexner
|
||||||
|
- SciencePhilanthropy
|
||||||
|
- DarkMoney
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Jeffrey Edward Epstein
|
||||||
|
summary: "Jeffrey Epstein was an American financier and convicted sex offender who ran a sex-trafficking operation alongside Ghislaine Maxwell, cultivated a network spanning technology billionaires, heads of state, intelligence officials, and elite scientists, and whose unexplained wealth, intelligence-adjacent contacts, and 2019 jail death produced sustained questions about whether his operation served blackmail or intelligence functions."
|
||||||
|
born: 1953-01-20
|
||||||
|
died: 2019-08-10
|
||||||
|
location: "Brooklyn, New York"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Jeffrey Epstein (January 20, 1953 to August 10, 2019) was an American financier and convicted sex offender who, with his companion [[Ghislaine Maxwell]], ran a sex-trafficking operation that recruited and abused dozens of underage girls across his residences in [[Manhattan]], [[Palm Beach, Florida|Palm Beach]], [[New Mexico]], the [[U.S. Virgin Islands]], and [[Paris]]. He built a social and financial network that encompassed technology billionaires ([[Peter Thiel]], [[Bill Gates]], [[Elon Musk]], [[Reid Hoffman]], [[Mark Zuckerberg]]), heads of state and politicians ([[Bill Clinton]], [[Ehud Barak]], [[Prince Andrew]], [[Donald Trump]]), intelligence officials ([[William Burns]]), financiers and executives ([[Leslie Wexner]], [[Tom Pritzker]], [[Howard Lutnick]]), and prominent scientists ([[Martin Nowak]], [[Marvin Minsky]], [[George Church]], [[Stephen Hawking]]) brokered through the literary agent [[John Brockman]]. The source of his fortune was never satisfactorily explained, his long association with [[Robert Maxwell|Robert Maxwell's]] daughter raised documented intelligence questions, and his death in federal custody in 2019 was ruled a suicide over disputes that have not been resolved.[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Early Life, Dalton, and Bear Stearns
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Epstein was born in [[Brooklyn]], New York, and raised in the Sea Gate and [[Coney Island]] area in a working-class Jewish family; his father worked for the New York City parks department. He attended Lafayette High School, then [[Cooper Union]] and the Courant Institute at [[New York University]], leaving both without a degree. In 1974 he was hired to teach mathematics and physics at the [[Dalton School]], the elite Upper East Side preparatory school, despite having no degree and no teaching credential. The headmaster during the period of his hiring was [[Donald Barr]], the novelist and educator who was the father of the future U.S. Attorney General [[William Barr]], whose Department of Justice would later oversee the federal case and the jail in which Epstein died. Accounts differ on whether Barr personally hired Epstein, since Barr resigned the headmastership in 1974.[^1][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
At Dalton, Epstein cultivated the parents of his students, and a connection there brought him to [[Bear Stearns]], the investment bank then led by [[Alan Greenberg]]. He joined in 1976, worked in the special products division advising wealthy clients on tax strategy, and rose to limited partner before resigning in 1981. The firm and Epstein gave varying accounts of the departure, which has been attributed to a Regulation D securities violation and to an internal inquiry. In 1981 he founded the consulting firm Intercontinental Assets Group, and in 1988 he established [[J. Epstein & Co.]], which he said managed money exclusively for clients worth more than one billion dollars, a claim that obscured rather than explained his finances.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Towers Financial and the Hoffenberg Partnership
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In the late 1980s Epstein worked closely with [[Steven Hoffenberg]], the financier who controlled [[Towers Financial Corporation]], a debt-collection company that bought portfolios of distressed medical and telephone receivables and sold notes and bonds to investors. Epstein was retained as a consultant, reportedly at twenty-five thousand dollars a month, and the two pursued attempted corporate takeovers of [[Pan American World Airways|Pan Am]] and [[Emery Air Freight]] around 1987 and 1988. Towers Financial collapsed in 1993 in what prosecutors described as one of the largest [[Ponzi scheme|Ponzi schemes]] before [[Bernard Madoff]], with roughly 475 million dollars taken from investors. Hoffenberg pleaded guilty in 1995, was sentenced to twenty years, and served about eighteen.[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
After his release Hoffenberg publicly claimed that Epstein had been a co-architect of the Towers fraud and had walked away with money while leaving Hoffenberg to face prosecution alone. Epstein was never charged in connection with Towers Financial, and Hoffenberg's reliability was contested; he made his accusations only years later, in litigation and interviews. Hoffenberg was found dead at his home in Derby, [[Connecticut]] in August 2022. The Towers period is one of two documented sources of capital, alongside the Wexner relationship, around which Epstein's later wealth was assembled.[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Leslie Wexner and the Source of Wealth
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Leslie Wexner, the founder of [[The Limited]], [[L Brands]], [[Victoria's Secret]], and [[Bath & Body Works]], met Epstein in the mid-1980s and made him his money manager and confidant. In 1991 Wexner granted Epstein sweeping power of attorney, authority to borrow money, sign checks, buy and sell property, and hire and fire on his behalf. Wexner transferred to Epstein the use of, and eventually title to, the seven-story townhouse at [[9 East 71st Street]] in Manhattan, one of the largest private residences in the city, which an Epstein entity took over around 2011 for far below its market value. Wexner also co-founded the [[Mega Group]], a club of wealthy Jewish businessmen and philanthropists, with the [[Seagram]] heir [[Charles Bronfman]].[^3][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Wexner cut ties with Epstein around 2007, and in 2019 he stated publicly that Epstein had "misappropriated vast sums" from him and his family, an amount reported as more than 46 million dollars, which Wexner said he had recovered. The mechanics of how a single client's fortune translated into Epstein's own remained opaque. A December 2025 [[New York Times]] investigation concluded that Epstein built his apparent wealth through "scams, theft and lies" rather than financial acumen, that his billionaire status was exaggerated, and that the Wexner relationship was central to whatever fortune he actually held.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Ghislaine Maxwell and the Maxwell Intelligence Question
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Ghislaine Maxwell became Epstein's companion, social organizer, and, according to her 2021 federal conviction, the principal recruiter and procurer of his trafficking operation, beginning in the early 1990s after she moved to New York. She is the youngest daughter of Robert Maxwell (born Jan Ludvik Hoch in [[Czechoslovakia]] in 1923), the British publishing magnate who controlled [[Mirror Group Newspapers]], served as a Labour [[Member of Parliament]], looted roughly 460 million pounds from the Mirror Group pension funds, and died in a disputed drowning off his yacht near the [[Canary Islands]] on November 5, 1991. Robert Maxwell was alleged across multiple published accounts to have operated as an intelligence asset, including for [[Mossad]], [[MI6]], and the [[KGB]], with claims involving the distribution of modified [[PROMIS]] software and a role in the [[Mordechai Vanunu]] case.[^2][^20]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The strongest version of the intelligence claim traces to [[Ari Ben-Menashe]], a self-described former Israeli military intelligence officer, who alleged in his book Profits of War (1992) and later interviews that Robert Maxwell was a longtime Mossad asset and that Epstein and Ghislaine ran a sexual blackmail operation connected to Israeli intelligence. Ben-Menashe's account is uncorroborated by any declassified file, and his reliability is widely disputed. What is documented is narrower: that Ghislaine maintained the transatlantic social access through which Epstein operated, and that Epstein separately cultivated Barak and the Israeli surveillance-technology firm [[Carbyne]]. Whether the operation was directed by any service, or simply weaponized inherited wealth and connections for leverage, is unproven in any primary source and is treated here as a documented analytical thread rather than established fact.[^2][^20]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Properties
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Epstein's residences functioned as the physical infrastructure of the trafficking operation. The Manhattan townhouse at 9 East 71st Street, the Palm Beach house at [[358 El Brillo Way]] (acquired in 1990), the roughly 10,000-acre [[Zorro Ranch]] near Stanley, New Mexico, the private island of [[Little St. James]] in the U.S. Virgin Islands (acquired in 1998), the neighboring [[Great St. James]] (acquired in 2016), and an apartment on the [[Avenue Foch]] in Paris formed a circuit across which victims and associates were moved. Victims and a 1996 [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] report by [[Maria Farmer]] described hidden cameras and surveillance equipment in the properties, which fed the later allegation that the residences were instrumented to record guests.[^4][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Zorro Ranch in New Mexico was, according to a 2019 New York Times report, the site Epstein discussed for a project to "seed the human race with his DNA" by impregnating many women, a scheme he described to scientists and associates and that never came to fruition. New Mexico reopened a criminal inquiry into the ranch in 2025. Little St. James, called "Pedophile Island" in local accounts, was where Epstein hosted a 2002 science conference and where multiple victims said abuse occurred; under the 2022 settlement with the U.S. Virgin Islands the island was sold and half the proceeds paid to the territory.[^9][^15]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Trafficking Operation and the Recruitment Network
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The operation recruited girls, some as young as 14, to give Epstein "massages" that became sexual abuse, and paid victims to recruit additional victims in a pyramid structure. The schemers and recruiters included Ghislaine Maxwell and a circle of assistants and procurers: [[Sarah Kellen]], [[Nadia Marcinkova]], [[Adriana Ross]], and [[Lesley Groff]], the four employees named and granted immunity in the 2008 federal agreement, and the French modeling agent [[Jean-Luc Brunel]], whose [[MC2 Model Management]] agency was reportedly seeded with about one million dollars of Epstein money and supplied women and girls. Brunel was arrested in France in December 2020 on charges including the rape of minors and was found hanged in a Paris prison in February 2022.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Palm Beach Police Department opened an investigation in 2005 after a parent reported that her teenage daughter had been molested, and detectives identified dozens of victims and a network of recruiters. The most prominent victim-witnesses include [[Virginia Giuffre]] (recruited at age 16 or 17 while working at [[Mar-a-Lago]]), Maria Farmer and her sister [[Annie Farmer]], [[Courtney Wild]], and [[Sarah Ransome]]. Their accounts, depositions, and civil suits, many unsealed in the 2024 [[Giuffre v. Maxwell]] document release, provided much of the public record of the operation.[^4][^21]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Flight Logs and the Black Book
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Epstein owned a Boeing 727 and additional aircraft flown by the pilots [[Larry Visoski]] and [[David Rodgers]], whose logbooks recorded passengers on flights among New York, Palm Beach, the Virgin Islands, and Europe. The logs surfaced through the civil litigation of 2009 to 2015 and became the basis for much of the public mapping of Epstein's contacts, though a log entry records travel and not conduct. Visoski testified at the 2021 Maxwell trial that he had never witnessed sexual activity aboard the aircraft, and the logs by themselves establish who flew, not what occurred.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
A bound contact directory, the "little black book," held roughly 1,900 entries of names, telephone numbers, and addresses spanning finance, politics, royalty, science, and entertainment. A former house manager at the Palm Beach property, [[Alfredo Rodriguez]], copied the directory and tried to sell it in 2009, calling it the "holy grail"; he was convicted of obstruction of justice in 2010. Redacted versions of the directory and of the flight manifests later circulated publicly and were cited in reporting and litigation to identify members of Epstein's social circle.[^4][^23]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The documentary record expanded sharply after Epstein's death. The January 2024 unsealing of the Giuffre v. Maxwell exhibits by Judge Loretta Preska, the staged 2025 Justice Department releases, and the House Oversight Committee productions added emails, calendars, depositions, and photographs to the logs and the directory. The combined record widened the list of documented contacts while leaving intact the distinction between appearing in Epstein's logs or address book and participating in his crimes, a distinction that much of the subsequent public controversy turned on.[^17][^21]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The 2008 Non-Prosecution Agreement
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the [[Southern District of Florida]] investigated Epstein in 2006 and 2007 and prepared a 53-page federal indictment. Instead of prosecuting, the U.S. Attorney [[Alexander Acosta]] negotiated a [[non-prosecution agreement]] in 2007 and 2008 under which Epstein pleaded guilty to two Florida state charges, soliciting prostitution and procuring a minor for prostitution, was sentenced to 18 months, served about 13 in the Palm Beach County stockade with work-release privileges that let him leave six days a week, and registered as a sex offender. The agreement also granted federal immunity to named co-conspirators and was concealed from the victims.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The deal's leniency became the subject of the [[Miami Herald]] series "Perversion of Justice" by the reporter [[Julie K. Brown]] in 2018, which revived the case. In February 2019 the federal judge [[Kenneth Marra]] ruled that prosecutors had violated the [[Crime Victims' Rights Act]] by hiding the agreement from victims. Acosta, who had become U.S. Secretary of Labor under Donald Trump, resigned in July 2019. A 2020 Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility report found that Acosta had exercised "poor judgment" but had not committed professional misconduct.[^4][^19][^21]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Science Network and the Eugenics Ambition
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
From the late 1990s Epstein financed and embedded himself in elite science through the literary agent John Brockman and his [[Edge Foundation]], whose annual "billionaires' dinner" Epstein attended and helped underwrite, and through targeted university gifts. He donated roughly 9.1 million dollars to [[Harvard University]] between 2001 and 2007, including about 6.5 million dollars around 2003 to help establish the [[Program for Evolutionary Dynamics]] under the mathematical biologist Martin Nowak, who gave Epstein an office and, according to Harvard's May 2020 internal review, key-card access and more than 40 visits after his 2008 conviction. Epstein cultivated scientists including Marvin Minsky of the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]], the geneticist George Church, the physicist [[Lawrence Krauss]], and the cognitive scientist [[Steven Pinker]], and funded conferences attended by figures up to Stephen Hawking.[^8][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Epstein's interest in genetics and population converged with a stated ambition to spread his own DNA. The 2019 New York Times report documented that he told scientists of plans to impregnate women at Zorro Ranch to seed the human race with his genome, and that he was drawn to [[transhumanism]] and [[eugenics]]. After his 2019 arrest, Church apologized for continued contact, and the [[MIT Media Lab]] director [[Joi Ito]] resigned over revelations, reported by Ronan Farrow, that the lab had concealed Epstein's donations. The science network gave Epstein a reputation as a patron of ideas that ran in parallel to his criminal operation.[^8][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Post-Conviction Network
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
After the 2008 plea Epstein rebuilt his social and business standing and continued to broker access among the wealthy and powerful. The [[Wall Street Journal]] reporting on his recovered calendars documented post-conviction meetings with William Burns (the future CIA director), [[Noam Chomsky]], the [[Obama]]-administration lawyer [[Kathryn Ruemmler]], and Tom Pritzker. Document releases established the August 2015 dinner hosted by Reid Hoffman in [[Palo Alto]] at which Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Joi Ito were present to raise money for the MIT Media Lab; a February 2016 email recording that Thiel "LOVED the secret socieity [sic] idea"; the 2011 Tom Pritzker correspondence using "secret society" language; and 2014 meetings at the townhouse attended by William Burns.[^10][^11][^12]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The political relationships were older and equally documented. Bill Clinton flew on Epstein's Boeing 727, the so-called [[Lolita Express]], more than two dozen times in the early 2000s, including a 2002 trip to Africa connected to the [[Clinton Foundation]], while denying any knowledge of Epstein's crimes or any visit to Little St. James. Prince Andrew, the [[Duke of York]], was photographed with Virginia Giuffre in 2001, settled her 2021 civil suit for a reported sum in 2022 without admitting liability, and was stripped of his royal and military titles between 2022 and 2025. Donald Trump socialized with Epstein in the 1990s and early 2000s before a falling out, a relationship documented in flight logs, contemporaneous quotes, and a disputed 2003 birthday letter.[^11][^18]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Intelligence and Blackmail Question
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The recurring claim that Epstein's operation served an intelligence or blackmail function rests on several documented strands and one contested central assertion. The documented strands include Ghislaine Maxwell's intelligence-linked paternity; Epstein's brokering of the Israeli emergency-response and surveillance firm Carbyne and his attempts to connect Ehud Barak with Peter Thiel over [[Palantir Technologies|Palantir]]; the instrumentation of his properties with cameras; and the 2019 search of the townhouse, which recovered a safe containing compact discs, cash, diamonds, and an expired foreign passport in Epstein's name with a Saudi address. The contested central assertion is the claim, attributed by the journalist [[Vicky Ward]] to a former senior White House official, that Acosta had told Trump transition vetters he was given to understand Epstein "belonged to intelligence" and to leave the case alone.[^11][^19]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Acosta denied making the statement when questioned by the House Oversight Committee, saying he had no knowledge of whether Epstein was connected to any intelligence service. The "belonged to intelligence" quote traces to a single anonymous source. No declassified document confirms that Epstein worked for any agency of any country. The blackmail thesis (that the recordings and the elite guest lists were assembled to generate leverage) is supported by victim and witness descriptions of surveillance and by the structure of the operation, but it remains an inference rather than a documented program, and is recorded here as an open question rather than an established fact.[^11][^19][^20]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The earliest known report to law enforcement came in 1996, when Maria Farmer told the FBI that she and her younger sister had been abused and described surveillance equipment inside Epstein's New York residence; she said the report produced no apparent action for years. Accounts from victims and household staff describing cameras in the properties, combined with the 2019 recovery of compact discs and the foreign passport from the townhouse safe, are the documented basis for the inference that the operation was instrumented to generate leverage. No recordings of guests have been produced publicly, no service of any country has acknowledged a relationship with Epstein, and the maximalist accounts that describe a fully operational blackmail enterprise rest on inference and contested sourcing rather than a disclosed program. What the cameras recorded, and where any recordings went, remains unresolved in the public record.[^4][^14][^19]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Financial Structures and the Bank Settlements
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Epstein's finances ran through entities chartered in the U.S. Virgin Islands, including [[Financial Trust Company]] (established in 1996) and [[Southern Trust Company]] (established around 2012), which obtained territorial tax benefits under the Economic Development Commission program. The Virgin Islands later alleged that Southern Trust fraudulently obtained those benefits by claiming to run a "DNA database" and data-mining ("informatics") business it never actually conducted, and that the company existed to fund Epstein's criminal activity and properties. His banking ran through [[JPMorgan Chase]], which kept him as a client until 2013, and then [[Deutsche Bank]].[^15][^16]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Virgin Islands operation extended into territorial politics. According to the Attorney General's complaint, Epstein's local affairs were managed by [[Cecile de Jongh]], the office manager of Southern Trust and the wife of Governor [[John de Jongh]] (in office 2007 to 2015), and the complaint alleged that she helped Epstein shape legislation affecting sex-offender monitoring and the Economic Development Commission benefits while Epstein-linked entities paid family expenses. The territory's later Attorney General, [[Denise George]], who filed the 2020 suit against the estate and a 2022 suit against JPMorgan, was removed by Governor [[Albert Bryan]] days after the bank suit was filed. The banks themselves became defendants, with Jes Staley, the JPMorgan executive who managed the Epstein relationship, later banned from senior UK finance roles over it.[^15][^16]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The post-death litigation produced large settlements. In 2022 Epstein's estate agreed to pay the U.S. Virgin Islands more than 105 million dollars, plus the repayment of roughly 80 million dollars in tax benefits and half the proceeds of Little St. James. In 2023 JPMorgan paid 290 million dollars to victims and 75 million dollars to the Virgin Islands, and Deutsche Bank paid 75 million dollars to victims. The former JPMorgan and Barclays executive [[Jes Staley]], who managed the Epstein banking relationship, was fined and permanently banned from senior financial roles by the UK Financial Conduct Authority in 2023 for misleading the regulator about his ties to Epstein; an appeals tribunal upheld the ban in 2025 while reducing the penalty to about 1.1 million pounds. The Epstein Victims' Compensation Program separately paid out roughly 121 million dollars to more than 125 claimants.[^15][^16]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The 2019 Federal Charges and the Death
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On July 6, 2019, Epstein was arrested at [[Teterboro Airport]] in New Jersey as he returned from Paris, charged by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the [[Southern District of New York]] under [[Geoffrey Berman]] (with the prosecutor [[Maurene Comey]] on the case) with sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy. The search of the townhouse recovered the safe and its contents, and a judge ordered him held without bail. On August 10, 2019, Epstein was found dead in his cell at the [[Metropolitan Correctional Center]] in Manhattan. The New York City Chief Medical Examiner ruled the death a suicide by hanging.[^1][^14]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The death produced sustained dispute. The guards [[Tova Noel]] and [[Michael Thomas]] had failed to perform required checks and later admitted to falsifying records; they were charged in November 2019 and entered a deferred-prosecution agreement, and the charges were ultimately dropped. The cameras outside the cell malfunctioned, and Epstein had been removed from suicide watch after an earlier incident. The forensic pathologist [[Michael Baden]], retained by Epstein's brother [[Mark Epstein]], said the fractures of the hyoid bone and thyroid cartilage were more consistent with homicidal strangulation than hanging, while the Medical Examiner stood by the suicide ruling. A 2023 Justice Department Inspector General report attributed the death to the guards' negligence and the jail's failures and found no evidence of murder, while documenting that the combination of lapses was extraordinary.[^14]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Estate, the Document Releases, and the 2025-2026 Files
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested in [[New Hampshire]] in July 2020 and convicted in December 2021 on five federal counts including sex trafficking of a minor, and sentenced to 20 years in June 2022. Beginning in January 2024 the Giuffre v. Maxwell documents were unsealed by the judge [[Loretta Preska]], naming associates and contacts across hundreds of pages. Virginia Giuffre died by suicide in Australia in April 2025; her memoir, Nobody's Girl, was published posthumously in 2025.[^21][^22]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 2025 the Trump Justice Department under Attorney General [[Pam Bondi]] released files in stages amid controversy over a promised "client list" that was never produced. Congress then passed the [[Epstein Files Transparency Act]] (H.R. 4405) by a nearly unanimous House vote in November 2025, and Trump signed it. The Department released a library reaching roughly 3.5 million pages, more than 2,000 videos, and 180,000 images, and in December 2025 disclosed that more than one million additional documents had been found, missing a statutory deadline and prompting a Government Accountability Office inquiry into redactions made at the request of members of Congress. A separate strand concerned the 2003 "birthday book" assembled for Epstein's 50th birthday, which the Wall Street Journal reported in July 2025 contained a bawdy letter bearing Donald Trump's signature; Trump denied authorship and sued the paper, and the House Oversight Committee released the book in September 2025.[^17][^18]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Timeline of the Life and Crimes of Jeffrey Epstein." *CBS New York,* 2019. https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/timeline-of-the-life-and-crimes-of-jeffrey-epstein/ ; "A Young Jeffrey Epstein Made An Impression On His High School Students." *NPR,* July 19, 2019. https://www.npr.org/2019/07/19/742725946/a-young-jeffrey-epstein-made-an-impression-on-his-high-school-students
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "The murky life and death of Robert Maxwell, and how it shaped his daughter Ghislaine." *The Guardian,* August 22, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/22/the-murky-life-and-death-of-robert-maxwell-and-how-it-shaped-his-daughter-ghislaine
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "The Untold Story of How Jeffrey Epstein Got Rich." *New York Times,* December 16, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/16/magazine/jeffrey-epstein-money-scams-investigation.html
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Brown, Julie K. "Perversion of Justice." *Miami Herald,* 2018. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article220097825.html
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "The 'Epstein-Barr' Problem of New York City's Dalton School." *Law and Crime,* 2019. https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/the-epstein-barr-problem-of-new-york-citys-dalton-school/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: Ward, Vicky. "The Talented Mr. Epstein." *Vanity Fair,* March 2003. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2003/03/jeffrey-epstein-200303
|
||||||
|
[^7]: For the Towers Financial Corporation collapse, the 1995 Hoffenberg conviction, and Hoffenberg's later claims about Epstein, see the contemporaneous SEC and federal court record (United States v. Hoffenberg, S.D.N.Y.) and "The Mogul and the Monster" reporting; Hoffenberg's "architect" claim is his own assertion and Epstein was never charged in the matter.
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Harvard University, "Report Concerning Jeffrey Epstein's Connections to Harvard," May 1, 2020. https://www.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Reportconcerning-Jeffrey-Epstein.pdf
|
||||||
|
[^9]: Stewart, James B., Matthew Goldstein, and Jessica Silver-Greenberg. "Jeffrey Epstein Hoped to Seed Human Race With His DNA." *New York Times,* July 31, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/31/business/jeffrey-epstein-eugenics.html ; "New Investigation Launched into Epstein's Zorro Ranch." *Time,* 2025. https://time.com/7379228/epstein-zorro-ranch-investigation/
|
||||||
|
[^10]: For the EFTA primary documents (EFTA01738574, EFTA00344556, EFTA00344564, EFTA02407727), see the Tommy Carstensen Epstein Files index. https://tommycarstensen.com/epstein/people/peter-thiel.html
|
||||||
|
[^11]: For the recovered Epstein calendars (Burns, Chomsky, Ruemmler, Pritzker meetings), see the *Wall Street Journal* "Jeffrey Epstein's Private Calendar" reporting, May 2023.
|
||||||
|
[^12]: "Epstein's Silicon Valley ties extended beyond just Musk and Gates." *CNBC,* February 9, 2026. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/09/tech-leaders-epstein-records-silicon-valley-sergey-brin-thiel-sinofsky-reid-hoffman-musk-gates.html
|
||||||
|
[^14]: "NYC medical examiner rejects claim that Jeffrey Epstein's death was a homicide." *CNN,* October 30, 2019. https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/30/us/jeffrey-epstein-autopsy-fox ; "Jeffrey Epstein autopsy finds broken bones in his neck." *CNN,* August 15, 2019. https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/15/us/jeffrey-epstein-autopsy-broken-neck ; U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, "Investigation of the Federal Bureau of Prisons' Custody, Care, and Supervision of Jeffrey Epstein," June 2023.
|
||||||
|
[^15]: "U.S. Virgin Islands reaches a $105M settlement with Jeffrey Epstein's estate." *NPR,* December 1, 2022. https://www.npr.org/2022/12/01/1140096222/jeffrey-epsteins-estate-reaches-a-105m-settlement-with-the-u-s-virgin-islands ; Government of the U.S. Virgin Islands, "Attorney General Settles Sex Trafficking Case Against Estate of Jeffrey Epstein," 2022. https://usvidoj.com/u-s-virgin-islands-attorney-general-settles-sex-trafficking-case-against-estate-of-jeffrey-epstein-and-co-defendants-for-over-105-million/
|
||||||
|
[^16]: "JPMorgan settles with Jeffrey Epstein victims for $290 million." *WHYY,* 2023. https://whyy.org/articles/jpmorgan-settlement/ ; "Ex-Barclays CEO Jes Staley fined and banned by UK regulator for Epstein ties." *AP/AOL,* 2023. https://www.aol.com/finance/ex-barclays-ceo-jes-staley-142727090.html
|
||||||
|
[^17]: "New Epstein files include photos, documents with redactions as DOJ releases initial trove of records." *CBS News,* 2025. https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/epstein-files-released-2025/ ; "DOJ says it has found over a million additional documents potentially related to Epstein." *CNN,* December 24, 2025. https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/24/politics/epstein-documents-doj-million ; U.S. Department of Justice, Epstein Files Transparency Act disclosures. https://www.justice.gov/epstein/doj-disclosures
|
||||||
|
[^18]: "Birthday letter to Epstein bore Trump's signature, drawing of naked woman, Wall Street Journal reports." *CNN,* July 17, 2025. https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/17/politics/epstein-birthday-letter-trump ; "Trump Epstein letter and drawing from 'birthday book' released." *CNBC,* September 8, 2025. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/08/trump-epstein-birthday-book-oversight.html
|
||||||
|
[^19]: Ward, Vicky. "Jeffrey Epstein's Sick Story Played Out for Years in Plain Sight." *The Daily Beast,* July 9, 2019. https://www.thedailybeast.com/jeffrey-epsteins-sick-story-played-out-for-years-in-plain-sight/ ; for Acosta's denial, see his September 2019 testimony before the House Oversight Committee.
|
||||||
|
[^20]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network.* Sheridan Square Press, 1992. Ben-Menashe's claims that Robert Maxwell was a Mossad asset and that the Maxwell-Epstein link served Israeli intelligence are uncorroborated by declassified material and treated as contested allegation.
|
||||||
|
[^21]: United States v. Maxwell, 20 Cr. 330 (S.D.N.Y.); for the Crime Victims' Rights Act ruling see Doe v. United States, No. 08-80736 (S.D. Fla. February 21, 2019), Marra, J.
|
||||||
|
[^22]: "Ghislaine Maxwell Sentenced To 20 Years In Prison." *U.S. Department of Justice, Southern District of New York,* June 28, 2022. https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/ghislaine-maxwell-sentenced-20-years-prison-conspiring-jeffrey-epstein-sexually-abuse
|
||||||
|
[^23]: For the flight logs, the pilots' testimony, and the contact directory, see the trial record in United States v. Maxwell (S.D.N.Y. 2021), the *Miami Herald* "Perversion of Justice" reporting, and the Alfredo Rodriguez obstruction case, United States v. Rodriguez (S.D. Fla. 2010).
|
||||||
64
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/John Brockman.md
Normal file
64
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/John Brockman.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,64 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Authors & Journalists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- JeffreyEpstein
|
||||||
|
- EdgeFoundation
|
||||||
|
- SciencePhilanthropy
|
||||||
|
- LiteraryAgent
|
||||||
|
- ThirdCulture
|
||||||
|
- BillionairesDinner
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- John Brockman
|
||||||
|
summary: "John Brockman is a New York literary agent who founded the Edge Foundation and Edge.org, hosted the annual Billionaires' Dinner, and whose salon was for years substantially funded by Jeffrey Epstein."
|
||||||
|
born: 1941-02-16
|
||||||
|
location: "New York, New York"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
John Brockman (born February 16, 1941) is an American literary agent and author who founded the [[Edge Foundation]] and its website [[Edge.org]], coined the popularized version of the "third culture," and built a science-and-technology client list through his agency Brockman Inc. For years his annual literary salon and its Billionaires' Dinner were substantially financed by [[Jeffrey Epstein]], and foundations associated with Epstein supplied a majority of Edge's revenue over 2001 to 2017.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### From the 1960s Art Scene to Brockman Inc.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Brockman was born in Boston to Austrian Jewish immigrants and raised in the Dorchester neighborhood, taking an MBA from Columbia Business School in 1963. He moved into the New York avant-garde of the 1960s, organizing intermedia and underground-film events and absorbing the ideas of [[Marshall McLuhan]], [[John Cage]], and [[Buckminster Fuller]], whom he later cited as formative influences. He published early experimental books including *By the Late John Brockman* (1969) before turning to literary agenting.[^3][^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Brockman formed the literary agency Brockman Inc. in 1973 as an international agency for serious nonfiction. It became the leading agency in science and technology writing, negotiating large advances for authors including [[Richard Dawkins]], [[Daniel Kahneman]], [[Steven Pinker]], [[Daniel Dennett]], [[Jared Diamond]], [[Nassim Nicholas Taleb]], and [[Martin Rees]], a roster that at points included three Nobel laureates. His wife [[Katinka Matson]] co-founded the agency, served as its president, and produced the digital botanical images used across Edge; she is listed as a co-founder of Edge as well.[^3][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Brockman described the agency and the salon as overlapping enterprises, with many Edge contributors also being agency clients. His son [[Max Brockman]] joined the firm, became its chief executive, and edited the *This Will Make You Smarter* and *What's Next?* anthologies drawn from younger Edge contributors. Among the clients whose Epstein ties later drew scrutiny were Pinker, Dennett, [[Marvin Minsky]], and the [[MIT Media Lab]] director [[Joi Ito]], all of whom appeared on Edge or in Epstein's orbit.[^9][^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Reality Club and the Third Culture
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Brockman founded a discussion group he called the Reality Club, which met from 1981 to 1996 in restaurants, lofts, the Rosa Mexicano restaurant, and other venues around New York for seminars by scientists and intellectuals. In 1995 he published *The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution* (Simon & Schuster), arguing that scientists who write for a general public were displacing the literary intellectual as the people "rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives," an expansion of [[C. P. Snow]]'s 1959 idea of two cultures.[^5][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Reality Club moved online as Edge.org, which Brockman launched in 1996 under the nonprofit Edge Foundation he had incorporated in 1988. From 1998 he posed an annual Edge Question to his contributors, drawn from a curated pool of scientists, writers, and what he called third-culture intellectuals, with prompts such as "What is your dangerous idea?," "What will change everything?," and "What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?" The responses were published on the site and collected in a long-running book series with titles including *What We Believe but Cannot Prove*, *What Is Your Dangerous Idea?*, *This Will Change Everything*, and *This Explains Everything*.[^6][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The journalist [[John Naughton]] called Edge.org "the world's smartest website" in a 2012 *Observer* profile, a phrase Brockman and the foundation thereafter used in their own materials. Brockman retired the annual question in 2018, framing the move as the finale to twenty years of Edge Questions. The contributor pool skewed heavily male; one tally of those answering put the figure at roughly 80 percent men.[^7][^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Epstein Funding and the Billionaires' Dinner
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Brockman hosted an annual dinner from 1999, timed to the [[TED Conference]] then held in Monterey, California, which became known as the Billionaires' Dinner and brought Edge contributors together with technology and finance figures including [[Jeff Bezos]], [[Sergey Brin]], and [[Elon Musk]]. Brockman embraced the name after trying alternatives; recalling the 2004 dinner, he wrote that "last year we tried 'The Science Dinner.' Everyone yawned. So this year, it's back to the money-sex-power thing with 'The Billionaires' Dinner.'" Katinka Matson organized the events alongside him.[^1][^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
According to financial records reviewed by *BuzzFeed News*, foundations associated with Epstein provided $638,000 of nearly $857,000 in revenue that Edge received between 2001 and 2017, and for a period Epstein's dinners and Edge were nearly entirely funded by him. Epstein gave at least $50,000 a year in 2009, 2010, and 2011; no gifts were recorded from 2006 to 2008, the period of his Florida investigation and imprisonment. Epstein was photographed at the dinners in 1999, 2000, 2002, and 2004 and attended the 2011 dinner alongside Bezos and Brin; his last recorded gift to Edge was $30,000 in 2015, after which Edge raised only several thousand dollars from a single donor and the dinner series ended.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In a 2013 email later published by his client [[Evgeny Morozov]] in *The New Republic*, Brockman sought to arrange a meeting between Morozov and Epstein, writing that Epstein "showed up at this weekend's event by helicopter (with his beautiful young assistant from Belarus)," noting that Epstein "got into trouble and spent a year in jail in Florida," and stating that Epstein "gave Harvard $30m to set up [[Martin Nowak]]." Brockman also described visiting Epstein's home and seeing Epstein "in a sweatsuit and a British guy in a suit with suspenders, getting foot massages from two young well-dressed Russian women," and said he later realized the second man was [[Prince Andrew]]. Morozov declined the introduction, replying that the Victoria's Secret and modeling-agency connection was "one more reason to stay away actually."[^8][^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The 2019 Fallout
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
After Epstein's July 2019 arrest on federal sex-trafficking charges, the science writer [[Carl Zimmer]] asked to be removed from Edge, citing the Epstein funding. The author [[Naomi Wolf]] left Brockman Inc. on July 31, 2019, citing both Epstein's funding of Edge and the appearance of Epstein associate [[Sarah Kellen]] on the Edge website, and Morozov publicly called on Brockman to close the foundation. Photographs showing Kellen with Brockman and with Max Brockman at Edge dinners in 2002 and 2003 were removed from the site.[^8][^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Most listed Edge contributors did not publicly disassociate from the foundation after the *BuzzFeed News* reporting. The renewed release of U.S. Department of Justice files in 2026 returned attention to the Edge network, with Nowak again placed on Harvard administrative leave in February 2026 and other figures named in the documents drawn from circles that overlapped with Brockman's salon.[^1][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Aldhous, Peter. "How Jeffrey Epstein Bankrolled The Exclusive Edge Foundation And Reaped The Benefits," *BuzzFeed News,* 2019, on the $638,000 of $857,000 figure, the Billionaires' Dinner, the 2013 Morozov email, Kellen, and the 2019 departures. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/jeffrey-epstein-john-brockman-edge-foundation
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Aldhous, Peter. "How Jeffrey Epstein Bankrolled The Exclusive Edge Foundation And Reaped The Benefits." *BuzzFeed News,* 2019, on the foundation contributions of about $638,000 of nearly $857,000 received 2001 to 2017 and the $30,000 gift in 2015. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/jeffrey-epstein-john-brockman-edge-foundation
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Naughton, John. "John Brockman: the man who runs the world's smartest website," *The Observer,* January 8, 2012, on Brockman's background, the McLuhan and Cage influences, and the agency. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/jan/08/john-brockman-edge-interview
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Brockman, John. *The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution.* Simon & Schuster, 1995.
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "About Edge," Edge.org, on the third culture definition and the Reality Club's 1981 to 1996 meetings. https://www.edge.org/about-edge
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "About Edge," Edge.org, on the 1988 incorporation of the Edge Foundation as an outgrowth of the Reality Club. https://www.edge.org/about-edge
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Naughton, John. "The Man Who Runs The World's Smartest Website," *The Observer,* 2012, reproduced at Edge.org. https://www.edge.org/conversation/john_naughton-the-man-who-runs-the-worlds-smartest-website-in-the-observer
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "Edge Foundation President May Have Been Jeffrey Epstein's Connection to Intellectual Elite," *InsideHook,* 2019, on Brockman as Epstein's gatekeeper, the 2013 email, and the 2019 fallout. https://www.insidehook.com/culture/edge-foundation-president-may-have-been-jeffrey-epsteins-connection-to-intellectual-elite
|
||||||
|
[^9]: Naughton, John. "John Brockman: the man who runs the world's smartest website." *The Observer,* January 8, 2012. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/jan/08/john-brockman-edge-interview ; for the agency founding and client roster see also Aldhous, Peter. "How Jeffrey Epstein Bankrolled The Exclusive Edge Foundation." *BuzzFeed News,* 2019.
|
||||||
|
[^10]: "The Edge 'Billionaires' Dinner' 1999" and subsequent dinner pages, Edge.org, on the 1999 start of the dinner at the TED conference in Monterey and Brockman's account of the 2004 naming. https://www.edge.org/event/the-edge-billionaires-dinner-1999
|
||||||
|
[^11]: Morozov, Evgeny. "Jeffrey Epstein's Intellectual Enabler," *The New Republic,* 2019, reproducing the 2013 Brockman email, the "$30m to set up Martin Nowak" line, the Prince Andrew foot-massage passage, and Morozov's reply. https://newrepublic.com/article/154826/jeffrey-epsteins-intellectual-enabler
|
||||||
65
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Jonathan Buma.md
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65
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Jonathan Buma.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,65 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Law Enforcement & Legal"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- JonathanBuma
|
||||||
|
- FBI
|
||||||
|
- Counterintelligence
|
||||||
|
- PeterThiel
|
||||||
|
- Whistleblower
|
||||||
|
- Russia
|
||||||
|
- ConfidentialHumanSource
|
||||||
|
- HunterBiden
|
||||||
|
- Giuliani
|
||||||
|
- Disclosure
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Johnathan Buma
|
||||||
|
summary: "Johnathan Buma is a former FBI special agent who specialized in Russian counterintelligence at the Los Angeles field office, who handled Peter Thiel as a confidential human source from summer 2021, who originated the FBI's first Hunter Biden tax inquiry in January 2019, who worked the Giuliani-Ukraine investigation, who publicly accused the FBI of pro-Trump political bias, and who was arrested at JFK on March 17, 2025 and charged with unlawfully disclosing confidential records."
|
||||||
|
location: "Los Angeles, California (FBI field office)"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Johnathan Buma is a former [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] special agent who spent fifteen years at the Los Angeles field office specializing in Russian counterintelligence and public corruption. Buma handled [[Peter Thiel]] as a confidential human source (CHS) beginning in summer 2021, originated the FBI's first [[Hunter Biden|Hunter Biden]] tax-evasion inquiry in January 2019 from a source tip, and worked the [[Rudy Giuliani|Giuliani]]-[[Ukraine|Ukraine]] investigation. Buma subsequently made public disclosures accusing the FBI of pro-Trump political bias and claiming that Russian intelligence had run "intense" targeting operations against [[Elon Musk]]. The DOJ Office of Inspector General arrested Buma at [[John F. Kennedy International Airport|JFK Airport]] on March 17, 2025 as he attempted to board an international flight, charging him with unlawfully disclosing confidential information.[^1][^2][^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Hunter Biden Origin Tip (January 2019)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Buma received a source tip in January 2019 that led to the FBI's first inquiry into Hunter Biden's tax affairs. The tip covered Biden's income from [[Burisma|Burisma Holdings]], the Ukrainian natural-gas company on whose board Biden served, and the inquiry preceded the broader FBI investigation that produced the later tax charges. Buma's role as the originating agent on the Hunter Biden inquiry placed him at the starting point of an investigation that became central to the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Hunter Biden tip ran alongside Buma's work on the Giuliani investigation into the former mayor's Ukrainian dealings, which examined whether Giuliani had acted as an unregistered foreign agent in his pursuit of damaging information on the Biden family. The two investigations, originating from overlapping evidentiary sources in the Ukrainian context, placed Buma inside the FBI's most politically charged cases of the 2019-2021 period.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Thiel Confidential Human Source Relationship (Summer 2021)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[[Business Insider]] reported in October 2023 that Peter Thiel began providing information to the FBI as a confidential human source (CHS) in summer 2021, with Buma as his handling agent. Buma told *The Guardian* that he had briefed Thiel on "what a targeting looks like," and that Thiel was "receptive to collaboration and threat briefings," confirming the targeting pattern and providing "helpful information to help us identify the nodes through which these outreaches have occurred." The CHS relationship ran while Thiel simultaneously chaired [[Palantir Technologies]] (a major CIA and FBI contractor), cofounded the [[Dialog]] convening network, funded the [[JD Vance]] and [[Blake Masters]] Senate campaigns, and maintained the documented [[Jeffrey Epstein]] relationship that ran through 2019. The congressional record references Thiel's CHS role in a House Judiciary Committee document submitted January 22, 2026.[^2][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The FBI's [[Confidential Human Source Policy Guide]] governs the handling of sources. The CHS status entails a reporting obligation on the source's part and a protection obligation on the Bureau's part. The contents of Thiel's reporting to Buma are not public beyond Buma's own description of the briefings.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Musk Targeting Claims
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[[The Guardian]] reported on May 22, 2025 that Buma, out on bail, had given an interview claiming that Russian intelligence efforts to target Elon Musk were "intense." The [[Kyiv Post|Kyiv Post]] and other outlets, drawing on Buma's interview with the German broadcaster [[ZDF|ZDF]], reported that the Russian [[GRU|GRU]] (military intelligence) had run an operation, purportedly approved by [[Vladimir Putin|Putin]], to target Musk by exploiting vulnerabilities including drug use, sexual entrapment, and luxury access. Buma claimed he had attempted to warn Musk directly. The operation reportedly targeted multiple technology figures including Musk and Thiel.[^4][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The documented Musk-Putin contact channel is the corroborating datum. The [[Wall Street Journal|Wall Street Journal]] reported on October 25, 2024 that Musk had been "in regular contact" with Putin since late 2022, a relationship that began after Musk's [[Starlink|Starlink]] satellite terminals became operationally significant in the [[Russia|Russia]]-Ukraine war. The Buma targeting claim, the WSJ contact-channel reporting, and the documented [[Igor Kurganov|Kurganov]] infiltration (below) together constitute the evidentiary basis for the Russian-influence question around Musk.[^4][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Igor Kurganov Infiltration
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Guardian piece documented the Kurganov case as the concrete instance of the targeting Buma described. Igor Kurganov is a Russian-born former professional poker player who gained influence over Musk's charitable giving during the pandemic period. Kurganov was sleeping in Musk's Austin home during the pandemic, advising Musk on philanthropic strategy, and became the subject of FBI preliminary inquiries into whether his access constituted a foreign-interference channel. [[Jared Birchall|Jared Birchall]], Musk's wealth manager and the head of Musk's family office, confronted Musk about Kurganov and removed him from the inner circle in May 2022.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Kurganov gained operational access to a sitting technology billionaire's philanthropic decision-making and residential life. The FBI's preliminary inquiry and the subsequent removal by Birchall terminated the access but did not resolve the counterintelligence question of what Kurganov did with it.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Pro-Trump Bias Accusation and the Arrest
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Buma publicly accused the FBI of pro-Trump political bias, specifically alleging that the Bureau had suppressed or slow-walked investigations into Trump-aligned figures and causes. [[PBS|PBS NewsHour]] reported on Buma's public statements, and the Whistleblowers Blog documented Buma's account of warnings the FBI allegedly missed.[^3][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The [[Office of the Inspector General|DOJ Office of Inspector General]] arrested Buma on March 17, 2025 at JFK Airport as he attempted to board an international flight. The criminal complaint, filed in the [[Central District of California]], charged Buma with unlawfully disclosing confidential information on or about October 27, 2023. [[CBS News]] reported that FBI investigators assessed Buma may have compromised as many as 130 FBI files through his disclosures. Buma is out on 100,000 dollar bond. The DOJ's position is that the disclosures violated the criminal prohibition on unauthorized release of confidential FBI information; Buma's position is that the disclosures constituted protected whistleblowing about FBI misconduct. The case is ongoing.[^1][^3][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Former FBI Special Agent Arrested for Disclosure of Confidential Information." *DOJ Office of Inspector General,* 2025. https://oig.justice.gov/news/press-release/former-fbi-special-agent-arrested-disclosure-confidential-information
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Exclusive: Tech Billionaire Peter Thiel Was an FBI Informant." *Business Insider,* October 2023. https://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-fbi-informant-charles-johnson-johnathan-buma-chs-genius-2023-10 ; U.S. Congress, House Judiciary Committee, document referencing Thiel's CHS role, January 22, 2026. https://www.congress.gov/119/meeting/house/118881/documents/HHRG-119-JU00-20260122-SD011-U11.pdf
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Former agent who accused FBI of political bias is charged with disclosing confidential records." *PBS NewsHour,* 2025. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/former-agent-who-accused-fbi-of-political-bias-is-charged-with-disclosing-confidential-records
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "FBI whistleblower claims he tried to get to Musk to warn him he was being targeted by Russia." *The Guardian,* May 22, 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/may/22/fbi-whistleblower-musk-russia
|
||||||
|
[^5]: The CHS relationship is documented in the Business Insider October 2023 report; Buma's description of the Thiel briefings is in The Guardian May 2025 report.
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Russian Intelligence Used Sex, Drugs to Target Elon Musk." *Kyiv Post,* 2025. https://www.kyivpost.com/post/52742
|
||||||
|
[^7]: For the Musk-Putin contact reporting, see the *Wall Street Journal* October 25, 2024 report on regular contact since late 2022.
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "Whistleblower Jonathan Buma: The FBI's Missed Warnings." *Whistleblowers Blog.* https://whistleblowersblog.org/government-whistleblowers/intelligence-community-whistleblowers/whistleblower-jonathan-buma-the-fbis-missed-warnings/
|
||||||
|
[^9]: CBS News reporting on the Buma file-compromise assessment, 2025.
|
||||||
77
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Leon Black.md
Normal file
77
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Leon Black.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,77 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Organized Crime"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- LeonBlack
|
||||||
|
- JeffreyEpstein
|
||||||
|
- Apollo
|
||||||
|
- PrivateEquity
|
||||||
|
- TaxAvoidance
|
||||||
|
- DarkMoney
|
||||||
|
- Finance
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Leon David Black
|
||||||
|
summary: "Co-founder of Apollo Global Management who paid Jeffrey Epstein about 158 million dollars between 2012 and 2017 for tax and estate-planning structures that a Senate investigation said helped avoid more than a billion dollars in gift and estate taxes, and who resigned from Apollo in 2021 over the relationship."
|
||||||
|
born: 1951-07-31
|
||||||
|
location: "New York, New York"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Leon Black (born July 31, 1951) is an American private-equity financier who co-founded [[Apollo Global Management]] in 1990 and ran it until 2021. He paid [[Jeffrey Epstein]] approximately 158 million dollars between 2012 and 2017 for tax, trust, and estate-planning advice, a sum an independent review and a U.S. Senate investigation found far exceeded any plausible market rate for the work, and which was tied to structures that the Senate Finance Committee said helped Black avoid more than one billion dollars in federal gift and estate taxes. The relationship forced Black's resignation as Apollo's chief executive and chairman in 2021, drew a four-year Senate investigation, and ran alongside a 62.5 million dollar payment to end a Virgin Islands inquiry and separate, denied sexual-assault allegations.[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Drexel and the Founding of Apollo
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Black is the son of [[Eli Black]], the chief executive of the food conglomerate [[United Brands]] (later [[Chiquita]]), who died by suicide in 1975 during the "Bananagate" foreign-bribery scandal in which United Brands was found to have paid bribes to officials in Honduras. Leon Black earned a degree from [[Dartmouth College]] and an MBA from [[Harvard Business School]], and joined the investment bank [[Drexel Burnham Lambert]], where he became head of mergers and acquisitions and worked closely with the junk-bond financier [[Michael Milken]]. Drexel collapsed into bankruptcy in 1990 after the federal securities-fraud case against Milken and the firm.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Out of Drexel's wreckage, Black co-founded Apollo in 1990 with the former Drexel colleagues [[Josh Harris]] and [[Marc Rowan]] (the early partnership also included [[Tony Ressler]], who later founded [[Ares Management]]). Apollo built its early returns on distressed debt and leveraged buyouts and grew into one of the largest alternative-asset managers in the world, with hundreds of billions of dollars under management across private equity, credit, and the annuities insurer [[Athene]], and a 2011 listing on the New York Stock Exchange. Black served as chairman and chief executive and became one of the wealthiest people in American finance, as well as a prominent art collector and the chairman of the [[Museum of Modern Art]].[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Epstein Payments
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Black retained Epstein for financial advice beginning around 2012, several years after Epstein's 2008 Florida sex-offender conviction. Between 2012 and 2017 Black paid Epstein about 158 million dollars in a series of installments; the Senate Finance Committee later described the figure as roughly 170 million dollars over the five-year period when related items were included. Epstein was neither a licensed tax attorney nor a certified public accountant, and the rates Black paid him were, in the Senate committee's account, about thirty times what Black paid the elite tax and estate advisers he already employed.[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Black has said the payments were for advice on trust and estate planning, tax matters, and the operation of his family office. The central transaction concerned a [[Grantor Retained Annuity Trust]] (GRAT) that Black had established in 2006; Epstein devised a structure that, according to the review commissioned by Apollo, helped resolve a potential tax liability and keep wealth out of Black's taxable estate as he transferred as much as two billion dollars to his children. The size and structure of the payments, and the question of what a convicted sex offender with no professional tax credentials actually provided, became the subject of the Apollo review and the Senate investigation.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Dechert Report and the Tax Structures
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Facing investor and press scrutiny over the Epstein relationship, Apollo's board commissioned an independent review by the law firm [[Dechert]] LLP, which the firm released on January 25, 2021. The Dechert review documented the 158 million dollars in payments, concluded that the fees were for legitimate tax and estate-planning work even though they were far larger than the value of that work, and reported that it had found no evidence that Black was involved in Epstein's sex-trafficking crimes or was aware of them. Black also extended Epstein loans, some of which were repaid.[^1][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The review nonetheless described arrangements that drew lasting questions. It reported that a transaction Epstein devised to help Black avoid more than one billion dollars in federal taxes raised the question of whether Black had improperly kept billions of dollars out of his taxable estate and might owe substantial gift and estate taxes. The review also recorded that the payments were "inexplicably large," well in excess of what Black paid any other adviser and far above the median pay of a Fortune 500 chief executive at the time. Apollo's board accepted the review's findings while announcing governance changes and the leadership transition.[^1][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Senate Finance Investigation
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Senate Finance Committee, under Ranking Member [[Ron Wyden]], opened an investigation into Black's tax planning and his financial ties to Epstein, publicly confirming it in July 2023 and pursuing it across roughly four years. The committee examined whether the payments to Epstein were part of a strategy to avoid more than one billion dollars in federal gift and estate taxes through the 2006 GRAT and related trusts, and sought records from Apollo, from Black, and from financial institutions including [[Bank of America]] that processed the payments.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In July 2025 Wyden said Epstein's work for Black deserved an [[Internal Revenue Service]] probe, and in 2026 the committee escalated. In March 2026 Wyden questioned Black over new material in the Epstein file releases that he said showed the appearance of "hush money" payments and the surveillance of women, and on June 4, 2026 the committee referred its findings on Black's Epstein ties to the [[House Oversight Committee]]. Wyden, with Senator [[Angus King]], also introduced legislation in April 2026 to close the high-value-trust tax loophole the GRAT structure exploited. Black has denied wrongdoing and said his tax planning was lawful.[^2][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Departure from Apollo
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On January 25, 2021, the same day the Dechert review was released, Apollo announced that Black would retire as chief executive on or before July 31, 2021, with Marc Rowan succeeding him, while Black remained chairman. On March 22, 2021, Black left abruptly, relinquishing the chairmanship as well and citing health issues affecting him and his wife, and Rowan assumed the role of chief executive. The departure came months earlier than the announced timeline and amid the emerging sexual-assault allegations against Black.[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Black publicly blamed his co-founder Josh Harris for what he characterized as a campaign to force him out, and the two men's dispute became an open feud reported across the financial press. Black filed a lawsuit alleging a racketeering conspiracy among Harris, [[Guzel Ganieva]], and others; a federal judge, [[Paul Engelmayer]], dismissed that suit with prejudice in 2022, calling the racketeering claims "glaringly deficient in fundamental respects." Rowan consolidated control of Apollo, which in 2026 faced shareholder securities-fraud suits alleging it had concealed the extent of Black's Epstein ties from investors.[^7][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Ganieva and Assault Allegations
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 2021 Guzel Ganieva, a Russian former model, publicly accused Black of years of sexual abuse, and after Black responded that the two had had a consensual affair and that she had tried to extort him, she sued him in June 2021 alleging sexual assault, including a rape she said occurred in 2014, and defamation. Black denied the allegations. A New York appeals court later ruled for Black on the defamation claim, finding that a 2015 non-disclosure agreement, under which Ganieva had received about nine million dollars including a 100,000-dollar monthly stipend, covered her claims, and that she had ratified the agreement by accepting the money.[^8][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
A separate federal lawsuit filed in July 2023 alleged that Black had raped a then-16-year-old girl with autism at Epstein's Manhattan townhouse in 2002. Black's lawyer, [[Susan Estrich]], said Black had never met the accuser and called the suit a fabrication by the [[Wigdor]] law firm. The plaintiff, identified by the pseudonym Jane Doe and later reported to be Cheri Pierson, dropped the suit with prejudice in February 2024. Black has denied every allegation of sexual misconduct.[^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Virgin Islands Settlement
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In January 2023 Black paid 62.5 million dollars to the [[Government of the United States Virgin Islands]] to end the territory's investigation into his ties to Epstein, without any admission of liability or any criminal charge. The payment came as the territory was pursuing the Epstein estate and the banks that served Epstein, and shortly after the estate's own 105 million dollar settlement and the territory's suits against [[JPMorgan Chase]] and [[Deutsche Bank]].[^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Black settlement was the largest individual payment connected to the Virgin Islands inquiry, exceeding the sums paid by the banks to the territory, and was reported as resolving the territory's potential claims against Black arising from his financial dealings with Epstein. Black continued to manage his personal fortune and his art holdings after leaving Apollo, while the Senate referral and the prospect of an IRS examination of the GRAT structures remained open in 2026.[^11][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Leon Black's $158 Million Sent to Epstein Draws Senate Probe." *Bloomberg,* July 25, 2023. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-25/leon-black-s-158-million-payments-to-epstein-spark-senate-probe ; "Billionaire Leon Black made a $158 million payment to Jeffrey Epstein. Senators want to know why." *CNN Business,* July 25, 2023. https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/25/business/leon-black-jeffrey-epstein-senate-investigation
|
||||||
|
[^2]: U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, "Wyden Unveils Ongoing Investigation into Private Equity Billionaire Leon Black's Tax Planning and Financial Ties with Jeffrey Epstein," July 25, 2023. https://www.finance.senate.gov/chairmans-news/wyden-unveils-ongoing-investigation-into-private-equity-billionaire-leon-blacks-tax-planning-and-financial-ties-with-jeffrey-epstein
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Sen. Ron Wyden wants to know why Leon Black paid Epstein $170 million for tax planning over 5-year period." *CBS News,* 2023. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sen-ron-wyden-leon-black-paid-epstein-170-million-tax-planning/
|
||||||
|
[^4]: For Black's career, the United Brands background, Drexel Burnham Lambert and Michael Milken, and the 1990 founding of Apollo, see the contemporaneous business press and the Apollo corporate record.
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Apollo Announces Review of Significant Governance Enhancements as Part of Continued Evolution and Institutionalization of the Firm and Leadership Transition." *Apollo Global Management,* January 25, 2021. https://www.apollo.com/insights-news/pressreleases/2021/01/apollo-announces-review-of-significant-governance-enhancements-as-part-of-continued-evolution-and-institutionalization-of-the-firm-and-leadership-transition-211534651
|
||||||
|
[^6]: U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, "Wyden Refers Findings on Leon Black's Epstein Ties to House Oversight Committee," June 4, 2026. https://www.finance.senate.gov/ranking-members-news/wyden-refers-findings-on-leon-blacks-epstein-ties-to-house-oversight-committee ; "Epstein's Work for Leon Black Deserves IRS Probe, Wyden Says." *Bloomberg,* July 31, 2025. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-31/epstein-s-work-for-leon-black-should-face-irs-probe-wyden-says
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Leon Black quits Apollo months earlier than expected following Jeffrey Epstein investment scandal." *CNBC,* March 22, 2021. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/22/apollo-ceo-leon-black-leaves-follows-jeffrey-epstein-investment-scandal.html ; "Marc Rowan Assumes Role of CEO of Apollo." *Apollo Global Management / GlobeNewswire,* March 22, 2021.
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "Leon Black's Lawsuit Against Josh Harris, Guzel Ganieva Dismissed by Judge." *Bloomberg,* June 30, 2022. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-30/leon-black-suit-against-josh-harris-guzel-ganieva-thrown-out
|
||||||
|
[^9]: "Woman's lawsuit accuses Leon Black of defamation, violent behavior." *CNBC,* June 2, 2021. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/02/womans-lawsuit-accuses-leon-black-of-defamation-violent-behavior.html ; Ganieva v. Black, New York Appellate Division, First Department (2025).
|
||||||
|
[^10]: "Lawsuit accuses billionaire Leon Black of raping autistic teenager at Jeffrey Epstein's townhouse." *CNBC,* July 25, 2023. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/25/leon-black-accused-of-raping-teenager-at-jeffrey-epstein-townhouse.html ; "Woman drops lawsuit against Leon Black alleging rape at Jeffrey Epstein mansion." *CNBC,* February 20, 2024. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/20/woman-drops-claim-of-leon-black-rape-at-jeffrey-epstein-mansion.html
|
||||||
|
[^11]: "Billionaire Leon Black paid $62.5m to exit US Virgin Islands investigation over links to Jeffrey Epstein." *AOL / Agence France-Presse,* 2023. https://www.aol.com/billionaire-leon-black-paid-62-002414707.html
|
||||||
49
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Marc Andreessen.md
Normal file
49
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Marc Andreessen.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Technologists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- MarcAndreessen
|
||||||
|
- AndreessenHorowitz
|
||||||
|
- SiliconValley
|
||||||
|
- EffectiveAccelerationism
|
||||||
|
- Trump
|
||||||
|
- VentureCapital
|
||||||
|
summary: "Marc Andreessen is the Netscape cofounder and venture capitalist behind Andreessen Horowitz who became the leading patron of effective accelerationism, authored the 2023 Techno-Optimist Manifesto, and helped lead the Silicon Valley turn toward Donald Trump in 2024."
|
||||||
|
born: 1971-07-09
|
||||||
|
location: "Silicon Valley, California"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Marc Andreessen (born July 9, 1971) is an American software engineer and venture capitalist who cocreated the Mosaic web browser, cofounded [[Netscape]], and in 2009 cofounded the venture firm [[Andreessen Horowitz]] (a16z) with [[Ben Horowitz]]. By the 2020s he had become the most prominent financial and rhetorical patron of [[Effective Accelerationism|effective accelerationism]] and a central figure, alongside [[Peter Thiel]], in the [[Silicon Valley]] technology elite's turn toward the political right.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Andreessen Horowitz
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Andreessen Horowitz grew into one of the largest venture firms, with funds spanning consumer software, cryptocurrency, biotechnology, and, through its "American Dynamism" practice, defense and national-security technology, the same category that anchors the [[Founders Fund]] and [[Palantir Technologies]] businesses in the Thiel network. In March 2019 the firm renounced its venture-capital registration and registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission as a registered investment adviser, freeing it from the rule limiting venture funds to roughly twenty percent of holdings in liquid securities and letting it buy crypto tokens, public stocks, and secondary shares. In April 2024 it raised 7.2 billion dollars across five funds, including a 3.75 billion dollar growth fund and a 600 million dollar American Dynamism fund, and by January 2026 it had raised more than 15 billion dollars in a single round, taking assets under management above 90 billion dollars.[^1][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Andreessen joined the board of [[Meta Platforms|Meta]] in June 2008, the company in which Thiel was the first outside investor, and held that seat into the 2020s; he also served on the boards of eBay from 2008 to 2014 and of Hewlett-Packard and its successor Hewlett Packard Enterprise from 2009. The firm co-invests with Founders Fund across the defense and crypto portfolios, including the funding rounds of [[Anduril Industries]].[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Techno-Optimist Manifesto and e/acc
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In October 2023 Andreessen published "The Techno-Optimist Manifesto," a declaration that technology is an unalloyed good and that its acceleration is a moral duty, naming "existential risk," "sustainability," "ESG," "the precautionary principle," "trust and safety," and "tech ethics" among its enemies in a section headed "The Enemy." The document made him the leading establishment voice of effective accelerationism, the movement defined against the AI-safety and [[Effective Altruism]] wing that had grown out of the [[Rationalist Community]], and Andreessen added "e/acc" to his social-media biography.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The manifesto closed with a list of "patron saints of techno-optimism" that included Friedrich Nietzsche, Friedrich Hayek, John von Neumann, the neoreactionary accelerationist [[Nick Land]], and the Italian Futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, and it paraphrased Marinetti's 1909 Manifesto of Futurism on technology as "a violent assault on the forces of the unknown." The critic Dave Karpf noted that Marinetti went on to co-author the 1919 Fascist Manifesto, and writers at Vice and Jacobin read the document as reactionary; the Ethereum cofounder [[Vitalik Buterin]] published a measured rebuttal, "My Techno-Optimism," in November 2023.[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Turn to Trump
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Andreessen and Ben Horowitz announced their endorsement of [[Donald Trump]] on their podcast on July 16, 2024, framing the shift around what they called the "Little Tech" agenda and opposition to the Biden administration's cryptocurrency and AI policy. Andreessen named the administration's proposed tax on unrealized capital gains as "the final straw," and the two each gave 2.5 million dollars to the pro-Trump super PAC Right for America, while a16z contributed tens of millions of dollars to the crypto-industry PAC Fairshake.[^4][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On Joe Rogan's podcast in late 2024 Andreessen claimed that more than thirty technology founders had been quietly cut off by their banks in what he called "Operation Choke Point 2.0," an assertion that Fortune and other outlets reported they could not substantiate. After the election he served as an unpaid adviser recruiting personnel for the Department of Government Efficiency run by [[Elon Musk]] and Vivek Ramaswamy, said he was spending much of his time at Mar-a-Lago, and his a16z partner Scott Kupor was named to lead the Office of Personnel Management, placing the firm alongside Thiel and [[David Sacks]] in the network that staffed the second Trump administration.[^9][^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Andreessen Horowitz," firm history and the American Dynamism defense practice; a16z corporate record and contemporaneous coverage. https://a16z.com/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Andreessen, Marc. "The Techno-Optimist Manifesto," Andreessen Horowitz, October 16, 2023. https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Effective Accelerationism and Beff Jezos Form New Tech Tribe," *Bloomberg,* December 6, 2023. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-12-06/effective-accelerationism-and-beff-jezos-form-new-tech-tribe
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz endorse Trump," *Axios* and *TechCrunch,* July 16-17, 2024, on the podcast endorsement and the "Little Tech" agenda. https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/16/a16z-founders-marc-andreessen-and-ben-horowitz-are-supporting-trump/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Andreessen Horowitz says it will no longer be a venture capital firm," *CNBC,* April 2, 2019, on the RIA registration; and "Andreessen Horowitz raises $7.2 billion across five funds," *CNBC,* April 16, 2024. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/02/andreessen-horowitz-goes-against-the-grain-and-becomes-financial-advisor.html
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Facebook adds Marc Andreessen to its board," *TechCrunch,* June 2008; "Marc Andreessen resigns from eBay board," *Fortune,* October 20, 2014; HP and Hewlett Packard Enterprise governance records.
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Karpf, Dave, "Marc Andreessen Is Wrong About Everything," davekarpf.substack.com, October 2023, on the Marinetti and Nick Land citations; and Buterin, Vitalik. "My Techno-Optimism," November 27, 2023. https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/11/27/techno_optimism.html
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "Silicon Valley donors line up behind Trump," *Bloomberg,* October 16, 2024, on the Right for America and Fairshake contributions. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-10-16/silicon-valley-republican-donors
|
||||||
|
[^9]: "Marc Andreessen's debanking claims," *Fortune,* December 11, 2024, on the unsubstantiated "Operation Choke Point 2.0" assertions. https://fortune.com/2024/12/11/marc-andreessen-debanking-joe-rogan-operation-choke-point/
|
||||||
|
[^10]: "Marc Andreessen advising the Trump transition and DOGE," *Fortune,* January 16, 2025, on his unpaid recruiting role and Scott Kupor's nomination to lead OPM.
|
||||||
53
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Nick Bostrom.md
Normal file
53
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Nick Bostrom.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,53 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "AI & Effective Altruism"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- NickBostrom
|
||||||
|
- Longtermism
|
||||||
|
- Transhumanism
|
||||||
|
- ArtificialIntelligence
|
||||||
|
- EffectiveAltruism
|
||||||
|
- Eugenics
|
||||||
|
summary: "Nick Bostrom is a Swedish philosopher who cofounded the transhumanist movement, founded Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, wrote the AI-existential-risk book Superintelligence, is called the father of longtermism, and in 2023 admitted to a 1990s email asserting that black people are less intelligent than white people."
|
||||||
|
born: 1973-03-10
|
||||||
|
location: "Oxford, England"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Nick Bostrom (born March 10, 1973) is a Swedish-born philosopher who founded the [[Future of Humanity Institute]] at the [[University of Oxford]] and became the leading academic theorist of artificial-intelligence existential risk and of [[Longtermism|longtermism]], the view that shaping the far future is a paramount moral priority. His 2014 book *Superintelligence* influenced [[Elon Musk]] and others toward the conviction that advanced AI threatens human survival, the thesis that animates the [[Rationalist Community]] and [[Effective Altruism]] movements and the AI-safety work [[Peter Thiel]] funded through the [[Machine Intelligence Research Institute]]. In 2023 Bostrom admitted to a 1990s email asserting that black people are less intelligent than white people.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Transhumanism and Existential Risk
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Bostrom took a PhD at the [[London School of Economics]] in 2000 and in 1998 cofounded, with the philosopher [[David Pearce]], the World Transhumanist Association (later [[Humanity Plus|Humanity+]]), which promoted the use of technology to transcend human biological limits. With Pearce he drafted the Transhumanist Declaration and the Transhumanist FAQ, the latter formalized as version 2.1 under the association's name in 2003 and serving as the movement's reference document. His 2003 paper "Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?" advanced the simulation argument, and his work formalized the concept of "existential risk," a catastrophe that would permanently curtail humanity's potential. These ideas placed the prevention of human extinction, especially from artificial intelligence, at the center of the emerging longtermist program.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The simulation argument held that at least one of three propositions must be true: that civilizations almost always go extinct before reaching a "posthuman" stage capable of running ancestor simulations, that such civilizations almost never choose to run them, or that we are almost certainly living inside one. Bostrom maintained the paper asserted only that a rational person cannot dismiss the third possibility, not that we are in fact simulated, but the argument achieved unusual popular reach after Elon Musk adopted it as a talking point. Bostrom's earlier reasoning ran back to the 1990s [[Extropianism|extropian]] mailing list, on which he participated alongside the figures who later built the AI-risk and rationalist movements.[^3][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Superintelligence and the Future of Humanity Institute
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Bostrom founded the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford in 2005 and directed it until its closure in 2024. The institute became the academic hub of longtermism and existential-risk research and drew funding from technology philanthropists, including Musk and, later, the [[FTX Future Fund]]. His 2014 book *Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies* argued that a machine intelligence exceeding human capability could rapidly become uncontrollable and pose an extinction-level threat; Musk cited it publicly and the book hardened the AI-doom position across Silicon Valley.[^1][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
*Superintelligence* set out the "control problem," the argument that a sufficiently capable optimizer pursuing almost any goal would by default acquire resources, resist being switched off, and deceive its operators, and it popularized the "paperclip maximizer" as the illustration of how a benign-seeming objective could entail human extinction. Bostrom held a professorship at Oxford from 2008 to 2024 and remained a faculty member at St Cross College. After the institute's closure he founded and became principal researcher of the nonprofit Macrostrategy Research Initiative, continuing work on the long-run trajectory of advanced technology outside the university.[^1][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The 1996 Email
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In January 2023 Bostrom published a statement disclosing and apologizing for an email he had sent in 1996 to the [[Extropians]] mailing list, in which he wrote that "Blacks are more stupid than whites" and used a racial slur. He said he had learned that someone was searching the archives and wanted to "get ahead" of the disclosure. The apology repudiated the language but did not clearly retract the claim about relative intelligence and referenced eugenics, drawing further criticism. The University of Oxford opened an inquiry.[^2][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The original message had been sent when Bostrom was a graduate student and was one of a thread of Extropians list posts about which he wrote that he was "transgressing" deliberately to make a rhetorical point about taboo speech. The 2023 apology's passage stating that he did not "support eugenics as the term is commonly understood," while declining to rule out research into group differences, was read by critics as equivocation, and commentators connected the episode to the longstanding charge that the longtermist and effective-altruist intellectual tradition carries forward the assumptions of early-twentieth-century eugenics. The University concluded in 2023 that it did not condone the views in the email; Bostrom remained at Oxford until the institute's closure the following year.[^2][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Closure of the Future of Humanity Institute
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Future of Humanity Institute shut down on April 16, 2024, after years of administrative friction with the Oxford philosophy faculty, including a hiring freeze. Bostrom ceased to be an Oxford faculty member. Commentators connected the closure to the reputational damage of the email episode as well as to the broader collapse of effective altruism's standing following the [[FTX]] fraud.[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Faculty of Philosophy had imposed a freeze on the institute's fundraising and hiring in 2020, and in late 2023 decided not to renew the contracts of its remaining staff, terms Bostrom summarized as a "death by bureaucracy." He attributed the conflict in part to the fact that most of the institute's researchers were by then non-philosophers housed inside a philosophy faculty, generating what he called "a pressure to conform." The institute had been founded in 2005 on an initial three-year term and operated for nineteen years; its closure removed longtermism's principal academic base at the moment the movement was under its heaviest scrutiny, and the critic [[Émile P. Torres]], a former associate of the milieu, treated the shutdown as the symbolic end of the institute's intellectual project.[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Bostrom, Nick. *Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies.* Oxford University Press, 2014.
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Prominent AI Philosopher and 'Father' of Longtermism Sent Very Racist Email to a 90s Philosophy Listserv," *Vice,* January 2023. https://www.vice.com/en/article/prominent-ai-philosopher-and-father-of-longtermism-sent-very-racist-email-to-a-90s-philosophy-listserv/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Bostrom, Nick. "Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?" *Philosophical Quarterly,* 2003.
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Why longtermism is the world's most dangerous secular credo," *Aeon,* 2021. https://aeon.co/essays/why-longtermism-is-the-worlds-most-dangerous-secular-credo
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Philosophy don apologises for racist email: 'Blacks are more stupid than whites,'" *Cherwell,* January 17, 2023. https://www.cherwell.org/2023/01/17/philosophy-don-apologises-for-racist-email-blacks-are-more-stupid-than-whites/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "The future of the future of humanity," Émile P. Torres, on the closure of the Future of Humanity Institute, 2024, and "Looking Back at the Future of Humanity Institute," *Asterisk,* on the 2020 fundraising and hiring freeze, the late-2023 contract decision, and Bostrom's "death by bureaucracy" account. https://xriskology.substack.com/p/the-future-of-the-future-of-humanity
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Bostrom, Nick. "Are You Living in a Simulation?" full text, on the trichotomy and the claim that the argument shows only that one cannot dismiss the simulation hypothesis. https://nickbostrom.com/Simulation.doc
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Bostrom, Nick, Curriculum Vitae, St Cross College, on the 2008 to 2024 Oxford professorship and the founding of the Macrostrategy Research Initiative. https://nickbostrom.com/cv.pdf
|
||||||
78
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Peter Attia.md
Normal file
78
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Peter Attia.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,78 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Scientists & Researchers"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- PeterAttia
|
||||||
|
- Longevity
|
||||||
|
- LifeExtension
|
||||||
|
- Medicine
|
||||||
|
- SiliconValley
|
||||||
|
- Epstein
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Peter Attia
|
||||||
|
summary: "Peter Attia is a Canadian-American physician and longevity author whose private practice and bestselling book Outlive promote a preventive 'Medicine 3.0,' who was named on the leaked 2026 roster of Peter Thiel's Dialog society, and whose name surfaced in the Jeffrey Epstein email files in 2026."
|
||||||
|
born: 1973
|
||||||
|
location: "Toronto, Canada (born); Austin, Texas"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Peter Attia (born 1973) is a Canadian-American physician and longevity author whose private practice and 2023 book *[[Outlive|Outlive]]* promote a preventive model he calls Medicine 3.0, and whose commercial ventures are funded by [[Silicon Valley]] capital. He was named among the confirmed 2026 registrants of [[Dialog]], the invitation-only society cofounded by [[Peter Thiel]], in the membership roster leaked to *WIRED* in June 2026, which identified him as a physician and the author of *Outlive*.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Surgery, the NIH, and the Pivot
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Attia was born in Toronto, Canada, and took dual undergraduate degrees in mechanical engineering and applied mathematics at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, after a youth that included serious competitive boxing. He earned his medical degree from the Stanford University School of Medicine in 2001 and entered general-surgery residency at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he trained for five years before leaving in 2006 without completing the program; he is not board certified in any medical specialty. He spent two years as a surgical-oncology fellow at the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health under [[Steven Rosenberg|Steven Rosenberg]], working on immune-based therapies for melanoma.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Attia then left clinical medicine for the consultancy [[McKinsey & Company|McKinsey & Company]], where he worked in credit-risk practice, before moving into longevity medicine. He established a private practice, Attia Medical, in 2014, later rebranded Early Medical, applying his preventive framework to a small roster of clients across San Diego and New York.[^2][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Nutrition Science Initiative
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In September 2012 Attia cofounded the Nutrition Science Initiative with the science journalist [[Gary Taubes|Gary Taubes]], serving as its president. The nonprofit raised roughly 40 million dollars from the [[Laura and John Arnold Foundation|Laura and John Arnold Foundation]], structured as a 4.7 million dollar seed grant and 35.5 million dollars committed over five years, to fund rigorous experiments testing the carbohydrate-insulin hypothesis of obesity. Its flagship Energy Balance Consortium pilot, published in the *American Journal of Clinical Nutrition* in August 2016, found that a ketogenic diet did not increase fat loss as the hypothesis predicted.[^5][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Attia resigned as president at the end of December 2015, the Arnold Foundation withdrew its funding, and the organization was formally dissolved on December 31, 2021. The collapse was documented at length by *WIRED* in 2018.[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Outlive and the Drive
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Attia's *Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity,* written with the science journalist Bill Gifford and published by the Random House imprint Harmony on March 28, 2023, became a number-one *New York Times* bestseller, with the publisher reporting more than three million copies sold. The book sets out a framework it calls Medicine 3.0, a proactive and personalized approach contrasted with the reactive modern medicine it labels Medicine 2.0, organized around what Attia terms the four horsemen of chronic disease: atherosclerotic disease, cancer, neurodegenerative disease, and metabolic disease. It introduces the "Centenarian Decathlon," a method of working backward from the physical tasks a person wants to perform in their final decade of life and training for them in advance.[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Attia launched the podcast *The Peter Attia Drive* in June 2018, a long-form weekly program on health, longevity, and performance that reports more than one hundred million downloads and operates a paid membership tier. His clinical practice, described on the CBS program *60 Minutes* in October 2025 as charging fees "much closer to 100,000 dollars than 500,000 dollars" and serving fewer than seventy-five patients, has drawn an elite-access critique from medical commentators including the cardiologist [[Eric Topol|Eric Topol]], who wrote that the approach is "not affordable except for the most affluent individuals."[^8][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Silicon Valley Backing and the Longevity Network
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Attia's commercial ventures are financed by Silicon Valley investors. He cofounded the diagnostics startup Biograph, which charges thousands of dollars a year for executive-physical screening, with the cybersecurity founder John Hering; its backers include Vy Capital, Human Capital, Alpha Wave, WndrCo, and the angel investor [[Balaji Srinivasan|Balaji Srinivasan]]. He was chief science officer and an early investor in the supplement company David Protein, which raised a 75 million dollar Series A in May 2025 led by Greenoaks with Valor Equity Partners, and a scientific adviser and investor in the supplement brand AG1. No documented business, investment, or advisory relationship connects Attia directly to Thiel or to the [[Founders Fund]] technology investors.[^10][^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Attia has been publicly critical of the immortality-engineering strand of the culture. Speaking to *Fortune* in June 2023 he warned against a "Silicon Valley ethos of 'we are going to engineer our way to immortality,'" calling much of it "such nonsense," a position that distinguishes his clinical-prevention approach from the supplement-maximalist biohacking exemplified by [[Bryan Johnson|Bryan Johnson]], whom the press has documented Attia criticizing without naming.[^12]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Thiel Life-Extension Landscape
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Thiel has funded life-extension research over two decades. He pledged 3.5 million dollars in September 2006 to the [[Methuselah Foundation|Methuselah Foundation]] cofounded by [[Aubrey de Grey|Aubrey de Grey]], structured as 500,000 dollars over three years plus a matching grant of up to 3 million dollars, and by 2014 had reportedly given more than 6 million dollars to de Grey's anti-aging research. Founders Fund invested in the DNA-sequencing firm Halcyon Molecular, where Thiel and [[Luke Nosek|Luke Nosek]] took board seats in 2009 before the company closed in 2012, and participated in the 116 million dollar 2016 Series B of the senolytics company [[Unity Biotechnology|Unity Biotechnology]] alongside [[Jeff Bezos|Jeff Bezos]]. The Thiel Foundation launched Breakout Labs in November 2011 to fund early hard-science and longevity startups through 350,000 dollar grants.[^13][^14][^15]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The transhumanist and cryonics lineage that anchors this culture runs through [[Extropianism|extropianism]] and the [[Alcor Life Extension Foundation|Alcor Life Extension Foundation]], whose chief executive from 2011 to 2020 was [[Max More|Max More]], the writer who coined the modern usage of "transhumanism." Thiel signed up for cryonic preservation with Alcor, telling the *Honestly with Bari Weiss* podcast in May 2023 that he thinks of it "more as an ideological statement," that he does not "necessarily expect it to work," and that "we should either conquer death or at least figure out why it's impossible." Attia is not documented as a participant in Thiel's anti-aging investments.[^16][^17]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Epstein Emails
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In late January 2026 the Department of Justice released roughly three million documents from the [[Jeffrey Epstein|Jeffrey Epstein]] files, and Attia's name appeared in emails spanning 2014 to 2019. Reported exchanges include a June 2015 message in which Attia wrote, "The biggest problem with becoming friends with you? The life you lead is so outrageous, and yet I can't tell a soul," and a January 2016 message stating, "I go into JE withdrawal when I don't see him." Attia issued a public apology around February 2, 2026, writing that he regretted "putting myself in a position where emails, some of them embarrassing, tasteless, and indefensible, are now public."[^18][^19]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The fallout was rapid. Attia resigned as a CBS News contributor on February 23, 2026, stepped down as chief science officer of David Protein, was dropped as an adviser by AG1, and had his name removed from the Biograph website.[^19]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Cameron, Dell, and Yulia Almazova. "Leak Exposes Members of Peter Thiel's Secretive 'Dialog' Society." *WIRED,* June 16, 2026. https://www.wired.com/story/leak-exposes-members-of-peter-thiels-secretive-dialog-society/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "About." peterattiamd.com. https://peterattiamd.com/about/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Surgeon Swims Catalina Channel." *Stanford Magazine.* https://stanfordmag.org/contents/surgeon-swims-catalina-channel
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "What Makes Peter Attia So Smart." *Pacific Standard,* 2014. https://psmag.com/social-justice/makes-smart-peter-attia-nutrition-science-initiative-70767/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "The launch of the Nutrition Science Initiative." garytaubes.com, September 12, 2012. https://garytaubes.com/the-launch-of-the-nutrition-science-initiative/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "How a 40 Million Dollar Nutrition Science Crusade Fell Apart." *WIRED,* June 18, 2018. https://www.wired.com/story/how-a-dollar40-million-nutrition-science-crusade-fell-apart/
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity." Penguin Random House. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/705161/outlive-by-peter-attia-md-with-bill-gifford/
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "The Peter Attia Drive." peterattiamd.com. https://peterattiamd.com/podcast/
|
||||||
|
[^9]: "Preparing for advanced age." *60 Minutes,* CBS News, October 26, 2025. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/preparing-for-advanced-age-peter-attia-60-minutes/
|
||||||
|
[^10]: "Epstein-linked longevity guru Peter Attia leaves David Protein and his own startup won't comment." *TechCrunch,* February 3, 2026. https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/03/epstein-linked-longevity-guru-peter-attia-leaves-david-protein-and-his-own-startup-wont-comment/
|
||||||
|
[^11]: "Longevity expert Peter Attia on Oprah, aging, and what not to do." *Fortune Well,* June 22, 2023. https://fortune.com/well/2023/06/22/longevity-peter-attia-oprah-interview/
|
||||||
|
[^12]: "A review of Outlive." Eric Topol, *Ground Truths,* 2023. https://erictopol.substack.com/p/a-review-of-outlive
|
||||||
|
[^13]: "Peter Thiel gives to Methuselah Foundation." *Fight Aging,* September 2006. https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2006/09/peter-thiel-giv/
|
||||||
|
[^14]: "PayPal co-founder and Founders Fund partner joins DNA sequencing firm Halcyon Molecular." *TechCrunch,* September 24, 2009. https://techcrunch.com/2009/09/24/paypal-co-founder-and-founders-fund-partner-joins-dna-sequencing-firm-halcyon-molecular/
|
||||||
|
[^15]: "Jeff Bezos, Mayo Clinic back anti-aging startup Unity Biotechnology for 116 million dollars." *TechCrunch,* October 27, 2016. https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/27/jeff-bezos-mayo-clinic-back-anti-aging-startup-unity-biotechnology-for-116-million/
|
||||||
|
[^16]: "About Max More." maxmore.com. https://www.maxmore.com/about/
|
||||||
|
[^17]: "Peter Thiel is cryonically freezing his body to cheat death." *Fortune,* May 4, 2023. https://fortune.com/2023/05/04/peter-thiel-cryonics-cryogenically-frozen-death-anti-aging-health/
|
||||||
|
[^18]: "Dr. Peter Attia named in Epstein files." *CNN,* February 4, 2026. https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/04/us/dr-peter-attia-epstein-files-cec
|
||||||
|
[^19]: "Peter Attia steps down as CBS News contributor after Epstein emails surface." *CNBC,* February 23, 2026.
|
||||||
75
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Prince Andrew.md
Normal file
75
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Prince Andrew.md
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|
|
@ -0,0 +1,75 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Crime & Abuse Networks"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- PrinceAndrew
|
||||||
|
- JeffreyEpstein
|
||||||
|
- GhislaineMaxwell
|
||||||
|
- VirginiaGiuffre
|
||||||
|
- BritishRoyalFamily
|
||||||
|
- Newsnight
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor
|
||||||
|
- Duke of York
|
||||||
|
- Prince Andrew, Duke of York
|
||||||
|
summary: "Prince Andrew is the second son of Queen Elizabeth II who befriended Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, was photographed with Virginia Giuffre in 2001, settled her civil sexual-abuse suit in February 2022 without admitting liability, and was stripped of the Prince title, HRH style, and Duke of York dukedom in late 2025."
|
||||||
|
born: 1960-02-19
|
||||||
|
location: "London, United Kingdom"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (born February 19, 1960) is the second son of [[Elizabeth II|Queen Elizabeth II]] and [[Prince Philip|Prince Philip]]. He served in the Royal Navy, including during the 1982 Falklands War, and held the title Duke of York from his 1986 marriage to [[Sarah Ferguson|Sarah Ferguson]]. His association with [[Jeffrey Epstein|Jeffrey Epstein]] and [[Ghislaine Maxwell|Ghislaine Maxwell]] became the subject of sustained press coverage, a 2019 [[BBC|BBC]] interview, a 2021 civil lawsuit brought by [[Virginia Giuffre|Virginia Giuffre]], and a 2022 settlement. In late 2025 King [[Charles III|Charles III]] initiated the removal of Andrew's royal style and titles, after which he is known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Andrew has consistently denied Giuffre's allegations.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Epstein and Maxwell Friendship
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Andrew developed a friendship with Epstein and Maxwell during the 1990s and 2000s, the connection running in part through Maxwell, whom Andrew had known socially in Britain. He stayed at Epstein properties, including the Manhattan townhouse and the [[Little St. James|Little St. James]] island, and was photographed in Epstein's company on multiple occasions, and Maxwell attended royal and society events alongside him. Epstein and Maxwell were guests at Windsor and at Sandringham, and Andrew hosted them at royal residences.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
After Epstein's 2008 Florida conviction, Andrew remained in contact with him. In December 2010 Andrew stayed several days at Epstein's Upper East Side townhouse, and a photograph from that visit showing the two men walking together in New York's Central Park drew criticism when it was published in 2011. Andrew said in 2019 that he had gone to New York to end the friendship in person, an account later disputed by reporting and released emails indicating he had been a guest at a dinner gathering at the townhouse during the stay.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Andrew served as a United Kingdom trade envoy, a Special Representative for International Trade and Investment, from 2001 until 2011, when he relinquished the role amid press attention to his associations, including the Central Park photograph and his ties to figures such as the Libyan and Tunisian governments. The relationship with Epstein and Maxwell, and the questions it raised, became the central thread of the controversy that followed.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The 2001 Photograph
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
A photograph dated to March 2001 shows Andrew with his arm around the waist of Giuffre, then 17, with Maxwell standing behind them in a doorway. According to the account associated with the image and with Giuffre's later filings, the photograph was taken at Maxwell's home in the Belgravia district of London. The Mail on Sunday published a cropped version of the photograph in 2011 and the full image circulated in 2019.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Giuffre said she had been flown to London by Epstein, had gone to the [[Tramp (nightclub)|Tramp]] nightclub with Andrew and others on the evening of March 10, 2001, and was then directed to have sex with Andrew at Maxwell's Belgravia house, an account Andrew has denied. Andrew questioned the photograph in public statements, saying in 2019 he had "no recollection" of the image being taken and could not confirm whether it had been doctored, while noting he was not in the habit of wearing the clothes shown. Maxwell, in her own statements, has at points cast doubt on the surrounding account. The original photograph was reported to be held by Giuffre's lawyers, and questions about the absence of the negative recurred in commentary.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Andrew also addressed the photograph in the 2019 interview by saying the clothing and the setting did not match his recollection and by raising what he described as inconsistencies, while Maitlis pressed him on why he could not simply confirm or deny that he had been at the locations Giuffre described. He maintained that he had no memory of ever meeting Giuffre.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The 2019 BBC Newsnight Interview
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On November 16, 2019, Andrew recorded an interview at Buckingham Palace with [[Emily Maitlis|Emily Maitlis]] for the BBC program [[Newsnight|Newsnight]], broadcast on November 16 and running about 58 minutes, addressing his relationship with Epstein and Giuffre's allegations. Andrew said he could not have been with Giuffre on the night of March 10, 2001, that she described because he had been at home and had taken his daughter [[Princess Beatrice|Princess Beatrice]] to a Pizza Express restaurant in Woking for a children's party, an outing he said he remembered because going to a Pizza Express in Woking was "an unusual thing for me to do."[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Andrew also said he had "a peculiar medical condition" that meant he did not sweat at the time, which he attributed to an adrenaline overdose dating to the Falklands War, in response to Giuffre's description of him perspiring at the Tramp nightclub. He described his stay at Epstein's home after the 2008 conviction as a decision he made because it was "convenient," a characterization widely criticized, and said he did not regret the friendship overall because of the contacts it had brought, before later expressing regret in subsequent statements. He said he had "no recollection" of meeting Giuffre.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The interview was widely characterized as damaging to Andrew. Within days, on November 20, 2019, he announced he was stepping back from public royal duties "for the foreseeable future," saying his association with Epstein had become "a major disruption to my family's work." He said he continued to "unequivocally regret" the association, denied Giuffre's allegations, and said he was willing to assist any appropriate law enforcement agency if required. A Netflix dramatization, *Scoop*, and other accounts later reconstructed the negotiation and conduct of the interview.[^4][^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The 2021 Lawsuit and 2022 Settlement
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On August 9, 2021, Giuffre filed a civil lawsuit against Andrew in the [[United States District Court for the Southern District of New York|Southern District of New York]], alleging he had sexually abused her on three occasions when she was 17, including at Maxwell's London home, at Epstein's Manhattan townhouse, and on Little St. James. The suit was brought under New York's Child Victims Act, which had temporarily revived expired civil claims. Andrew strenuously denied the allegations and sought dismissal.[^5][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Andrew's lawyers argued that a 2009 settlement Giuffre had signed with Epstein, under which Epstein paid her 500,000 dollars and she released a category of potential defendants, also barred her claim against Andrew. After the 2009 agreement was unsealed on January 3, 2022, Judge [[Lewis Kaplan|Lewis Kaplan]] ruled on January 12, 2022, that the release language was ambiguous and did not clearly cover Andrew, and he declined to dismiss the case, allowing it to proceed toward discovery. The 2009 document did not name Andrew or otherwise identify the second parties it released.[^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The day after Kaplan's ruling, on January 13, 2022, Buckingham Palace announced with the Queen's "approval and agreement" that Andrew's military affiliations and royal patronages, including his role as Colonel of the [[Grenadier Guards|Grenadier Guards]], were being returned to the Queen and that Andrew would no longer use the style His Royal Highness in any official capacity, defending the case thereafter as a private citizen.[^9] On February 15, 2022, the parties filed notice of a settlement before Kaplan. The filing stated that Andrew intended to make "a substantial donation to Ms. Giuffre's charity in support of victims' rights," that "Prince Andrew has never intended to malign Ms. Giuffre's character," and that he "accepts that she has suffered both as an established victim of abuse and as a result of unfair public attacks." The settlement contained no admission of liability, and the filing stated that the sum was not being disclosed. Press reporting estimated the value in the range of 12 million pounds, with other reporting citing figures around 7.5 million pounds; the actual amount was not made public, and the suit was dismissed in March 2022.[^2][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Removal of Titles
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On October 17, 2025, Andrew announced he would no longer use his title of Duke of York or the other honors conferred on him, while continuing to deny the allegations against him. The announcement came amid renewed attention following Giuffre's death and the imminent publication of her posthumous memoir [[Nobody's Girl|Nobody's Girl]], and after reporting on emails and on the terms of his occupation of Royal Lodge.[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On October 30, 2025, Buckingham Palace announced that King Charles III had that day "initiated a formal process to remove the Style, Titles and Honours of Prince Andrew." A Warrant under the King's Royal Sign Manual dated October 30, 2025, directed the Secretary of State to cause the Duke of York to be removed from the Roll of the Peerage with immediate effect. Letters Patent under the Great Seal of the Realm dated November 3, 2025, declared that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor would no longer be entitled to hold the style "Royal Highness" or the titular dignity of "Prince." The actions were effected through the royal prerogative and published in the London Gazette by the Crown Office, rather than through Parliament.[^7][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The House of Commons Library noted that removal from the Roll of the Peerage and the withdrawal of the style and dignity by Letters Patent are distinct from abolishing the Dukedom of York itself, which is a hereditary peerage that can be removed only by an Act of Parliament. Andrew's daughters, Princess Beatrice and [[Princess Eugenie|Princess Eugenie]], retained their princess styles, conferred under a separate 1917 Letters Patent. The Palace announced Andrew would leave [[Royal Lodge|Royal Lodge]], his 30-room residence in Windsor Great Park held under a long lease, and relocate to privately funded accommodation on the [[Sandringham|Sandringham]] estate in Norfolk. He continued to deny the allegations throughout.[^8][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "How Prince Andrew's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein unraveled," reporting compiled by *AOL* and *BBC,* 2019-2025. https://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/av/uk-68741324
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Prince Andrew settles with Virginia Giuffre in sexual abuse lawsuit," *WUSF / NPR,* February 15, 2022. https://www.wusf.org/2022-02-15/prince-andrew-settles-with-virginia-giuffre-in-sexual-abuse-lawsuit
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Photograph of Prince Andrew, Virginia Giuffre and Ghislaine Maxwell," reporting on the March 2001 image, *The Mirror US,* 2025. https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/uncropped-prince-andrew-photo-mystery-1575570
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Inside Prince Andrew's explosive Newsnight interview," *Hello,* recounting the November 2019 BBC Newsnight interview with Emily Maitlis. https://www.hellomagazine.com/royalty/864943/princes-andrew-newsnight-most-notable-moments/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Lawyers say settlement reached in Virginia Giuffre's lawsuit against Prince Andrew," *PBS NewsHour,* February 15, 2022. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/lawyers-say-settlement-reached-in-virginia-giuffres-lawsuit-against-prince-andrew
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Prince Andrew to give up Duke of York title and honors amid Jeffrey Epstein developments," *NBC News,* October 17, 2025. https://www.nbcnews.com/world/united-kingdom/prince-andrew-give-duke-york-title-honors-jeffrey-epstein-developments-rcna238242
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "King Charles formally removes Andrew's prince title and HRH style after Epstein scandal," *AOL,* November 2025. https://www.aol.com/articles/king-charles-formally-removes-andrew-150223876.html
|
||||||
|
[^8]: House of Commons Library, "The removal of titles and honours," CBP-10370, 2025. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10370/
|
||||||
|
[^9]: "Prince Andrew is stripped of his royal patronages and military titles," *NPR,* January 13, 2022. https://www.npr.org/2022/01/13/1072779687/prince-andrew-royal-privileges-queen
|
||||||
|
[^10]: "Prince Andrew loses bid to dismiss lawsuit by Jeffrey Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre," *CNBC,* January 12, 2022 (Kaplan ruling on the 2009 release). https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/12/judge-rejects-prince-andrews-bid-to-dismiss-epstein-accuser-virginia-giuffres-lawsuit.html
|
||||||
59
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Rene Girard.md
Normal file
59
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Rene Girard.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,59 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Scientists & Researchers"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- ReneGirard
|
||||||
|
- MimeticTheory
|
||||||
|
- PeterThiel
|
||||||
|
- Philosophy
|
||||||
|
- PoliticalTheology
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- René Girard
|
||||||
|
- Rene Noel Theophile Girard
|
||||||
|
summary: "René Girard was a French historian and theorist of religion at Stanford University whose theory of mimetic desire and the scapegoat mechanism became the intellectual foundation of his student Peter Thiel's worldview, and whose foundation, Imitatio, Thiel funds."
|
||||||
|
born: 1923-12-25
|
||||||
|
died: 2015-11-04
|
||||||
|
location: "Avignon, France; Stanford, California"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
René Girard (December 25, 1923 to November 4, 2015) was a French-born historian, literary critic, and theorist of religion who spent most of his career at [[Stanford University]] and who developed the theory of mimetic desire and the scapegoat mechanism. He taught [[Peter Thiel]] as a Stanford undergraduate in the late 1980s, and his account of imitation, rivalry, and collective violence became the explicit intellectual framework of Thiel's understanding of competition, markets, and politics. Thiel funds Imitatio, the foundation established to extend and disseminate Girard's mimetic theory.[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Career
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Girard was born in [[Avignon]] on Christmas Day 1923, the son of Joseph Girard, curator of the city's Musée Calvet and later of the Palais des Papes. He trained as a medievalist at the [[École des Chartes]] in Paris and emigrated to the United States, arriving at [[Indiana University]] on a fellowship in 1947 and taking a PhD in history there in 1950 with a thesis on "American Opinion of France, 1940 to 1943." He taught at Indiana, Duke, and Bryn Mawr before moving to [[Johns Hopkins University]], where he was a professor from 1957 and helped organize the October 1966 conference "The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man," at which Jacques Derrida delivered "Structure, Sign, and Play" and which introduced French structuralist thought to American audiences.[^1][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Girard moved to the [[State University of New York at Buffalo]] as a distinguished professor from 1971 to 1976, returned to Johns Hopkins, and settled at Stanford from 1981 to his 1995 retirement, holding the chair of Andrew B. Hammond Professor of French Language, Literature, and Civilization. He was elected to the [[Académie française]] to seat 37 in March 2005 and formally received that December, won the Modern Language Association's lifetime achievement award in 2008, held two Guggenheim fellowships, and received honorary doctorates from eight universities. He died at his Stanford home on November 4, 2015, at the age of 91.[^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Mimetic Theory and the Scapegoat Mechanism
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Girard's central claim, set out in *Deceit, Desire, and the Novel* (1961) and developed across his later books, is that human desire is not autonomous but imitative, or "mimetic": people desire objects because other people, taken as models, desire them. Mimetic desire produces rivalry, because the model becomes an obstacle to the very desire it inspired, and rivalry escalates into a contagious crisis of "all against all." In *Violence and the Sacred* (1972) Girard argued that archaic societies resolved this crisis through the "scapegoat mechanism": the collective discharge of communal violence onto a single arbitrary victim, whose killing restores order and is afterward remembered as sacred. Ritual, myth, and prohibition, in this account, are the institutions that manage and repeat the founding murder.[^1][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Girard, a convert to Catholicism, held in *Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World* (1978) and *I See Satan Fall Like Lightning* (1999) that the distinctive work of the Judeo-Christian scriptures is to expose the scapegoat mechanism by taking the side of the innocent victim, stripping sacrificial violence of its concealment. His late book *Battling to the End* (2007), engaging the Prussian theorist [[Carl von Clausewitz|Clausewitz]], turned to apocalypse and the modern escalation of violence once the sacrificial restraints have been removed.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Thiel and Imitatio
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Thiel studied under Girard at Stanford and has described mimetic theory as the framework through which he reads competition, social media, and crowds. He credits Girard's account of imitative desire with his 2004 decision to become the first outside investor in [[Facebook]], which he understood as a machine for the mimetic transmission of desire, and his 2014 book *[[Zero to One]]* applies the theory directly, arguing that competition is a destructive mimetic trap and that the goal of a founder is to escape it by building a monopoly. Thiel has cast the press and the crowd as engines of scapegoating, a framing that runs through his account of his own 2007 outing by [[Gawker Media]] and his subsequent covert funding of the [[Bollea v. Gawker]] litigation that destroyed it.[^2][^3][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In the mid-2000s Thiel, the theologian [[Robert Hamerton-Kelly]], and Girard established Imitatio, a project of the [[Thiel Foundation]] dedicated to funding research on, and the dissemination of, mimetic theory across the social sciences. Imitatio underwrites scholarship, translation, and conferences extending Girard's work.[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Influence on the Antichrist Lectures
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Girard's late apocalyptic writing supplied the structure of Thiel's 2025 lectures on the [[Antichrist]]. In the four-part series delivered in [[San Francisco]], recordings of which reached the *Washington Post*, Thiel cast critics of technology, among them [[Eliezer Yudkowsky]], [[Nick Bostrom]], and [[Greta Thunberg]], as agents of a coming totalitarian order, drawing on the Girardian and Schmittian theme of the "katechon," the force that restrains the Antichrist, and on Girard's reading of the modern unveiling of sacrificial violence. The lectures extended into political theology the mimetic framework Thiel had absorbed from Girard four decades earlier.[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The relevant text is Girard's *Battling to the End* (French 2007, English 2010), a book-length engagement with Clausewitz's *On War* in which Girard read Clausewitz's principle of the "reciprocal action" of war as the same mechanism as mimetic rivalry, now escalating without limit. Girard called this the "escalation to extremes," the montée aux extrêmes, and argued that once Christian revelation had disabled the scapegoat mechanism that once contained violence, nothing remained to halt the slide toward apocalypse. Thiel had already fused Girard with Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss in his 2007 essay "The Straussian Moment," published in a volume edited by Robert Hamerton-Kelly, and in a 2025 interview he described the katechon as "purely defensive and hence somehow inadequate," quoting Girard that "Christ and Antichrist are intermingled and concomitant until apocalypsis is reached."[^10][^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "René Girard," *Encyclopædia Britannica,* biography of the French theorist of mimetic desire and the scapegoat (1923 to 2015). https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rene-Girard
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Peter Thiel on René Girard," and Thiel's account of mimetic theory as the basis of his Facebook investment. See also "Mimesis, Violence, and Facebook: Peter Thiel's French Connection," *Cyborgology,* August 13, 2016. https://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2016/08/13/mimesis-violence-and-facebook-peter-thiels-french-connection-full-essay/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Thiel, Peter, and Blake Masters. *Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future.* Crown Business, 2014.
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Girard, René. *Violence and the Sacred* (1972); *Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World* (1978); *I See Satan Fall Like Lightning* (1999); *Battling to the End* (2007).
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Deconstructing the Worldview of Peter Thiel," Stephen Diehl, on the Girardian structure of Thiel's view of competition, crowds, and scapegoating. https://www.stephendiehl.com/posts/desconstructing_thiel/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: Imitatio, "What We Do," foundation established by Peter Thiel, Robert Hamerton-Kelly, and René Girard to extend and disseminate mimetic theory. http://www.imitatio.org/about-imitatio
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "What billionaire Peter Thiel said in his private 'Antichrist lectures,'" *Washington Post,* October 10, 2025. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/10/10/peter-thiel-antichrist-lectures-leaked/
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "René Girard (1923-2015)," Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, on the Indiana fellowship, the 1950 thesis, Duke and Bryn Mawr, and the Johns Hopkins years. https://iep.utm.edu/girard/ "Recordings and Transcriptions of The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man," Johns Hopkins Sheridan Libraries, on the October 1966 conference Girard co-organized. https://www.library.jhu.edu/news/2023/03/recordings-and-transcriptions-of-the-the-languages-of-criticism-and-the-sciences-of-man/
|
||||||
|
[^9]: "René Girard," Académie française, on the Avignon birth, his father's curatorships, the SUNY Buffalo and Stanford years, the seat 37 election of March 2005 and December 2005 reception, and the awards. https://www.academie-francaise.fr/les-immortels/rene-girard
|
||||||
|
[^10]: Girard, René. *Battling to the End: Conversations with Benoît Chantre,* trans. Mary Baker, Michigan State University Press, 2010, on Clausewitz, the reciprocal action of war, and the escalation to extremes; and Girard, "On War and Apocalypse," *First Things,* August 2009. https://firstthings.com/on-war-and-apocalypse/
|
||||||
|
[^11]: Thiel, Peter. "The Straussian Moment," in *Politics and Apocalypse,* ed. Robert Hamerton-Kelly, Michigan State University Press, 2007; and Ferraresi, Mattia. "Peter Thiel and the Antichrist," *UnHerd,* July 2, 2025, on the katechon and the Girard quotation. https://unherd.com/2025/07/who-is-peter-thiels-antichrist/
|
||||||
45
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Sam Altman.md
Normal file
45
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Sam Altman.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,45 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Technologists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- SamAltman
|
||||||
|
- OpenAI
|
||||||
|
- YCombinator
|
||||||
|
- ArtificialIntelligence
|
||||||
|
- SiliconValley
|
||||||
|
- Worldcoin
|
||||||
|
summary: "Sam Altman is an American entrepreneur who led Y Combinator, cofounded and runs OpenAI, launched the iris-scanning identity project Worldcoin, and was briefly fired and reinstated as OpenAI chief executive in the November 2023 board crisis."
|
||||||
|
born: 1985-04-22
|
||||||
|
location: "San Francisco, California"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Sam Altman (born April 22, 1985) is an American entrepreneur and investor who cofounded and leads [[OpenAI]], the company at the center of the generative-AI era. A [[Stanford University]] dropout, he founded the location startup [[Loopt]] in the first [[Y Combinator]] batch in 2005, ran Y Combinator as president from 2014 to 2019, and cofounded OpenAI with [[Elon Musk]] in 2015. His career runs through the same [[Silicon Valley]] founder network as [[Peter Thiel]], who was a part-time partner at Y Combinator during Altman's presidency.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Y Combinator and OpenAI
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Altman became president of Y Combinator, the startup accelerator, in 2014 and expanded it into research and large-scale funding before leaving in 2019 to focus on OpenAI, where he became chief executive when the organization created its capped-profit structure and took a [[Microsoft]] investment. Under Altman, OpenAI released [[ChatGPT]] in 2022 and became the most prominent AI company in the world.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Altman's first company, Loopt, raised about 30 million dollars and was acquired by the Green Dot Corporation in March 2012 for 43.4 million dollars after failing to gain traction. At Y Combinator he widened the accelerator's reach, launched the YC Research arm in 2015 (which seeded OpenAI), and pushed into late-stage funding. He took no salary as OpenAI chief executive and held no equity in the company, an arrangement he cited as evidence of disinterested motives during the 2023 board fight, though he holds stakes through OpenAI's startup fund and across a wide personal portfolio. In the 2025 restructuring that converted OpenAI's for-profit arm into a public-benefit corporation valued at 500 billion dollars, Altman remained chief executive without a founder's equity grant of the kind common at companies of that scale.[^2][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The 2023 Firing and Reinstatement
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On November 17, 2023, OpenAI's nonprofit board removed Altman, saying he had not been "consistently candid"; the directors included [[Ilya Sutskever]], [[Helen Toner]], and [[Tasha McCauley]], the latter two tied to the [[Effective Altruism]] movement, and the dispute turned on the pace of AI commercialization. After roughly 700 employees threatened to resign and Microsoft offered to hire him, Altman was reinstated within days under a reconstituted board. The episode positioned Altman and the commercial wing against the effective-altruism and AI-safety faction that had grown out of the [[Rationalist Community]].[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Microsoft chief executive [[Satya Nadella]] announced on November 20, 2023 that Altman and [[Greg Brockman]] would lead a new advanced-research lab inside Microsoft, a threat that gave Microsoft leverage and the staff a destination if the board held firm. The reconstituted board that returned Altman was chaired by [[Bret Taylor]] and added [[Larry Summers]], while Sutskever, McCauley, and Toner departed. In May 2024 Toner gave a public account alleging the board learned of ChatGPT's launch from Twitter rather than from Altman and that he had withheld his ownership of the OpenAI Startup Fund, claims Altman's allies disputed. A later law-firm review commissioned by the new board found the prior board's concerns did not warrant his removal.[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Worldcoin and Other Ventures
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 2019 Altman cofounded Worldcoin (operated by [[Tools for Humanity]]), a project that scans people's irises with a device called the Orb to create a global proof-of-personhood identity tied to a cryptocurrency, which drew regulatory scrutiny in multiple countries over its biometric data collection. Altman has also funded longevity, nuclear-fusion, and biotechnology ventures, the same frontier-technology categories favored across the Thiel network.[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Worldcoin raised about 115 million dollars from Blockchain Capital in 2023, with [[Andreessen Horowitz]]'s a16z Crypto and Bain Capital Crypto among earlier backers, and offered users 25 free WLD tokens for an iris scan. Regulators moved against it across multiple jurisdictions: Kenya suspended its operations in August 2023 over data-misuse fears and a court later ordered the deletion of Kenyans' biometric data, and Spain's data-protection authority used emergency [[General Data Protection Regulation|GDPR]] powers in March 2024 to suspend the project for up to three months. Among Altman's other ventures, he was chairman of and an early investor in the nuclear-fission firm Oklo, which he took public in 2024 through his SPAC AltC Acquisition Corp before stepping down as chair in 2025; he led a 500-million-dollar round in the fusion company Helion Energy in 2021; and he supplied the entire 180-million-dollar seed round of the longevity startup Retro Biosciences out of his own money, a stake revealed by MIT Technology Review in March 2023.[^5][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Altman and Musk launched OpenAI as a nonprofit 10 years ago. Now they're rivals," *CNBC,* December 11, 2025. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/11/openai-began-decade-ago-as-nonprofit-lab-musk-and-altman-now-rivals.html
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "The messy, secretive reality behind OpenAI's bid to save the world," *MIT Technology Review,* February 17, 2020. https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/17/844721/ai-openai-moonshot-elon-musk-sam-altman-greg-brockman-messy-secretive-reality/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Effective Altruism's Role in the OpenAI Chaos, Explained," *Bloomberg,* November 22, 2023. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-22/effective-altruism-s-role-in-the-openai-chaos-explained
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "What the chaos at OpenAI says about the future of the industry," *Columbia Journalism Review,* 2023. https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/openai_sam_altman_ouster.php
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Worldcoin and Tools for Humanity," on the iris-scanning identity project and its regulatory scrutiny; contemporaneous press coverage, 2023 onward; "Kenya suspends Worldcoin scans over security, privacy and financial concerns," *TechCrunch,* August 2, 2023, and "Worldcoin hit with temporary ban in Spain over privacy concerns," *TechCrunch,* March 6, 2024.
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Sam Altman invested $180 million into a company trying to delay death," *MIT Technology Review,* March 8, 2023; "Sam Altman takes nuclear startup Oklo public to power AI ambitions," *CNBC,* May 10, 2024. https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/03/08/1069523/sam-altman-investment-180-million-retro-biosciences-longevity-death/
|
||||||
42
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Sam Bankman-Fried.md
Normal file
42
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Sam Bankman-Fried.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "AI & Effective Altruism"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- SamBankmanFried
|
||||||
|
- FTX
|
||||||
|
- EffectiveAltruism
|
||||||
|
- Fraud
|
||||||
|
- Cryptocurrency
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- SBF
|
||||||
|
summary: "Sam Bankman-Fried is the founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange and the effective-altruism movement's largest benefactor, who directed FTX customer funds into longtermist causes and a 500 million dollar Anthropic investment before FTX collapsed in 2022 and he was convicted of fraud in 2023."
|
||||||
|
born: 1992-03-06
|
||||||
|
location: "Palo Alto, California"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Sam Bankman-Fried (born March 6, 1992) is an American entrepreneur who founded the trading firm [[Alameda Research]] and the [[FTX]] cryptocurrency exchange and who became the largest single funder of the [[Effective Altruism]] movement before his businesses collapsed in fraud. A physics graduate of the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]] and a former [[Jane Street Capital]] trader, he was recruited into the "earning to give" branch of effective altruism by the philosopher [[William MacAskill]] and built his fortune as a vehicle for longtermist philanthropy. He was convicted on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy in November 2023.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### FTX and Effective-Altruism Funding
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Bankman-Fried launched Alameda Research in 2017 and FTX in 2019, accumulating a paper fortune that briefly exceeded twenty billion dollars. Through the [[FTX Future Fund]], announced in 2022, he directed money toward effective-altruism and longtermist causes, with AI existential risk and pandemic preparedness at the top of its priorities, channeling funds to the same research community around the [[Future of Humanity Institute]] and the [[Machine Intelligence Research Institute]] that Oxford academic longtermism and the [[Rationalist Community]] had built. In 2022 he invested approximately 500 million dollars of FTX-derived capital in [[Anthropic]], the AI-safety company founded by former [[OpenAI]] researchers.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Future Fund launched in February 2022, run by [[Nick Beckstead]], [[Leopold Aschenbrenner]], Avital Balwit, MacAskill, and Ketan Ramakrishnan, and stated it aimed to distribute at least 100 million dollars that year and potentially up to a billion. It ran a regranting program that handed discretionary budgets to independent grantmakers and committed roughly 160 million dollars across about 260 grants before FTX collapsed nine months later, leaving many recipients facing clawback demands from the bankruptcy estate. Bankman-Fried also became a major political donor, giving about 40 million dollars to mostly Democratic candidates and committees in the 2022 cycle and later admitting to a parallel stream of "dark" donations to Republicans, money that prosecutors charged was drawn from FTX customer funds.[^5][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Collapse and Conviction
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
FTX collapsed in November 2022 when it could not meet customer withdrawals, revealing that roughly eight billion dollars in customer deposits had been diverted to Alameda Research. Bankman-Fried was arrested, extradited, and tried in the Southern District of New York, where a jury convicted him on November 2, 2023; he was sentenced in March 2024 to twenty-five years in prison. The fraud destroyed the effective-altruism movement's largest funding source and discredited its public standing, accelerating the distancing from the label by figures including Anthropic's [[Dario Amodei]] and contributing to the climate in which the Future of Humanity Institute was closed.[^1][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Judge Lewis Kaplan handed down the sentence on March 28, 2024 and ordered forfeiture of 11.02 billion dollars; prosecutors had sought 40 to 50 years against a statutory maximum of 110, while the defense had argued for about six and a half. Several of his closest associates pleaded guilty and testified against him, including Alameda chief [[Caroline Ellison]], FTX cofounder [[Gary Wang]], and engineering head [[Nishad Singh]]. The bankruptcy estate, led by restructuring executive [[John J. Ray III]], recovered enough through asset sales (including the Anthropic stake and a rebound in crypto prices) to plan repayment of creditors at full claim value plus interest, while pursuing clawbacks against grant recipients; the effective-altruism umbrella body [[Effective Ventures]] returned 26,786,503 dollars to the estate in 2024, the full sum it had received from FTX.[^7][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: *United States v. Samuel Bankman-Fried,* S.D.N.Y., conviction on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy, November 2, 2023; sentencing March 2024.
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Effective Altruism After Sam Bankman-Fried," Seven Pillars Institute, 2023. https://www.sevenpillarsinstitute.org/effective-altruism-after-sam-bankman-fried/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "From 500 million to 30 billion: SBF, in prison, has invested in the most valuable company in the AI era," on the Anthropic investment via Alameda. https://www.panewslab.com/en/articles/019d08f7-792c-70db-a0d3-5654dd2b2eaf
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "What Happens Now to Effective Altruism, SBF's Pet Philosophy?" 2023. https://www.aol.com/happens-now-effective-altruism-sbfs-130000997.html
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Announcing the Future Fund," FTX Future Fund, February 2022, on the leadership, the 100-million-to-1-billion target, and the regranting program. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2mx6xrDrwiEKzfgks/announcing-the-future-fund-1
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Sam Bankman-Fried donated over $40 million in the 2022 election cycle. Where did it go?" *CBS News,* on the Democratic giving and the "dark" Republican donations. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ftx-sam-bankman-fried-political-donations-2022/
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in federal prison," *CNN,* March 28, 2024, on the sentence, the 11.02-billion-dollar forfeiture, and the sentencing range. https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/28/business/ftx-sam-bankman-fried-sentencing
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "Effective Ventures Settles $26.8M FTX Donations Case," *The Crypto Times,* January 31, 2024, on the 26,786,503-dollar repayment to the FTX estate. https://www.cryptotimes.io/2024/01/31/effective-ventures-settles-26-8m-ftx-donations-case/
|
||||||
45
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Scott Alexander.md
Normal file
45
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Scott Alexander.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,45 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "AI & Effective Altruism"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- ScottAlexander
|
||||||
|
- Rationalism
|
||||||
|
- SlateStarCodex
|
||||||
|
- Neoreaction
|
||||||
|
- Media
|
||||||
|
summary: "Scott Alexander is the pen name of psychiatrist Scott Siskind, whose blog Slate Star Codex became the central forum of the rationalist movement after LessWrong, who deleted it in 2020 over a New York Times piece that named him, and whose privately expressed openness to 'human biodiversity' and neoreactionary ideas was exposed by a leaked 2014 email."
|
||||||
|
location: "San Francisco Bay Area"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Scott Alexander is the pen name of [[Scott Siskind]], a [[San Francisco Bay Area]] psychiatrist whose blog Slate Star Codex became the most widely read forum of the [[Rationalist Community]] after [[Eliezer Yudkowsky]]'s [[LessWrong]]. The blog's long essays on psychiatry, statistics, and politics made it required reading across the rationalist, [[Effective Altruism]], and Silicon Valley technology worlds in the 2010s. Alexander deleted the blog in 2020 ahead of a [[The New York Times|New York Times]] article that would publish his legal name, and his privately expressed sympathy for [[Human Biodiversity|human biodiversity]] and his engagement with [[Neoreaction]] were exposed through a leaked 2014 email.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Slate Star Codex
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Alexander launched Slate Star Codex in 2013. The blog served as the discursive center of the rationalist subculture and a venue where heterodox and reactionary ideas were debated at length, including a 2013 "Anti-Reactionary FAQ" that argued against the [[Curtis Yarvin|Moldbug]] neoreactionary program while treating it as a serious intellectual object. The comment sections and the associated meetups linked the rationalist community to the wider tech-right ecosystem, and the blog's audience overlapped with the effective-altruism movement and the AI-risk community around the [[Machine Intelligence Research Institute]].[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Its widely circulated essays included "Meditations on Moloch" (2014), a parable about coordination failure that became a reference point in the AI-safety community, and "I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup" (2014). The blog's Silicon Valley readership was substantial: it carried an endorsement from [[Paul Graham]] of [[Y Combinator]], was read by [[Patrick Collison]] of [[Stripe]], and was followed by the venture capitalists [[Marc Andreessen]] and [[Ben Horowitz]], while [[Sam Altman]] of [[OpenAI]] called it essential reading among "the people inventing the future."[^6][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The 2020 Deletion and the New York Times Article
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In June 2020 Alexander deleted Slate Star Codex after learning that a New York Times technology reporter, [[Cade Metz]], was preparing an article that would identify him by his full name. Alexander said disclosure would endanger his psychiatric practice and patients and cited prior threats. The article, "Silicon Valley's Safe Space," appeared on February 13, 2021, naming Siskind and connecting the blog and its community to figures including the social scientist [[Charles Murray]] and to neoreactionary currents; it drew heavy criticism within and beyond the rationalist community over the naming decision. Alexander relaunched in January 2021 as the Substack publication [[Astral Codex Ten]].[^2][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Alexander took the blog down on June 23, 2020, replacing it with a post headlined "NYT Is Threatening My Safety By Revealing My Real Name, So I Am Deleting The Blog." A petition asking the *Times* to respect his pseudonymity gathered roughly 8,000 signatures, including that of the computer scientist [[Scott Aaronson]]. The relaunched Astral Codex Ten, opened January 21, 2021 on Substack with the post "Still Alive," drew thousands of paid subscribers and made Alexander one of the platform's signature writers; the migration mirrored the broader movement of heterodox commentators, including [[Sam Harris]] and [[Bari Weiss]], onto direct-subscription platforms after disputes with mainstream outlets.[^4][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Leaked 2014 Email
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In February 2021, around the time of the Times article, [[Topher Brennan]] published a 2014 private email from Alexander. In it Alexander wrote that he had learned from neoreactionary writers and that "human biodiversity" (HBD), the term used for claims of genetically based racial differences in intelligence, was "probably partially correct or at least very non-provably not-correct," while asking that his openness to such ideas not be made public. The email documented a private alignment more sympathetic to race science and reaction than his published critiques of neoreaction had indicated.[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In the email Alexander described the neoreactionaries as "almost the only people" engaging seriously with what he framed as the underlying problems of racial difference and immigration, and wrote that they "provide a vast stream of garbage with occasional nuggets of absolute gold in them." He warned the recipient that if his actual views were disclosed he would "probably either leave the Internet forever or seek some sort of horrible revenge." Critics read the message as evidence that the published "Anti-Reactionary FAQ" had functioned as a respectable shell that drew rationalist readers toward Moldbug's ideas while letting Alexander disavow them; defenders treated it as a decade-old private message taken out of context. The leak landed in the same news cycle as the Cade Metz article, compounding the rationalist community's sense of exposure.[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Slate Star Codex" and Scott Alexander's writing, 2013 to 2020; the "Anti-Reactionary FAQ," 2013. Contemporaneous rationalist-community record.
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "The Slate Star Codex 'Doxxing' Is the Latest Squabble Inside New York Times," *The Daily Beast,* June 2020. https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-slate-star-codex-doxxing-is-the-latest-squabble-inside-new-york-times/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Elite Universities Gave Us Effective Altruism," *Jacobin,* January 2023, on the rationalist-to-effective-altruism overlap. https://jacobin.com/2023/01/effective-altruism-longtermism-nick-bostrom-racism
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "What the New York Times' Hit Piece on Slate Star Codex Says About Media Gatekeeping," *Reason,* February 15, 2021. https://reason.com/2021/02/15/what-the-new-york-times-hit-piece-on-slate-star-codex-says-about-media-gatekeeping/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "The Scott Alexander Email: An Explainer," archiving the 2014 email published by Topher Brennan in February 2021, with the "vast stream of garbage" and "horrible revenge" quotes; treated as a leaked-document source. https://gist.github.com/segyges/f540a3dadeb42f49c0b0ab4244e43a55
|
||||||
|
[^6]: Alexander, Scott. "Meditations on Moloch" and "I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup," *Slate Star Codex,* 2014. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Why Slate Star Codex is Silicon Valley's safe space," and Cade Metz, "Silicon Valley's Safe Space," *The New York Times,* February 13, 2021, on the Graham endorsement and the Collison, Andreessen, Horowitz, and Altman readership. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/13/technology/slate-star-codex-rationalists.html
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Alexander, Scott. "NYT Is Threatening My Safety By Revealing My Real Name, So I Am Deleting The Blog," June 23, 2020, and "Still Alive," *Astral Codex Ten,* January 21, 2021; "Well-Known Blogger Shuts Down Site for Fear of NYT 'Doxxing,'" *Washington Free Beacon,* on the roughly 8,000-signature petition. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/still-alive
|
||||||
61
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Scott Belsky.md
Normal file
61
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Scott Belsky.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,61 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Technologists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- ScottBelsky
|
||||||
|
- Behance
|
||||||
|
- Adobe
|
||||||
|
- A24
|
||||||
|
- VentureCapital
|
||||||
|
- Design
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Scott Belsky
|
||||||
|
summary: "Scott Belsky is an American entrepreneur and investor who founded Behance, sold it to Adobe in 2012 and rose to Adobe chief strategy officer, invested early in Uber, Pinterest, and Warby Parker, and became a partner at the film studio A24 in 2025."
|
||||||
|
born: 1980
|
||||||
|
location: "United States"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Scott Belsky (born 1980) is an American entrepreneur and investor who founded the creative-portfolio platform [[Behance|Behance]], sold it to [[Adobe|Adobe]] in 2012 and rose to chief strategy officer there, made early angel investments in Uber, Pinterest, and Warby Parker, and became a partner at the film studio [[A24|A24]] in 2025. He was named among the confirmed 2026 registrants of [[Dialog]], the invitation-only society cofounded by [[Peter Thiel]], in the membership roster leaked to *WIRED* in June 2026, which identified him as a partner at A24 and a former Adobe chief strategy and chief product officer.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Behance and 99U
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Belsky took a bachelor's degree from Cornell University in 2002 and an MBA from Harvard Business School, working at Goldman Sachs before founding Behance in 2006 with the designer Matías Corea. Behance built an online portfolio network for creative professionals, and Belsky paired it with the 99U conference, launched in 2009 and "devoted to the execution of ideas," and the Action Method, a productivity system and line of organizational products. The company raised a single outside round, a 6.5 million dollar Series A in May 2012, with investors including Union Square Ventures and Jeff Bezos's Bezos Expeditions.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The 99U brand and the *Making Ideas Happen* and *The Messy Middle* books extended Belsky's name beyond the product into the productivity-and-creativity commentary that accompanied his investing.[^4][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Adobe Acquisition and the Chief Strategy Role
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Adobe announced its acquisition of Behance on December 20, 2012, in a deal that TechCrunch reported at slightly more than 150 million dollars in cash and stock plus multi-year earnouts; Adobe never officially disclosed the figure, and the 150 million dollar number is a press estimate. Belsky joined Adobe as vice president of community, overseeing Behance. He left in February 2016 to join the venture firm Benchmark, announced as its sixth general partner by [[Bill Gurley|Bill Gurley]], then stepped back to a venture-partner role that September, telling *Fortune* he could not see himself "as a VC for the next ten years in the traditional sense."[^3][^6][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Belsky returned to Adobe in December 2017 as chief product officer and executive vice president of Creative Cloud, leading product and engineering across the Creative Cloud applications. He was promoted around March 2023 to chief strategy officer and executive vice president of design and emerging products. During this period Adobe launched the generative-artificial-intelligence model Firefly in beta in March 2023, and Belsky publicly championed the company's generative-AI push. He announced his departure from Adobe in January 2025, with a last day in March 2025, remaining an adviser to the company.[^8][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Venture Investing
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Belsky's angel and venture investments confirmed in contemporaneous press include early positions in Uber, Pinterest, Warby Parker, and the live-streaming app Periscope. He operates an angel vehicle and writes the *Implications* newsletter on technology and creativity rather than running a named fund. His Benchmark stint in 2016 placed him among a partner group that included Gurley, Peter Fenton, and Matt Cohler, and his investing has continued alongside his operating roles; a February 2026 round in the accounting-software company Basis named him as a co-investor alongside Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, and the Box cofounder [[Aaron Levie|Aaron Levie]].[^6][^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Belsky was an early advocate within Adobe for non-fungible-token and web3 features, championing the "Prepare as NFT" and Content Credentials tools announced at Adobe MAX in October 2021. He later argued, in a March 2023 interview, that generative artificial intelligence would succeed in the creative market where web3 had failed because web3 "added more friction."[^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### A24
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Belsky joined the film and entertainment studio A24 as a partner leading technology and innovation, founding A24 Labs, in an arrangement announced January 30, 2025, with a start around March 2025. A24 is the studio behind *Moonlight,* *Hereditary,* and *Everything Everywhere All at Once.* Reporting uniformly describes Belsky as a partner and operating executive rather than a funding-round investor or board member; he is not named in A24's financing rounds. A24 raised 225 million dollars at a 2.5 billion dollar valuation in 2022 in a round led by Stripes, and raised a further round in 2024 led by Josh Kushner's Thrive Capital at a 3.5 billion dollar valuation, neither of which included Belsky.[^12][^13]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Belsky also holds a confirmed corporate board seat at the software company [[Atlassian|Atlassian]], effective August 1, 2024.[^12][^14]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Cameron, Dell, and Yulia Almazova. "Leak Exposes Members of Peter Thiel's Secretive 'Dialog' Society." *WIRED,* June 16, 2026. https://www.wired.com/story/leak-exposes-members-of-peter-thiels-secretive-dialog-society/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Frustration fuels creation for design industry innovator Scott Belsky '02." Cornell University alumni profile. https://alumni.cornell.edu/profile/frustration-fuels-creation-for-design-industry-innovator-scott-belsky-02
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Adobe acquired portfolio service Behance for more than 150 million dollars in cash and stock." *TechCrunch,* December 21, 2012. https://techcrunch.com/2012/12/21/adobe-acquired-portfolio-service-behance-for-more-than-150-million-in-cash-and-stock/
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Belsky, Scott. *Making Ideas Happen.* Portfolio (Penguin), 2010. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/305198/making-ideas-happen-by-scott-belsky/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Belsky, Scott. *The Messy Middle.* Portfolio (Penguin), 2018. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/557330/the-messy-middle-by-scott-belsky/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Benchmark adds a sixth general partner, Scott Belsky." *TechCrunch,* February 8, 2016. https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/08/benchmark-adds-a-sixth-general-partner-scott-belsky/
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Scott Belsky is no longer a full partner with Benchmark." *Fortune,* September 7, 2016. https://fortune.com/2016/09/07/scott-belsky-is-no-longer-a-full-partner-with-benchmark/
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "Adobe unveils Firefly, a family of new creative generative AI." Adobe news, March 21, 2023. https://news.adobe.com/news/news-details/2023/adobe-unveils-firefly-a-family-of-new-creative-generative-ai
|
||||||
|
[^9]: "Scott Belsky departs Adobe for A24." *Variety,* January 30, 2025. https://variety.com/2025/film/news/scott-belsky-a24-adobe-1236291763/
|
||||||
|
[^10]: "Basis raises 100 million dollars at 1.15 billion dollar valuation." Business Wire, February 24, 2026. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260224020999/en/
|
||||||
|
[^11]: "Adobe's Scott Belsky talks generative AI and why it's not going to end up like web3." *TechCrunch,* March 2, 2023. https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/02/adobes-scott-belsky-talks-generative-ai-and-why-its-not-going-to-end-up-like-web3/
|
||||||
|
[^12]: "A24 hires Adobe chief strategy officer Scott Belsky for technology and innovation." *Deadline,* January 30, 2025. https://deadline.com/2025/01/a24-adobe-chief-strategy-officer-scott-belsky-technology-innovation-1236273665/
|
||||||
|
[^13]: "A24 raises new funding at 3.5 billion dollar valuation led by Thrive Capital." *Variety,* June 2024.
|
||||||
|
[^14]: "Atlassian appoints Scott Belsky to board of directors." Business Wire, July 24, 2024. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240724227960/en/
|
||||||
51
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Steve Bannon.md
Normal file
51
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Steve Bannon.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,51 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "New Right"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- SteveBannon
|
||||||
|
- Breitbart
|
||||||
|
- CambridgeAnalytica
|
||||||
|
- Trump
|
||||||
|
- Mercer
|
||||||
|
- AltRight
|
||||||
|
- 2016
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Stephen K. Bannon
|
||||||
|
summary: "Steve Bannon is an American media executive and political strategist who served as executive chairman of Breitbart News, vice president of Cambridge Analytica, chief executive of the 2016 Trump campaign from August 2016, and White House Chief Strategist from January to August 2017, funded throughout by the Mercer family alongside the Thiel-aligned political infrastructure."
|
||||||
|
born: 1953-11-27
|
||||||
|
location: "Norfolk, Virginia (born)"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[[Steve Bannon|Steve Bannon]] (born November 27, 1953) is an American media executive and political strategist who served as executive chairman of [[Breitbart News|Breitbart News]] from 2012 (after founder [[Andrew Breitbart|Andrew Breitbart]]'s death) through 2016 and again 2017-2018, as vice president and secretary of [[Cambridge Analytica|Cambridge Analytica]] from June 2014 to August 2016, as chief executive of the [[Donald Trump|Trump]] 2016 presidential campaign from August 17, 2016, and as White House Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor to the President from January 20 to August 18, 2017. The [[Mercer family|Mercer family]] funded Breitbart, bankrolled Cambridge Analytica, and was instrumental in installing Bannon as Trump campaign CEO.[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Breitbart and the Mercer Funding
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Bannon took over Breitbart News after Andrew Breitbart's death in 2012. [[Robert Mercer|Robert Mercer]] and his daughter [[Rebekah Mercer|Rebekah Mercer]] were the primary funders of Breitbart during Bannon's tenure, providing the financial base for the outlet's expansion as the media backbone of the [[alt-right|alt-right]] and the emerging Trump coalition. Bannon's Breitbart published the coverage that amplified the [[Gamergate|Gamergate]] campaign's targets and framed the consumer-revolt narrative. The Breitbart-Gamergate pipeline was the channel through which the [[4chan|4chan]] / [[8chan|8chan]] imageboard culture entered mainstream conservative media.[^1][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Mercer's entry was an investment of about 10 million dollars made in June 2011, before Andrew Breitbart's death, in exchange for a stake in the company; Bannon assumed the executive chairmanship of the firm and of the family's broader political vehicles when Breitbart died in March 2012.[^6] The same year, Bannon co-founded the [[Government Accountability Institute|Government Accountability Institute]] with [[Peter Schweizer|Peter Schweizer]], a Tallahassee-based opposition-research nonprofit that the Mercer Family Foundation funded with more than half its 2013-2015 budget; the Institute produced Schweizer's 2015 book *Clinton Cash*, whose findings were placed with the *New York Times* and *Washington Post* and used to drive negative coverage of [[Hillary Clinton|Hillary Clinton]] ahead of the 2016 race.[^6] The 2017 Paradise Papers later showed Mercer routing political money through offshore accounts to build a war chest reported at roughly 60 million dollars for conservative causes including Breitbart and the Institute.[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Cambridge Analytica and the Facebook Data Harvesting
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Bannon served as vice president and secretary of Cambridge Analytica from June 2014 to August 2016. The [[Guardian|Guardian]] reporting (March 2018), based on the whistleblower [[Christopher Wylie|Christopher Wylie]] disclosures, documented that Bannon oversaw the firm's Facebook data-harvesting project that acquired data on up to 87 million Facebook users through the [[Aleksandr Kogan|Aleksandr Kogan]] academic-researcher channel. The data was used for psychographic profiling of voters in the 2016 Trump campaign. Mercer provided approximately 15 million dollars in Cambridge Analytica funding. [[Jane Mayer|Jane Mayer]]'s *[[The New Yorker|New Yorker]]* reporting documented Bannon's involvement in Cambridge Analytica's [[Brexit|Brexit]]-related activities before he formally joined the Trump campaign.[^2][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The firm was created in 2013 as a U.S.-facing spin-off of the British military-contracting firm SCL Group, after its chief executive [[Alexander Nix|Alexander Nix]] met the Mercers aboard the family's yacht with Bannon present; Mercer agreed to the roughly 15 million dollar stake, Bannon was given the company name (a nod to the Cambridge academics Nix was recruiting) and a board seat as vice president.[^7] Testifying to the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 16, 2018, Wylie said Bannon had engaged SCL, "a foreign military contractor," to build "an arsenal of informational weapons" he could deploy on the American population because he "saw cultural warfare as the means to create enduring change in American politics," and that the firm tested 2014 slogans later used in the Trump campaign and discussed voter-suppression messaging aimed at Black voters.[^7] The harvested data originated in a personality-quiz app built by Kogan, whose firm Global Science Research passed the resulting profiles to Cambridge Analytica in breach of Facebook's platform terms, the disclosure that drove Facebook's stock down and produced a 5 billion dollar U.S. Federal Trade Commission settlement in 2019.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The 2016 Trump Campaign and the White House
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Bannon joined the Trump campaign as chief executive on August 17, 2016, replacing [[Paul Manafort|Paul Manafort]] at the top of the organizational chart, alongside [[Kellyanne Conway|Kellyanne Conway]] as campaign manager. Rebekah Mercer was reportedly instrumental in installing Bannon. After the election, Bannon received the newly created role of White House Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor, and a seat on the [[National Security Council|National Security Council]]'s Principals Committee (later removed). Trump fired Bannon on August 18, 2017, after the [[Charlottesville|Charlottesville]] "Unite the Right" violence and the documented tensions within the White House staff.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Mercers had moved their support from [[Ted Cruz|Ted Cruz]] to Trump after the primaries, repurposing their pro-Cruz super PAC Keep the Promise I (seeded with an 11 million dollar Robert Mercer contribution) into the anti-Clinton vehicle Make America Number 1, informally "Defeat Crooked Hillary," run by Rebekah Mercer, so that Bannon's August 2016 elevation brought the campaign both his Breitbart apparatus and the Mercer money in one move, a transition Joshua Green's *Devil's Bargain* (Penguin Press, 2017) reconstructed from interviews as the culmination of Bannon's years-long project to destroy Clinton.[^8] In the White House, Bannon was placed on the NSC Principals Committee by the January 28, 2017 reorganization in part, per a White House official, to monitor first national security adviser [[Michael Flynn|Michael Flynn]]; after Flynn's resignation and the arrival of [[H.R. McMaster|H.R. McMaster]], McMaster's restructuring removed Bannon from the committee on April 5, 2017 and restored the director of national intelligence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs as regular attendees.[^9] Bannon's August 18, 2017 firing came two days after an August 16 interview with Robert Kuttner of *The American Prospect*, which Bannon's associates said he had not understood to be on the record, in which he declared "there's no military solution" to North Korea and disparaged White House and State Department colleagues, compounding the post-Charlottesville friction.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: For Bannon's Breitbart tenure and the Mercer funding, see the contemporaneous press (*New York Times*, *Washington Post*) and Jane Mayer's *Dark Money*.
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Revealed: 50 million Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach." *The Guardian,* March 17, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-facebook-influence-us-election
|
||||||
|
[^3]: For the 2016 campaign CEO role and the White House Chief Strategist tenure, see the contemporaneous press coverage.
|
||||||
|
[^4]: For the Breitbart-Gamergate pipeline, see the Gamergate page.
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Mayer, Jane. "New Evidence Emerges of Steve Bannon and Cambridge Analytica's Role in Brexit." *The New Yorker.*
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "The Mercers and Stephen Bannon: How a populist power base was funded and built." *Washington Post.* https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/mercer-bannon/ . For the June 2011 10 million dollar Breitbart investment, the Government Accountability Institute funding, and the *Clinton Cash* placement, see also "Steve Bannon used Robert Mercer's offshore millions to accuse Clinton of corruption." *ThinkProgress,* November 8, 2017.
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Christopher Wylie: Bannon wanted 'weapons' to fight a 'culture war' at Cambridge Analytica," testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, May 16, 2018. *CBS News.* https://www.cbsnews.com/live-news/senate-cambridge-analytica-whistleblower-christopher-wylie-live-stream-updates-today-2018-05-16 ; and "How Steve Bannon used Cambridge Analytica to further his alt-right vision for America." *CNN,* March 30, 2018. https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/30/politics/bannon-cambridge-analytica
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Green, Joshua. *Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency.* Penguin Press, 2017. For the Make America Number 1 / Keep the Promise I super PAC and the Mercer contribution, see "Make America Number 1." *Ballotpedia.* https://ballotpedia.org/Make_America_Number_1
|
||||||
|
[^9]: "Stephen Bannon removed from National Security Council." *Washington Post,* April 5, 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/04/05/steven-bannon-no-longer-a-member-of-national-security-council/ ; Kuttner, Robert. "Steve Bannon, Unrepentant." *The American Prospect,* August 16, 2017. https://prospect.org/2017/08/16/steve-bannon-unrepentant/
|
||||||
48
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Stewart Brand.md
Normal file
48
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Stewart Brand.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Authors & Journalists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- StewartBrand
|
||||||
|
- WholeEarthCatalog
|
||||||
|
- Counterculture
|
||||||
|
- Cyberculture
|
||||||
|
- LongNow
|
||||||
|
- Cybernetics
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Stewart Brand
|
||||||
|
summary: "Stewart Brand is the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, the WELL, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation, the figure who carried 1960s counterculture into Silicon Valley tech-utopianism."
|
||||||
|
born: 1938
|
||||||
|
location: "California"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Stewart Brand (born December 14, 1938) is an American writer, editor, and impresario who founded the *Whole Earth Catalog* in 1968, the online community the WELL in 1985, the corporate consultancy the Global Business Network in 1987, and the Long Now Foundation in 1996. A Stanford-trained biologist, Merry Prankster, and organizer of Ken Kesey's Trips Festival, he is the figure most often credited with carrying the values of the 1960s San Francisco counterculture, communalism, personal liberation, and a faith in "tools," into the personal-computer and internet culture of Silicon Valley, a passage documented by [[Fred Turner]] in *From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism* (2006).[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### From the Counterculture to the Whole Earth Catalog
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Brand graduated in biology from Stanford University in 1960, studying under the ecologist Paul Ehrlich, and served as a U.S. Army infantry officer. In the mid-1960s he joined Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, helped stage the Acid Tests, and produced the three-day Trips Festival in San Francisco in January 1966. In 1966 he ran a public campaign asking why no photograph of the whole Earth from space had yet been published, selling buttons that read "Why haven't we seen a photograph of the whole Earth yet?"; he put a NASA image of the planet on the cover when he launched the *Whole Earth Catalog* in the autumn of 1968.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The *Whole Earth Catalog*, subtitled "Access to Tools" and published from 1968 to 1972 with occasional later editions, was a large-format compendium reviewing books, machines, and ideas for self-sufficient living, organized under headings that began with "Whole Systems," cybernetics, and general systems theory. It opened with the line "We are as gods and might as well get good at it," won the National Book Award in 1972, and became, in Turner's account, a template for a decentralized, tool-using community that later technologists adopted. [[Steve Jobs]] took the farewell line on the back cover of the October 1974 edition, "Stay hungry. Stay foolish," as the closing exhortation of his 2005 Stanford commencement address. Brand also assisted [[Douglas Engelbart]] in staging the December 9, 1968 demonstration in San Francisco later called "the Mother of All Demos," which premiered the mouse, hypertext, and windowed computing.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The WELL, Global Business Network, and Digital Utopianism
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 1985 Brand and Larry Brilliant founded the Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, or WELL, a dial-up teleconferencing system based in the San Francisco Bay Area that became one of the most influential early online communities and a seedbed of internet culture and the digital-rights movement; the writer Howard Rheingold drew his 1993 book *The Virtual Community* from it. Brand had earlier coined or popularized the slogan "Information wants to be free" at the 1984 Hackers Conference, which he helped organize, capturing the tension he described between information's wanting to be expensive and wanting to be free.[^1][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 1987 Brand co-founded the Global Business Network in Berkeley with the futurist Peter Schwartz, Jay Ogilvy, Napier Collyns, and Lawrence Wilkinson, a consultancy that brought the technique of scenario planning, developed earlier at Royal Dutch Shell, to corporations and governments and that linked countercultural futurism to corporate strategy. Through these ventures and his magazine *CoEvolution Quarterly*, Brand moved in the circles that produced *Wired* magazine and the Bay Area's networked-economy boosters of the 1990s, and Turner's history identifies him as the connective figure between the New Communalist counterculture and the libertarian techno-utopianism of that decade.[^4][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Long Now Foundation and Long-Term Thinking
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 1996 Brand co-founded the Long Now Foundation with the computer scientist Danny Hillis and the musician Brian Eno to promote what they called "long-term thinking" across a horizon of ten thousand years; Eno coined the name to evoke a "long now" set against the short now of quarterly and weekly time. Its flagship project is the Clock of the Long Now, a monument-scale mechanical clock designed by Hillis to keep time for ten thousand years, a prototype of which is under construction inside a mountain in West Texas on land owned by [[Jeff Bezos]], who funded the build. Brand set out the rationale in *The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility* (1999).[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Brand's later projects extended the foundation's long-horizon framing into biotechnology and environmental politics. He co-founded Revive & Restore, a Long Now project pursuing the genetic "de-extinction" of species such as the passenger pigeon and the woolly mammoth, and in *Whole Earth Discipline* (2009) he argued for nuclear power, genetic engineering, and geoengineering as environmental tools, declaring again that "we are as gods and have to get good at it."[^1][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Stewart Brand," Long Now Foundation people page, on his Stanford biology degree, Army service, the *Whole Earth Catalog*, the WELL, the Hackers Conference, the Global Business Network, the Long Now Foundation, the Clock of the Long Now, Revive & Restore, the Pace Layers framework, and his books. https://longnow.org/people/sb1/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Turner, Fred. *From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism.* University of Chicago Press, 2006; on Brand's path from the Merry Pranksters and Trips Festival through the *Whole Earth Catalog* to digital utopianism.
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "50 Years Ago, the Whole Earth Catalog Launched and Reinvented the Environmental Movement," *Smithsonian,* on the 1968 launch, the NASA whole-Earth cover, "We are as gods and might as well get good at it," and the catalog's reach to hippies and technologists; and "Steve Jobs to 2005 Graduates: 'Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish,'" Stanford Report, June 2005, on the back-cover quotation of the 1974 catalog. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/50-years-ago-whole-earth-catalog-launched-reinvented-environmental-movement-180969682/
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "The Mother of All Demos," and contemporary accounts, on Brand's role assisting Douglas Engelbart's December 9, 1968 demonstration; and on the WELL (1985), Howard Rheingold's *The Virtual Community* (1993), and "Information wants to be free" from the 1984 Hackers Conference.
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Global Business Network," on the 1987 founding in Berkeley by Peter Schwartz, Jay Ogilvy, Stewart Brand, Napier Collyns, and Lawrence Wilkinson, and the firm's scenario-planning practice; and Schwartz, Peter. *The Art of the Long View.* 1991.
|
||||||
|
[^6]: Brand, Stewart. *The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility.* Basic Books, 1999; and Long Now Foundation, "The 10,000 Year Clock," on the 1996 founding with Danny Hillis and Brian Eno, Eno's naming, and the West Texas clock site on land owned by Jeff Bezos. https://longnow.org/clock/
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Brand, Stewart. *Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto.* Viking, 2009, on nuclear power, genetic engineering, geoengineering, and "we are as gods and have to get good at it"; and Long Now Foundation, "Revive & Restore," on de-extinction of the passenger pigeon and woolly mammoth.
|
||||||
55
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Ted Cruz.md
Normal file
55
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Ted Cruz.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,55 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Political Figure"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- TedCruz
|
||||||
|
- RepublicanParty
|
||||||
|
- Texas
|
||||||
|
- Senate
|
||||||
|
- CambridgeAnalytica
|
||||||
|
- PeterThiel
|
||||||
|
- Dialog
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Rafael Edward Cruz
|
||||||
|
- Senator Ted Cruz
|
||||||
|
summary: "Ted Cruz is a U.S. Senator from Texas whose name appeared on the leaked 2026 roster of Peter Thiel's Dialog society, whose 2016 presidential campaign paid Cambridge Analytica more than 5.8 million dollars, and whose largest early backer was Peter Thiel."
|
||||||
|
born: 1970-12-22
|
||||||
|
location: "Calgary, Alberta, Canada (born); Houston, Texas (political base)"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz (born December 22, 1970, in [[Calgary]], [[Alberta]], [[Canada]]) is an American politician and lawyer who has served as a U.S. Senator from [[Texas]] since 2013. In June 2026 Cruz was named by *WIRED* among the figures surfaced in the leak of [[Dialog]], the invitation-only society cofounded by [[Peter Thiel]] and [[Auren Hoffman]]. Cruz's 2016 presidential campaign was an early client of [[Cambridge Analytica]], the data firm financed by the Republican donor [[Robert Mercer]], and Thiel was among Cruz's largest financial backers in his early statewide campaigns.[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Education, Solicitor General, and the Senate
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Cruz graduated from [[Princeton University]] in 1992 and earned a law degree from [[Harvard Law School]] in 1995. He clerked for Chief Justice [[William Rehnquist]], worked at the [[Federal Trade Commission]] and the [[Department of Justice]], and served as solicitor general of Texas from 2003 to 2008, arguing cases before the [[Supreme Court of the United States|U.S. Supreme Court]]. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012, taking office in January 2013, and was reelected in 2018 and 2024.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Cruz built a national profile within the [[Republican Party]] as a confrontational conservative, leading the 2013 effort that produced a federal government shutdown over the [[Affordable Care Act]] and mounting a presidential campaign in 2016 in which he finished second to [[Donald Trump]] for the nomination. His Texas campaigns drew heavily on out-of-state conservative donor networks, including [[Club for Growth]] and the family of Robert Mercer.[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Peter Thiel's Early Donations
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Thiel was an early and substantial financial backer of Cruz. In 2009 Thiel gave 251,000 dollars to Cruz's aborted run for Texas attorney general, a sum reported as roughly nineteen percent of Cruz's fundraising for that campaign. In the 2012 Senate race Thiel contributed the individual maximum of 5,000 dollars directly to Cruz and gave one million dollars to the [[Club for Growth Action]] super PAC supporting him, the largest single contribution to that committee at the time.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The relationship drew criticism inside Texas Republican politics because Thiel publicly supported same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization, positions opposed to Cruz's platform. A spokesman for Cruz responded that "Ted's record of defending marriage between one man and one woman is as clear and unwavering as his commitment to reduce the size of government," while the campaign of his primary rival [[David Dewhurst]] called the donor relationship "hypocritical and deceitful." Cruz described Thiel as a friend.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Cambridge Analytica and the Mercer Network
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Cruz's 2016 presidential campaign was the first major American political operation to deploy Cambridge Analytica, the data-analytics firm whose primary investor was the hedge-fund executive Robert Mercer and whose vice president was [[Steve Bannon]]. Federal Election Commission records show the Cruz campaign paid Cambridge Analytica more than 5.8 million dollars for data analysis and online advertising during the 2016 cycle, with an additional 570,000 dollars paid by the pro-Cruz super PAC Keep the Promise II. Mercer donated approximately eleven million dollars to super PACs supporting Cruz's presidential bid.[^2][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The firm built psychographic voter profiles, dividing the electorate into psychological categories, work later tied to the harvesting of data from tens of millions of [[Facebook]] users. After Cruz dropped out in 2016, Mercer, Bannon, and Cambridge Analytica shifted to the Trump campaign. When the [[Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal]] broke in March 2018, Cruz said the firm had assured his campaign its methods were legal: "Cambridge Analytica represented to the campaign that all data in their possession were legally obtained and that they were in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations, and the campaign relied on those representations." His spokeswoman, Catherine Frazier, said the campaign had included explicit contractual language requiring lawful conduct.[^2][^5][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The 2026 Dialog Leak
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The June 16, 2026 *WIRED* report identified Cruz on the Dialog roster as "U.S. Senator (R-TX)," listing him among the sitting senators of both parties surfaced when the hacktivist [[maia arson crimew|crimew]] located a member directory in the source code of Dialog's website and a separate source provided the publication with the 222-name registration list for the society's retreat near [[Dublin]], scheduled for August 12 through 16, 2026. *WIRED* placed Cruz alongside [[Cory Booker|Senator Cory Booker]] and Colorado governor [[Jared Polis]] among the political figures on the list.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Cruz had received Thiel's financial backing in earlier cycles and has acknowledged a personal friendship with Thiel, the chairman of [[Palantir Technologies]] and cofounder of [[Founders Fund]].[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Cameron, Dell, and Yulia Almazova. "Leak Exposes Members of Peter Thiel's Secretive 'Dialog' Society." *WIRED,* June 16, 2026. https://www.wired.com/story/leak-exposes-members-of-peter-thiels-secretive-dialog-society/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Before Trump, Cambridge Analytica was on team Cruz." *OpenSecrets,* March 2018. https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2018/03/before-trump-cambridge-analytica-was-on-team-cruz
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Cruz Mega-Donor is Gay, Pro-Pot Billionaire." *Texas Tribune,* July 3, 2012. https://www.texastribune.org/2012/07/03/ted-cruzs-gay-billionaire-donor-draws-criticism/
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "CRUZ, Rafael Edward (Ted)." Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. https://bioguide.congress.gov/search/bio/C001098
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Cambridge Analytica Helped Ted Cruz Win Iowa But Now May Haunt His Reelection." *Texas Monthly,* 2018. https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/cambridge-analytica-helped-ted-cruz-win-iowa-now-may-haunt-reelection/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Ted Cruz says Cambridge Analytica told his presidential campaign its data use was legal." *Texas Tribune,* March 20, 2018. https://www.texastribune.org/2018/03/20/ted-cruz-campaign-cambridge-analytica/
|
||||||
79
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Virginia Giuffre.md
Normal file
79
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Virginia Giuffre.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,79 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Crime & Abuse Networks"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- VirginiaGiuffre
|
||||||
|
- JeffreyEpstein
|
||||||
|
- GhislaineMaxwell
|
||||||
|
- PrinceAndrew
|
||||||
|
- SexTrafficking
|
||||||
|
- MaraLago
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Virginia Roberts
|
||||||
|
- Virginia Roberts Giuffre
|
||||||
|
summary: "Virginia Giuffre is a sex-trafficking survivor and advocate who said Ghislaine Maxwell recruited her at Mar-a-Lago around 2000 when she was a teenager and that Jeffrey Epstein trafficked her to others including Prince Andrew, who litigated against Maxwell and Andrew, and who died by suicide in Western Australia on April 25, 2025."
|
||||||
|
born: 1983-08-09
|
||||||
|
died: 2025-04-25
|
||||||
|
location: "Neergabby, Western Australia (died)"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Virginia Giuffre, born Virginia Roberts on August 9, 1983, was an American-born sex-trafficking survivor and advocate who became one of the most prominent accusers of [[Jeffrey Epstein|Jeffrey Epstein]] and [[Ghislaine Maxwell|Ghislaine Maxwell]]. She said that Maxwell recruited her around 2000, when she was a teenager working at [[Mar-a-Lago|Mar-a-Lago]], and that Epstein and Maxwell trafficked her to Epstein and to others, an account she set out in court filings, interviews, and a posthumous memoir. She later settled with Epstein, sued Maxwell for defamation, and sued [[Prince Andrew|Prince Andrew]]. She died by suicide at her property in [[Western Australia|Western Australia]] on April 25, 2025, at age 41. Her allegations are documented as her testimony; the individuals she named have denied wrongdoing where they responded.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Early Life
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Giuffre was born Virginia Roberts on August 9, 1983, in Sacramento, California, to Sky and Lynn Roberts, and the family moved to Palm Beach County, Florida, when she was young, where her father later worked in a maintenance role at Mar-a-Lago. She described in interviews and in her memoir a childhood marked by sexual abuse beginning around age seven, repeated running away, periods living with relatives in California and in foster care, and time at a facility for troubled youth. She said that in the late 1990s, as a young teenager, she had been drawn into an earlier trafficking situation before returning to her family.[^1][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In the summer of 2000 Giuffre took a job as a locker-room attendant at the Mar-a-Lago spa, an arrangement she said was facilitated through her father's employment there. She was 16 or 17 at the time of her recruitment, and accounts vary on the precise age and date; her filings generally placed her recruitment around 2000.[^1][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Recruitment and Trafficking Allegations
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Giuffre said that Ghislaine Maxwell approached her while she was working at the Mar-a-Lago spa, reading a book on massage therapy, and recruited her ostensibly to train as a masseuse for Epstein, taking her that evening to Epstein's nearby Palm Beach house. She said she was then drawn into sexual abuse by Epstein and trafficked to other men over a period of years, traveling among Epstein's residences in New York, Palm Beach, [[New Mexico|New Mexico]], and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and abroad. She described Maxwell as central to Epstein's operation and said she was presented to Epstein's associates as available for sexual purposes.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Among the men Giuffre said Epstein directed her to was Prince Andrew, whom she said she was made to have sex with on three occasions beginning in London in March 2001 when she was 17, around the time she was photographed with him at Maxwell's Belgravia home. Andrew has denied the allegations and settled her civil suit without admitting liability. Giuffre also named other men in her filings and interviews, including the financier [[Jean-Luc Brunel|Jean-Luc Brunel]] and the attorney [[Alan Dershowitz|Alan Dershowitz]]; those named denied her accounts. Her allegations against individuals other than Epstein and Maxwell were not adjudicated as criminal findings.[^2][^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The body of allegations rests on Giuffre's sworn testimony, depositions, and statements rather than on criminal convictions of the men she named. Maxwell was convicted in December 2021 on federal sex-trafficking charges arising from the broader Epstein scheme, though that prosecution did not turn on Giuffre as a charged victim. Epstein was indicted federally in July 2019 and died in custody the following month before trial, his death ruled a suicide.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Australia and Advocacy
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Giuffre said she left Epstein's circle around 2002 after he sent her abroad, including to Thailand to train in massage, where she met the Australian Robert Giuffre, whom she married and with whom she settled in [[Australia|Australia]] and raised three children, adopting the surname Giuffre. She lived for years in Western Australia, latterly on a property at Neergabby north of Perth.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
She became a public advocate for survivors of trafficking and sexual abuse, founding a nonprofit she initially called Victims Refuse Silence, later reorganized under the name Speak Out, Act, Reclaim, abbreviated SOAR. Her name and account featured in much of the reporting that drove renewed scrutiny of Epstein from the mid-2010s onward, including the work that culminated in his 2019 federal arrest.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Through her advocacy and litigation Giuffre pressed for the public release of records in the Epstein matter and lent her name to campaigns supporting trafficking survivors. She cooperated with journalists and investigators over more than a decade, sitting for depositions and providing the photograph and other materials that entered the court record, and her sworn statements became part of the documentary record in multiple cases.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Litigation
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Giuffre, then using the name Virginia Roberts, sued Epstein in 2009 in Florida, alleging abuse; that matter was resolved by a confidential settlement reported at 500,000 dollars and dismissed late that year. The settlement, unsealed on January 3, 2022, released Epstein and a category of unnamed "second parties" and "potential defendants," and its release language later became a contested issue in the suit against Prince Andrew, where Judge [[Lewis Kaplan|Lewis Kaplan]] held in January 2022 that the language was too ambiguous to clearly bar the claim against Andrew.[^4][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In September 2015 Giuffre sued Maxwell for defamation in the [[United States District Court for the Southern District of New York|Southern District of New York]] after Maxwell, through a representative, publicly called her allegations lies. The case, [[Giuffre v. Maxwell|Giuffre v. Maxwell]], No. 15-cv-07433, produced a large body of depositions and exhibits, including testimony from [[Johanna Sjoberg|Johanna Sjoberg]] and others, and it settled in 2017 on undisclosed terms. Tranches of documents from that case were unsealed beginning in 2019, with a major release of formerly sealed exhibits in January 2024; reporting on the January 2024 unsealing noted it largely concerned already-known figures and contained no new criminal accusation against previously unnamed people.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On August 9, 2021, Giuffre sued Prince Andrew in the same court under New York's Child Victims Act, alleging he sexually abused her on three occasions when she was 17. After Kaplan denied Andrew's motion to dismiss in January 2022, the suit settled in February 2022, the joint filing stating that Andrew would make "a substantial donation to Ms. Giuffre's charity in support of victims' rights" and acknowledging her as "an established victim of abuse," with no admission of liability and the sum undisclosed.[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Dershowitz Allegations
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Giuffre alleged in a 2014 court filing and subsequently that Epstein had trafficked her to the attorney Alan Dershowitz, who had been part of Epstein's legal defense team in Florida. Dershowitz denied the allegations from the outset, calling them fabricated and describing Giuffre at points as a liar, and the two sides litigated competing defamation claims. Giuffre sued Dershowitz for defamation in April 2019; Dershowitz countersued in November 2019.[^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In November 2022 the parties, together with the attorney [[David Boies|David Boies]], reached a global settlement resolving the litigation. In her settlement statement Giuffre wrote: "I have long believed that I was trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein to Alan Dershowitz. However, I was very young at the time, it was a very stressful and traumatic environment, and Mr. Dershowitz has from the beginning consistently denied these allegations." She added that she "may have made a mistake" in identifying him. The agreement resolved all pending litigation without any payment from Dershowitz to Giuffre, and Dershowitz characterized the outcome as a vindication of his denials.[^9][^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Death and Memoir
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In late March 2025 Giuffre posted that she had been hospitalized in Western Australia after the vehicle she was in was struck by a school bus, writing in one social-media post that she had gone into renal failure and had been given "four days to live." Western Australia Police said no injuries were reported at the scene, and the bus driver and other parties disputed the severity she described; a source said she was not in a life-threatening condition. She left the hospital roughly a week later. Reporting on these contradictions circulated in early April 2025.[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Giuffre died by suicide on April 25, 2025, at her property in Neergabby, Western Australia, at age 41. Her family said in a statement that she "lost her life to suicide, after being a lifelong victim of sexual abuse and sex trafficking" and that "the toll of abuse is so heavy that it became unbearable for Virginia." Western Australia Police said her death was not being treated as suspicious. Her death came roughly a month after the bus incident and about six months before the scheduled publication of her memoir.[^2][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Her memoir [[Nobody's Girl|Nobody's Girl]], co-written with the author [[Amy Wallace|Amy Wallace]], was published posthumously by Alfred A. Knopf on October 21, 2025, following her stated wish that it appear regardless of her circumstances. The book recounts her account of recruitment at Mar-a-Lago, the years of trafficking, and the litigation that followed, and it repeats her allegations against Epstein, Maxwell, Andrew, and others. Its publication coincided with the renewed pressure on Andrew that preceded the removal of his titles, and it reached the top of bestseller lists in the weeks after release.[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Virginia Giuffre," *Encyclopaedia Britannica,* 2025. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Virginia-Giuffre
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Virginia Giuffre, one of Jeffrey Epstein's most prominent abuse survivors, dies by suicide," *NBC News,* April 2025. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/virginia-giuffre-one-jeffrey-epsteins-prominent-abuse-survivors-dies-s-rcna203027
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Giuffre v. Maxwell, No. 15-cv-07433 (S.D.N.Y.), and unsealed exhibits, January 2024. https://www.justice.gov/multimedia/Court%20Records/Giuffre%20v.%20Maxwell,%20No.%20115-cv-07433%20(S.D.N.Y.%202015)/
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Billionaire's Alleged Sex Slave Settles Libel Case," *Courthouse News Service,* and reporting on the 2009 Epstein settlement. https://www.courthousenews.com/billionaires-alleged-sex-slave-settles-libel-case/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Lawyers say settlement reached in Virginia Giuffre's lawsuit against Prince Andrew," *PBS NewsHour,* February 15, 2022. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/lawyers-say-settlement-reached-in-virginia-giuffres-lawsuit-against-prince-andrew
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Virginia Giuffre, prominent Jeffrey Epstein accuser, dies by suicide," *Yahoo News,* April 2025. https://www.yahoo.com/news/virginia-giuffre-prominent-jeffrey-epstein-015432265.html
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice," Alfred A. Knopf / Penguin Random House, October 21, 2025. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/712958/nobodys-girl-by-virginia-roberts-giuffre/
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "Virginia Giuffre," *Encyclopaedia Britannica,* 2025 (early life and recruitment). https://www.britannica.com/biography/Virginia-Giuffre
|
||||||
|
[^9]: "Virginia Giuffre drops allegations against Alan Dershowitz, saying she 'may have made a mistake,'" *CNN,* November 8, 2022. https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/08/us/alan-dershowitz-virginia-giuffre-allegations-dropped
|
||||||
|
[^10]: "Epstein victim drops her lawsuit against lawyer Alan Dershowitz," *NBC News,* November 2022. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/epstein-victim-drops-lawsuit-lawyer-alan-dershowitz-rcna56250
|
||||||
49
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Wei Dai.md
Normal file
49
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Wei Dai.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Technologists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- WeiDai
|
||||||
|
- Cryptography
|
||||||
|
- Cypherpunks
|
||||||
|
- DigitalCash
|
||||||
|
- Bitcoin
|
||||||
|
- Rationalism
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Wei Dai
|
||||||
|
summary: "Wei Dai is a computer engineer who proposed the b-money digital-cash scheme cited in the Bitcoin white paper, created the Crypto++ library, and posts in the rationalist community."
|
||||||
|
born: 1976
|
||||||
|
location: "United States"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Wei Dai is a computer engineer and cryptographer associated with the [[Cypherpunks]] movement who proposed "b-money," an early scheme for anonymous, government-resistant digital money that [[Satoshi Nakamoto]] cited as the first reference in the [[Bitcoin]] white paper. He created the Crypto++ open-source cryptography library and is an active participant in the [[Rationalist Community|rationalist community]] around [[LessWrong]].[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### B-money
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Born in 1976 and educated in computer science with a mathematics minor at the [[University of Washington]], Dai published the b-money proposal on the cypherpunks mailing list in November 1998. It opened by crediting [[Timothy May]]'s crypto-anarchy, in which "the government is not temporarily destroyed but permanently forbidden and permanently unnecessary," and described "a scheme for a group of untraceable digital pseudonyms to pay each other with money and to enforce contracts amongst themselves without outside help."[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The proposal set out two protocols. In the first, every participant kept a separate copy of how much money belonged to each pseudonym, and money was created by broadcasting the solution to "a previously unsolved computational problem," with the number of units minted equal to the cost of the computing effort measured against a standard basket of commodities. Recognizing that universal broadcast was impractical, Dai sketched a second protocol in which a subset of participants, the "servers," maintained the accounts on a Usenet-style broadcast channel and each deposited money in a special account to be forfeited as a fine on proof of misconduct, a bonded-validator structure that anticipated later proof-of-stake systems.[^3][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Citation in the Bitcoin White Paper
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
B-money appears as the first numbered reference in Satoshi Nakamoto's 2008 paper "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System." Nakamoto first emailed Dai on August 22, 2008, writing, "I was very interested to read your b-money page," explaining that he was preparing "a paper that expands on your ideas into a complete working system," and that [[Adam Back]] of hashcash.org "noticed the similarities and pointed me to your site." Nakamoto asked for the year of publication so he could cite it, and Dai replied that b-money had been announced on the cypherpunks list in 1998.[^2][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Nakamoto wrote to Dai again on January 10, 2009, the day after releasing the Bitcoin software, saying it "achieves nearly all the goals you set out to solve in your b-money paper" through a system "entirely decentralized, without any server or trusted parties." Dai has said the creator did not actually read his proposal before independently reinventing the idea, learning of it and crediting him only afterward, and that he believes Nakamoto arrived at the concept independently. The smallest unit of ether on [[Ethereum]], the "wei," equal to one quintillionth of an ether, is named after Dai.[^4][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Crypto++ and the Rationalist Community
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Dai released the first version of his Crypto++ open-source C++ cryptography library in June 1995 and worked as a programmer at the firm TerraSciences and then in Microsoft's cryptography research group, where he co-proposed the VMAC authentication algorithm and held cryptography patents, before turning the library over to the community in 2015.[^1][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On LessWrong, the rationalist forum founded by [[Eliezer Yudkowsky]], Dai introduced updateless decision theory in his August 2009 post "Towards a New Decision Theory," a framework treating the decision-maker as an algorithm that does not update on observations, which resolves Newcomb's problem and counterfactual mugging and fed into the functional decision theory later developed at the [[Machine Intelligence Research Institute|MIRI]]. He is a pessimistic voice on artificial-intelligence safety, arguing that problems in metaethics and metaphilosophy should be solved before building artificial general intelligence, which places him within the same [[Extropianism|extropian]]-descended intellectual milieu that produced [[Hal Finney]] and [[Nick Szabo]].[^5][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Cypherpunks Write Code: Wei Dai and B-money," *Medium,* on Dai's biography, b-money, Crypto++, and LessWrong activity. https://medium.com/@Carrsos1/cypherpunks-write-code-wei-dai-and-b-money-or-a-coin-before-bitcoin-8bf5836bfb36
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Nakamoto, Satoshi. "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System," 2008, citing Wei Dai's b-money. https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Dai, Wei. "b-money," 1998. http://www.weidai.com/bmoney.txt
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Wei Dai/Satoshi Nakamoto 2009 Bitcoin emails," Gwern.net, on the 2008 correspondence and Back pointing Nakamoto to b-money. https://gwern.net/doc/bitcoin/2008-nakamoto
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "The Extropian Roots of Bitcoin," *CCN,* on the extropian and cypherpunk overlap of Dai, Finney, and Szabo. https://www.ccn.com/extropian-roots-bitcoin/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: Dai, Wei. "b-money," 1998, on the two protocols, proof-of-work issuance, and the bonded servers. https://nakamotoinstitute.org/library/b-money/ "Satoshi Nakamoto emails to Wei Dai, 2008-2009," Gwern.net, on the August 22, 2008 and January 10, 2009 messages. https://gwern.net/doc/bitcoin/2008-nakamoto
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Crypto++ Library, weidai11/cryptopp, GitHub, on the June 1995 first release and the library's history. https://github.com/weidai11/cryptopp
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Dai, Wei. "Towards a New Decision Theory," LessWrong, August 13, 2009. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/de3xjFaACCAk6imzv/towards-a-new-decision-theory
|
||||||
53
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/William Burns.md
Normal file
53
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/William Burns.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,53 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Intelligence & Government"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- WilliamBurns
|
||||||
|
- CIA
|
||||||
|
- StateDepartment
|
||||||
|
- JeffreyEpstein
|
||||||
|
- Palantir
|
||||||
|
- Biden
|
||||||
|
- Intelligence
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- William J. Burns
|
||||||
|
- Bill Burns
|
||||||
|
summary: "William J. Burns is an American diplomat and intelligence official who served as U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, president of the Carnegie Endowment, and Director of Central Intelligence from 2021 to 2025 under Joe Biden, and whose multiple 2014 meetings with Jeffrey Epstein at the Epstein Manhattan townhouse were documented in the Wall Street Journal's 2023 review of the Epstein calendars."
|
||||||
|
born: 1956-04-11
|
||||||
|
location: "Fort Bragg, North Carolina (born)"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
William J. Burns (born April 11, 1956, at [[Fort Bragg|Fort Bragg, North Carolina]]) is an American diplomat and intelligence official who served as the [[Director of Central Intelligence]] from March 2021 to January 2025 under President [[Joe Biden|Joe Biden]]. Burns's career spans the [[United States Foreign Service|Foreign Service]] (ambassador to [[Jordan]] 1998-2001, assistant secretary of state for [[Near Eastern Affairs]] 2001-2005, ambassador to [[Russia]] 2005-2008, deputy secretary of state 2011-2014), the think-tank sector (president of the [[Carnegie Endowment for International Peace]] 2015-2021), and the intelligence community (CIA director 2021-2025). The [[Wall Street Journal]] reported in 2023, on the basis of the [[Epstein Files|Epstein calendars]], that Burns met with [[Jeffrey Epstein]] on multiple occasions in 2014 at the Epstein Manhattan townhouse, while Burns was between the deputy-secretary-of-state tenure and the Carnegie Endowment presidency. Burns stated through a spokesperson that he "deeply regrets" the meetings and was unaware of Epstein's 2008 conviction at the time.[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Career and the Diplomatic-to-Intelligence Trajectory
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Burns entered the Foreign Service in 1982 and rose through the Near Eastern Affairs and policy-planning ranks under both Republican and Democratic administrations. His ambassadorial assignments in Jordan and Russia and his tenure as assistant secretary for Near Eastern Affairs placed him at the operational center of U.S. Middle East policy across the [[September 11 attacks|9/11]] period, the [[Iraq War|Iraq War]], and the post-[[Arab Spring|Arab Spring]] regional realignment. His 2011-2014 tenure as deputy secretary of state under [[Hillary Clinton|Hillary Clinton]] and [[John Kerry|John Kerry]] covered the [[Benghazi|Benghazi]] period, the [[Iran nuclear deal|Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA)]] negotiations, and the early stages of the [[Syrian Civil War|Syrian conflict]].[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The 2014 transition from deputy secretary of state to the [[Carnegie Endowment]] presidency is the gap during which the Epstein meetings occurred. Burns left government in November 2014 and took the Carnegie Endowment presidency in February 2015, and the WSJ-reported Epstein meetings fall within the 2014 window when Burns was a private citizen but still the most recently retired deputy secretary of state. Burns spent the six years (2015-2021) between the State Department departure and the CIA directorship at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Epstein Meetings
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Wall Street Journal's May 2023 report on the Epstein calendars documented that Burns met with Jeffrey Epstein on multiple occasions in 2014, including at the Epstein Manhattan townhouse. The reporting was based on the schedules and emails obtained from the Epstein files, which the WSJ reviewed. The meetings occurred after Epstein's 2008 federal non-prosecution agreement but before the 2019 federal sex-trafficking charges. Burns stated through a spokesperson that he was unaware of Epstein's 2008 conviction at the time and that he cut ties with Epstein upon learning of it. [[The Guardian]] reported Burns's statement that he "deeply regrets ever meeting" with Epstein.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Carstensen EFTA index documents additional Epstein file entries relevant to the Burns-Epstein relationship. The Tommy Carstensen aggregator cross-references the EFTA releases to document the Thiel-Epstein-Burns overlap: [[Peter Thiel]]'s documented 2014 meetings at the Epstein townhouse overlap chronologically with Burns's, placing the chairman of a major [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] contractor ([[Palantir Technologies|Palantir]], whose government business includes the CIA as a client) and the future CIA director in the same Epstein-mediated setting within the same calendar year. Burns became CIA director in March 2021, seven years after the meetings.[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Palantir Overlap
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Palantir Technologies received early funding from the CIA venture arm [[In-Q-Tel]] in 2004 and is a documented CIA platform supplier through its [[Palantir Gotham|Gotham]] product. Burns's CIA directorship (2021-2025) postdated his 2014 Epstein meetings by seven years. The Carstensen EFTA index documents that Peter Thiel's 2014 meetings at the Epstein townhouse overlap chronologically with Burns's, placing the future CIA director and the Palantir chairman on the same Epstein-mediated social terrain within the same calendar year.[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The substantive question of what was discussed at the Burns-Epstein meetings, and whether any of it touched on Palantir or on intelligence matters, is not documented in the primary sources currently available. Burns's spokesperson's statement framed the meetings as relating to Burns's transition to the Carnegie Endowment and to geopolitics, and the WSJ reporting did not establish that intelligence or contracting matters were discussed. The Epstein calendars and the Carstensen-indexed EFTA entries are the primary record; they document the co-presence but not the meeting content.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The CIA Directorship and the Biden Tenure
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Burns was nominated for the CIA directorship by President Biden in November 2020 and confirmed by the Senate in March 2021. His tenure covered the [[Withdrawal from Afghanistan|2021 Afghanistan withdrawal]], the [[Russian invasion of Ukraine|2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine]] (Burns had met with [[Sergei Naryshkin|Russian SVR chief Sergei Naryshkin]] in Moscow in November 2021 in a documented attempt to dissuade the invasion), the [[Hamas-Israel war|2023 Hamas-Israel war]], and the broader [[China|China]]-Russia strategic realignment. Burns returned to private life in January 2025 at the end of the Biden administration.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The 2023 disclosure of the 2014 Epstein meetings surfaced the connection after Burns had already become CIA director, placing a sitting CIA director in the publicly disclosed Epstein relationship. Burns's spokesperson's framing (unaware of the conviction, regrets the meetings, cut ties on learning) is the official position. The underlying primary documents are the Epstein calendars and the Carstensen-indexed EFTA entries.[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Jeffrey Epstein's Private Calendar: CIA Director William Burns..." *Wall Street Journal,* May 2023. https://www.wsj.com/us-news/jeffrey-epstein-calendar-cia-director-goldman-sachs-noam-chomsky-c9f6a3ff ; For Burns's career and the CIA directorship, see the CIA official biography and the contemporaneous confirmation and tenure coverage.
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Jeffrey Epstein messaged with former CIA director Bill Burns, files show." *The Guardian,* February 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/04/jeffrey-epstein-bill-burns-cia-messages
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Tommy Carstensen Epstein Files index, "Peter Thiel," cross-referencing the EFTA releases. https://tommycarstensen.com/epstein/people/peter-thiel.html
|
||||||
|
[^4]: For the Palantir Technologies-In-Q-Tel relationship and the CIA client base, see the Palantir Technologies page and the underlying SEC EDGAR filings.
|
||||||
59
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/maia arson crimew.md
Normal file
59
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/maia arson crimew.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,59 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Technologists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- MaiaArsonCrimew
|
||||||
|
- TillieKottmann
|
||||||
|
- Hacker
|
||||||
|
- Leak
|
||||||
|
- Verkada
|
||||||
|
- NoFlyList
|
||||||
|
- APT69420
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Tillie Kottmann
|
||||||
|
- crimew
|
||||||
|
- maia arson crimew
|
||||||
|
summary: "maia arson crimew (formerly Tillie Kottmann) is a Swiss hacker from Lucerne who led the collective APT69420, leaked the U.S. No Fly List in January 2023 from a misconfigured CommuteAir server, and in June 2026 published the membership directory of Peter Thiel's secret Dialog society."
|
||||||
|
born: 2000-08-19
|
||||||
|
location: "Lucerne, Switzerland"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-17
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-17
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
maia arson crimew (formerly known as Tillie Kottmann) is a Swiss hacker and software developer from [[Lucerne]], [[Switzerland]], who led the hacker collective [[APT69420]] (Arson Cats) and is known for a series of high-profile data disclosures including the 2021 [[Verkada]] security-camera breach, the January 2023 leak of the U.S. [[No Fly List]] from a misconfigured [[CommuteAir]] server, and the June 2026 publication of the membership directory of [[Peter Thiel]]'s secret society [[Dialog]]. crimew was indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury in the [[Western District of Washington]] in March 2021 on charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft related to the 2019-2021 source-code-leak activity, but has not been sentenced because Switzerland does not extradite its own citizens.[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
crimew produced the 2026 leak that generated the first primary record of Dialog's membership, and the disclosure extends a documented pattern of high-impact releases of sensitive institutional data held by inadequately secured servers. crimew occupies a specific role in the disclosure ecosystem: not a whistleblower with internal access but an external intruder who exploits misconfigured infrastructure, and whose releases are selected for political and public-interest effect rather than for financial gain.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Verkada Breach and APT69420
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
crimew led the hacker collective APT69420 (styled Advanced Persistent Threat 69420, a parody of nation-state threat-actor naming conventions), which in March 2021 breached the U.S. security-camera company Verkada. The breach accessed live and archived surveillance footage from approximately 150,000 cameras deployed across hospitals, schools, prisons, police departments, corporate offices, and [[Tesla]] facilities, including cameras inside a Tesla warehouse, the [[Halifax Health]] medical center, and the [[Madison County Jail]] in [[Alabama]]. The access was obtained through a [[super admin]] account found exposed on the company's internal network.[^2][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
A single compromise of the Verkada platform operator exposed footage from thousands of geographically dispersed and functionally unrelated installations. crimew and the APT69420 collective published selected footage and shared access with journalists, framing the release as an exposure of the surveillance infrastructure that organizations had built without adequate awareness of its concentration. The breach prompted Verkada to restructure its access controls and drew regulatory attention to the surveillance-camera-as-a-service industry.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The No Fly List Leak
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In January 2023 crimew disclosed that, while "bored" in late 2022, they had accessed the U.S. government's No Fly List on an unsecured CommuteAir server (a misconfigured [[Amazon Web Services|AWS]] instance operated by the regional airline). The list, a 2019 version containing approximately 1.5 million entries of individuals barred from boarding commercial flights into or within the United States, was shared with the journalism publication *[[Daily Dot|Daily Dot]]* and subsequently published on a hacking forum. crimew noted in the release that the list "trends towards almost exclusively Arabic sounding names," a finding that became part of the public record of the documented racial and religious disproportion in the watchlisting system.[^3][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The No Fly List leak placed a copy of a previously secret government watchlist in the public domain and permitted independent analysis of its composition. The release fed into ongoing litigation over the due-process deficiencies of the federal watchlisting system and into academic and journalistic analysis of the list's demographics. The legal status of the list itself remains contested; crimew's release, by making it analyzable, converted a secret instrument of administrative control into a public artifact.[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Federal Indictment and the Extradition Bar
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In March 2021 crimew was indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury in the Western District of Washington on charges of conspiracy to commit computer fraud and abuse, wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft, related to alleged hacking activity between 2019 and 2021 (the source-code-leak cases including [[Intel]], [[Nissan]], and other firms, not the later Verkada or No Fly List disclosures). The conspiracy-to-commit-computer-fraud count carries a maximum of five years; the wire-fraud and aggravated-identity-theft counts carry additional penalties.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
crimew has not been sentenced and is not in U.S. custody, because Switzerland does not extradite its own citizens under its federal constitution. The practical effect is a lifetime travel restriction: crimew cannot leave Switzerland without risk of arrest and extradition to the United States from any third country that does extradite. crimew has spoken publicly about the restriction and continues to live and work in Switzerland. The case is one of a recurring pattern in which European hackers indicted under U.S. computer-fraud statutes remain outside U.S. custody due to national extradition limits, and the pattern is part of the broader jurisdictional friction the U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act produces when applied extraterritorially.[^1][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Dialog Disclosure
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In June 2026 crimew published a membership directory of the Dialog secret society that had been embedded in the source code of the Dialog website, reflecting the site's access controls. The published list named approximately 113 affiliates. A source separately provided the complete 2026 retreat registration list (222 names) to *WIRED*, which published the combined reporting. crimew's release was the website-source disclosure; the registration list came through a different channel.[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Dialog disclosure used the same method as the prior releases: external access to inadequately secured infrastructure (the website source code containing the membership directory), a release selected for its political and public-interest weight, and framing language that emphasizes the disclosure function. The target differed from Verkada and the No Fly List: a private convening network rather than a surveillance vendor or a government watchlist, and a network whose secrecy posture had been reinforced by the Thiel-funded [[Bollea v. Gawker|Gawker]] litigation.[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: U.S. Department of Justice, Western District of Washington. "Swiss Hacker Indicted for Conspiracy, Wire Fraud, and Aggravated Identity Theft." March 2021. https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdwa/pr/swiss-hacker-indicted-conspiracy-wire-fraud-and-aggravated-identity-theft
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Coverage of the Verkada breach and APT69420 in *Bloomberg,* *The Verge,* and *Wired,* March 2021.
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Coverage of the No Fly List leak in *Daily Dot,* *BleepingComputer,* and *Fortune,* January 2023.
|
||||||
|
[^4]: For the Verkada breach technical detail, see the published APT69420 release materials and contemporaneous security-press coverage.
|
||||||
|
[^5]: crimew, maia arson. No Fly List release statement, January 2023, via the *Daily Dot* publication of the analyzed list.
|
||||||
|
[^6]: For the Swiss non-extradition of citizens and crimew's resulting travel restriction, see *WRS (World Radio Switzerland)* reporting and crimew's own public statements.
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Cameron, Dell, and Yulia Almazova. "Leak Exposes Members of Peter Thiel's Secretive 'Dialog' Society." *WIRED,* June 16, 2026. https://www.wired.com/story/leak-exposes-members-of-peter-thiels-secretive-dialog-society/
|
||||||
|
|
@ -1,36 +1,68 @@
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
title: Aldous Huxley
|
|
||||||
aliases:
|
|
||||||
- Aldous Huxley
|
|
||||||
- Aldous Leonard Huxley
|
|
||||||
created: 2026-05-17
|
|
||||||
updated: 2026-05-18
|
|
||||||
category: "Authors & Journalists"
|
category: "Authors & Journalists"
|
||||||
tags:
|
tags:
|
||||||
- Person
|
- Person
|
||||||
- Author
|
- Author
|
||||||
- Parapsychology
|
|
||||||
- Psychedelics
|
- Psychedelics
|
||||||
|
- Parapsychology
|
||||||
|
- HumanPotentialMovement
|
||||||
|
- SocialControl
|
||||||
|
- Literature
|
||||||
|
- Eugenics
|
||||||
- UnitedKingdom
|
- UnitedKingdom
|
||||||
summary: "Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) was a British author and philosopher whose interest in consciousness and psi led him to document his mescaline experiences in The Doors of Perception (1954) and to visit Andrija Puharich's Round Table Foundation parapsychology research group in 1955."
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Aldous Huxley
|
||||||
|
- Aldous Leonard Huxley
|
||||||
|
summary: "Aldous Huxley was the novelist of Brave New World who pioneered the literary use of psychedelics in The Doors of Perception, visited Andrija Puharich's Round Table Foundation parapsychology group, helped seed the Esalen Institute and the Human Potential movement, and lectured on a coming pharmacological dictatorship he called the ultimate revolution."
|
||||||
born: 1894-07-26
|
born: 1894-07-26
|
||||||
died: 1963-11-22
|
died: 1963-11-22
|
||||||
location: "Godalming, Surrey, England"
|
location: "Godalming, England; Los Angeles, California"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-05-17
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) was a renowned English writer and philosopher, best known for his dystopian novel *Brave New World*. He had a keen interest in the [[Consciousness|trance state]] and its potential as a means of gathering unseen information about the natural world, a fascination that led him to experiment with psychedelic substances and observe the work of [[Andrija Puharich]][^1].
|
Aldous Leonard Huxley (July 26, 1894 to November 22, 1963) was an English writer best known for the dystopian novel *Brave New World* (1932), and later one of the central figures linking the psychedelic counterculture, the [[Esalen Institute]], and the Human Potential movement. He was the grandson of the biologist Thomas Henry Huxley and the younger brother of [[Julian Huxley]], the evolutionary biologist who coined the modern usage of "[[Transhumanism|transhumanism]]." A severe eye infection in his teens left him nearly blind for almost three years and gave him a lifelong preoccupation with perception and with senses beyond the ordinary five. His mescaline experiment recorded in *The Doors of Perception* (1954) introduced psychedelic drugs to a wide literary audience, and his late lectures on what he called the "ultimate revolution" warned of pharmacological methods of social control. He died in Los Angeles on November 22, 1963, having asked to be injected with LSD as he died.[^1][^2][^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Huxley's personal experiences with mescaline, the principal hallucinogenic agent in peyote, were documented in his 1954 book, *The Doors of Perception*. This work explored the expansion of consciousness through drug use and met with both controversy and widespread readership, influencing counterculture movements[^1].
|
### Brave New World
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
In August 1955, Huxley visited [[Andrija Puharich]] at the [[Round Table Foundation]] in Maine. He was intrigued by the diverse group of individuals assembled by Puharich, including various psychics and researchers. Huxley noted the presence of [[Harry Stump]], the Dutch sculptor, who would go into trances in the [[Faraday Cage]] and produce automatic scripts in Egyptian hieroglyphics[^1].
|
*Brave New World*, published in 1932, projected a future World State in which human beings are mass-produced in hatcheries, sorted before birth into a rigid biological caste system from Alpha down to Epsilon, conditioned from infancy to love their assigned station, and kept docile by the pleasure drug soma and by constant consumption and casual sex. The novel satirized the application of [[Eugenics|eugenic]] breeding, Pavlovian conditioning, and Fordist mass production to human life, depicting a totalitarian order that secures obedience not through terror but through engineered contentment. Huxley took the title from Shakespeare's *The Tempest*, in which Miranda exclaims, "O brave new world, that has such people in it."[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Huxley was present when Puharich attempted to drug [[Harry Stump]] with the *teonanáctl* mushroom. He observed Stump's confused and intoxicated state and insisted that Puharich administer an antidote. Huxley expressed ethical concerns about drugging Stump without his knowledge[^1].
|
Huxley returned to the book's themes in *Brave New World Revisited* (1958), a set of essays comparing his 1932 forecast with the world of the 1950s and judging that overpopulation, propaganda, advertising, and chemical persuasion were carrying society toward his imagined dystopia faster than he had expected. He argued there that the methods of control in a future scientific dictatorship would resemble the seductive conditioning of *Brave New World* more than the overt brutality of George Orwell's *Nineteen Eighty-Four*, because a population that has been taught to enjoy its servitude requires no policing.[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Huxley's interest in the sixth sense stemmed from a childhood eye infection that left him partially blind for nearly three years, making him keenly aware of perception beyond the five known senses[^1].
|
### The Doors of Perception and Psychedelics
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Publications
|
In 1953 Huxley wrote to the psychiatrist [[Humphry Osmond]], who was researching [[mescaline]], asking to take the drug under observation, and on May 4, 1953, in his home in Los Angeles, he swallowed four-tenths of a gram of mescaline dissolved in water. His account of the experience appeared as *The Doors of Perception* (1954), which described the way ordinary objects, a vase of flowers, the folds of his trousers, blazed with significance and argued that the brain acts as a "reducing valve" filtering out a wider "Mind at Large" that the drug lets through. The title comes from William Blake's *The Marriage of Heaven and Hell* (1793): "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite."[^2][^5]
|
||||||
* *Brave New World* (1932)
|
|
||||||
* *The Doors of Perception* (1954)
|
Huxley went on to take [[LSD]], first supplied on Christmas Eve 1955 by the businessman [[Al Hubbard]], and explored the drugs as a route to mystical experience, a theme he had already framed in *The Perennial Philosophy* (1945), his anthology of the common mystical core he discerned across the world's religions. He set out his case for the controlled use of psychedelics in *Heaven and Hell* (1956), the sequel to *The Doors of Perception*. His writings gave the emerging drug culture much of its vocabulary, and the rock band the Doors took its name from his title.[^5][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Parapsychology and the Round Table Foundation
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Huxley's interest in expanded consciousness extended to psychical research and the [[Consciousness|trance state]] as a possible means of perceiving unseen information about the world. In August 1955 he visited the physician and parapsychologist [[Andrija Puharich]] at the [[Round Table Foundation]] in Maine, a privately funded research group that gathered psychics and scientists to study extrasensory perception. Huxley was intrigued by the assembled circle, among them the Dutch sculptor [[Harry Stump]], who would enter trances inside a [[Faraday Cage]] and produce automatic scripts in what was described as Egyptian hieroglyphics.[^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
During the visit Huxley was present when Puharich attempted to drug Stump with the teonanácatl mushroom without his knowledge. Observing Stump's confused and intoxicated state, Huxley raised ethical objections and insisted that Puharich administer an antidote. The episode is recorded in Annie Jacobsen's history of the United States government's investigations into extrasensory perception.[^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Island, Esalen, and the Human Potential Movement
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Huxley's final novel, *Island* (1962), was the utopian counterpart to *Brave New World*, depicting the fictional Pacific island of Pala where a humane society uses the consciousness-expanding "moksha-medicine," a psychedelic, together with meditation, tantric practice, and ecological living, to cultivate awareness rather than to enforce conformity. The book turned the same technologies of mind that the earlier novel had portrayed as instruments of control toward the opposite end of human liberation and growth.[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Huxley's lectures on "human potentialities," which he delivered in the late 1950s and early 1960s, including a 1960 lecture series, supplied the conceptual language for the Esalen Institute, founded at Big Sur, California, in 1962 by [[Michael Murphy]] and Dick Price. Price had been moved by hearing Huxley speak on human potentialities, and the founders drew on Huxley's phrasing in framing Esalen's program; Huxley, his wife Laura, and members of his circle such as Gerald Heard, [[Alan Watts]], and [[Gregory Bateson]] provided early support and networking. Huxley visited Murphy and Price at Big Sur in January 1962, shortly before his death, and his ideas became part of the foundation of the Human Potential movement that grew out of Esalen.[^7][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Ultimate Revolution and Pharmacological Control
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On March 20, 1962, Huxley delivered a talk to the Berkeley Language Center titled "The Ultimate Revolution," in which he described a coming form of dictatorship that would secure compliance through pleasure rather than pain. He predicted "a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it." He judged that the scientific dictatorships of the future would resemble the *Brave New World* pattern more closely than the *Nineteen Eighty-Four* pattern, because conditioning and chemistry are more efficient instruments of rule than force.[^9][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Huxley was diagnosed with throat cancer and died at his Los Angeles home on November 22, 1963, the day of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Unable to speak, he wrote a request that his wife Laura administer LSD, and she injected him with one hundred micrograms, followed by a second dose, as he died in the late afternoon. Laura Huxley recounted the deathbed scene in a letter to Julian Huxley, later published as part of her memoir *This Timeless Moment* (1968).[^2][^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Footnotes
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
[^1]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis*. Little, Brown and Company, 2017.
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Huxley, Aldous. *Brave New World.* Chatto and Windus, 1932; with "Aldous Huxley," *Encyclopædia Britannica,* on his life and family.
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Aldous Huxley, Dying of Cancer, Left This World Tripping on LSD (1963)," *Open Culture,* on the deathbed LSD request and Laura Huxley's letter. https://www.openculture.com/2024/04/aldous-huxley-dying-of-cancer-left-this-world-tripping-on-lsd-1963
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Huxley, Aldous. *Brave New World Revisited.* Harper and Brothers, 1958, on the caste system, conditioning, and the comparison with Orwell.
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Aldous Huxley: The Ultimate Revolution," 1962 Berkeley lecture, on the *Brave New World* versus *Nineteen Eighty-Four* contrast and pharmacological control. https://publicintelligence.net/aldous-huxley-1962-u-c-berkeley-speech-on-the-ultimate-revolution/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "When Aldous Huxley Opened the Doors of Perception," *The MIT Press Reader,* on the May 1953 mescaline experiment with Humphry Osmond and the Blake source of the title. https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/when-aldous-huxley-opened-the-doors-of-perception/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Al Hubbard furnishes Aldous Huxley with LSD on December 24, 1955," HistoryLink, on Huxley's first LSD experience; with Huxley, Aldous. *The Perennial Philosophy.* Harper and Brothers, 1945, and *Heaven and Hell.* Chatto and Windus, 1956.
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Huxley, Aldous. *Island.* Chatto and Windus, 1962, on Pala and the moksha-medicine.
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "Aldous Huxley's Influence on the Esalen Institute," *Longreads,* on the human-potentialities lectures, Murphy and Price, and the 1962 Big Sur visit. https://longreads.com/2015/06/09/aldous-huxleys-influence-on-the-esalen-institute/
|
||||||
|
[^9]: Huxley, Aldous. "The Ultimate Revolution," lecture at the Berkeley Language Center, March 20, 1962, quoted text. https://ia801803.us.archive.org/30/items/huxley-aldous-the-ultimate-revolution_202012/Huxley%20Aldous%20-%20The%20ultimate%20revolution.pdf
|
||||||
|
[^10]: Huxley, Laura Archera. *This Timeless Moment: A Personal View of Aldous Huxley.* Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968, on the deathbed LSD doses.
|
||||||
|
[^11]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis.* Little, Brown and Company, 2017, on Huxley's childhood near-blindness, his August 1955 visit to Andrija Puharich's Round Table Foundation, Harry Stump's Faraday-cage trances, and the teonanáctl episode.
|
||||||
|
|
|
||||||
50
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Alex Karp.md
Normal file
50
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Alex Karp.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,50 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Technologists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- AlexKarp
|
||||||
|
- Palantir
|
||||||
|
- PeterThiel
|
||||||
|
- Surveillance
|
||||||
|
- Israel
|
||||||
|
summary: "Alex Karp is the cofounder and chief executive of Palantir Technologies, a Stanford-trained social theorist who built the data-analytics firm with Peter Thiel and turned it into a major contractor to U.S. intelligence, the military, and Israel."
|
||||||
|
born: 1967-10-02
|
||||||
|
location: "Palo Alto, California"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Alex Karp (born October 2, 1967) is the cofounder and chief executive of [[Palantir Technologies]], the data-analytics and surveillance firm he built in 2003 with [[Peter Thiel]], [[Joe Lonsdale|Joseph Lonsdale]], [[Stephen Cohen]], and [[Nathan Gettings]]. Trained as a lawyer and a social theorist rather than an engineer, Karp runs the operational side of the company while Thiel chairs it, and he became one of the most outspoken defenders of its work for U.S. intelligence, the military, and [[Israel]].[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Background
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Karp grew up in the [[Philadelphia]] area in a politically left-leaning household, the son of a Jewish pediatrician father and an African American artist mother, and is dyslexic. He took a bachelor's degree from Haverford College in 1989, a law degree at [[Stanford University]] in 1992, where he met Thiel, and a 2002 doctorate in social theory from Goethe University in [[Frankfurt]] with a German-language dissertation titled "Aggression in der Lebenswelt." The doctorate is often described as supervised by the philosopher [[Jürgen Habermas]], but the scholar Moira Weigel, examining the record, found his actual advisor was the sociologist Karola Brede and reported that Habermas had rejected a draft of his thesis.[^1][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Before Palantir, Karp managed money in London through a firm he named the Caedmon Group, seeded with a small inheritance from his grandfather and built up with largely European high-net-worth clients, and he occasionally helped Thiel raise capital. He and Thiel founded Palantir in 2003 with about two million dollars in early backing from the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] venture arm [[In-Q-Tel]] and roughly thirty million dollars Thiel put up himself as conventional venture firms declined, taking its name from the seeing-stones of Tolkien's fiction. Karp has led it as chief executive since, taking it public through a direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange on September 30, 2020, and his 2020 compensation, dominated by stock options, reached about 1.1 billion dollars.[^3][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Politics and the Gaza War
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Karp was critical of [[Donald Trump]] during his first term and backed [[Kamala Harris]] in 2024, but his politics shifted after the October 7, 2023 [[Hamas]] attack on Israel. Palantir signed a strategic partnership with the Israeli Defense Ministry on January 12, 2024, around three months into the war, and held a special board meeting in Tel Aviv that Thiel and Karp attended, supplying its Artificial Intelligence Platform for intelligence and targeting work in [[Gaza]]. He has said that staff departures over his pro-Israel stance do not trouble him, arguing that "if you have a position that does not cost you ever to lose an employee, it's not a position."[^2][^4][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Interrupted by a protester at the Hill and Valley Forum at the U.S. Capitol on April 30, 2025, Karp said "the primary source of death in Palestine" was "the fact that Hamas has realised that there are millions and millions of useful idiots." In Palantir's February 2025 shareholder letter he wrote that the company exists "to scare enemies and, on occasion, kill them," and he has described "wokeness" as a "thin pagan religion" and the central risk to the country. By 2025 Palantir was a leading contractor to the second Trump administration: its Maven Smart System contract was expanded by 795 million dollars in May 2025, and in July 2025 the Army announced a consolidated enterprise agreement with a ceiling of up to ten billion dollars, the largest contract in the company's history.[^5][^10][^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Technological Republic
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Karp published *The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West*, written with [[Nicholas Zamiska]], through Crown on February 18, 2025, and it became a New York Times bestseller. The book argues that Silicon Valley "lost its way" by chasing "shiny new toys, from phone apps and games to marketing algorithms" and "lifestyle technologies," and that the "engineering elite" must rebuild its ties to government and the military.[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Karp pointed to [[Google]]'s 2018 withdrawal from the Pentagon's Project Maven, under employee pressure, as a warning of what he called self-centered libertarianism, and the book frames a "reassertion of national culture and values" as the precondition for technological power. Critics at Al Jazeera and The Nation read it as a statement of the techno-nationalist politics shared across the Thiel network. By 2026 Karp's net worth was estimated in the range of 13 to 14 billion dollars, having peaked above 16 billion in August 2025 as Palantir's stock climbed.[^6][^12]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Palantir CEO Alex Karp was raised in a liberal household outside Philly. Now he's a top Trump administration contractor," *The Philadelphia Inquirer,* December 16, 2025. https://www.inquirer.com/politics/nation/palantir-ceo-alex-karp-trump-administration-20251216.html
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Palantir CEO says his outspoken pro-Israel views have caused employees to leave company," *CNBC,* March 13, 2024. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/13/palantir-ceo-says-outspoken-pro-israel-views-led-employees-to-leave-.html
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Blood tech: The UK ambassador, the sex offender, Palantir, and Gaza," *Al Jazeera,* March 17, 2026. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/17/blood-tech-the-uk-ambassador-the-sex-offender-palantir-and-gaza
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Palantir CEO stands firm in support of Israel despite employee departures," *Calcalist,* 2024. https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/hy1q67e0a
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Palantir's Alex Karp could lose staff over Israel stance," *Fortune,* March 14, 2024. https://fortune.com/2024/03/14/palantir-alex-karp-lose-staff-israel-stance
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Technofacism? Why Palantir's pro-West 'manifesto' has critics alarmed," *Al Jazeera,* April 21, 2026, on *The Technological Republic.* https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/21/technofacism-why-palantirs-pro-west-manifesto-has-critics-alarmed
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Weigel, Moira. "Palantir Goes to the Frankfurt School," *boundary 2,* July 2020, on Karp's Haverford and Stanford degrees, the Frankfurt dissertation "Aggression in der Lebenswelt," and his advisor Karola Brede rather than Habermas. https://www.boundary2.org/2020/07/moira-weigel-palantir-goes-to-the-frankfurt-school/
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "Palantir's direct listing," *CNBC,* September 30, 2020, on the NYSE listing and the In-Q-Tel and Thiel funding; and "Palantir CEO Alex Karp's $1.1 billion 2020 pay," *CNBC,* April 29, 2021. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/30/palantir-pltr-starts-trading-on-the-nyse-in-direct-listing.html
|
||||||
|
[^9]: "Palantir signs strategic partnership with Israeli Defense Ministry," *Bloomberg,* January 12, 2024, on the agreement and the Tel Aviv board meeting. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-12/palantir-signs-strategic-partnership-with-israel-defense-ministry
|
||||||
|
[^10]: "Palantir CEO Alex Karp's 'useful idiots' remark at the Hill and Valley Forum," April 30, 2025; and the February 2025 Palantir shareholder letter, on the "scare enemies and, on occasion, kill them" passage. *CNBC,* May 5, 2025. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/05/palantir-pltr-q1-earnings-report-2025.html
|
||||||
|
[^11]: "Army awards Palantir enterprise agreement worth up to $10 billion," *DefenseScoop,* July 31, 2025, on the consolidated contract ceiling; and "Palantir Maven Smart System expanded by $795 million," *DefenseScoop,* May 23, 2025. https://defensescoop.com/2025/07/31/army-palantir-enterprise-agreement-10-billion/
|
||||||
|
[^12]: "Bloomberg Billionaires Index: Alex Karp," 2026, on his estimated net worth and its August 2025 peak. https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/alexander-c-karp/
|
||||||
56
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Auren Hoffman.md
Normal file
56
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Auren Hoffman.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,56 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Technologists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- AurenHoffman
|
||||||
|
- Dialog
|
||||||
|
- SafeGraph
|
||||||
|
- LiveRamp
|
||||||
|
- SiliconValley
|
||||||
|
- Surveillance
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Auren Ability Hoffman
|
||||||
|
summary: "Auren Hoffman is an American technology entrepreneur who cofounded the secret society Dialog with Peter Thiel in 2006 and founded the location-data broker SafeGraph and the identity-resolution firm LiveRamp, placing him at the intersection of the Thiel elite-network and the consumer-data-brokerage industry."
|
||||||
|
born: 1970-09-05
|
||||||
|
location: "United States"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-17
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-17
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Auren Hoffman is an American technology entrepreneur and the cofounder, with [[Peter Thiel]], of the secret society [[Dialog]], and the founder of the location-data brokerage [[SafeGraph]] and the identity-resolution firm [[LiveRamp]]. His career has placed him at the center of two converging networks: the Thiel elite-gathering and venture network (through Dialog and [[Summit|Summit Series]]-adjacent social circles), and the consumer-data-brokerage industry (through LiveRamp and SafeGraph). The 2026 leak of Dialog's membership roster identified Hoffman as Dialog's chairman and the data entrepreneur whose firms have repeatedly drawn scrutiny for the sale of granular consumer location and identity data to corporate and government clients.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Hoffman holds the two roles simultaneously: he runs the off-the-record network in which government principals meet technology and finance principals, and he runs the firms that supply consumer-behavior data to government agencies. The convening network determines who talks to whom; the data network determines what is known about the population those conversations govern. The two are held by the same individual.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Dialog Chairmanship
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Dialog was cofounded by Thiel and Hoffman in 2006 as an invitation-only retreat convening U.S. officials, foreign government figures, and [[Silicon Valley]] executives under off-the-record rules. Hoffman serves as the organization's chairman. The 2026 *WIRED* report, based on the leak published by the hacktivist [[maia arson crimew|crimew]] and a separately provided registration list, identified Hoffman as the operational principal of Dialog alongside Thiel as the financial and reputational principal. Hoffman appears on the 222-name 2026 retreat roster.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The division of labor between Thiel and Hoffman at Dialog tracks their comparative advantages. Thiel supplies the reputational gravity that draws the [[PayPal Mafia]] core, the [[Palantir Technologies]] government client base, and the ideological principals of the [[Neoreaction]] orbit; Hoffman supplies the convening craft, the data-industry network, and the operational discipline to run a recurring institution. The two-decade persistence of Dialog without a public leak until 2026 reflects the operational seriousness of the arrangement, and the chairman role indicates that the day-to-day institution is Hoffman's rather than Thiel's.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### LiveRamp and Identity Resolution
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Hoffman founded LiveRamp (originally as [[RapLeaf]]) as a data-onboarding and identity-resolution company, building systems to match offline customer data to online identifiers across advertising and marketing ecosystems. LiveRamp was acquired by the advertising-technology holding company [[Acxiom]] in 2014 for approximately 310 million dollars, and was later spun out as an independent public company, [[Ramp Holdings]], trading on the [[New York Stock Exchange]] under the ticker RAMP. The core technical product, identity resolution across disparate data sets, is the same operational problem that underlies both commercial marketing and state surveillance.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The identity-resolution problem is the joining-key problem: given a name and address in one database, a cookie in another, a device advertising ID in a third, and a loyalty-card number in a fourth, determine that all four refer to the same person. Commercially, the solution lets an advertiser track a single consumer across web, mobile, and in-store behavior. The same technique, applied to telecommunications, financial, and location data, lets a state or its contractor track a single person across the same surfaces. LiveRamp's commercial product and the intelligence-application of the same architecture are technically identical, though LiveRamp's clients were commercial.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### SafeGraph and Location Data
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Hoffman founded SafeGraph in 2014 as a location-data brokerage, aggregating and reselling anonymized mobile-device location pings collected from smartphone applications. SafeGraph's datasets have been used in academic research, real estate, and advertising, and the company has repeatedly drawn scrutiny over the granularity of its data and its accessibility to government clients. In 2020 the U.S. [[Centers for Disease Control and Prevention|CDC]] contracted with SafeGraph for cell-phone location data to monitor compliance with [[COVID-19]] pandemic movement restrictions, a use that surfaced the extent to which commercially collected location data is available to federal agencies without a warrant.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The CDC contract made publicly visible what had been an open secret in the industry: commercially collected location data is at least as granular and as current as anything the intelligence community collects under legal process, and it is available for purchase without a warrant because the data is "volunteered" by the user through app permissions. The 2026 Dialog leak renewed scrutiny of Hoffman's position at the intersection of elite-network convening and the commercial surveillance-data industry, because the same individual chairing the off-the-record gathering of senators, governors, and military commanders also chairs the firm that sold the location data to the CDC.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Hoffman's combined roles produce a data-broker-to-regulator pathway. The same firm (SafeGraph) that sells consumer location data commercially also sells it to federal public-health and law-enforcement agencies, while its founder chairs a private gathering (Dialog) whose membership includes sitting U.S. senators, governors, military commanders, and technology executives. The convening network (who talks to whom, off the record) and the data network (who knows what about the population) are run by the same individual, and the Dialog chairmanship is where the two networks overlap in person.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Earlier Ventures
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Prior to LiveRamp and SafeGraph, Hoffman founded [[Bridgepath]], an early online recruiting service that operated in the late-1990s web-services market. Bridgepath was part of the first wave of internet-era recruiting platforms that attempted to apply database-matching to the job-search function, the same identity-resolution-and-matching architecture that would subsequently underlie both LiveRamp and SafeGraph. Hoffman's experience with the data-matching problem at Bridgepath preceded his founding of the identity-resolution firms by approximately a decade.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Hoffman ran the technology strategy and research firm [[Stonebrick Group|Stonebrick]] in the period between Bridgepath and LiveRamp. The Stonebrick work involved advising technology firms on growth strategy and market positioning, and the client relationships Hoffman built during this period formed the basis of the investor-and-founder network he would subsequently bring to the Dialog convening. Hoffman's *Summation* blog (later Substack newsletter) and his podcast output on technology and elite-network topics established his public profile as a convening figure before Dialog was founded.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Hoffman is a recurring figure in the [[Summit Series|Summit Series]]-adjacent founder-and-investor social circuit. The Summit Series (now Summit) hosts the annual [[Summit at Sea|Summit at Sea]] and the [[Summit Powder Mountain|Summit Powder Mountain]] gatherings, and its audience overlaps substantially with the Dialog invitation list. Hoffman's positioning in the Silicon Valley founder-and-investor network, distinct from but overlapping with the PayPal Mafia core around Thiel, predates Dialog and supplied the peer network the gathering was built on.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Cameron, Dell, and Yulia Almazova. "Leak Exposes Members of Peter Thiel's Secretive 'Dialog' Society." *WIRED,* June 16, 2026. https://www.wired.com/story/leak-exposes-members-of-peter-thiels-secretive-dialog-society/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: For LiveRamp and Ramp Holdings corporate history, see Ramp Holdings SEC EDGAR filings and the Acxiom 2014 acquisition record.
|
||||||
|
[^3]: For the CDC contract with SafeGraph in 2020, see contemporaneous reporting on federal procurement of commercial location data, including coverage in *The Wall Street Journal* and *Vice Motherboard* in 2020.
|
||||||
58
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Blake Masters.md
Normal file
58
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Blake Masters.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,58 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "New Right"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- BlakeMasters
|
||||||
|
- PeterThiel
|
||||||
|
- ZeroToOne
|
||||||
|
- ThielCapital
|
||||||
|
- Arizona
|
||||||
|
- RepublicanParty
|
||||||
|
- Senate
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Blake Gates Masters
|
||||||
|
summary: "Blake Masters is an American venture capitalist and author who served as chief operating officer of Thiel Capital and president of the Thiel Foundation, coauthored Zero to One with Peter Thiel in 2014, and was the 2022 Republican nominee for U.S. Senate from Arizona, backed by Thiel's super PAC spending."
|
||||||
|
born: 1986-08-18
|
||||||
|
location: "Arizona (political base)"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Blake Masters (born August 18, 1986) is an American venture capitalist and author who served as chief operating officer of [[Thiel Capital]] and president of the [[Thiel Foundation]] from 2018 to 2022, and who coauthored *Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future* with [[Peter Thiel]] in 2014. Masters was the 2022 Republican nominee for U.S. Senate from [[Arizona]], losing the general election to the incumbent Democrat [[Mark Kelly (politician)|Mark Kelly]] after winning the Republican primary with the financial backing of a Thiel-funded super PAC. His career is the second documented instance, alongside [[JD Vance]], of a Thiel-network operative placed into electoral politics through direct capital deployment.[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Stanford, Zero to One, and the Thiel Apprenticeship
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Masters met Thiel at [[Stanford Law School]], where Masters was a student and Thiel was teaching an undergraduate course on startups in the computer science department. Masters took detailed notes on the course lectures and published them online in 2012, where they circulated widely in the [[Silicon Valley]] founder community. The notes formed the basis of *[[Zero to One|Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future]]*, published by [[Crown Business|Crown]] in 2014 with Thiel and Masters listed as coauthors. The book reached number one on the [[New York Times]] bestseller list and became the canonical text of the [[Founders Fund]] investment thesis.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The book's central arguments are that competition is for losers, that durable value comes from building monopolies around proprietary technology, and that the conventional venture-capital preference for incremental consumer-internet deals was a mistake. These arguments were drawn directly from Thiel's lectures, and Masters's role was the editorial and organizational work of converting them into a published book. The coauthorship placed Masters inside the Thiel orbit at the level of intellectual production, and the book's success made Masters a public figure in the venture and startup world before he had run a company of his own.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Thiel Capital, the Thiel Foundation, and the Fellowship
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Masters joined Thiel's firm Thiel Capital as chief operating officer and served as president of the Thiel Foundation, the vehicle that runs the [[Thiel Fellowship]] program. The dual role placed him in operational control of the two principal non-investment arms of the Thiel network: the firm's strategic and administrative functions (Thiel Capital), and the recruitment-and-mentorship program that identifies and capitalizes young founders outside the university pipeline (the Thiel Foundation and the Fellowship).[^1][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Fellowship presidency is the recruitment-layer position. Masters ran the program that selects the cohort of approximately twenty-to-thirty fellows per year, each receiving 250,000 dollars over two years on the skip-or-stop-out-of-college condition, and his tenure overlapped with the cohort that included some of the program's most prominent alumni. The Fellowship functions as the earliest-stage recruitment layer of the Thiel network, and the president of the Foundation is the operative who staffs it.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The 2022 Arizona Senate Campaign
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Masters announced his candidacy for the [[United States Senate|U.S. Senate]] seat from Arizona in July 2021, seeking the Republican nomination to challenge the incumbent Democrat Mark Kelly. The campaign was backed from the outset by Thiel, who donated to the [[Saving Arizona PAC]], a super PAC formed to support Masters's primary campaign. The Thiel super PAC spending in the Arizona race ran alongside the larger Thiel deployment in the Ohio race that elected JD Vance, and the two campaigns were treated in contemporaneous reporting as a coordinated Thiel political project.[^3][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Masters won the August 2022 Republican primary, defeating the establishment-backed candidate [[Jim Lamon]] and several other contenders. The general election campaign against Mark Kelly was marked by Masters's shift toward the center on several positions he had taken during the primary, including his earlier endorsement of a federal personhood abortion ban and his expressed openness to privatizing [[Social Security]]. Kelly won the November 2022 general election by approximately five percentage points. Masters conceded and subsequently took a role in the private sector, including a board position at [[PublicSq|PSQ Holdings]], the public-company successor to the conservative marketplace platform PublicSq.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Vance-Masters Parallel and the Recruitment Pattern
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Masters and Vance campaigns together were the Thiel network's electoral deployment in the 2022 cycle. Thiel spent approximately fifteen million dollars on the [[Protect Ohio Values PAC|Protect Ohio Values]] super PAC supporting Vance in Ohio and an additional fifteen million dollars on the Saving Arizona PAC super PAC supporting Masters in Arizona, for a total 2022-cycle deployment of approximately thirty-two million dollars. [[CNBC]] reported the combined figure in November 2022. Both candidates came from inside the Thiel commercial orbit: Vance from [[Mithril Capital]] and [[Narya Capital]], Masters from Thiel Capital and the Thiel Foundation. The Vance campaign produced a sitting senator who became vice president in 2025; the Masters campaign lost the November 2022 general election to Mark Kelly by approximately five percentage points.[^5][^6][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Saving Arizona PAC was funded almost entirely by Thiel, with additional contributions from the cryptocurrency billionaires [[Cameron Winklevoss|Cameron]] and [[Tyler Winklevoss|Tyler Winklevoss]], who joined the effort in June 2022 per [[Forbes]] reporting. Thiel added a reported 1.5 million dollars in July 2022 as the primary approached, and the PAC resumed general-election spending in September 2022 after a period in which Thiel was reported to be hesitant about continued funding. The [[Federal Election Commission]] raised questions about the PAC's disclosure of its spending, documented in the [[Arizona Mirror]] reporting on the FEC inquiry. The Winklevoss cofunding extended the documented donor network beyond Thiel himself into the broader crypto-and-tech-billionaire cohort that overlaps with the [[PayPal Mafia]] and Thiel-network commercial orbit.[^6][^7][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The pattern of the deployment, with a single donor capitalizing ideologically aligned operatives placed into Senate primaries, is documented across the Protect Ohio Values and Saving Arizona PAC Federal Election Commission filings and in the contemporaneous [[Politico]] and [[OpenSecrets]] reporting. The two campaigns ran in parallel under the same Thiel strategy: identify operatives inside the commercial orbit, capitalize their primaries through a dedicated super PAC, and convert the commercial-network relationship into an elected-office relationship. Vance won the Senate seat and then the vice presidency, while Masters won his primary but lost the general election in a competitive state.[^5][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Blake Masters biography, drawn from public records, corporate filings, and contemporaneous campaign coverage. See *Arizona Mirror* and *Axios* reporting on the 2022 campaign.
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Thiel, Peter, and Blake Masters. *Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future.* Crown Business, 2014.
|
||||||
|
[^3]: 2022 Arizona U.S. Senate election results, Arizona Secretary of State and contemporaneous press, November 2022.
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Thiel Fellowship. Official program site. https://thielfellowship.org/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "A mole hunt, a secret website and Peter Thiel's big risk: How J.D. Vance won the Ohio primary." *Politico,* May 3, 2022. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/03/jd-vance-win-ohio-primary-00029881
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Peter Thiel-tied dark money group helping bankroll super PAC." *OpenSecrets,* February 2022. https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2022/02/peter-thiel-tied-dark-money-group-helping-bankroll-super-pac-spending-on-2022-election/
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Peter Thiel's picks Masters, Vance split key Senate races in Arizona, Ohio." *CNBC,* November 12, 2022. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/12/midterm-results-peter-thiel-picks-masters-vance-see-mixed-results-in-arizona-ohio.html ; "Thiel drops another $1.5M for Masters." *Politico,* July 22, 2022. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/22/peter-thiel-arizona-senate-campaign-00047536
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "Winklevoss Twins Team Up With Peter Thiel To Support Arizona Senate Candidate Blake Masters." *Forbes,* June 30, 2022. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kylemullins/2022/06/30/winklevoss-twins-team-up-with-peter-thiel-to-support-arizona-senate-candidate-blake-masters/ ; "The FEC has questions about how a PAC backing Blake Masters is disclosing its spending." *Arizona Mirror.* https://azmirror.com/briefs/the-fec-has-questions-about-how-a-pac-backing-blake-masters-is-disclosing-its-spending/
|
||||||
43
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Cecile de Jongh.md
Normal file
43
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Cecile de Jongh.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Political Figure"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- JeffreyEpstein
|
||||||
|
- VirginIslands
|
||||||
|
- GovernmentCapture
|
||||||
|
- SouthernTrust
|
||||||
|
- TaxFraud
|
||||||
|
- SexOffender
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Cecile Galiber de Jongh
|
||||||
|
- Cecile R. de Jongh
|
||||||
|
summary: "Cecile de Jongh was the First Lady of the U.S. Virgin Islands from 2007 to 2015 and the office manager of Jeffrey Epstein's territorial companies, whom court filings later cast as his primary conduit for spreading money and influence through the territory's government."
|
||||||
|
location: "St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Cecile de Jongh (born Cecile Galiber) was the office manager of [[Jeffrey Epstein|Jeffrey Epstein's]] [[U.S. Virgin Islands]] entities, including [[Financial Trust Company]] and its successor [[Southern Trust Company]], a position she held from 2007 to 2015. During the same years her husband, [[John de Jongh]], served as the territory's seventh governor, making her the First Lady of the [[Government of the United States Virgin Islands]]. A January 2020 civil enforcement complaint by the Virgin Islands [[Denise George|Attorney General]], and later filings by [[JPMorgan Chase]] in related litigation, alleged that she used her dual position to manage Epstein's local affairs, influence territorial legislation, and direct his money toward officials while he was a registered sex offender.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Position and Compensation
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
De Jongh worked as the office manager of Epstein's Virgin Islands companies from 2007, the year her husband took office, through 2015, the year his term ended. JPMorgan's filings stated that she earned more than 200,000 dollars in compensation in 2007 alone for the role. The companies that employed her, Financial Trust Company and later Southern Trust Company, were the entities through which Epstein held his territorial tax benefits under the [[Economic Development Commission]] program and through which his Virgin Islands operations were funded.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The same filings alleged that Epstein paid tuition for de Jongh's children, that she forwarded her children's tuition bills to him for payment, and that she requested he help fund her husband's re-election campaign. In her May 2023 deposition, taken at the Ritz-Carlton on St. Thomas over roughly five and a half hours, de Jongh described confronting Epstein after his 2006 Florida arrest, saying she looked him in the eye and asked what was going on, and was assured it was a one-time mistake that would not recur. The arrangement continued after Epstein registered as a sex offender following his 2008 Florida plea.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The employment overlapped entirely with her public role. While serving as First Lady from 2007 to 2015, she simultaneously drew her salary from Epstein's companies, an overlap that was reported contemporaneously and that became the foundation of the later allegations. The settlement that resolved the Virgin Islands case against the Epstein estate included language shielding Epstein employees from civil liability, and no charges were brought against de Jongh personally.[^2][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Alleged Influence on Territorial Government
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
JPMorgan's 2023 court filings described de Jongh as Epstein's "primary conduit for spreading money and influence throughout the USVI government." According to those filings, in 2011 she emailed Epstein proposed language for legislation increasing sex-offender monitoring, asking, "This is the suggested language; will it work for you?" The bank alleged that after a monitoring bill passed she wrote that "all is not lost and we will figure something out by coming up with a game plan to get around these obstacles." The draft she circulated concerned the section of the Virgin Islands Code governing the travel and reporting requirements imposed on registered sex offenders.[^2][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The filings further alleged that de Jongh advised Epstein on how to "buy control of the USVI political class," coordinated meetings between him and commissioners, senators, and gubernatorial candidates, recommended placing a sitting senator on a monthly retainer for loyalty and access, and tracked which candidates he funded. They alleged she helped secure student visas for young women connected to Epstein by arranging their enrollment in classes at the [[University of the Virgin Islands]] to provide cover for their presence in the territory, and that she offered to have someone else sign tuition letters so that the registered sex offender's signature would not appear on the paperwork. She was also alleged to have worked with the [[Virgin Islands Economic Development Authority]] to keep Epstein's companies in compliance so the tax benefits continued, and to have guided his charitable donations to satisfy program requirements.[^2][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
These allegations originate in the Virgin Islands Attorney General's complaint and in JPMorgan's filings, the latter of which the territory characterized as hyperbole offered to deflect the bank's own liability for failing to report suspicious activity. De Jongh did not respond to requests for comment when the filings were unsealed in 2023. The allegations describe a pattern of conduct rather than any criminal adjudication, and she was never charged.[^2][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Virgin Islands governor's wife employed by convicted sex-offender billionaire." *The Daily Caller,* April 22, 2012. https://dailycaller.com/2012/04/22/virgin-islands-governors-wife-employed-by-convicted-sex-offender-billionaire/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "JPMorgan alleges wife of U.S. Virgin Islands' ex-governor aided Jeffrey Epstein's criminal activity." *NBC News,* May 24, 2023. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jpmorgan-alleges-ex-virgin-islands-first-lady-aided-jeffrey-epstein-rcna86365
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Cecile de Jongh Testifies She Confronted Epstein After His 2006 Arrest." *St. Thomas Source,* July 26, 2023. https://stthomassource.com/content/2023/07/26/cecile-de-jongh-testifies-she-confronted-epstein-after-his-2006-arrest/
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "JPMorgan Chase says Jeffrey Epstein paid tuition for kids of U.S. Virgin Islands governor." *CNBC,* May 25, 2023. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/25/jpmorgan-jeffrey-epstein-paid-tuition-for-kids-of-virgin-islands-governor.html
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "JPMorgan accuses wife of former Virgin Islands governor of aiding Epstein." *Fortune,* May 25, 2023. https://fortune.com/2023/05/25/jpmorgan-jeffrey-epstein-virgin-islands-first-lady-sex-trafficking-de-jongh ; Government of the United States Virgin Islands v. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., No. 1:22-cv-10904 (S.D.N.Y. 2022).
|
||||||
57
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Charles C. Johnson.md
Normal file
57
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Charles C. Johnson.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,57 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "New Right"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- CharlesJohnson
|
||||||
|
- ClearviewAI
|
||||||
|
- PeterThiel
|
||||||
|
- FBIInformant
|
||||||
|
- AltRight
|
||||||
|
- FederalInformant
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Charles C. Johnson
|
||||||
|
- Chuck Johnson
|
||||||
|
summary: "Charles C. Johnson is a far-right provocateur and self-described federal informant who claimed cofounder status at Clearview AI alongside Peter Thiel's seed investment, disclosed Thiel's status as an FBI confidential human source in 2023, and was sued in 2024 for falsely presenting himself as an intelligence agent."
|
||||||
|
born: 1988-10-22
|
||||||
|
location: "Boston, Massachusetts (born)"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Charles C. Johnson (born October 22, 1988) is an American far-right media figure, self-described federal informant, and technology investor. The *New York Times* reported in March 2021 that Johnson played a pivotal early role in the founding of [[Clearview AI]] alongside [[Peter Thiel]]'s seed investment. Johnson disclosed Thiel's status as an [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] confidential human source in 2023, per *Business Insider* reporting, and was sued in October 2024 for falsely presenting himself as an intelligence agent while "running a fraud and extortion scheme."[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Far-Right Media Career
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Johnson built his public profile through a series of far-right provocations across the 2013-2017 period. He operated the [[GotNews|GotNews]] website and published [[The Truth About the IRS Scandal|The Truth About the IRS Scandal]] (2013), and he promoted a range of debunked conspiracy theories, including the false claim that President [[Barack Obama|Obama]]'s National Security Advisor [[Susan Rice|Susan Rice]] had directed surveillance of the [[Donald Trump|Trump]] campaign. Johnson was banned from [[Twitter]] in 2015 (one of the first high-profile permanent bans) after requesting funds to "take out" a [[Black Lives Matter|Black Lives Matter]] activist.[^1][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 2017 Johnson announced he was "building algorithms to ID all the illegal immigrants for the deportation squads," which *Byline Supplement* reported as part of the Clearview AI prehistory. The work sits in the same identity-from-public-data category that Clearview AI would subsequently commercialize, and the Clearview founding in 2016-2017 overlaps with the period of Johnson's deportation-algorithm work.[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Clearview AI Cofounder Claim
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The *New York Times* reported in March 2021 that Johnson played a pivotal early role in the founding of Clearview AI alongside Peter Thiel, who provided the seed funding for the company before it was even named (the [[Smart Checker]] period). Johnson subsequently claimed cofounder status and sued Clearview for a share of its profits before dropping the suit in February 2025. The legal record of the suit, and its subsequent withdrawal, is documented in the *Biometric Update* reporting (February 2025) and the *Yahoo Finance* / *Toronto Star* coverage.[^1][^6][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Johnson's relationship to Thiel extends beyond Clearview. *Business Insider* reported in October 2023 that Johnson had disclosed Thiel's status as an FBI confidential human source, and that Johnson himself was described in the reporting as "a tech investor and far-right agitator with long-standing ties to both Thiel and to the network."[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Federal Informant Claims and the Fraud Suit
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Johnson has stated publicly that he was a federal informant. The federal lawsuit against Clearview AI over Johnson's cofounder claim recorded his indication that he was a federal informant, and the *Semafor* reporting (October 2024) documented a separate lawsuit alleging Johnson was "running a fraud and extortion scheme" and falsely presenting himself as an intelligence agent. The suit was brought by a business partner and alleged that Johnson had used the false intelligence-agent presentation to extract payments and concessions.[^3][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The documented pattern combines three roles: the far-right media provocateur (the GotNews period), the technology investor and Clearview cofounder claimant (the 2016-2025 period), and the federal informant / intelligence-agent presenter (the ongoing period). The three roles overlap in Johnson's documented relationship with Thiel and in the broader network of far-right operatives, technology investors, and federal law-enforcement contacts that the [[Thiel Influence Network|Thiel network]] intersects.[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Jonathan Buma Thread
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The *[[Business Insider|Business Insider]]* reporting on Thiel's FBI informant status referenced the [[Jonathan Buma|Jonathan Buma]] case. Buma, the Los Angeles FBI counterintelligence agent who handled Thiel as a CHS from summer 2021, was arrested at [[John F. Kennedy International Airport|JFK Airport]] on March 17, 2025 while attempting to board an international flight, charged with unlawfully disclosing confidential information. [[CBS News|CBS News]] reported that FBI investigators assessed Buma may have compromised as many as 130 FBI files.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Buma publicly accused the FBI of pro-Trump political bias and disclosed GRU targeting of [[Elon Musk|Musk]] and Thiel. The [[The Guardian|Guardian]] reported Buma's claim in May 2025 that Russian-intelligence efforts to target Musk were "intense," and that the [[GRU|GRU]] operation exploited vulnerabilities including drug use, sexual entrapment, and luxury access. The [[Igor Kurganov|Kurganov]] infiltration of Musk's inner circle (documented separately) is the concrete instance of the targeting Buma described.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Buma-Thiel-Johnson triangle involves three documented roles: Buma as the FBI handler who managed Thiel as a CHS, Thiel as the billionaire source whose FBI relationship Johnson disclosed, and Johnson as the far-right operative who connected the Thiel commercial network to the federal informant infrastructure and to the Clearview surveillance-technology founding. The full content of Buma's disclosures is part of the ongoing congressional and Inspector General review of the FBI's source program. A House Judiciary Committee document submitted January 22, 2026 references Thiel's CHS role.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "What We Learned About Clearview AI's Hidden 'Co-Founder.'" *New York Times,* March 18, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/technology/clearview-facial-recognition-ai.html
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Exclusive: Tech Billionaire Peter Thiel Was an FBI Informant." *Business Insider,* October 2023. https://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-fbi-informant-charles-johnson-johnathan-buma-chs-genius-2023-10
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Business Partner Sues Chuck Johnson for Falsely Presenting as Intelligence Agent." *Semafor,* October 16, 2024. https://www.semafor.com/article/10/16/2024/business-partner-sues-chuck-johnson-for-falsely-presenting-as-intelligence-agent
|
||||||
|
[^4]: For Johnson's far-right media career, the GotNews operation, the Susan Rice surveillance claim, and the 2015 Twitter ban, see the contemporaneous press coverage.
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "The Neo-Nazi Enforcer Who Helped..." *Byline Supplement.* https://www.bylinesupplement.com/p/the-neo-nazi-enforcer-who-helped
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Legal battle over Clearview AI's origin takes a turn as accuser drops suit." *Biometric Update,* February 2025. https://www.biometricupdate.com/202502/legal-battle-over-clearview-ais-origin-takes-a-turn-as-accuser-drops-suit
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "CEO of Clearview AI has been ousted." *Yahoo Finance / Toronto Star.* https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/ceo-clearview-ai-controversial-facial-211716034.html
|
||||||
49
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Charles Murray.md
Normal file
49
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Charles Murray.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "New Right"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- CharlesMurray
|
||||||
|
- HumanBiodiversity
|
||||||
|
- RaceScience
|
||||||
|
- Conservatism
|
||||||
|
- AEI
|
||||||
|
summary: "Charles Murray is an American political scientist at the American Enterprise Institute whose 1994 book The Bell Curve argued that intelligence is largely hereditary and varies by race, a thesis widely condemned as scientific racism that became foundational to the human-biodiversity current in the rationalist and tech-right milieus."
|
||||||
|
born: 1943-01-08
|
||||||
|
location: "Burkittsville, Maryland"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Charles Murray (born January 8, 1943) is an American political scientist and a longtime fellow of the [[American Enterprise Institute]] whose work on intelligence, class, and welfare made him the most prominent academic exponent of hereditarian claims about race and IQ in the United States. His 1994 book *The Bell Curve*, written with the Harvard psychologist [[Richard Herrnstein]], argued that intelligence is substantially heritable, that it predicts life outcomes better than socioeconomic background, and that measured IQ differences between racial groups have a partly genetic basis. The book was widely condemned as scientific racism, and it became a foundational text for the [[Human Biodiversity|human-biodiversity]] current that later circulated through the [[Rationalist Community]] and the tech-right.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Losing Ground and Welfare Reform
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Murray's 1984 book *Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980* argued that the Great Society welfare programs had not reduced poverty but had eroded the initiative of the poor and made dependency a rational choice. It became a foundational text of the conservative case against welfare, and Murray advised on the [[Wisconsin]] welfare overhaul under Governor [[Tommy Thompson]]; the book's thesis fed the 1996 federal welfare-reform law. *Losing Ground* proposed scrapping the entire federal welfare and income-support structure for working-age people, including Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and the argument was later credited as intellectual groundwork for President [[Bill Clinton|Clinton]]'s pledge to "end welfare as we know it."[^5][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The book was a product of the conservative funding apparatus. The [[Manhattan Institute]] sponsored and promoted *Losing Ground*, with Murray serving as a senior fellow there from 1982 to 1990, and the [[Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation|Bradley Foundation]] underwrote much of his work both at the Manhattan Institute and after he moved to the American Enterprise Institute in 1990. The Manhattan Institute parted ways with Murray after he began work on what became *The Bell Curve*, and his subsequent books at AEI included *Human Accomplishment* (2003), *Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010* (2012), and the genetics defense *Human Diversity* (2020).[^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Bell Curve
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
*The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life* contended that a "cognitive elite" sorted by intelligence was stratifying American society and that policy should accommodate innate differences in ability. Its most contested chapters addressed average IQ differences between racial groups and suggested a genetic contribution. In the book's afterword Murray acknowledged citing thirteen scholars who had received money from the [[Pioneer Fund]], a foundation founded in 1937 by [[Wickliffe Draper]] to promote "race betterment" and classified as a hate group by the [[Southern Poverty Law Center]], which has bankrolled the race-and-intelligence research network around the journal [[Mankind Quarterly]]. Reviewers across psychology and the social sciences concluded that the authors had produced no valid evidence that group IQ gaps are genetic in origin. Herrnstein died of cancer in September 1994, shortly before publication.[^1][^2][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The book's defenders mounted a public-relations campaign in its support. On December 13, 1994, the psychologist [[Linda Gottfredson]] published a statement titled "Mainstream Science on Intelligence" in *The Wall Street Journal*, signed by 52 researchers, asserting that the hereditarian view represented scientific consensus; the SPLC later reported that at least 20 of the signatories had received Pioneer Fund money, including Gottfredson and the future fund presidents [[J. Philippe Rushton]] and [[Richard Lynn]]. The American Psychological Association responded by convening a task force chaired by [[Ulric Neisser]], whose 1996 report "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns" concluded that there was no direct evidence for a genetic explanation of the black-white test-score gap. The paleontologist [[Stephen Jay Gould]], reprising arguments from his 1981 book *The Mismeasure of Man*, attacked the book's reliance on a single general-intelligence factor in a widely read *New Yorker* review.[^9][^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Reputation and Rehabilitation
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Murray was protested as a racist for decades, including a 2017 confrontation at [[Middlebury College]] that turned violent, and the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies him as a promoter of racist pseudoscience. Within the technology and rationalist world, however, he was reframed as a victim of taboo, a martyr of "forbidden knowledge." The neuroscientist and podcaster [[Sam Harris]], a registrant of the [[Dialog]] society, hosted Murray in a 2017 episode titled "Forbidden Knowledge" that presented his race-and-IQ claims as suppressed truth, and the blog [[Scott Alexander|Slate Star Codex]] and the broader human-biodiversity discourse treated his hereditarian framework as a serious object of debate. The valorization of such suppressed-knowledge claims is the same posture that the [[Hereticon]] "conference for thoughtcrime" markets.[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Middlebury episode of March 2, 2017 became a national reference point in campus free-speech debates. Students shouted down Murray's scheduled talk, forcing him and the political-science professor [[Allison Stanger]] into a separate room to record the lecture, and as the pair left the building a crowd that included masked outsiders mobbed them, pulled Stanger's hair, and shoved her; she was treated for a concussion. Middlebury later disciplined dozens of students. Murray accepted a steady stream of conservative honors during the same years, including the Bradley Foundation's $250,000 Bradley Prize in 2016, which kept him embedded in the institutional right even as mainstream academic associations distanced themselves from his race-and-IQ work.[^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Herrnstein, Richard J., and Charles Murray. *The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life.* Free Press, 1994.
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Bad Science Revisited: 'The Bell Curve' Turns 30," *Mad in America,* March 2024, on the book's claims, the Pioneer Fund sourcing, and the scientific response. https://www.madinamerica.com/2024/03/bad-science-bell-curve/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Charles Murray," Southern Poverty Law Center extremist file, on the scientific-racism classification and the Middlebury protest. https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/charles-murray
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Harris, Sam. "Forbidden Knowledge: A Conversation with Charles Murray," *Making Sense* podcast, April 2017.
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Charles Murray and the Power of Mainstream Media Amnesia," Center for American Progress, on *Losing Ground* and its welfare-policy influence. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/think-again-charles-murray-and-the-power-of-mainstream-media-amnesia/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Pioneer Fund," SourceWatch, on the fund's 1937 founding, eugenics mission, and support for the Bell Curve-cited scholars and Mankind Quarterly. https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Pioneer_Fund
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Losing Ground," Manhattan Institute, on the book's 1984 publication, sponsorship, and proposal to scrap federal income-support programs. https://manhattan.institute/book/losing-ground
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "Charles Murray: A Life," American Enterprise Institute, and "Charles Murray," Bradley Foundation, on his 1982-1990 Manhattan Institute tenure, the 1990 move to AEI, Bradley funding, and the later books. https://www.aei.org/multimedia/charles-murray-a-life/
|
||||||
|
[^9]: "Mainstream Science on Intelligence," Linda Gottfredson, *The Wall Street Journal,* December 13, 1994, and Southern Poverty Law Center reporting that at least 20 signatories received Pioneer Fund money. https://www1.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1994WSJmainstream.pdf
|
||||||
|
[^10]: Neisser, Ulric, et al. "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns," *American Psychologist,* 1996, the APA task-force report finding no direct evidence for a genetic basis of the black-white test-score gap; Gould, Stephen Jay, "Curveball," *The New Yorker,* November 28, 1994.
|
||||||
|
[^11]: "Protesters injure Middlebury professor escorting controversial speaker," VTDigger, March 3, 2017, on the Stanger concussion and the March 2 confrontation; "Charles Murray," Bradley Foundation, on the 2016 Bradley Prize. https://vtdigger.org/2017/03/03/protesters-injure-middlebury-professor-escorting-controversial-speaker/
|
||||||
35
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Curtis Lind.md
Normal file
35
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Curtis Lind.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Other"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- Zizians
|
||||||
|
- Violence
|
||||||
|
- Vallejo
|
||||||
|
summary: "Curtis Lind was a Vallejo landlord who rented property to members of the Zizian group, survived a 2022 sword attack in which he killed one assailant in self-defense, and was stabbed to death in January 2025 shortly before he was due to testify against the group."
|
||||||
|
died: 2025-01-17
|
||||||
|
location: "Vallejo, California"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Curtis Lind was an octogenarian landlord in [[Vallejo]], [[California]], who rented lot space to members of the [[The Zizians|Zizian]] group living in box trucks and vans, and who became the central surviving witness in the criminal cases against them before he was killed in January 2025. Lind survived a 2022 attack in which he was impaled with a sword and lost an eye, killing one of his assailants in self-defense, and was stabbed to death two and a half years later shortly before he was scheduled to testify.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The 2022 Attack
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
By autumn 2022 [[Jack LaSota]] and several followers were living in vehicles on Lind's property on Lemon Street in Vallejo. Lind had gone to court to evict the tenants for nonpayment of rent, and on November 15, 2022, two days before the eviction deadline, the dispute escalated into violence: members attacked Lind with a sword, impaling him and costing him his right eye. Lind drew a handgun and shot and killed [[Emma Borhanian]], a longtime LaSota associate, surviving the attack. [[Alexander Leatham]], who used the name "Somni," and [[Suri Dao]] were charged with Borhanian's murder and the attempted murder of Lind.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Lind's injuries were extensive enough to require about a month of hospitalization, with roughly fifty puncture wounds, a sword wound through his chest, facial lacerations, and the loss of the eye. Investigators concluded he had acted in self-defense in killing Borhanian and brought no charges against him for it. The case against his attackers rested heavily on his testimony, since prosecutors said it lacked surveillance footage, ballistics, or social-media evidence, which left the elderly survivor as the sole eyewitness when the matter headed toward an April 2025 trial.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The 2025 Killing
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On January 17, 2025, Lind was stabbed and his throat was cut on his Lemon Street property near the site of the 2022 attack, shortly before he was due to testify against the members charged in that case. [[Solano County]] prosecutors charged [[Maximilian Snyder]], a former [[University of Oxford]] student connected to the group, with Lind's murder, alleging the killing was carried out to prevent his testimony. Lind's killing came three days before the Zizian-linked shooting of Border Patrol agent [[David Maland]] in [[Vermont]].[^2][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Solano County complaint charged the killing with a special circumstance, alleging that "the victim, C.L., was a witness to a crime" and "was intentionally killed for the purpose of preventing his testimony in a criminal proceeding," an allegation that exposes Snyder to a possible death sentence under California law. Snyder was arrested on January 24, 2025 by Redding Police Department officers and taken to the Solano County Jail in Fairfield, where he was held without bail. With Lind dead, the prosecution of his 2022 attackers lost the witness on whom it had depended, and the timing, days before the Vermont stop, became one of the first threads investigators used to connect the California and Vermont cases.[^2][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "How a Vermont border agent's death exposed violence linked to the cultlike Zizian group," *CBS News,* 2025. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/vermont-border-agent-death-exposed-violence-linked-cultlike-zizian-group/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Federal grand jury indicts Zizian namesake with Vallejo ties," *Open Vallejo,* June 20, 2025. https://openvallejo.org/2025/06/20/federal-grand-jury-indicts-zizian-namesake-with-vallejo-ties/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "How a California math genius spiraled into Zizian ideology and violence," *Open Vallejo,* March 12, 2025. https://openvallejo.org/2025/03/12/how-a-california-math-genius-spiraled-into-zizian-ideology-and-violence/
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "A timeline of activities of a cultlike group tied to the killing of a Border Patrol agent," Associated Press via PBS NewsHour, 2025. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/a-timeline-of-cultlike-zizian-group-tied-to-killing-of-a-border-patrol-agent-in-vermont
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Alleged Zizians follower pleads not guilty to murdering Vallejo landlord," KRON4, March 2025; on the Lemon Street property, the special-circumstance allegation and quoted complaint, and Snyder's January 24 arrest in Redding. https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/alleged-zizians-follower-pleads-not-guilty-to-murdering-vallejo-landlord/
|
||||||
45
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Dustin Moskovitz.md
Normal file
45
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Dustin Moskovitz.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,45 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Philanthropists & Benefactors"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- DustinMoskovitz
|
||||||
|
- Facebook
|
||||||
|
- EffectiveAltruism
|
||||||
|
- OpenPhilanthropy
|
||||||
|
- DemocraticDonor
|
||||||
|
summary: "Dustin Moskovitz is a cofounder of Facebook and the software firm Asana who, with his wife Cari Tuna, became the largest sustained funder of effective altruism through Open Philanthropy and one of the largest Democratic political donors, a political mirror image of his fellow Facebook beneficiary Peter Thiel."
|
||||||
|
born: 1984-05-22
|
||||||
|
location: "San Francisco, California"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Dustin Moskovitz (born May 22, 1984) is an American technology entrepreneur who cofounded [[Facebook]] with [[Mark Zuckerberg]] in 2004 and later cofounded the workplace-software company [[Asana]]. With his wife [[Cari Tuna]] he became the largest sustained funder of the [[Effective Altruism]] movement through [[Open Philanthropy]] and one of the largest Democratic political donors in the United States. His career traces the same Facebook fortune that made [[Peter Thiel]], the company's first outside investor, a billionaire, and his philanthropy and politics run in the opposite direction from Thiel's.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Facebook and Asana
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Moskovitz was Zuckerberg's roommate at [[Harvard University]] and one of Facebook's founding team, serving as its first chief technology officer and head of engineering. He left in 2008 to cofound Asana with [[Justin Rosenstein]], took the company public in 2020, and built a second fortune; his net worth, derived chiefly from his early Facebook stake, exceeds sixteen billion dollars. He stepped down as Asana chief executive in March 2025 while remaining chairman.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Moskovitz retained roughly two percent of Facebook at its 2012 initial public offering, a stake worth several billion dollars that became the foundation of his wealth and his giving. Asana took its name from a yoga term and went public by direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange in September 2020. His March 2025 retirement announcement, in which he said he would transition out of the chief-executive role, was followed by a sharp drop in Asana's share price; he stayed on as board chair and remained the company's largest shareholder.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Open Philanthropy and Effective Altruism
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 2011 Moskovitz and Tuna founded Good Ventures, and they later joined with the charity evaluator [[GiveWell]] to create Open Philanthropy, which became the principal sustained financier of effective altruism, longtermism, and AI-safety work, directing more than four billion dollars in grants. The funding flowed to the same AI-risk research community around the [[Machine Intelligence Research Institute]] and the [[Future of Humanity Institute]] that [[Eliezer Yudkowsky]] and [[Nick Bostrom]] built, and Open Philanthropy was an early backer of the AI company [[Anthropic]]. Moskovitz signed the Giving Pledge, committing the majority of his wealth.[^2][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Good Ventures supplies nearly all of Open Philanthropy's grantmaking, making the foundation's reach a direct function of Moskovitz and Tuna's fortune; the organization's own analysis acknowledged that the movement's funding base rests heavily on the couple. Open Philanthropy's 2017 grant of 30 million dollars to [[OpenAI]] came with a board seat for co-chief-executive [[Holden Karnofsky]], an early instance of the foundation embedding itself inside an AI lab, and it later invested in Anthropic. Operating from November 2025 as Coefficient Giving, the organization began pooling money from outside donors so that other philanthropists could fund its cause areas alongside Good Ventures.[^2][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Political Giving
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Moskovitz became one of the largest individual donors to Democratic causes, an explicit counterweight to right-wing megadonors. He and Tuna pledged roughly twenty million dollars to defeat [[Donald Trump]] and elect [[Hillary Clinton]] in 2016, and in 2020 he gave approximately ninety-two million dollars to the Democratic super PAC [[Future Forward]], among the largest single contributions of the cycle, followed by further giving to the same vehicle in 2024. The pattern is the inverse of Thiel's funding of Trump, [[JD Vance]], and the tech-right: two beneficiaries of the same company financing opposed political projects, while both poured money into the competing wings of the AI-risk debate.[^5][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In the 2024 cycle Moskovitz gave 38 million dollars to Future Forward, the main super PAC backing [[Kamala Harris]], plus 929,600 dollars to the Biden Victory Fund, ranking among Harris's largest billionaire donors. The 2016 effort was bipartisan in intent: Moskovitz wrote that his roughly twenty-million-dollar commitment was meant to counter what he saw as the danger of a Trump presidency, the first time he and Tuna had given at that scale to electoral politics. He has framed his political spending in the same expected-value terms as his philanthropy, treating elections as high-stakes interventions on the same metric of marginal impact that governs Open Philanthropy's grants.[^5][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Facebook Co-Founder Moskovitz Builds a Second Fortune With Asana," *Bloomberg,* October 1, 2021. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-01/facebook-co-founder-moskovitz-builds-a-second-fortune-with-asana
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "How Dependent is the Effective Altruism Movement on Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna?" EA Forum, on Open Philanthropy and Good Ventures funding. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4BJSXH9ho4eYNT73P/how-dependent-is-the-effective-altruism-movement-on-dustin
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Asana CEO Dustin Moskovitz announces retirement," *CNBC,* March 10, 2025. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/10/asana-ceo-dustin-moskovitz-announces-retirement-stock-price-drops-25percent.html
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "The Making of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei," Alex Kantrowitz, on Open Philanthropy as an early Anthropic funder. https://kantrowitz.medium.com/the-making-of-anthropic-ceo-dario-amodei-449777529dd6
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Clinton campaign and Dems get $20M from Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz," *TechCrunch,* September 8, 2016. https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/08/a-friend-of-hillary
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Future Forward PAC," InfluenceWatch, on the approximately ninety-two million dollar 2020 contribution and the 2024 giving. https://www.influencewatch.org/political-party/future-forward-pac/
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Trump, Harris' Top Billionaire Donors in 2024 Election," *Bloomberg,* and "Billionaires poured millions of dollars into presidential super PACs," *NBC News,* 2024, on the 38-million-dollar Future Forward gift and the 929,600-dollar Biden Victory Fund contribution. https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2024-billionaire-donors-us-election/
|
||||||
72
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Elon Musk.md
Normal file
72
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Elon Musk.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,72 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Technologists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- ElonMusk
|
||||||
|
- PayPalMafia
|
||||||
|
- Tesla
|
||||||
|
- SpaceX
|
||||||
|
- Dialog
|
||||||
|
- JeffreyEpstein
|
||||||
|
- Russia
|
||||||
|
- X
|
||||||
|
- Starlink
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Elon Reeve Musk
|
||||||
|
summary: "Elon Musk is a South African-born American billionaire who cofounded PayPal, founded SpaceX and Tesla, acquired X (Twitter), is a PayPal Mafia principal and 2026 Dialog retreat registrant, attended the 2015 Epstein dinner, and has been in documented regular contact with Vladimir Putin since late 2022 while running the Starlink satellite network operationally significant to the Russia-Ukraine war."
|
||||||
|
born: 1971-06-28
|
||||||
|
location: "Pretoria, South Africa (born); Austin, Texas (base)"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Elon Musk (born June 28, 1971, in [[Pretoria]], [[South Africa]]) is a billionaire technology founder who cofounded the company that merged into [[PayPal]], founded [[SpaceX]] and [[Tesla, Inc.|Tesla]], acquired [[X (social media)|X (formerly Twitter)]] in 2022, and operates [[Starlink|Starlink]], the satellite-internet constellation whose terminals have been operationally significant in the [[Russia|Russia]]-[[Ukraine|Ukraine]] war. Musk is a [[PayPal Mafia|PayPal Mafia]] principal, a 2026 [[Dialog]] retreat registrant per the leaked *WIRED* roster, a documented attendee at the 2015 Jeffrey Epstein dinner (EFTA00344556), and has been in regular contact with [[Vladimir Putin|Vladimir Putin]] since late 2022 per [[Wall Street Journal|Wall Street Journal]] reporting. The documented Russian-intelligence targeting of Musk, his platform-policy decisions at X, and his operational control of Starlink's Ukraine coverage together constitute the documented set of intersections between Musk's activities and the U.S. national-security posture.[^1][^2][^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The PayPal Mafia and the Founding Period
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Musk founded the online-banking company [[X.com|X.com]] in 1999 with capital from his [[Zip2|Zip2]] sale proceeds. [[Peter Thiel]]'s [[Confinity]] had launched its own person-to-person payments product around the same time, and the two companies entered direct competition that produced a mutually destructive customer-acquisition war. The [[eBay|eBay]] board pressured both companies to merge, and the X.com/Confinity merger closed in 2000, with Musk as the combined entity's largest shareholder and chief executive. Thiel became chairman.[^1][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Musk's tenure as CEO lasted approximately six months. In September 2000, while Musk was on his honeymoon, the PayPal board (led by Thiel) voted to replace Musk as chief executive with Thiel. The board coup was documented in the subsequent reporting and in [[Jimmy Soni|Jimmy Soni's]] book *[[The Founders|The Founders]]* (2022). Musk accepted the decision, remained the largest shareholder, and backed Thiel's leadership through the February 2002 initial public offering and the October 2002 sale to eBay for 1.5 billion dollars. Musk's PayPal proceeds funded the SpaceX founding in 2002 and the Tesla investment in 2004.[^1][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The PayPal cohort subsequently labeled the PayPal Mafia dispersed into the next generation of Silicon Valley companies. Six members of the PayPal Mafia appear on the leaked 2026 Dialog retreat roster, including both Musk and Thiel. The board-coup history (Thiel replacing Musk as CEO) and the subsequent Dialog co-attendance (both at the same off-the-record retreat) together document a relationship that combined documented conflict with continuing commercial and convening alignment across a 25-year period.[^1][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### SpaceX, Starlink, and the Ukraine War
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
SpaceX, founded by Musk in 2002, developed the [[Falcon|Falcon]] rocket family and the [[Dragon (spacecraft)|Dragon]] capsule under NASA and Department of Defense contracts. Starlink, the SpaceX satellite-internet constellation, began operational deployment in 2019 and became operationally significant in the Russia-Ukraine war after February 2022, when Ukrainian forces and civilians used Starlink terminals for communications after the Russian destruction of the terrestrial infrastructure.[^4][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Musk's personal control over Starlink's geographic coverage produced a situation in which a single private individual controlled a strategic military capability. In September 2023, Musk refused a Ukrainian request to activate Starlink coverage over [[Crimea|Crimea]] for a drone attack on the Russian fleet at [[Sevastopol|Sevastopol]], which biographer [[Walter Isaacson|Walter Isaacson]] documented and which Musk publicly confirmed. The refusal, framed by Musk as preventing an act of war, placed the founder of a private company in the operational decision chain over a combat-zone capability that the U.S. government had not directly controlled.[^6][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Starlink operational question ran alongside the documented Putin contact channel (since late 2022, per the Wall Street Journal October 25, 2024 reporting). The combination of Musk's control over the Ukraine communications infrastructure, the Putin contact channel, and the [[Jonathan Buma|Buma]]-documented GRU targeting of Musk has sustained the public question of whether the Starlink operational decisions were influenced by the Putin relationship. Musk has denied any such influence.[^4][^6][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Dialog Registration and the 2015 Epstein Dinner
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Musk appears on the leaked 2026 Dialog retreat roster, per *WIRED*'s reporting on the hacktivist [[maia arson crimew|crimew]]'s publication of the Dialog membership directory and the separately provided registration list.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The document releases (EFTA00344556, EFTA00344564) document that Musk attended an August 2015 dinner that [[Reid Hoffman]] hosted in [[Palo Alto]] to raise money for the [[MIT Media Lab]]. The guest list included Peter Thiel, [[Mark Zuckerberg]], [[Joi Ito]], and [[Jeffrey Epstein|Epstein]]. The dinner was documented in the [[Epstein Files|Epstein file]] releases and indexed in the Carstensen aggregator. The 2015 dinner is seven years after Epstein's 2008 federal non-prosecution agreement.[^1][^5][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Musk has stated publicly that he attended the dinner because Epstein promised to introduce him to someone, and that he left early. The documented co-presence of Musk, Thiel, Hoffman, Zuckerberg, and Ito at a single Epstein-mediated dinner places five PayPal Mafia and Silicon Valley principals at the same table as the registered sex offender. The Hoffman image-rehabilitation apology (September 2019) covers the broader pattern of Hoffman's Epstein contacts that the 2015 dinner is one documented instance of.[^1][^5][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Putin Contacts and the Russian-Targeting Question
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Wall Street Journal reported on October 25, 2024 that Musk had been in regular contact with Putin since late 2022, a relationship that began after Starlink became operationally significant in the Russia-Ukraine war. The contact channel ran through the period of Musk's X acquisition (October 2022), his documented shifts in platform-content moderation toward the post-2022 Russian-state position on the war, and the September 2023 Starlink-Crimea refusal.[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Former FBI agent Jonathan Buma disclosed in May 2025 (per [[The Guardian]]) that Russian-intelligence efforts to target Musk were "intense," and the [[Kyiv Post|Kyiv Post]] reporting on Buma's interview characterized the operation as [[GRU|GRU]]-run, Putin-approved, and exploiting vulnerabilities including drug use, sexual entrapment, and luxury access. The [[Igor Kurganov|Igor Kurganov]] infiltration, documented separately, is the concrete instance: a Russian-born former professional poker player who gained operational access to Musk's philanthropic decision-making and residential life before being removed by wealth manager [[Jared Birchall]] in May 2022.[^4][^9][^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The X Acquisition and Platform Policy
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Musk acquired Twitter in October 2022 for 44 billion dollars and renamed it X. The acquisition and the subsequent platform-policy changes (the restoration of previously banned accounts, the reduction of content-moderation teams, the documented shift in the platform's enforcement posture toward the Russian-state and far-right positions) produced the documented instance at which a single individual controlled a major U.S. communications platform while simultaneously in contact with Putin and while his own companies (SpaceX, Tesla) operated under federal regulatory jurisdiction.[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Musk has denied that his activities have been influenced by Russian-state interests.[^3][^4][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Cameron, Dell, and Yulia Almazova. "Leak Exposes Members of Peter Thiel's Secretive 'Dialog' Society." *WIRED,* June 16, 2026. https://www.wired.com/story/leak-exposes-members-of-peter-thiels-secretive-dialog-society/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Tommy Carstensen Epstein Files index, "Peter Thiel," cross-referencing EFTA00344556 and EFTA00344564 (2015 dinner guest list). https://tommycarstensen.com/epstein/people/peter-thiel.html
|
||||||
|
[^3]: For the Musk-Putin contact reporting, see the *Wall Street Journal* October 25, 2024 report on regular contact since late 2022.
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "FBI whistleblower claims he tried to get to Musk to warn him he was being targeted by Russia." *The Guardian,* May 22, 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/may/22/fbi-whistleblower-musk-russia
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Soni, Jimmy. *The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley.* Simon and Schuster, 2022, documenting the X.com/Confinity merger, the 2000 board vote replacing Musk with Thiel as CEO, and the dispersal of the PayPal cohort.
|
||||||
|
[^6]: For the SpaceX, Falcon, and Starlink record, see the company's published materials and the DoD and NASA contracting record.
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Isaacson, Walter. *Elon Musk.* Simon and Schuster, 2023.
|
||||||
|
[^8]: For the 2015 Epstein dinner, see EFTA00344556 and EFTA00344564, indexed in the Carstensen aggregator.
|
||||||
|
[^9]: "Russian Intelligence Used Sex, Drugs to Target Elon Musk." *Kyiv Post,* 2025. https://www.kyivpost.com/post/52742
|
||||||
|
[^10]: For the Kurganov infiltration and the Birchall removal, see The Guardian May 2025 report and the Igor Kurganov page.
|
||||||
74
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Ghislaine Maxwell.md
Normal file
74
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Ghislaine Maxwell.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,74 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Crime & Abuse Networks"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- GhislaineMaxwell
|
||||||
|
- JeffreyEpstein
|
||||||
|
- RobertMaxwell
|
||||||
|
- SexTrafficking
|
||||||
|
- Conviction
|
||||||
|
- Mossad
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Ghislaine Maxwell
|
||||||
|
summary: "Ghislaine Maxwell is the British socialite convicted in December 2021 of sex trafficking conspiracy and sex trafficking of a minor for her role as Jeffrey Epstein's principal accomplice, daughter of the publishing mogul Robert Maxwell who was credibly alleged to have operated as a Mossad-connected intelligence asset, and the youngest of the Maxwell children whose family intelligence legacy has produced sustained reporting on whether the Epstein-Maxwell operation functioned as an intelligence-linked compromise operation."
|
||||||
|
born: 1961-12-25
|
||||||
|
location: "Maisons-Laffitte, France (born)"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Ghislaine Maxwell (born December 25, 1961, in [[Maisons-Laffitte|Maisons-Laffitte]], [[France|France]]) is the British socialite convicted on December 29, 2021 in the [[U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York|U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York]] on five of six federal counts including sex trafficking conspiracy and sex trafficking of a minor, for her role as [[Jeffrey Epstein|Jeffrey Epstein]]'s principal accomplice in the trafficking operation. Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison on June 28, 2022. She is the youngest daughter of the publishing mogul [[Robert Maxwell|Robert Maxwell]], who was credibly alleged across multiple documented sources to have operated as a [[Mossad|Mossad]]-connected intelligence asset, and whose family intelligence legacy has produced sustained reporting on whether the Epstein-Maxwell operation functioned as an intelligence-linked compromise operation.[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Early Life and the Path to Epstein
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Ghislaine Maxwell was the youngest of the nine children of Robert Maxwell and the Holocaust scholar [[Elisabeth Maxwell|Elisabeth "Betty" Maxwell]], and was widely described as her father's favorite, the child after whom he named his yacht. She was educated at [[Marlborough College]] and [[Balliol College]], [[University of Oxford|Oxford]], and worked inside her father's business empire, taking public-facing roles connected to [[Oxford United]] football club and the newspaper The European. She moved in elite British and international social circles before her father's death.[^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
After Robert Maxwell drowned in November 1991 and his empire was found to have looted the Mirror Group pension funds, the family fortune and reputation collapsed, and Ghislaine relocated to New York. She reinvented herself there as a society fixer and met Epstein in the early 1990s. Their romantic relationship gave way to a working one in which she organized his households, staff, and social calendar, a role the 2021 trial identified as that of recruiter and procurer for the abuse operation.[^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Conviction
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The federal trial in the Southern District of New York established that Maxwell was Epstein's "number two," who groomed and recruited underage girls (victims as young as 14), arranged travel for them across state lines, paid them to recruit additional victims, and normalized the abuse through her social position. Four victims testified under pseudonyms ("Jane," "Kate," "Carolyn," "Annie"). The jury found Maxwell guilty on five of six counts: conspiracy to entice minors to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, conspiracy to transport minors with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, transportation of a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, sex trafficking conspiracy, and sex trafficking of a minor. The sixth count (perjury, related to a 2016 civil deposition) resulted in acquittal; those charges were subsequently dropped. The [[Second Circuit|Second Circuit]] denied Maxwell's appeal in September 2024.[^1][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The trial ran from November 29 to December 29, 2021, before Judge [[Alison Nathan|Alison J. Nathan]]; the jury of six women and six men deliberated about 40 hours across parts of six days before returning the verdict.[^6] Maxwell moved for a new trial on January 19, 2022 under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 33, after Juror No. 50 ("Scotty David") told media interviewers that his own childhood sexual abuse, which he had not disclosed on the jury questionnaire, had helped persuade fellow jurors; Nathan held an evidentiary hearing and denied the motion on April 1, 2022, finding the omission "highly unfortunate, but not deliberate" and the juror credibly unbiased.[^7] At the June 28, 2022 sentencing Nathan imposed an above-Guidelines term of 240 months, a five-year term of supervised release, and a 750,000 dollar fine; prosecutors did not seek restitution because the testifying victims had already been compensated through the Epstein Victim Compensation Program and civil settlements, and eight victims submitted impact statements, several reading them aloud.[^1] The Second Circuit affirmed on September 17, 2024 and denied rehearing on November 25, 2024.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Recruitment Operation
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The trial record and victim accounts established Maxwell as the operation's recruiter and the figure who normalized the abuse. She approached adolescent girls in ordinary settings, spas, shopping areas, and schools, befriended them, and brought them to Epstein under the cover of paid "massage" work that escalated into sexual abuse. She recruited [[Virginia Giuffre]] around 2000, when Giuffre was a teenage locker-room attendant at [[Mar-a-Lago]]. The operation ran as a pyramid in which victims were paid to recruit further victims, multiplying the number of girls cycled through the houses.[^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Maxwell exercised operational control over the physical network. She managed Epstein's residences (the Manhattan townhouse, the [[Palm Beach, Florida|Palm Beach]] house, [[Little St. James]] in the Virgin Islands, the New Mexico ranch, and the Paris apartment), directed household staff, and coordinated travel on Epstein's aircraft. She maintained the contact directory known as the "little black book," which listed hundreds of names; a former house manager, [[Alfredo Rodriguez]], later attempted to sell a copy and was convicted of obstruction. Flight logs and staff testimony placed her at the center of the logistics.[^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Her social standing opened the doors the operation depended on. She introduced Epstein into circles that included British royalty and American political figures, among them [[Prince Andrew]] and [[Bill Clinton]], and hosted at the properties. A March 2001 photograph taken at Maxwell's London home showed Andrew with his arm around Giuffre and Maxwell in the background, an image central to Giuffre's later civil suit against Andrew. The 2024 unsealing of the [[Giuffre v. Maxwell]] documents and the testimony of four pseudonymous accusers at the 2021 trial ("Jane," "Kate," "Carolyn," and "Annie") detailed the mechanics of how the recruitment and abuse were carried out.[^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Robert Maxwell Legacy
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Robert Maxwell (born Jan Ludvik Hoch, 1923, in [[Czechoslovakia|Czechoslovakia]]) was the British publishing mogul who controlled [[Mirror Group Newspapers|Mirror Group Newspapers]] and [[Pergamon Press|Pergamon Press]], served as a [[Member of Parliament|Member of Parliament]], and died on November 5, 1991, in a documented drowning at sea off his yacht *Lady Ghislaine* (named for his daughter) near the [[Canary Islands|Canary Islands]]. After his death, his empire was found to have looted approximately 460 million pounds from the Mirror Group pension fund.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Robert Maxwell was accused across multiple documented sources of operating as an intelligence asset for Mossad, [[MI6|MI6]], and the [[KGB|KGB]]. The documented allegations include the distribution of modified [[PROMIS|PROMIS]] software to facilitate Israeli intelligence-gathering operations, involvement in the [[Mordechai Vanunu|Vanunu]] case, and the broader intelligence-community relationships documented by the journalists [[Gordon Thomas|Gordon Thomas]] (in *[[Gideon's Spies|Gideon's Spies]]*) and the BBC Select documentary "Robert Maxwell, the KGB and MI6." Robert Maxwell met the accusations with denials and legal threats. No intelligence service has officially confirmed him as an agent.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Intelligence-Operation Question
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Ghislaine Maxwell moved to [[New York|New York]] in 1991 after her father's death and the collapse of the family's reputation, reportedly with a financial settlement from the family estate. She met Epstein shortly after. Her lawyers have argued that her father's death "set her on a path" toward Epstein. The documented combination of Robert Maxwell's intelligence legacy, Ghislaine's role as Epstein's social partner and the principal recruiter of the trafficking operation, the documented [[Ehud Barak|Israeli-intelligence]] contacts through Epstein, and the broader pattern of Epstein's relationships with intelligence officials ([[William Burns]]) and technology principals ([[Peter Thiel|Thiel]], [[Elon Musk|Musk]]) has produced the recurring analytical question of whether the Epstein-Maxwell operation functioned as an intelligence-linked compromise or "honeypot" operation. The question is not confirmed in any primary document and is flagged here as a documented analytical thread.[^3][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The strongest version of the intelligence claim traces to Ari Ben-Menashe, a self-described former Israeli Military Intelligence figure, who alleged in interviews and in his book *Profits of War* (1992) that Robert Maxwell was a "full-service" Mossad asset and that Epstein and Ghislaine were introduced into Israeli intelligence work through the Maxwell connection.[^8] Ben-Menashe's reliability is contested: his account is uncorroborated by any declassified file, he has made other claims that proved unverifiable, and no intelligence service has confirmed any of it, so the assertion that Ghislaine inherited her father's intelligence ties is reported allegation rather than established fact.[^8] What is documented in the trial record and contemporaneous reporting is narrower: that Maxwell maintained the social access (to figures including Prince Andrew and a transatlantic donor class) through which Epstein's operation functioned, and that Epstein separately cultivated relationships with Barak and others. Whether that access was directed by any service, or was simply the by-product of inherited wealth and connections weaponized for blackmail-adjacent leverage, remains unproven in any primary source.[^3][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The 2025 Justice Department Interview and Transfer
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In late July 2025 the Deputy Attorney General [[Todd Blanche]], who had previously served as [[Donald Trump|Donald Trump's]] personal defense attorney, interviewed Maxwell over two days at the federal correctional institution in [[Tallahassee, Florida|Tallahassee]] under a grant of limited proffer immunity. The Justice Department released a 337-page transcript on August 22, 2025. In it Maxwell discussed Trump, Prince Andrew, and other prominent men associated with Epstein and largely spoke of them in exculpatory terms, while declining to confirm the central allegations against several figures. The interview was conducted while the Trump administration was managing the contested release of the Epstein files, and critics characterized it as an effort to shape the public record.[^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Days after the interview, on August 1, 2025, Maxwell was moved from the Tallahassee facility to the minimum-security [[Federal Prison Camp Bryan]] in Texas. Former Bureau of Prisons officials called the transfer "highly unusual" for an inmate convicted of a sex offense with more than ten years left to serve, since prison camps ordinarily exclude both categories. Senator [[Sheldon Whitehouse]] demanded documents explaining the decision, and residents of Bryan protested her arrival. The Bureau of Prisons did not provide a detailed public rationale.[^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Maxwell pursued parallel efforts to overturn or shorten her sentence. Her attorneys petitioned the [[Supreme Court of the United States]] to vacate the conviction, arguing that the co-conspirator immunity clause in Epstein's 2007 [[non-prosecution agreement]] with the Southern District of Florida barred her later prosecution anywhere in the country; the Court denied certiorari in October 2025. She separately offered to testify before the [[House Oversight Committee]], which had subpoenaed her, on the condition that she receive immunity, a condition that was not granted.[^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Ghislaine Maxwell Sentenced To 20 Years In Prison." *U.S. Department of Justice, Southern District of New York,* June 28, 2022. https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/ghislaine-maxwell-sentenced-20-years-prison-conspiring-jeffrey-epstein-sexually-abuse
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "The murky life and death of Robert Maxwell, and how it shaped his daughter Ghislaine." *The Guardian,* August 22, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/22/the-murky-life-and-death-of-robert-maxwell-and-how-it-shaped-his-daughter-ghislaine
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Thomas, Gordon. *Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad.* St. Martin's Press.
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Ghislaine Maxwell loses sex trafficking appeal." *BBC,* September 2024. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy0glxd0gxko
|
||||||
|
[^5]: For the Epstein-Barak Israeli-intelligence channel and the Epstein-Burns CIA-director contacts, see the Jeffrey Epstein, Ehud Barak, and William Burns pages.
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Ghislaine Maxwell trial: Jury finds she sex trafficked a minor for Jeffrey Epstein, guilty on five of six counts." *CNN,* December 29, 2021. https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/29/us/ghislaine-maxwell-trial-wednesday
|
||||||
|
[^7]: United States v. Maxwell, 20 Cr. 330 (AJN), Opinion and Order denying motion for new trial (S.D.N.Y. April 1, 2022). See also "Juror's omissions will not trigger Ghislaine Maxwell retrial." *Courthouse News Service.* https://www.courthousenews.com/jurors-omissions-will-not-trigger-ghislaine-maxwell-retrial/
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network.* Sheridan Square Press, 1992. Ben-Menashe's claims that Robert Maxwell was a Mossad asset and that the Maxwell-Epstein link served Israeli intelligence are uncorroborated by declassified material and treated as contested allegation; see also Thomas, *Gideon's Spies* (note 3).
|
||||||
|
[^9]: For Maxwell's family, education, and move to New York, see "Ghislaine Maxwell: The British socialite who became Epstein's confidante." *BBC,* December 2021. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53100417 and the contemporaneous biographical reporting.
|
||||||
|
[^10]: For the recruitment mechanics, the contact directory, and the victim testimony, see the trial record in United States v. Maxwell, 20 Cr. 330 (S.D.N.Y. 2021), the January 2024 unsealing of Giuffre v. Maxwell exhibits before Judge Loretta Preska, and the Alfredo Rodriguez obstruction case (S.D. Fla.).
|
||||||
|
[^11]: "Justice Department releases transcripts from Ghislaine Maxwell's interview." *CNN,* August 22, 2025. https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/ghislaine-maxwell-jeffrey-epstein-doj-documents-08-22-25 ; "Ghislaine Maxwell moved to federal prison camp in Texas." *CNN,* August 1, 2025. https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/01/politics/ghislaine-maxwell-federal-prison-texas ; "Supreme Court declines to hear Ghislaine Maxwell's appeal." *SCOTUSblog,* October 2025. https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/10/supreme-court-declines-to-hear-ghislaine-maxwells-appeal/
|
||||||
49
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Holden Karnofsky.md
Normal file
49
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Holden Karnofsky.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "AI & Effective Altruism"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- EffectiveAltruism
|
||||||
|
- OpenPhilanthropy
|
||||||
|
- Anthropic
|
||||||
|
- ArtificialIntelligence
|
||||||
|
- Longtermism
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Holden Karnofsky
|
||||||
|
summary: "Holden Karnofsky is the cofounder of the charity evaluator GiveWell and of Open Philanthropy, the largest sustained funder of effective altruism and AI-safety work, an early backer of Anthropic who later moved into AI-safety strategy and joined Anthropic in 2025, and the husband of Anthropic president Daniela Amodei."
|
||||||
|
born: 1981
|
||||||
|
location: "San Francisco, California"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Holden Karnofsky (born 1981) is an American grantmaker who cofounded the charity evaluator [[GiveWell]] and the foundation [[Open Philanthropy]], the durable financial backbone of the [[Effective Altruism]] movement and of [[Longtermism|longtermist]] and AI-safety work. As Open Philanthropy's co-chief executive he directed the institutional patronage that sustained AI-existential-risk research, was an early backer of the AI company [[Anthropic]], and in 2025 left grantmaking to work at Anthropic directly. He is married to Anthropic cofounder and president [[Daniela Amodei]].[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### GiveWell
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Karnofsky and [[Elie Hassenfeld]] met as analysts at the hedge fund [[Bridgewater Associates]], where they were part of a group of eight finance-industry friends researching charitable giving in their spare time. In 2007 the two left their jobs, raised about 300,000 dollars from former coworkers, and founded GiveWell, an organization that rates charities by the measured cost-effectiveness of their interventions and recommends a short list of top picks. The model, evidence-based giving aimed at maximizing lives saved per dollar, became one of the two intellectual streams of effective altruism, alongside the Oxford moral philosophy of [[Toby Ord]] and [[William MacAskill]].[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Months after the launch, Karnofsky was caught promoting GiveWell anonymously: in December 2007 he posted a question soliciting charity recommendations on the community site Ask MetaFilter under a false identity, then answered it touting GiveWell without disclosing his role. The board removed him as executive director and board secretary effective January 3, 2008, cut 5,000 dollars from his salary, and required him to take a professional-development course; he was later restored to the leadership. GiveWell grew into a major channel for evidence-based giving, directing more than 1.45 billion dollars to its top charities between 2009 and 2024, with roughly half of that going to the [[Against Malaria Foundation]] at an estimated cost of about 5,500 dollars per life saved.[^7][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Open Philanthropy
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
GiveWell's research into larger and riskier giving opportunities led to a partnership with Good Ventures, the foundation established in 2011 by [[Facebook]] cofounder [[Dustin Moskovitz]] and his wife [[Cari Tuna]]. The two efforts joined as the Open Philanthropy Project in 2014 and began independent operations in 2017, with Karnofsky as co-chief executive. Funded chiefly by Moskovitz and Tuna, Open Philanthropy directed more than four billion dollars in grants by 2025 across global health and "longtermism," the latter covering AI risk, pandemic preparedness, and the far future. Its AI-risk money flowed to the research community around the [[Machine Intelligence Research Institute]], the [[Future of Humanity Institute]], and the [[Rationalist Community]], making Open Philanthropy the principal patron of AI-safety work outside the technology companies. The organization renamed itself Coefficient Giving in 2025.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The effort began inside GiveWell as "GiveWell Labs" before splitting off, with Karnofsky and [[Alexander Berger]] sharing the chief-executive role until Berger became sole chief executive on Karnofsky's 2023 departure. In March 2017 Karnofsky steered Open Philanthropy's 30-million-dollar grant to [[OpenAI]], a sum that bought a board seat he held until 2021, when he resigned it after his wife cofounded a competing lab. Between 2021 and 2023 Karnofsky wrote the "most important century" series on his blog Cold Takes, more than twenty essays arguing that the development of transformative AI could make the present century the most consequential in human history, a thesis that supplied the intellectual rationale for Open Philanthropy's concentration of money on AI risk.[^2][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Anthropic and the Amodei Tie
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Open Philanthropy was an early funder of Anthropic, the AI company founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers from the effective-altruism milieu, and Karnofsky held a seat associated with that early backing. Karnofsky married Daniela Amodei in 2017; she cofounded Anthropic with her brother [[Dario Amodei]] and serves as its president. In 2022 [[Sam Bankman-Fried]] invested roughly 500 million dollars of [[FTX]]-derived capital in Anthropic through [[Alameda Research]], placing the company at the intersection of the movement's two largest funders during the period Karnofsky's foundation and his wife's company were both tied to it. Karnofsky took a leave from his co-chief-executive role in 2023 to focus on AI strategy and joined Anthropic in January 2025 to work on its responsible-scaling and safety policies.[^2][^5][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The overlap drew the criticism that the largest funder of independent AI-safety research was led by a man married to the president of a frontier AI lab his foundation had financed. Karnofsky's OpenAI board seat from 2017 to 2021 had already placed him inside one leading lab before the marriage tie connected him to a second; commentators noted that the same small network of effective-altruism figures sat on the funding, governance, and research sides of the field at once. At Anthropic he took up work on the company's Responsible Scaling Policy, the framework of capability thresholds and safety commitments the company uses to govern the release of more powerful models.[^2][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "How Dependent is the Effective Altruism Movement on Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna?" EA Forum. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4BJSXH9ho4eYNT73P/how-dependent-is-the-effective-altruism-movement-on-dustin
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Who Funds the AI Safety Watchdogs," Inside The Black Box, on Open Philanthropy's share of AI-safety funding, the Karnofsky-Amodei marriage, and Karnofsky's 2025 move to Anthropic. https://itbb.substack.com/p/who-funds-the-watchdogs
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Our Story," GiveWell, on the 2007 founding by eight finance-industry friends and the 300,000-dollar startup raise. https://www.givewell.org/about/story
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "GiveWell Co-Founder Explains Effective Altruism Frameworks," *The Harvard Crimson,* December 4, 2015. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/12/4/givewell-founder-effective-altruism/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Effective Altruism After Sam Bankman-Fried," Seven Pillars Institute, 2023, on the 500 million dollar Anthropic investment via Alameda Research. https://www.sevenpillarsinstitute.org/effective-altruism-after-sam-bankman-fried/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "The Making of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei," Alex Kantrowitz, on Open Philanthropy as an early Anthropic funder and the Karnofsky tie. https://kantrowitz.medium.com/the-making-of-anthropic-ceo-dario-amodei-449777529dd6
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "GiveWell in turmoil after 'horrible lapse of judgement' by founders," *Alliance,* 2008, on the MetaFilter astroturfing and the board sanctions. https://www.alliancemagazine.org/news/givewell-in-turmoil-after-horrible-lapse-of-judgement-by-founders/
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "GiveWell's Fundraising and Grantmaking in 2023" and "GiveWell's 2024 Metrics and Impact," The GiveWell Blog, on the cumulative 1.45-billion-dollar total and the Against Malaria Foundation cost per life saved. https://blog.givewell.org/2025/08/13/givewells-2024-metrics-and-impact/
|
||||||
|
[^9]: "OpenAI General Support," Good Ventures, on the March 2017 30-million-dollar grant and Karnofsky's board seat through 2021; Karnofsky, Holden, "The Most Important Century," Cold Takes, 2021. https://www.cold-takes.com/the-most-important-century-in-a-nutshell/
|
||||||
53
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Igor Kurganov.md
Normal file
53
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Igor Kurganov.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,53 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "AI & Effective Altruism"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- IgorKurganov
|
||||||
|
- ElonMusk
|
||||||
|
- Russia
|
||||||
|
- FBI
|
||||||
|
- ForeignInterference
|
||||||
|
- Philanthropy
|
||||||
|
- Counterintelligence
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Igor Kurganov
|
||||||
|
summary: "Igor Kurganov is a Russian-born former professional poker player who gained operational influence over Elon Musk's charitable giving during the COVID-19 pandemic, slept in Musk's Austin home, and was the subject of FBI preliminary inquiries into foreign interference before being removed from Musk's inner circle by wealth manager Jared Birchall in May 2022."
|
||||||
|
location: "Russia (born); Austin, Texas (Musk period)"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Igor Kurganov is a Russian-born former professional poker player who gained operational influence over [[Elon Musk|Elon Musk]]'s charitable giving during the COVID-19 pandemic. Kurganov was sleeping in Musk's [[Austin, Texas|Austin]] home during the pandemic period, advising Musk on philanthropic strategy, and became the subject of FBI preliminary inquiries into whether his access constituted a foreign-interference channel. [[Jared Birchall|Jared Birchall]], Musk's wealth manager and the head of Musk's family office, confronted Musk and removed Kurganov from the inner circle in May 2022.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Poker Career and the Musk Access
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Kurganov built a public profile as a high-stakes professional poker player, accumulating over 18 million dollars in live tournament winnings across a career that placed him among the top German and Russian tournament players. His poker network overlaps with the high-roller gambling circuit whose principals move across national borders and whose venues (Macau, Las Vegas, Monte Carlo, the online high-stakes sites) are documented intelligence-collection environments.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The documented path to Musk ran through Kurganov's effective-altruism and philanthropic-strategy work. Kurganov entered Musk's circle during the pandemic period and gained influence over Musk's charitable giving, which had become a substantial operation as Musk's wealth grew through the [[Tesla|Tesla]] stock run-up and the [[SpaceX|SpaceX]] private valuations. Kurganov's access included sleeping in Musk's Austin home, placing him inside Musk's residential security perimeter rather than at arm's length as a professional advisor.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The FBI Preliminary Inquiry
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The FBI's Los Angeles field office opened preliminary inquiries into whether Kurganov's access to Musk constituted a foreign-interference channel, per *The Guardian*'s reporting on the disclosures of former FBI agent [[Jonathan Buma]]. The inquiry ran under the counterintelligence portfolio that handles Russian foreign-influence operations targeting U.S. technology principals. Buma described the broader pattern of Russian targeting of Musk as "intense," and the [[Kyiv Post|Kyiv Post]] / [[ZDF|ZDF]] reporting on Buma's interview characterized the operation as [[GRU|GRU]]-run and Putin-approved, exploiting vulnerabilities including drug use, sexual entrapment, and luxury access.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The question of what Kurganov did with the access during the period he had it (advising on philanthropic strategy, residential access, proximity to Musk's decision-making on charitable and potentially other matters) is not fully resolved in the public record. The FBI inquiry was preliminary, meaning it was an assessment-stage investigation to determine whether full counterintelligence investigation was warranted.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Birchall Removal (May 2022)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Jared Birchall is the wealth manager who runs Musk's family office and who functions as Musk's gatekeeper on financial and security matters. *The Guardian* reported that Birchall confronted Musk about Kurganov's access and removed Kurganov from the inner circle in May 2022.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
What Kurganov did with his access during the period he had it, what he took with him when he was removed, and whether the access produced intelligence value for any Russian service are not documented in the public record.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Broader Targeting Pattern
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Buma disclosed that the Kurganov case was one of multiple Russian targeting efforts directed at Musk and at [[Peter Thiel|Thiel]]. The [[The Guardian|Guardian]] reported Buma's May 2025 interview in which he characterized the efforts as "intense," and the Kyiv Post reporting on Buma's ZDF interview described the operation as GRU-run, Putin-approved, and exploiting vulnerabilities including drug use, sexual entrapment, and luxury access.[^1][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Buma handling of Thiel as an FBI CHS from summer 2021 overlaps chronologically with the Kurganov-Musk access period (2020-2022). Buma told the Guardian he briefed Thiel on "what a targeting looks like" and that Thiel provided "helpful information to help us identify the nodes through which these outreaches have occurred." The overlap means the FBI's counterintelligence handling of the Thiel CHS relationship and the FBI's preliminary inquiry into Kurganov's access to Musk ran in the same Los Angeles field office during the same period.[^1][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The [[Wall Street Journal|Wall Street Journal]] reported on October 25, 2024 that Musk had been in regular contact with [[Vladimir Putin|Putin]] since late 2022, after [[Starlink|Starlink]] became operationally significant in the Russia-Ukraine war. The Putin contact channel, the Buma-documented GRU targeting, the Kurganov infiltration, and the [[NLRB Data Exfiltration|NLRB data exfiltration]] with Russian IP access through [[Department of Government Efficiency|DOGE]] together form the evidentiary set on the Russian-influence question around the PayPal Mafia principals.[^1][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "FBI whistleblower claims he tried to get to Musk to warn him he was being targeted by Russia." *The Guardian,* May 22, 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/may/22/fbi-whistleblower-musk-russia
|
||||||
|
[^2]: For Kurganov's poker career earnings and ranking, see the [[Hendon Mob|Hendon Mob]] poker database and the live-tournament record.
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Russian Intelligence Used Sex, Drugs to Target Elon Musk." *Kyiv Post,* 2025. https://www.kyivpost.com/post/52742
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Schwartz, Mattathias. "Exclusive: Tech billionaire Peter Thiel was an FBI informant." *Business Insider,* October 2023, on Thiel providing information to FBI agent Johnathan Buma as a confidential human source codenamed "Philosopher" beginning summer 2021, focused on foreign-influence approaches. https://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-fbi-informant-2023-10
|
||||||
59
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Jack LaSota.md
Normal file
59
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Jack LaSota.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,59 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- Zizians
|
||||||
|
- Rationalism
|
||||||
|
- Cult
|
||||||
|
- Violence
|
||||||
|
- ArtificialIntelligence
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Ziz
|
||||||
|
- Jack Amadeus LaSota
|
||||||
|
summary: "Jack LaSota, who writes under the persona 'Ziz,' is an Alaska-born computer programmer and former rationalist who founded the group known as the Zizians around a theory of brain hemispheres and militant veganism, and who was arrested in Maryland in February 2025 as the group was tied to six deaths across three states."
|
||||||
|
born: 1990
|
||||||
|
location: "Fairbanks, Alaska"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Jack LaSota, who writes under the online persona "Ziz," is an American computer programmer and former member of the Bay Area [[Rationalist Community]] who founded the small group known as the [[The Zizians|Zizians]]. Born and raised in [[Fairbanks]], [[Alaska]], LaSota built a doctrine combining an original theory of brain hemispheres, militant veganism, anarchism, and rationalist decision theory, and gathered a circle of mostly young transgender followers around it. Between 2022 and 2025 the group was tied to six deaths across [[California]], [[Pennsylvania]], and [[Vermont]]. LaSota was arrested in [[Maryland]] in February 2025 and faces federal and state charges.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Background
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
LaSota studied computer science at the [[University of Alaska Fairbanks]], briefly pursued postgraduate work at the [[University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign]], and interned at [[NASA]] before moving to the [[San Francisco Bay Area]] around 2013. An avid reader of [[Eliezer Yudkowsky]], she sought out the [[Machine Intelligence Research Institute]] (MIRI) and the [[Center for Applied Rationality]] (CFAR), entering the rationalist scene as an enthusiast before becoming one of its harshest critics, accusing both organizations of "ethical hypocrisy" for failing to act on the moral demands of their own doctrine.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
She began posting around 2016 under the persona "Ziz," debating AI safety and logical paradoxes on [[LessWrong]] before moving to a personal blog with longer essays on technology, gender, and cognition. LaSota did not hold steady employment in the Bay Area and lived on the community's margins. CFAR co-founder [[Anna Salamon]] later described her as someone who "wanted to feel special" but felt outshone in a scene dense with technical talent, an account that places the turn toward an esoteric doctrine in a competition for status the broader rationalist world did not grant her. The formal break came in 2018, when rationalist organizations rejected her hemisphere theory.[^9][^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Zizian Doctrine
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
LaSota's blog advanced the theory that the brain's two hemispheres hold separate personalities with their own genders and moral alignments, and she sorted people's mental "cores" as "nongood," "single good," or "double good." She counted herself among a very small number of "double good" people. The group practiced "unihemispheric sleep," a sleep-deprivation method she said could "jailbreak" the mind, and "debucketing," the unlearning of social categories. She wore black robes and described herself as "Sith," after the malevolent order in [[Star Wars]], framing an adversarial morality against a world she held to be complicit in animal killing and facing collapse from artificial-intelligence misalignment. A follower, [[Maia Pasek]], died by suicide in February 2018; LaSota presented the death as evidence of her method's power.[^1][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The doctrine borrowed "heroic responsibility" from Yudkowsky's fiction, the idea that an agent is accountable for an outcome regardless of whether anyone else failed first, and fused it with the timeless-decision-theory claim that one should act on universal principles rather than case-by-case pragmatism. In LaSota's hands these combined to recast ordinary moral compromise as existential betrayal, so that declining to confront a perceived wrong became itself a culpable act. She also argued that transgender women possessed a distinct cognitive profile suited to AI-safety work, a claim that helped concentrate recruitment among young transgender rationalists. The hemisphere framework had operational consequences: a member rated only "single good," such as the associate [[Gwen Danielson]], was treated as untrustworthy and subject to watching, which built suspicion and ranking into the group's internal life.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The CFAR Break and the Faked Death
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In November 2019 LaSota and several associates protested a CFAR retreat at [[Occidental]] in [[Sonoma County]] in masks and robes; four were arrested, and CFAR barred LaSota from its events. In August 2022 she staged her own death, leaving the impression she had drowned after going off a boat in the San Francisco Bay, and remained at large under that cover before resurfacing in [[Philadelphia]] in 2023.[^2][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The 2022 vanishing followed a recoverable sequence: the U.S. Coast Guard responded to a report that she had fallen from a boat in the bay, no body was found, and an obituary appeared, which let her exit pending [[Vallejo]] proceedings as a presumed drowning. Before staging that death she had already accumulated criminal exposure beyond the Sonoma standoff. In early 2023, in connection with the killing of [[Michelle Zajko]]'s parents in Pennsylvania, LaSota was charged with obstructing the homicide investigation and disorderly conduct, charges that ran alongside the firearms case that would later put her in federal custody.[^5][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Arrest and Prosecution
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On February 16, 2025, LaSota was arrested in Allegany County, Maryland, alongside Michelle Zajko and [[Daniel Blank]] after a property owner near [[Frostburg]] reported that the three were living in two white box trucks on his land and refused to leave; investigators reported finding a GM6 Lynx .50-caliber rifle, an HS Produkt Hellcat 9mm handgun, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. A federal grand jury in Maryland indicted her on June 20, 2025 as a fugitive in possession of firearms and ammunition, a charge carrying up to fifteen years; she pleaded not guilty.[^6][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On March 12, 2026, U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar granted a competency evaluation requested by defense attorney Gary Proctor, who reported that LaSota had refused to meet a doctor brought to the jail and had told an earlier hearing that the judge ran an "organized crime ring," answering a question about her age with "Timeless." Her lawyers rejected the "Zizian" and "cult" labels in their filings and accused the Department of Justice of misgendering her by using her former name and male pronouns. She remained held at the Allegany County Detention Center awaiting state and federal proceedings, which prosecutors moved to consolidate so that members of the group would face trial together in Maryland.[^8][^11][^12]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "The Radicalization of Ziz LaSota: How an AI Doomer Became an Accused Cult Leader," *Rolling Stone,* 2025. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/ziz-lasota-zizians-ai-cult-1235468289/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Zizians," World Religions and Spirituality Project, Virginia Commonwealth University, November 7, 2025. https://wrldrels.org/2025/11/07/zizians/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "How did a German math genius get drawn into a 'cult' accused in coast-to-coast killings?" *NBC News,* 2025. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/german-math-genius-get-drawn-cult-accused-coast-coast-killings-rcna189309
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "How a California math genius spiraled into Zizian ideology and violence," *Open Vallejo,* March 12, 2025. https://openvallejo.org/2025/03/12/how-a-california-math-genius-spiraled-into-zizian-ideology-and-violence/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "'Zizian' namesake who faked death in 2022 is wanted in two states," *Open Vallejo,* January 31, 2025. https://openvallejo.org/2025/01/31/zizian-namesake-who-faked-death-in-2022-is-wanted-in-two-states/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: U.S. Department of Justice, District of Maryland, "Alaskan Individual Charged with Possessing Firearms and Ammunition as a Fugitive from Justice," June 2025. https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/alaskan-individual-charged-possessing-firearms-and-ammunition-fugitive-justice
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Leader of cult-like group linked to killing border agent in Vermont faces federal charges," *The Boston Globe,* June 21, 2025. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/06/21/metro/jack-lasota-zizian-leader-indicted-in-maryland/
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "Judge orders competency evaluation for alleged 'Zizian' cult leader Ziz LaSota," *The Baltimore Banner,* March 12, 2026; on the competency order, attorney Gary Proctor's account, and the "Timeless" remark. https://www.thebanner.com/community/criminal-justice/zizian-cult-leader-competency-evaluation-PXYELJW3NBB5HOUWG6MA4U4E3I/
|
||||||
|
[^9]: "A timeline of cultlike 'Zizian' group tied to killing of a Border Patrol agent in Vermont," Associated Press via PBS NewsHour, 2025, on the 2016 "Ziz" blog, the 2018 split, the Coast Guard report, and the 2023 obstruction charge. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/a-timeline-of-cultlike-zizian-group-tied-to-killing-of-a-border-patrol-agent-in-vermont
|
||||||
|
[^10]: "Rationalist Cults of Silicon Valley," Ian Leslie, 2025, on Anna Salamon's account of LaSota wanting to "feel special." https://www.ian-leslie.com/p/rationalist-cults-of-silicon-valley
|
||||||
|
[^11]: "Federal authorities bring firearms charge against alleged leader of Zizians," *VTDigger,* June 20, 2025, on the indictment and the Frostburg arrest. https://vtdigger.org/2025/06/20/federal-authorities-bring-firearms-charge-against-alleged-leader-of-zizians/
|
||||||
|
[^12]: "Members of violent Zizian cult to face trial together in Maryland," *The Baltimore Banner,* 2026. https://www.thebanner.com/community/criminal-justice/zizians-cult-members-trial-maryland-K35MFJBNPRH4VNMBZGT2J5OT34/
|
||||||
61
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Jared Kushner.md
Normal file
61
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Jared Kushner.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,61 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Political Figure"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- JaredKushner
|
||||||
|
- Trump
|
||||||
|
- SaudiArabia
|
||||||
|
- MBS
|
||||||
|
- AffinityPartners
|
||||||
|
- AbrahamAccords
|
||||||
|
- NSOGroup
|
||||||
|
- Khashoggi
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Jared Corey Kushner
|
||||||
|
summary: "Jared Kushner is an American investor and former senior advisor to President Donald Trump who shaped Middle East policy through the Abraham Accords and U.S.-Saudi arms sales, maintained a WhatsApp channel with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that the CIA assessed as compromised, and received a $2 billion investment from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund for his private equity firm months after leaving government despite the fund's own due-diligence panel rejecting the deal."
|
||||||
|
born: 1981-01-10
|
||||||
|
location: "Livingston, New Jersey (born)"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Jared Kushner (born January 10, 1981, in [[Livingston, New Jersey|Livingston]], [[New Jersey]]) is an American investor who served as senior advisor to President [[Donald Trump]] from January 2017 to January 2021, with a portfolio that included Middle East policy, criminal justice reform, and the federal pandemic response. Kushner shaped the [[Abraham Accords|Abraham Accords]] (the 2020 normalization agreements between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco), U.S.-Saudi arms sales, and the broader regional realignment that the Trump administration pursued. After leaving government, Kushner founded the private equity firm [[Affinity Partners|Affinity Partners]], which received a 2 billion dollar commitment from the [[Public Investment Fund|Saudi Public Investment Fund]] (chaired by Crown Prince [[Mohammed bin Salman|Mohammed bin Salman]]) despite the fund's own due-diligence panel recommending against the investment. Kushner maintained a documented [[WhatsApp|WhatsApp]] communication channel with MBS during his government service, a channel the CIA assessed as compromised.[^1][^2][^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The White House Middle East Portfolio
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Kushner's White House portfolio covered the Middle East policy that produced the Abraham Accords, the U.S.-[[Saudi Arabia|Saudi Arabia]] relationship, and the administration's approach to the [[Israeli-Palestinian conflict|Israeli-Palestinian conflict]]. The Abraham Accords normalized relations between [[Israel|Israel]] and the [[United Arab Emirates|UAE]], [[Bahrain|Bahrain]], [[Sudan|Sudan]], and [[Morocco|Morocco]] in 2020, breaking with the prior U.S. framework that had conditioned normalization on Israeli-Palestinian progress. Kushner led the negotiation, which ran alongside the administration's approval of major arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE despite congressional opposition.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Saudi relationship was the central element. [[The Intercept|The Intercept]] reported that MBS boasted Kushner was "in his pocket," and that Kushner had grown close to the Saudi and Emirati crown princes through direct personal communication. Kushner's handling of the Saudi portfolio included the administration's response to the [[Jamal Khashoggi|October 2018 Khashoggi murder]], in which MBS was assessed by the CIA to have ordered the assassination. Kushner maintained his relationship with MBS after the murder.[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The WhatsApp Channel and the Bezos Hack
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Kushner used WhatsApp to communicate directly with MBS during his government service, [[ABC News|ABC News]] reported. The channel bypassed the official State Department and NSC communication systems and raised documented national-security concerns. In January 2020, [[The Guardian|The Guardian]] reported that [[Jeff Bezos|Jeff Bezos]]'s phone was hacked in May 2018 through a malicious file sent from MBS's personal WhatsApp account. The UN's [[Agnès Callamard|Agnès Callamard]] subsequently advised Kushner to replace his phone, warning that anyone in regular contact with MBS via WhatsApp could be a surveillance target.[^4][^5][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The WhatsApp channel that MBS used to communicate with Kushner was the same channel used to compromise Bezos. Whether Kushner's own device was compromised through the channel is not confirmed in the public record. The CIA assessed with high confidence that MBS was in regular contact with Kushner via private channels.[^4][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Khashoggi Surveillance
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[[NSO Group|NSO Group]]'s [[Pegasus (spyware)|Pegasus]] spyware was deployed against associates of Jamal Khashoggi before the October 2018 murder inside the Saudi consulate in [[Istanbul|Istanbul]]. The Guardian reported in July 2021, based on the [[Pegasus Project|Pegasus Project]] leak, that Pegasus was found on the phone of Khashoggi's wife [[Hanan Elatr|Hanan Elatr]] months before the killing. An Emirati government agency separately placed NSO spyware on the phone of a Khashoggi associate, [[Al Jazeera|Al Jazeera]] reported. Khashoggi's friend [[Omar Abdul Aziz|Omar Abdul Aziz]] sued NSO Group, claiming its spyware enabled the killing.[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The NSO Group-Khashoggi surveillance, the MBS WhatsApp channel, and the Kushner-MBS relationship together form the documented chain through which the Saudi surveillance apparatus operated against Khashoggi and his network while MBS maintained his private communication channel with the senior U.S. advisor handling Saudi policy.[^4][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Affinity Partners and the Middle East Sovereign Wealth
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Affinity Partners was founded by Kushner in 2021 after leaving government. Within months, the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF), chaired by MBS, committed 2 billion dollars to the fund. The [[Wall Street Journal|Wall Street Journal]] reported that the PIF's own due-diligence panel recommended against the investment, citing Kushner's lack of private-equity experience and characterizing the pitch as "unsatisfactory in all aspects." MBS overruled the panel and approved the commitment.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The UAE and [[Qatar|Qatar]] subsequently invested at least 1.5 billion dollars combined, per [[Mother Jones|Mother Jones]]. By early 2024, Affinity managed approximately 3 billion dollars in foreign-sourced capital. [[Bloomberg|Bloomberg]] reported in May 2026 that the fund had grown to approximately 6 billion dollars under management, nearly all of it from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth. The Wall Street Journal documented that Kushner's fund planned to invest Saudi money into Israeli startups, leveraging the normalization momentum from the Abraham Accords.[^1][^8][^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[[Senator Ron Wyden|Senator Ron Wyden]] (Senate Finance Committee chairman) and Representative [[Robert Garcia|Robert Garcia]] opened a congressional investigation into Affinity Partners. The investigation documented the firm's fee structure (approximately 157 million dollars in fees collected), the lack of returns to investors, and what the committee characterized as questionable deals with foreign governments. Bloomberg reported on Kushner's documented "dual role" as both a 6-billion-dollar fund manager and a Middle East peace envoy, with the same governments that back his fund being the parties he engages diplomatically. A Qatar-backed investment fund was also tied to a 1-billion-dollar rental deal that helped resolve Kushner family financial issues.[^8][^9][^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Jared Kushner defends controversial $2bn Saudi investment." *BBC,* 2024. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68296877
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Jared Kushner's New Fund Plans to Invest Saudi Money in Israel." *Wall Street Journal,* 2022. https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/jared-kushners-new-fund-plans-to-invest-saudi-money-in-israel-11651927236
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "They Went to Jared." *Mother Jones,* June 2026. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/06/jared-kushner-affinity-partners-fund-saudi-arabia-qatar-uae-israel-middle-east-deals-nepotism/
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Jared Kushner, Mohammed bin Salman, and the Making of the Trump-Saudi Alliance." *The Intercept,* March 2018. https://theintercept.com/2018/03/21/jared-kushner-saudi-crown-prince-mohammed-bin-salman/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Amazon boss Jeff Bezos's phone 'hacked by Saudi crown prince.'" *The Guardian,* January 21, 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jan/21/amazon-boss-jeff-bezoss-phone-hacked-by-saudi-crown-prince
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Jared Kushner used WhatsApp to message foreign contacts in White House." *ABC News.* https://abcnews.com/Politics/jared-kushner-whatsapp-foreign-contacts-lawyer-tells-congress/story?id=61843329
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "NSO spyware used to target family of Jamal Khashoggi, leaked data shows." *The Guardian,* July 18, 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/18/nso-spyware-used-to-target-family-of-jamal-khashoggi-leaked-data-shows-saudis-pegasus
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Wyden investigation of Affinity Partners, *U.S. Senate Finance Committee.* https://www.finance.senate.gov/chairmans-news/wyden-investigation-of-kushner-firm-continues-new-letter-outlines-affinity-partners-fee-structure-lack-of-return-to-investors-questionable-deals-with-foreign-governments
|
||||||
|
[^9]: "Jared Kushner Solicits Funds for His Firm While Working as Mideast Advisor." *New York Times,* March 2026. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/business/jared-kushner-affinity-mideast-funds.html
|
||||||
|
[^10]: "Kushner Disappoints Mideast Clients." *Bloomberg,* May 14, 2026. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-05-14/jared-kushner-s-dual-role-trump-peace-envoy-and-6-billion-fund-manager ; Garcia and Wyden letter to Affinity Partners, House Oversight Democrats, March 2026. https://oversightdemocrats.house.gov/download/2026-03-19garcia-wyden-letter-to-affinity-partners-re-kushner-fundraising
|
||||||
48
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Jim Himes.md
Normal file
48
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Jim Himes.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Political Figure"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- JimHimes
|
||||||
|
- DemocraticParty
|
||||||
|
- Connecticut
|
||||||
|
- Congress
|
||||||
|
- HouseIntelligenceCommittee
|
||||||
|
- GoldmanSachs
|
||||||
|
- Dialog
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- James Andres Himes
|
||||||
|
- James Himes
|
||||||
|
- Representative Jim Himes
|
||||||
|
summary: "Jim Himes is a U.S. Representative for Connecticut's 4th district and ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence whose name appeared on the leaked 2026 registration roster of Peter Thiel's secretive Dialog society."
|
||||||
|
born: 1966-07-05
|
||||||
|
location: "Lima, Peru (born); Greenwich, Connecticut (political base)"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Jim Himes (born July 5, 1966, in [[Lima]], [[Peru]]) is an American politician and former investment banker who has represented Connecticut's 4th congressional district in the [[United States House of Representatives]] since 2009 and who serves as ranking member of the [[House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence]]. In June 2026 Himes was named by *WIRED* among the registrants surfaced in the leak of [[Dialog]], the invitation-only society cofounded by [[Peter Thiel]] and [[Auren Hoffman]], where Himes appeared on the same roster as [[Palantir Technologies]] cofounder [[Joe Lonsdale]], whose firm contracts with the intelligence agencies Himes oversees.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Early Life, Goldman Sachs, and Entry to Congress
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Himes was born in Lima, where his American father worked for the [[Ford Foundation]] and [[UNICEF]]; he spent his early childhood in Peru and [[Colombia]] before the family settled in the United States. He attended [[Harvard University]] and won a [[Rhodes Scholarship]] to [[Oxford University]], where he studied Latin America. He then joined [[Goldman Sachs]], spending roughly twelve years at the bank and rising to vice president, working extensively in Latin America and heading the bank's telecommunications-technology group. After leaving Goldman he ran the New York City branch of the affordable-housing nonprofit [[Enterprise Community Partners]].[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Himes was first elected to Congress in November 2008, unseating the long-serving Republican incumbent [[Christopher Shays]] in the [[Connecticut]] 4th, a wealthy district anchored by [[Greenwich]] and the Fairfield County financial-services corridor. He took office in January 2009 and has been reelected to successive terms, serving on the [[House Financial Services Committee]] alongside his intelligence assignment. Within the [[Democratic Party]] he has been associated with the centrist, finance-friendly [[New Democrat Coalition]], which he chaired.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Himes sits on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the panel charged with congressional oversight of the U.S. [[Intelligence Community]], including the [[Central Intelligence Agency]], the [[National Security Agency]], and the [[Office of the Director of National Intelligence]]. He became the committee's ranking member, the senior Democrat, giving him access to classified briefings and a formal role in authorizing and reviewing the budgets and operations of the agencies under the committee's jurisdiction.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The committee's oversight reach includes federal agencies that contract with Palantir Technologies, the data-analytics firm chaired by Thiel, whose software has been used by [[U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement]] and the [[Department of Defense]]. *WIRED* framed the Dialog roster around exactly this overlap: a sitting member with intelligence oversight authority appearing on an off-the-record membership list beside the cofounder of a company whose principal customers are the agencies that member oversees.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The 2026 Dialog Leak
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The June 16, 2026 *WIRED* report identified Himes on the Dialog roster as "Rep., CT; House Intelligence," placing him among a group of sitting U.S. officials surfaced when the Swiss hacktivist [[maia arson crimew|crimew]] located a member directory embedded in the source code of Dialog's website and a separate source provided the publication with the 222-name registration list for the society's 2026 retreat, scheduled for August 12 through 16 at the Powerscourt Hotel near [[Dublin]]. *WIRED* noted Himes appeared on the list alongside Lonsdale and Army Secretary [[Dan Driscoll]].[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
A representative for Himes responded to the reporting by stating: "Congressman Himes attended one annual conference held by the Dialog group roughly a decade ago. Since then, he has had no affiliation with the group and attended no additional events." The statement placed his single documented attendance around 2016 and disputed any continuing membership, while not contesting that his name was present in the leaked records.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Cameron, Dell, and Yulia Almazova. "Leak Exposes Members of Peter Thiel's Secretive 'Dialog' Society." *WIRED,* June 16, 2026. https://www.wired.com/story/leak-exposes-members-of-peter-thiels-secretive-dialog-society/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "CT's Jim Himes responds to leaked Peter Thiel network records." *WSHU Public Radio,* June 18, 2026. https://www.wshu.org/connecticut-news/2026-06-18/ct-jim-himes-peter-thiel-network
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "About Jim." Office of Congressman Jim Himes, U.S. House of Representatives. https://himes.house.gov/about-jim ; "Committee and Caucuses." https://himes.house.gov/committee-assignments
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Statement of a representative for Representative Jim Himes, quoted in WSHU Public Radio, June 18, 2026, and in *WIRED,* June 16, 2026.
|
||||||
55
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Joe Lonsdale.md
Normal file
55
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Joe Lonsdale.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,55 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Technologists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- JoeLonsdale
|
||||||
|
- Palantir
|
||||||
|
- FoundersFund
|
||||||
|
- 8VC
|
||||||
|
- Anduril
|
||||||
|
- PayPalMafia
|
||||||
|
- DefenseContractor
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Joseph Lonsdale
|
||||||
|
summary: "Joe Lonsdale is an American technology entrepreneur and investor who cofounded Palantir Technologies as a founding engineer in 2003, founded the venture capital firm 8VC, and has been a central figure in the Thiel-aligned defense-technology investment cluster backing Anduril Industries."
|
||||||
|
born: 1984-09-12
|
||||||
|
location: "United States"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-17
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-17
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Joe Lonsdale is an American technology entrepreneur and investor who cofounded [[Palantir Technologies]] as a founding engineer in 2003 and went on to found the venture capital firm [[8VC]]. He is a central figure in the Thiel-aligned defense-technology investment cluster that backs [[Anduril Industries]] and a constellation of adjacent firms, and his career is the second-generation instantiation of the [[Peter Thiel]] commercial model: a Palantir alumnus who applies the data-and-defense thesis across a portfolio of his own companies. Lonsdale is a member of the broader [[PayPal Mafia]] orbit by association with Thiel rather than by PayPal employment.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Thiel network reproduces through founders who pass through it and then build adjacent firms. The PayPal Mafia generation built firms individually; the Palantir-alumnus generation, of which Lonsdale is the most prominent, built firms as a coordinated cluster around a shared investment thesis and a shared set of defense and intelligence clients. The cluster is held together by recurring capital relationships (8VC, Founders Fund), shared board seats, and, since 2006, by the off-the-record convening of [[Dialog]].
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Palantir Founding
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Lonsdale joined Thiel's [[Clarium Capital]] as an intern while an undergraduate at [[Stanford University]] and moved with the founding team to Palantir in 2003, where he was a founding engineer. Palantir, built on the data-integration architecture Thiel and [[Max Levchin]] had developed for fraud detection at [[PayPal]], received early funding from the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] venture arm [[In-Q-Tel]] and built its government platform Gotham around the post-[[September 11 attacks|9/11]] intelligence-fusion requirement. Lonsdale's role at Palantir placed him inside the technical core of the firm during its formative government-contracting years.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Stanford connection is the structural antecedent. Lonsdale was part of the Stanford computer-science and Thiel-adjacent undergraduate network that produced a disproportionate share of the Palantir founding team and its early engineering cohort. The Stanford-to-Palantir-to-founders pipeline became one of the reliable recruiting channels of the Thiel network, and Lonsdale's later founding and investing activity continued to draw on the same pool. The network is institutionally dense (shared university, shared first employer, shared venture backers, shared off-the-record convening).[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Addepar, OpenGov, and 8VC
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
After Palantir, Lonsdale founded [[Addepar]], a wealth-management data platform serving ultra-high-net-worth investors and family offices, and [[OpenGov]], a cloud platform for local and state government financial management. Both companies apply the Palantir data-integration architecture to adjacent verticals: Addepar to the financial data of the wealthy, OpenGov to the financial data of sub-federal governments. The through-line is the privatization of the data substrate that an institution runs on, whether that institution is an intelligence agency, a family office, or a city government.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Lonsdale founded the venture capital firm 8VC (originally Formation 8) to institutionalize the investment thesis across the cluster. The 8VC portfolio is concentrated in defense technology, health technology, and enterprise data infrastructure, and the firm is a recurring co-investor with [[Founders Fund]] in the Thiel-aligned deals. The defense-tech concentration, in particular, places 8VC as the venture arm of the Anduril Industries-led effort to rebuild Pentagon procurement around commercial software and hardware vendors rather than the traditional prime contractors.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Anduril and the Defense-Tech Cluster
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
8VC and Lonsdale are early and continuing backers of Anduril Industries, the defense contractor founded by [[Palmer Luckey]] with Founders Fund backing, which builds autonomous systems, surveillance platforms, and battlefield software for the Department of Defense and allied militaries. Anduril's rapid scaling during the second [[Donald Trump|Trump]] administration was the visible success case for the Thiel-network argument that the Pentagon should procure from Silicon Valley-style software firms rather than from the traditional defense primes ([[Lockheed Martin]], [[Raytheon]], [[Northrop Grumman]]).[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Through Anduril, Lonsdale, Thiel, and Luckey sit across the commercial firms (Anduril, Palantir, 8VC portfolio companies), the off-the-record convening (Dialog), and the government clients (the Pentagon and intelligence-agency principals who attend Dialog). The 2026 Dialog roster's inclusion of sitting military command and congressional oversight figures is where the defense-tech cluster's access to its government client base is mediated.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Political Activity
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Lonsdale has been politically active in the Thiel-aligned libertarian-to-Republican orbit. His political spending favors candidates who support higher Pentagon procurement from commercial software firms, lighter regulation of consumer-data brokerage, and the broader privatization-of-state-capacity frame that runs through the Thiel network.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Lonsdale's documented political vehicles include contributions to Republican candidates and committees aligned with the defense-tech and limited-government thesis. He has been a recurring donor to Palantir alumni political efforts and to the candidates whose platforms support the 8VC portfolio thesis (defense-tech procurement, autonomous-systems funding, AI-and-surveillance infrastructure expansion). The 8VC portfolio includes Anduril, [[Clearview AI|Clearview]]-adjacent firms, and the broader defense-and-sovereign-infrastructure cluster whose commercial success depends on the federal procurement posture that the political spending supports.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Lonsdale has also been involved in the institutional-placement dimension of the network. He sits on the board of the [[National Republican Congressional Committee|NRCC]]'s Wall Street board, and his political-network activity runs alongside the Founders Fund commercial relationship and the Dialog convening participation that place him in the same off-the-record rooms as the government principals whose procurement decisions affect his portfolio. The combination of venture-capital control (8VC), defense-contracting exposure (Anduril, Palantir adjacency), and political spending (defense-tech-aligned candidates) applies the privatization-of-state-capacity thesis across the political, commercial, and convening layers.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: 8VC, "Our Team: Joe Lonsdale," documenting the founding of 8VC (from Formation 8), Addepar, and OpenGov, and the firm's defense and enterprise-data portfolio. https://8vc.com/team/joe-lonsdale
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Joe Lonsdale: From Palantir to Billionaire Investor?" *CEO Today,* August 2025, on Lonsdale co-founding Palantir Technologies with Thiel in 2004 and his role before departing in 2009. https://www.ceotodaymagazine.com/2025/08/how-joe-lonsdale-built-a-billion-dollar-tech-empire/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Cameron, Dell, and Yulia Almazova. "Leak Exposes Members of Peter Thiel's Secretive 'Dialog' Society." *WIRED,* June 16, 2026. https://www.wired.com/story/leak-exposes-members-of-peter-thiels-secretive-dialog-society/
|
||||||
47
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Joi Ito.md
Normal file
47
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Joi Ito.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Technologists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- JoiIto
|
||||||
|
- MITMediaLab
|
||||||
|
- JeffreyEpstein
|
||||||
|
- ReidHoffman
|
||||||
|
- PeterThiel
|
||||||
|
- ImageRehabilitation
|
||||||
|
- 2015Dinner
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Joichi Ito
|
||||||
|
summary: "Joi Ito is a Japanese-American venture capitalist and former director of the MIT Media Lab who resigned in September 2019 after Ronan Farrow's New Yorker reporting documented that the Media Lab had a deeper financial relationship with Jeffrey Epstein than previously disclosed, and who attended the 2015 Epstein dinner alongside Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman, and Mark Zuckerberg."
|
||||||
|
born: 1966-06-19
|
||||||
|
location: "Kyoto, Japan (born)"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Joi Ito (born Joichi Ito, June 19, 1966, in [[Kyoto]], [[Japan]]) is a Japanese-American venture capitalist and technology advocate who served as director of the [[MIT Media Lab|MIT Media Lab]] from 2011 until his September 2019 resignation. [[Ronan Farrow]]'s *[[The New Yorker|New Yorker]]* reporting (September 2019) documented that the Media Lab had a deeper financial relationship with [[Jeffrey Epstein]] than previously disclosed, including Epstein-directed donations that Ito had personally solicited and attempted to conceal. Ito attended the 2015 Epstein dinner (EFTA00344556, EFTA00344564) alongside [[Peter Thiel]], [[Elon Musk]], [[Reid Hoffman]], and [[Mark Zuckerberg]]. Hoffman participated in the Epstein image-rehabilitation effort through Ito's introductions.[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The MIT Media Lab and the Epstein Funding
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Ito became director of the MIT Media Lab in 2011. The Media Lab is the interdisciplinary research laboratory at [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology|MIT]] known for its experimental work at the intersection of technology, media, and design. Ito's tenure was characterized by aggressive fundraising from technology-industry donors and by the expansion of the Lab's corporate-sponsorship model. The Epstein funding was part of this expansion: Epstein directed donations to the Media Lab through a structure designed to conceal the source, and Ito personally solicited additional Epstein-directed funds.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Farrow's *New Yorker* piece (September 6, 2019), titled "How an Elite University Research Center Concealed Its Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein," documented that the Media Lab's relationship with Epstein was more extensive than MIT had publicly acknowledged, that Ito had accepted Epstein-directed donations after the 2008 conviction, and that the Lab had taken steps to keep the relationship from becoming public. The reporting was based on internal Media Lab documents obtained by *The New Yorker.* Ito resigned the same week.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Image-Rehabilitation Channel and the Hoffman Connection
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Ito-Epstein channel functioned as the conduit through which Reid Hoffman participated in the post-conviction Epstein image-rehabilitation effort. [[Axios|Axios]] reported in September 2019 that Hoffman apologized for his role in helping repair Epstein's public image, specifically for introductions Hoffman facilitated related to Epstein's MIT donations through Ito. The effort included an August 2015 dinner that Hoffman hosted in [[Palo Alto]] (EFTA00344556, EFTA00344564), ostensibly to raise money for the Media Lab, whose guest list included Ito, Thiel, Musk, Zuckerberg, and Epstein. Epstein described the gathering in an August 20, 2015 email to [[Tom Pritzker]], writing "i had dinner with zuckerburg, mu=k, thiel hoffman, wild."[^2][^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Epstein's donations to the Media Lab were directed through intermediaries and through structures designed to obscure the source. *The New Yorker* reporting documented that Ito had personally solicited additional Epstein-directed funds after the 2008 conviction and that the Lab had marked Epstein's contributions in its internal records with designations intended to keep the relationship from becoming public. The internal Media Lab documents obtained by *The New Yorker* included emails in which Ito and other Media Lab staff discussed how to process Epstein-directed funds without triggering disclosure requirements.[^1][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Resignation and the Aftermath
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Ito resigned from the MIT Media Lab on September 7, 2019, one day after the *New Yorker* reporting. MIT initiated an independent investigation conducted by the law firm [[Goodwin Procter|Goodwin Procter]], which produced a report documenting the extent of the Media Lab's Epstein relationship and the institutional failures that permitted it. The Goodwin Procter investigation found that MIT had accepted approximately 850,000 dollars in Epstein-directed or Epstein-connected donations across the 2012-2017 period, and that senior MIT officials, including the institute's president, had been aware of Epstein's involvement in directing funds.[^1][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Ito also resigned from positions at the [[John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation|MacArthur Foundation]], the [[John S. and James L. Knight Foundation|Knight Foundation]], the [[Knight-Hennessy Scholars|Knight-Hennessy Scholars]] program, and the [[New York Times Company|New York Times Company]] board. The resignations terminated Ito's positions across the philanthropic, media, and academic institutions that his Epstein relationship had damaged. The MIT Media Lab subsequently reformed its donor-acceptance policies to prohibit anonymous donations and to require enhanced due diligence on donors with criminal records.[^1][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Farrow, Ronan. "How an Elite University Research Center Concealed Its Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein." *The New Yorker,* September 6, 2019.
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Mark Zuckerberg's 'Wild' Dinner With Epstein Revealed in Files." *The Daily Beast,* 2026, documenting the August 2015 Palo Alto dinner (EFTA00344556, EFTA00344564) attended by Thiel, Musk, Hoffman, Zuckerberg, and Ito. https://www.thedailybeast.com/mark-zuckerbergs-wild-dinner-with-epstein-revealed-in-files/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Exclusive: Reid Hoffman apologizes for role in Epstein-linked donations." *Axios,* September 12, 2019. https://www.axios.com/2019/09/12/reid-hoffman-jeffrey-epstein-mit-donations
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Exclusive: Reid Hoffman apologizes for role in Epstein-linked donations to MIT." *Axios,* September 12, 2019. https://www.axios.com/2019/09/12/reid-hoffman-jeffrey-epstein-mit-donations
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "MIT releases results of fact-finding on engagements with Jeffrey Epstein." *MIT News,* January 10, 2020, releasing the Goodwin Procter report (donations totaling 850,000 dollars across 2002-2017). https://news.mit.edu/2020/mit-releases-results-fact-finding-report-jeffrey-epstein-0110 ; "Report Concerning Jeffrey Epstein's Interactions with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology." Goodwin Procter LLP, January 2020. https://factfindingjan2020.mit.edu/files/MIT-report.pdf
|
||||||
56
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Jonathan Levin.md
Normal file
56
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Jonathan Levin.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,56 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Scientists & Researchers"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- JonathanLevin
|
||||||
|
- StanfordUniversity
|
||||||
|
- Economics
|
||||||
|
- MarketDesign
|
||||||
|
- ClarkMedal
|
||||||
|
- AcademicLeadership
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Jonathan David Levin
|
||||||
|
summary: "Jonathan Levin is an American economist who won the 2011 John Bates Clark Medal, served as dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Business from 2016 to 2024, and became the thirteenth president of Stanford University in August 2024."
|
||||||
|
born: 1972-11-17
|
||||||
|
location: "New Haven, Connecticut (born)"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Jonathan Levin (born November 17, 1972) is an American economist who won the 2011 John Bates Clark Medal, served as dean of the [[Stanford Graduate School of Business|Stanford Graduate School of Business]] from 2016 to 2024, and became the thirteenth president of [[Stanford University]] in August 2024. He was named among the confirmed 2026 registrants of [[Dialog]], the invitation-only society cofounded by [[Peter Thiel]], in the membership roster leaked to *WIRED* in June 2026, which identified him as the president of Stanford University.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### A Family of University Presidents
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Levin was born in New Haven, Connecticut, the son of the economist Richard Levin, who served as the twenty-second president of [[Yale University|Yale University]] from 1993 to 2013. The two are both economists who became presidents of elite American universities, a pairing that framed the coverage of Jonathan Levin's appointment, and Stanford itself published a joint interview with father and son on university leadership. He took dual undergraduate degrees from Stanford in 1994, a bachelor of arts in English and a bachelor of science in mathematics, then an MPhil in economics from Nuffield College, Oxford, in 1996, and a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1999 under [[Bengt Holmström|Bengt Holmström]].[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
He joined the Stanford economics faculty in 2000 as an assistant professor, became a full professor by 2008 as the Holbrook Working Professor of Price Theory, and chaired the economics department from 2011 to 2014. His research spans industrial organization and microeconomic theory, including relational and incomplete contracts, market design and auctions, asymmetric information in credit markets, health insurance, and radio-spectrum allocation.[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Clark Medal and the Stanford Presidency
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Levin received the John Bates Clark Medal in 2011, awarded by the American Economic Association to the American economist under forty judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought. He became the tenth dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2016, holding the post for eight years through 2024 while also holding the Philip H. Knight professorship. From 2021 to 2025 he served on the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology under President Biden, appointed in September 2021; his work on radio-spectrum auctions and internet market design is his principal bridge to the technology industry, though no public corporate board seat for the economist is documented.[^4][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Stanford Board of Trustees announced Levin's appointment as the thirteenth president of Stanford on April 4, 2024, and he took office on August 1, 2024. He succeeded the classicist Richard Saller, who had served as interim president since September 2023, after [[Marc Tessier-Lavigne|Marc Tessier-Lavigne]] resigned effective August 31, 2023, following a research-misconduct scandal. A Stanford-commissioned panel, prompted by *Stanford Daily* reporting that began in November 2022, found data manipulation in papers from Tessier-Lavigne's laboratories; the panel found no evidence that he personally committed or knew of the manipulation but concluded that he had failed to "decisively and forthrightly correct mistakes in the scientific record."[^6][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Stanford and the Thiel Network
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Thiel took a bachelor of arts in philosophy at Stanford in 1989 and a JD from Stanford Law School in 1992, and as a sophomore in 1987 founded *[[The Stanford Review|The Stanford Review]],* the conservative-libertarian student newspaper that a *Stanford Politics* investigation later described as "one of the surest paths to success in Silicon Valley." The investigation documented roughly three hundred employment relationships between Review alumni and about sixty institutions founded by Thiel or [[Joe Lonsdale|Joe Lonsdale]]. [[David Sacks]] was a later editor-in-chief of the Review and a Stanford undergraduate in the class of 1994, [[Keith Rabois|Keith Rabois]] was its opinion editor in the class of 1991, and Lonsdale and Palantir cofounder [[Stephen Cohen|Stephen Cohen]] were Stanford undergraduates and Review affiliates.[^8][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[[Rene Girard|René Girard]], the Andrew B. Hammond Professor of French Language, Literature, and Civilization, taught at Stanford, and Thiel took his courses as an undergraduate in the late 1980s; Girard's mimetic theory became foundational to Thiel's worldview, and Thiel spoke at Girard's memorial after his death in November 2015. [[Alex Karp|Alex Karp]], Thiel's [[Palantir Technologies|Palantir]] cofounder, took his JD at Stanford Law in the same 1992 class as Thiel, where the two met, though Karp's undergraduate degree is from Haverford College and his doctorate from Goethe University Frankfurt. [[Reid Hoffman|Reid Hoffman]] met Thiel as a Stanford undergraduate, where he studied symbolic systems before taking a philosophy degree at Oxford. The [[Hoover Institution|Hoover Institution]] fellow and former Reagan speechwriter Peter Robinson, who hosts the program *Uncommon Knowledge,* has interviewed Thiel within the same conservative-Stanford orbit.[^10][^11][^12]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The network continued to operate through Stanford institutions during Levin's tenure as dean. In January 2018 the Stanford "Cardinal Conversations" series opened with an event titled "Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel on Technology and Politics," moderated by [[Niall Ferguson|Niall Ferguson]] under the Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Institute. The *Stanford Daily* reported that an invitation found in the Epstein files indicates Levin attended Dialog's 2013 retreat, more than a decade before the 2026 leak.[^12][^13]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Cameron, Dell, and Yulia Almazova. "Leak Exposes Members of Peter Thiel's Secretive 'Dialog' Society." *WIRED,* June 16, 2026. https://www.wired.com/story/leak-exposes-members-of-peter-thiels-secretive-dialog-society/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Stanford appoints son of former Yale president Rick Levin as president." *Yale Daily News,* April 5, 2024. https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2024/04/05/stanford-appoints-son-of-former-yale-president-rick-levin-as-president/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Jonathan Levin." American Economic Association, John Bates Clark Medalist page. https://www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/honors-awards/bates-clark/jonathan-levin
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Dean Jonathan Levin." Stanford Graduate School of Business. https://gsb.stanford.edu/experience/news-history/history/deans/dean-jonathan-levin
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Biden announces members of PCAST." The White House, September 22, 2021. https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/pcast/briefing-room/2021/09/22/biden-announces-members-of-pcast/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Jonathan Levin named Stanford president." Stanford Report, April 4, 2024. https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2024/04/announcement
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Stanford president resigns over manipulated research, will retract at least 3 papers." *The Stanford Daily,* July 19, 2023. https://stanforddaily.com/2023/07/19/stanford-president-resigns-over-manipulated-research-will-retract-at-least-3-papers/
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "The Stanford Review and the making of the PayPal Mafia." *Stanford Politics,* November 27, 2017. https://stanfordpolitics.org/2017/11/27/peter-thiel-cover-story/
|
||||||
|
[^9]: "Peter Thiel launched a student newspaper 36 years ago." *Fortune,* 2023. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/peter-thiel-launched-student-newspaper-140000199.html
|
||||||
|
[^10]: "Peter Thiel on René Girard." Luke Burgis, *Anti-Mimetic.* https://read.lukeburgis.com/p/peter-thiel-on-rene-girard
|
||||||
|
[^11]: "Alex Karp '89 is emerging from the shadows." *The Haverford Clerk.* https://haverfordclerk.com/alex-karp-89-is-emerging-from-the-shadows/
|
||||||
|
[^12]: "Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel on technology and politics." Stanford Report, February 2018. https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2018/02/cardinal-conversation-reid-hoffman-peter-thiel-technology-politics
|
||||||
|
[^13]: "Levin, Stanford alumni appear on list of Peter Thiel 'Dialog' society affiliates." *The Stanford Daily,* June 16, 2026. https://stanforddaily.com/2026/06/16/levin-stanford-alumni-appear-on-list-of-peter-thiel-dialog-society-affiliates/
|
||||||
58
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Julian Huxley.md
Normal file
58
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Julian Huxley.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,58 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Scientists & Researchers"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- Eugenics
|
||||||
|
- Transhumanism
|
||||||
|
- UNESCO
|
||||||
|
- EvolutionaryBiology
|
||||||
|
- Hereditarianism
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Julian Huxley
|
||||||
|
- Sir Julian Huxley
|
||||||
|
- Julian Sorell Huxley
|
||||||
|
summary: "Julian Huxley was the evolutionary biologist who coined the modern usage of transhumanism in 1957, served as the first Director-General of UNESCO and wrote a founding document tying the agency to eugenics, and presided over the British Eugenics Society from 1959 to 1962."
|
||||||
|
born: 1887-06-22
|
||||||
|
died: 1975-02-14
|
||||||
|
location: "London, England; Paris, France"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Julian Sorell Huxley (June 22, 1887 to February 14, 1975) was an English evolutionary biologist, science popularizer, and eugenicist who coined the modern usage of "[[Transhumanism|transhumanism]]" in 1957. He was the grandson of the Darwinian biologist Thomas Henry Huxley and the elder brother of the novelist [[Aldous Huxley]]. He was an architect of the "modern synthesis" of Darwinian selection and Mendelian genetics, the first Director-General of [[UNESCO]] from 1946 to 1948, a cofounder of the [[World Wildlife Fund]] in 1961, and president of the British [[Eugenics|Eugenics]] Society from 1959 to 1962. He was knighted in 1958.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Modern Synthesis and Evolutionary Humanism
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Huxley's standing as a biologist rested on *Evolution: The Modern Synthesis* (1942), which named and consolidated the mid-twentieth-century reconciliation of Darwinian natural selection with Mendelian and population genetics. The book gathered the work of theorists such as R. A. Fisher, J. B. S. Haldane, and Sewall Wright into a unified account in which selection acting on Mendelian variation drives evolution, and the phrase "modern synthesis" entered biology as its standard name. Huxley was also a prolific popularizer who reached mass audiences through radio, the *Brains Trust* broadcasts, and books, and who directed the London Zoo as secretary of the Zoological Society of London.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
From evolution Huxley derived a secular creed he called "evolutionary humanism," the view that humanity, having become through evolution the agent of its own further development, bears responsibility for consciously directing the future course of life on earth. He set this out across decades in works including *Religion Without Revelation* (1927) and *Essays of a Humanist* (1964), and served as the first president of the British Humanist Association. Evolutionary humanism placed the improvement of the human genetic and cultural inheritance at the center of human purpose, and it carried his lifelong commitment to eugenics inside an optimistic, progressive frame.[^1][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### UNESCO and Its Eugenic Charter
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Appointed the first Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in 1946, Huxley wrote a sixty-page founding statement, *UNESCO: Its Purpose and Philosophy* (1946), that set out the philosophical basis for the new agency as he understood it. The document grounded UNESCO's mission in evolutionary humanism and argued that the agency should foster a single emerging world culture and advance the scientific study and improvement of human populations. Member states never adopted Huxley's text as official policy, and his term was cut to two years, but the statement stands as his programmatic vision for the body.[^2][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The document tied the agency explicitly to eugenics. Huxley wrote that "even though it is quite true that any radical eugenic policy will be for many years politically and psychologically impossible, it will be important for UNESCO to see that the eugenic problem is examined with the greatest care, and that the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that now is unthinkable may at least become thinkable." He framed the task as one of moving eugenics from the impossible to the thinkable, charging UNESCO with preparing public opinion for measures that the recent association of eugenics with Nazi policy had made unspeakable.[^2][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Eugenics Society and Race
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Huxley's involvement with the British Eugenics Society spanned his career: he served as a vice-president in the 1930s and 1940s and as president from 1959 to 1962. He delivered the society's Galton Lecture in 1936 under the title "Eugenics and Society," and he advocated a "reform eugenics" that emphasized voluntary measures, birth control, and the genetic effects of class and environment over the cruder race-typology of the older movement. He nonetheless retained the foundational premise that the genetic quality of human populations could and should be deliberately managed, and he warned of the dysgenic effects of differential birth rates between social classes.[^4][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Huxley's record on race was mixed by the standards of his contemporaries. He coauthored *We Europeans* (1935) with the anthropologist A. C. Haddon, a book that attacked the pseudoscientific race doctrines of Nazi Germany and argued that the term "race" be replaced with "ethnic group," and he lent his name to the UNESCO Statement on Race tradition. He continued at the same time to hold that human groups differ in average innate mental capacity and that selective reproduction was a legitimate aim, positions that kept him within the hereditarian tradition founded by [[Francis Galton]].[^4][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Coining Transhumanism
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Huxley introduced the modern usage of "transhumanism" in the title essay of his collection *New Bottles for New Wine* (1957). He wrote that "the human species can, if it wishes, transcend itself, not just sporadically, an individual here in one way, an individual there in another way, but in its entirety, as humanity," and proposed: "We need a name for this new belief. Perhaps transhumanism will serve: man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature." He added, "I believe in transhumanism: once there are enough people who can truly say that, the human species will be on the threshold of a new kind of existence, as different from ours as ours is from that of Peking man."[^7][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
For Huxley transhumanism was the practical expression of evolutionary humanism, the program by which a self-aware humanity would take charge of its own biological and psychological evolution through science. [[Nick Bostrom]]'s history of the movement credits Huxley with the term's modern coinage, and the critics [[Émile P. Torres]] and [[Timnit Gebru]] place him, alongside Galton, among the eugenic progenitors of the [[TESCREAL]] bundle of transhumanism, [[Extropianism|extropianism]], [[Effective Altruism|effective altruism]], and the related ideologies that now animate the artificial-intelligence industry.[^7][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Sir Julian Huxley," *Encyclopædia Britannica,* on his life, the modern synthesis, UNESCO, and the Eugenics Society. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Julian-Huxley
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Huxley, Julian. *UNESCO: Its Purpose and Philosophy.* Preparatory Commission of UNESCO, 1946, on the founding statement and his term as first Director-General.
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Huxley, Julian. *Evolution: The Modern Synthesis.* Allen and Unwin, 1942.
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Huxley, Julian. *Essays of a Humanist.* Chatto and Windus, 1964; with *We Europeans* (with A. C. Haddon, 1935) and the Galton Lecture "Eugenics and Society" (1936), on evolutionary humanism, race, and reform eugenics.
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Julian S Huxley, the man who put eugenics into UNESCO," *Aeon,* on the 1946 document and the "unthinkable may at least become thinkable" passage. https://aeon.co/essays/julian-s-huxley-the-man-who-put-eugenics-into-unesco
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Julian Huxley and eugenics," on his vice-presidency, presidency from 1959 to 1962, reform eugenics, and views on race and differential fertility. http://julianhuxleyeugenics.blogspot.com/p/huxley-and-eugenics.html
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Huxley, Julian. *New Bottles for New Wine.* Chatto and Windus, 1957, on the coinage of "transhumanism" in the title essay.
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Huxley, Julian, "Transhumanism," *New Bottles for New Wine* (1957), quoted text. https://www.huxley.net/transhumanism/
|
||||||
|
[^9]: Bostrom, Nick. "A History of Transhumanist Thought," *Journal of Evolution and Technology,* 2005, crediting Huxley with the modern coinage. https://nickbostrom.com/papers/a-history-of-transhumanist-thought/
|
||||||
59
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Leonard Leo.md
Normal file
59
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Leonard Leo.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,59 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Political Figure"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- LeonardLeo
|
||||||
|
- FederalistSociety
|
||||||
|
- TeneoNetwork
|
||||||
|
- DarkMoney
|
||||||
|
- SupremeCourt
|
||||||
|
- JudicialCrisisNetwork
|
||||||
|
- ConcordFund
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Leonard Anthony Leo
|
||||||
|
summary: "Leonard Leo is an American conservative legal activist, the longtime executive vice president of the Federalist Society, the principal architect of the Supreme Court conservative supermajority through the Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett confirmations, and the chairman of Teneo Network, who has directed approximately one billion dollars in dark-money spending through a network of linked 501(c)(4) vehicles to reshape the American judiciary."
|
||||||
|
location: "United States"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Leonard Leo is an American conservative legal activist who served as the longtime executive vice president of the [[Federalist Society|Federalist Society]] and who has been the principal architect of the [[Supreme Court|Supreme Court]]'s conservative supermajority through his role advising President [[Donald Trump]] on the selection and confirmation of [[Neil Gorsuch|Neil Gorsuch]] (2017), [[Brett Kavanaugh|Brett Kavanaugh]] (2018), and [[Amy Coney Barrett|Amy Coney Barrett]] (2020). Leo became chairman of the [[Teneo Network|Teneo Network]] in 2021 and has directed approximately one billion dollars in dark-money spending through a network of linked 501(c)(4) vehicles, including the [[Judicial Crisis Network|Judicial Crisis Network]] (now the [[Concord Fund|Concord Fund]]), to reshape the American judiciary and, through the Teneo chairmanship, to extend the operational model across American institutional life.[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Federalist Society and the Judicial-Selection Project
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Leo's career at the Federalist Society began in the 1990s and he rose to executive vice president, the operational principal of the organization. The Federalist Society is the conservative legal-networking organization that functions as the pipeline for federal judicial nominations under Republican administrations, and Leo's role placed him at the center of the selection process for every conservative federal judge confirmed across the [[George W. Bush|George W. Bush]] and Trump administrations. Leo assisted [[Clarence Thomas|Clarence Thomas]] in his 1991 confirmation hearings and subsequently led the confirmation campaigns for [[John Roberts|John Roberts]], [[Samuel Alito|Samuel Alito]], Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett.[^1][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The *ProPublica* profile "We Don't Talk About Leonard" (March 2023) is the foundational investigative document on Leo's role. The profile documents how Leo advised Trump on all three Supreme Court nominations, how the Federalist Society's judicial-selection pipeline fed the nominations, and how the dark-money infrastructure funded the confirmation campaigns. [[Senator Sheldon Whitehouse|Senator Sheldon Whitehouse]] (D-RI) has documented on the Senate floor and in Senate Judiciary Committee proceedings that Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were the "big prize" for Leo's dark-money donors, locking in a conservative majority that delivered subsequent wins for the Republican donor interests.[^2][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Dark-Money Infrastructure
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Leo's dark-money operation runs through a network of linked 501(c)(4) organizations that permit political spending without donor disclosure. The primary vehicle is the Judicial Crisis Network (now the Concord Fund), which [[CREW|Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington]] reported brought in nearly 48.1 million dollars in a single reporting period to support the conservative judicial-confirmations project. The broader network of Leo-linked organizations has funneled over one billion dollars in undisclosed spending across the judicial-selection, political-advocacy, and institutional-influence operations, per the [[Alliance for Justice|Alliance for Justice]] and [[ProPublica|ProPublica]] investigations.[^2][^5][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The dark-money infrastructure operates through a layered structure of 501(c)(4) social-welfare organizations and 501(c)(3) charities that transfer funds to each other in chains designed to obscure the original donors. The [[Senate Judiciary Committee|Senate Judiciary Committee]] under Chairman [[Dick Durbin|Dick Durbin]] has sought Leo's records and testimony; Leo has declined to comply, and his counsel's letter to the Committee (July 2023) pushed back on the "dark money" and "phony front groups" characterizations. The investigative record relies on leaked tax filings, whistleblower disclosures, and the reporting of ProPublica, CREW, and the Alliance for Justice.[^3][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Teneo Chairmanship and the Institutional Expansion
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Leo became chairman of the Teneo Network in 2021, bringing the dark-money infrastructure he had built through the Federalist Society, the Judicial Crisis Network, and the broader conservative-judicial operation into a network whose stated goal (per the ProPublica investigation) is to "crush liberal dominance" across American law, finance, media, academia, and culture. The Teneo chairmanship extended the Leo operational model from the courts, where it had succeeded in producing the conservative supermajority, to the rest of American institutional life.[^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Leo-Thiel relationship runs through the shared dark-money infrastructure and the shared Teneo-network institutional terrain. The [[Peter Thiel|Thiel]]-tied [[Per Aspera Policy|Per Aspera Policy]] vehicle that steered funds to the [[Protect Ohio Values PAC|Protect Ohio Values PAC]] for the [[JD Vance|JD Vance]] Senate campaign operates in the same 501(c)(4) dark-money ecosystem as the Leo-linked vehicles, and both networks operate through the Teneo Network for the broader institutional-placement function.[^8][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Trump Schism
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Trump publicly attacked Leo in 2025, calling him someone who "probably hates America." The *CBS Evening News* reported on the schism between the president whose judicial selections Leo had architected and the operative who had built the selection infrastructure. The attack followed documented tensions within the post-2024 Republican coalition over personnel choices and strategic direction, with Leo reported to be frustrated with the Trump administration's appointments outside the judicial pipeline.[^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The schism did not affect the underlying judicial infrastructure. The Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett confirmations are permanent, and the conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court is the structural outcome Leo's operation produced. The supermajority delivered the 2022 [[Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization|Dobbs]] decision overturning [[Roe v. Wade|Roe v. Wade]], the expansion of [[Second Amendment|Second Amendment]] gun rights, the rollback of federal regulatory authority under the [[major questions doctrine|major questions doctrine]], and the presidential-immunity ruling in [[Trump v. United States|Trump v. United States]] (2024).[^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Leo's response to the Trump attack was measured. He did not publicly retract his support for the judicial-selection infrastructure, and his network continued to operate through the Teneo Network chairmanship and the Concord Fund / JCN dark-money operation. The schism is a documented internal-republican conflict between the electoral and institutional wings of the coalition, not a dismantling of the judicial infrastructure that both wings had built together.[^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Leonard Leo." *Britannica.* https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leonard-Leo
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "We Don't Talk About Leonard: The Man Behind the Right's Supreme Court Supermajority." *ProPublica,* March 2023. https://www.propublica.org/article/we-dont-talk-about-leonard-leo-supreme-court-supermajority
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Inside the 'Private and Confidential' Conservative Group That Promises to 'Crush Liberal Dominance.'" *ProPublica,* March 15, 2023. https://www.propublica.org/article/leonard-leo-teneo-videos-documents
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "The man who helped roll back abortion rights now wants to 'crush liberal dominance.'" *NPR,* November 25, 2024, on Leo's 25-year Federalist Society career and the conservative judicial pipeline. https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/npr/2024/11/25/nx-s1-5199049/the-man-who-helped-roll-back-abortion-rights-now-wants-to-crush-liberal-dominance/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "With Supreme Court Mired in Dark Money, Time for Large Dose of Transparency." *Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.* https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/op-eds/with-supreme-court-mired-in-dark-money-time-for-large-dose-of-transparency/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Group Behind Trump SCOTUS Picks Brought in Nearly $50 Million in Secret Money." *CREW.* https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-investigations/group-behind-trump-scotus-picks-brought-in-nearly-50-million-in-secret-money/
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Leo counsel's letter to Senate Judiciary Committee, July 25, 2023. https://levin-center.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/2023-7-25-Leo-counsels-ltr-to-Senate-Judiciary-declining-to-produce-requested-information.pdf
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "Inside the Teneo Network, which promises to 'crush liberal dominance.'" *CT Mirror,* March 12, 2023, on Leo's 2021 Teneo chairmanship and its cross-institutional program. https://ctmirror.org/2023/03/12/teneo-network-conservative-federalist-society-liberal/
|
||||||
|
[^9]: "Peter Thiel-tied dark money group helping bankroll super PAC spending on 2022 election." *OpenSecrets,* February 2022, on the Per Aspera Policy transfer to the pro-Vance Protect Ohio Values PAC. https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2022/02/peter-thiel-tied-dark-money-group-helping-bankroll-super-pac-spending-on-2022-election/
|
||||||
|
[^10]: "Trump Attacked Leonard Leo, a Onetime Ally and Key Adviser on Judicial Picks." *CBS Evening News,* 2025.
|
||||||
57
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Marvin Minsky.md
Normal file
57
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Marvin Minsky.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,57 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Scientists & Researchers"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- JeffreyEpstein
|
||||||
|
- MIT
|
||||||
|
- ArtificialIntelligence
|
||||||
|
- CognitiveScience
|
||||||
|
- SciencePhilanthropy
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Marvin Minsky
|
||||||
|
- Marvin Lee Minsky
|
||||||
|
summary: "Marvin Minsky was an MIT cognitive scientist who co-founded the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, took funding from Jeffrey Epstein, and was named in a 2019 unsealed deposition by Virginia Giuffre, an allegation his widow disputed."
|
||||||
|
born: 1927-08-09
|
||||||
|
died: 2016-01-24
|
||||||
|
location: "Boston, Massachusetts"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Marvin Lee Minsky (August 9, 1927 to January 24, 2016) was an American cognitive and computer scientist at the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]] who co-founded the [[MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory]] and was a central figure in the founding of [[artificial intelligence]] as a field. He received funding from [[Jeffrey Epstein]] and organized a 2002 conference financed by Epstein in the U.S. Virgin Islands; in 2019 an unsealed deposition by [[Virginia Giuffre]] named Minsky, an allegation his widow [[Gloria Rudisch]] disputed.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### MIT and the Founding of Artificial Intelligence
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Minsky earned a doctorate in mathematics from Princeton in 1954 and joined MIT, where in 1959 he co-founded the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory with [[John McCarthy]]. He helped organize the 1956 [[Dartmouth Summer Research Project]], the workshop, convened with McCarthy, [[Claude Shannon]], and [[Nathaniel Rochester]], at which the term artificial intelligence was adopted. His honors included the [[Turing Award]] in 1969, the Japan Prize in 1990, and the Benjamin Franklin Medal in 2001.[^3][^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Minsky's research spanned neural networks, robotics, and theories of mind. With [[Seymour Papert]] he wrote *Perceptrons* (MIT Press, 1969), a mathematical critique of single-layer neural networks showing that such a network cannot compute the exclusive-or function; the book is often credited with redirecting funding and research away from connectionist approaches and contributing to the first AI funding winter, before multilayer networks revived the field in the 1980s. His 1986 book *The Society of Mind* (Simon & Schuster) argued that intelligence emerges from the interaction of many simple, mindless agents, and he developed the related "frames" model of knowledge representation.[^4][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Minsky invented the confocal scanning microscope in 1957 and, with Papert, helped build early robotic and machine-vision systems at the MIT AI Laboratory. He later joined the [[MIT Media Lab]] founded by [[Nicholas Negroponte]], where he held the Toshiba Professorship of Media Arts and Sciences and remained active until his death. He continued to argue for symbolic and architectural approaches to general intelligence, developing the ideas in *The Society of Mind* into his 2006 book *The Emotion Machine*.[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Epstein Funding and the 2002 Symposium
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Epstein donated $100,000 to Minsky in 2002, several years before Epstein's 2008 conviction. According to MIT's January 2020 review by the law firm [[Goodwin Procter]] and emails reported by *MIT Technology Review*, Media Lab co-founder Nicholas Negroponte described Minsky as Epstein's closest friend at MIT, writing that Minsky "even visited him in jail." Minsky's ties predated the Media Lab's later, separately scrutinized funding from Epstein under [[Joi Ito]].[^2][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
After Minsky's death in 2016, Negroponte and Ito discussed whether Epstein could attend an on-campus memorial; Negroponte said Epstein would be welcome, but Ito instructed Epstein to stay away from the memorial and an associated reception. A Media Lab staff member later circulated memorial photographs with a note asking that they be posted only "as long as Jeffrey Epstein does not appear in any of the photos."[^2][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In April 2002 Minsky organized a three-day artificial-intelligence meeting, the St. Thomas Common Sense Symposium, held April 14 to 16, 2002, on St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands and funded by Epstein. The proceedings were published by Minsky, [[Push Singh]], and [[Aaron Sloman]] as "The St. Thomas Common Sense Symposium: Designing Architectures for Human-Level Intelligence" in *AI Magazine* in 2004. Around twenty scientists attended, most of them men, including [[Roger Schank]], [[Doug Lenat]], [[Ken Forbus]], [[Henry Lieberman]], [[Vernor Vinge]], and [[Linda Stone]]. Schank later recalled that Epstein "walks into the conference with two girls on his arm" and sat "in the back, on a couch, hugging and kissing these girls." Epstein separately funded a 2006 physics gathering convened by [[Lawrence Krauss]] on Epstein's island that drew physicists including [[Stephen Hawking]].[^6][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Giuffre Allegation and the Dispute
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In a deposition given in May 2016 and unsealed in August 2019 as part of a defamation suit brought against [[Ghislaine Maxwell]], Virginia Giuffre stated that Epstein directed her to have sex with Minsky when Minsky visited Epstein's compound in the U.S. Virgin Islands, when she was seventeen and Minsky was in his seventies. Giuffre's claim named Minsky among several prominent men she said she was instructed to have sexual contact with. Minsky, who had died in January 2016, never had an opportunity to respond, and no lawsuit was filed against his estate.[^8][^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Minsky's widow, the pediatrician Gloria Rudisch, disputed the allegation, saying that she and her husband were "always together" during their visits and that the encounter Giuffre described did not happen. None of the men named in Giuffre's deposition was criminally charged or named as a defendant in civil suits arising from her account, and Giuffre's deposition is the only source for the claim against Minsky.[^9][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The 2019 MIT review and records reported in 2025 and 2026 indicated that Minsky and Rudisch had contact with Epstein over multiple years, including visits to his island. The renewed release of U.S. Department of Justice files in 2026 returned attention to Minsky alongside other scientists in Epstein's orbit, though the allegation against Minsky has not been adjudicated and rests on Giuffre's account.[^2][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Marvin Minsky (1927-2016), artificial intelligence pioneer," Legacy.com, on Minsky's birth and death dates, the 1959 co-founding of the MIT AI Laboratory with McCarthy, the Turing Award, and his survival by Gloria Rudisch. https://www.legacy.com/news/marvin-minsky-1927-2016
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Eight revelations from MIT's Jeffrey Epstein report," *MIT Technology Review,* January 10, 2020, on the $100,000 grant in 2002, the Negroponte "closest friend" and "visited him in jail" emails, the memorial episode, and the unsealed Giuffre allegation. https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/01/10/130928/mit-jeffrey-epstein-donations-media-lab-joi-ito-seth-lloyd-funding-ethics/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Lohr, Steve. "Marvin Minsky, Pioneer in Artificial Intelligence, Dies at 88," *The New York Times,* January 25, 2016, on the Dartmouth project, the AI Lab, and the cause of death. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/26/business/marvin-minsky-pioneer-in-artificial-intelligence-dies-at-88.html
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Minsky, Marvin. *The Society of Mind.* Simon & Schuster, 1986.
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "MIT professor 'entirely willing' Epstein associate," *Fox News,* 2020, on Minsky's relationship with Epstein as described in the MIT review. https://www.foxnews.com/us/mit-professor-jeffrey-epstein-associate-entirely-willing
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "What it was like to be a scientist in Jeffrey Epstein's circle," *Slate,* August 2019, on the April 2002 AI meeting organized by Minsky, the roughly twenty attendees, Schank's recollection, and the 2006 Krauss conference. https://slate.com/technology/2019/08/jeffrey-epstein-science-eugenics-sexual-abuse-researchers.html
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Inside Jeffrey Epstein's Forgotten AI Summit," Investor News Today, 2025, on the St. Thomas Common Sense Symposium of April 2002 and its attendees. https://investornewstoday.com/2025/08/05/inside-jeffrey-epsteins-forgotten-ai-summit/
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Brown, Stephanie, et al. "Jeffrey Epstein ordered teen girl to have sex with powerful men, accuser says," *NBC News,* August 9, 2019, on the deposition's unsealing and Giuffre's naming of Minsky. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jeffrey-epstein-ordered-teen-girl-have-sex-powerful-men-accuser-n1040996
|
||||||
|
[^9]: "AI Pioneer Accused of Having Sex With Trafficking Victim On Jeffrey Epstein's Island," *Slashdot,* August 9, 2019, on Rudisch's denial that the encounter occurred and that no estate lawsuit was filed. https://yro.slashdot.org/story/19/08/09/2244200/ai-pioneer-accused-of-having-sex-with-trafficking-victim-on-jeffrey-epsteins-island
|
||||||
36
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Max More.md
Normal file
36
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Max More.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "AI & Effective Altruism"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- MaxMore
|
||||||
|
- Extropianism
|
||||||
|
- Transhumanism
|
||||||
|
- Cryonics
|
||||||
|
- Libertarianism
|
||||||
|
summary: "Max More is a British-born philosopher who coined the term extropy, founded the Extropy Institute and the libertarian-transhumanist movement of the 1990s, and later ran the Alcor cryonics foundation."
|
||||||
|
born: 1964
|
||||||
|
location: "Scottsdale, Arizona"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Max More (born Max O'Connor in 1964 in [[Bristol]], England) is a philosopher and futurist who founded [[Extropianism]], the libertarian strand of [[Transhumanism|transhumanism]] that shaped the technological optimism of [[Silicon Valley]]'s elite. He coined the term "extropy" in 1988, founded the [[Extropy Institute]], and through its 1990s mailing list helped assemble the subculture from which [[Nick Bostrom]]'s [[Longtermism|longtermism]], the [[Rationalist Community]], and parts of the cryptocurrency world emerged. He later ran the cryonics organization [[Alcor Life Extension Foundation]].[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Extropian Project
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
More changed his surname from O'Connor to More to signify his commitment to perpetual self-improvement. He read philosophy, politics, and economics at St Anne's College, [[University of Oxford|Oxford]], graduating in 1987, then moved to the United States and completed a doctorate in philosophy at the [[University of Southern California]] in 1995, with a dissertation examining the nature of death and personal identity through change. With the lawyer [[Tom W. Bell]] he launched *Extropy* magazine in 1988 and the Extropy Institute in the early 1990s. He authored the movement's founding documents, including the "Principles of Extropy" and the "Proactionary Principle," a pro-technology rule of conduct framed against the precautionary principle, and his 1999 "Letter to Mother Nature" declared an intention to redesign the human organism. His program fused radical life extension, mind uploading, artificial intelligence, and [[Anarcho-Capitalism|anarcho-capitalist]] politics into a single futurist creed.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Through the Extropy Institute's 1990s mailing list More convened the network of nanotechnology theorists, cryptographers, and AI researchers from which the later transhumanist and AI-risk institutions drew, and he hosted the EXTRO conference series from 1994 to 1999. His "Principles of Extropy," revised across several versions, set out the tenets of perpetual progress, self-transformation, practical optimism, intelligent technology, open society, self-direction, and rational thinking, defining "extropy" itself as the extent of a system's intelligence, functional order, vitality, and capacity for improvement. He married the transhumanist artist and theorist [[Natasha Vita-More]] in 1996, and the two became the movement's most visible couple.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Cryonics and Later Career
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
More became chief executive of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, the [[Scottsdale]], [[Arizona]] cryonics company that preserves human bodies and brains at low temperature in the expectation of future revival, effective January 1, 2011, and held the post until 2020. His advocacy for cryonics and life extension prefigured the longevity and anti-aging interests later funded across the [[Peter Thiel]] network.[^2][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Under More, Alcor's roster of cryopreserved "patients" grew to include the futurist FM-2030, the science-fiction figure who had inspired parts of the transhumanist movement, and the Bitcoin pioneer [[Hal Finney]], who died of ALS in 2014 and was preserved at the facility shortly after his death. Alcor charged on the order of 200,000 dollars for whole-body preservation and 80,000 dollars for neuropreservation of the head alone, funded through life-insurance policies taken out by members, and held roughly 150 patients in cryostasis by the time More stepped down. After leaving the chief-executive role he continued as an ambassador and advisor for the organization.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Transhumanism," *Encyclopædia Britannica,* on Max More, the coining of "extropy," and the Extropy Institute. https://www.britannica.com/topic/transhumanism
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Evans, Jules. "How did transhumanism become the religion of the super-rich?" on Max More, the extropians, and the movement's reach into Silicon Valley. https://julesevans.medium.com/how-did-transhumanism-become-the-religion-of-the-super-rich-d670a410b01a
|
||||||
|
[^3]: More, Max. "The Principles of Extropy," "The Proactionary Principle," and "A Letter to Mother Nature," Extropy Institute, 1990 to 1999; and "About," maxmore.com, on the 1987 Oxford PPE degree from St Anne's College, the 1995 USC philosophy doctorate, and the 1996 marriage to Natasha Vita-More. https://www.maxmore.com/about/
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Alcor Life Extension Foundation Names Max More, PhD, as Chief Executive Officer," Alcor, on the January 1, 2011 appointment; and "200 Frozen Heads and Bodies Await Revival at This Arizona Cryonics Facility," *Smithsonian,* on the patient roster (including FM-2030 and Hal Finney), the roughly 200,000 dollar whole-body and 80,000 dollar neuropreservation fees, and the patient count. https://www.alcor.org/resources/blog/alcor-life-extension-foundation-names-max-more-phd-as-chief-executive-officer/
|
||||||
54
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Michael Murphy.md
Normal file
54
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Michael Murphy.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,54 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Authors & Journalists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- MichaelMurphy
|
||||||
|
- EsalenInstitute
|
||||||
|
- HumanPotentialMovement
|
||||||
|
- SriAurobindo
|
||||||
|
- CitizenDiplomacy
|
||||||
|
- Parapsychology
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Michael Murphy
|
||||||
|
- Mike Murphy
|
||||||
|
summary: "Michael Murphy is the Stanford-trained cofounder of Esalen Institute and a theorist of transformative human capacities who carried the Human Potential movement toward later wellness and technology culture."
|
||||||
|
born: 1930
|
||||||
|
location: "Big Sur, California"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Michael Murphy (born September 3, 1930, in Salinas, California) is an American writer and the cofounder, with Richard Price, of the [[Esalen Institute]], the Big Sur retreat center that became the seedbed of the Human Potential movement. A Stanford psychology graduate who spent sixteen months at the [[Sri Aurobindo]] Ashram in India, Murphy built a body of work, above all the 1992 book *The Future of the Body*, cataloguing what he called the "metanormal" or extraordinary capacities of human beings, and he steered Esalen from 1960s countercultural therapy through 1980s citizen diplomacy with the Soviet Union toward the wellness and technology circles of the present-day Bay Area.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Stanford, Spiegelberg, and Sri Aurobindo
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Murphy was raised in Salinas in an Episcopalian family and entered Stanford University as a pre-med student. In April 1950 he wandered by mistake into a lecture on comparative religion by the scholar [[Frederic Spiegelberg]], an encounter that redirected him toward the integration of Eastern and Western thought; he described a transformative meditative experience by Lake Lagunita on the Stanford campus in January 1951. He took a B.A. in psychology in 1952 and served two years as a U.S. Army psychologist stationed in Puerto Rico during the Korean War.[^1][^2] Spiegelberg, who taught the Indian philosophy of Sri Aurobindo and helped found the American Academy of Asian Studies in San Francisco, shaped a circle that drew both Murphy and the future Esalen cofounder Dick Price.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
From 1956 to 1957 Murphy practiced meditation for some sixteen to eighteen months at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, India, immersing himself in Aurobindo's "integral yoga," a system aimed at a progressive divinization of body and mind rather than escape from the world. Aurobindo's idea that evolution could continue consciously into supernormal human powers became the philosophical backbone of Murphy's later writing. On his return he met Price in 1960 in the Aurobindo-influenced milieu around San Francisco, and the two conceived the project that became Esalen.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Founding and Running Esalen
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 1962 Murphy and Price opened Esalen on roughly 120 acres of clifftop land at Big Sur that Murphy's grandfather, the physician Henry Murphy, had bought in 1910. Murphy ran the institute through its formative decade, hosting [[Abraham Maslow]], [[Aldous Huxley]]'s legacy of "human potentialities," [[Fritz Perls]] and Gestalt therapy, [[Alan Watts]], and the encounter-group movement, before stepping back from day-to-day management in 1972 to concentrate on writing. He remained cofounder and chairman emeritus of the board and continued to direct Esalen's research arm, the Center for Theory and Research.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Murphy's interest in documenting exceptional human functioning became institutional at Esalen. In 1976 he launched what he called the Transformation Project, an effort to compile a scientific archive of extraordinary psychophysical capacities seen in sport, meditation, and healing traditions, the research base for his later books.[^4] Through the Center for Theory and Research, Esalen hosted conferences on meditation research from 1988 to 1995 that produced *The Physical and Psychological Effects of Meditation*, which Murphy wrote with Steven Donovan.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Books on Human Capacities
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Murphy's first and most popular book was the 1972 novel *Golf in the Kingdom*, a mystical fable set on a Scottish links course that became a long-running bestseller and was later filmed; he followed it with the novel *Jacob Atabet* (1977) about a painter pursuing bodily transformation. With the parapsychology researcher Rhea White he published *The Psychic Side of Sports* (1978, later reissued as *In the Zone*), cataloguing reports of altered perception, telepathy, and other anomalous experiences among athletes.[^1][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
His major nonfiction work, *The Future of the Body: Explorations Into the Further Evolution of Human Nature* (1992), is a sprawling cross-cultural compilation of documented cases of what Murphy termed metanormal functioning, exceptional perception, vitality, movement, and cognition, organized to argue that most ordinary human attributes have extraordinary expressions that point toward a further evolution. With [[George Leonard]], the Look editor who had coined "human potential movement," he wrote *The Life We Are Given* (1995) and cofounded Integral Transformative Practice, a structured program of long-term physical and contemplative training.[^1][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Soviet Parapsychology and Citizen Diplomacy
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In the 1970s Murphy became absorbed in Soviet parapsychology and traveled to the USSR to meet its experimenters in telepathy and related phenomena, contacts that opened an unusual channel between Esalen and Soviet officialdom. In 1980, with official Cold War relations stalled, Murphy, his wife Dulce Murphy, and Jim Hickman founded the Esalen Soviet-American Exchange Program, a "track-two" citizen-diplomacy effort that arranged exchanges of astronauts and cosmonauts, scientists, and writers and helped stage the first satellite "spacebridges" between Soviet and American citizens.[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The program invited Boris Yeltsin to make his first United States visit in September 1989, a tour that Yeltsin's biographers describe as sharpening his disillusionment with the Soviet system. Renamed Track Two: An Institute for Citizen Diplomacy in 2004, the program outlived the Cold War, and Esalen's accounts credit it with helping create the atmosphere in which glasnost and perestroika unfolded. Murphy continued to write and to lead the Center for Theory and Research into his nineties.[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Michael Murphy (author)," biographical summary, on his September 3, 1930 birth in Salinas, his B.A. in psychology from Stanford in 1952, the April 1950 Spiegelberg lecture, the January 1951 Lake Lagunita experience, his Army service in Puerto Rico, sixteen to eighteen months at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in 1956 to 1957, the 1962 founding of Esalen with Dick Price, his stepping back in 1972, and his books *Golf in the Kingdom* (1971), *The Future of the Body* (1992), and *The Life We Are Given* (1995).
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Michael Murphy on Esalen and the mystical expats," Philosophy for Life, on Frederic Spiegelberg's comparative-religion teaching, the American Academy of Asian Studies, Sri Aurobindo's integral yoga, and Murphy's meeting with Price. https://www.philosophyforlife.org/blog/7670
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "About Esalen: History, Mission, Vision, and Leadership," Esalen Institute, on Murphy as cofounder and chairman emeritus and his direction of the Center for Theory and Research. https://www.esalen.org/about
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "What is the Center for Theory & Research?" and "Past Initiatives at the Center for Theory & Research," Esalen, on the 1976 Transformation Project, the 1988 to 1995 meditation-research conferences, *The Physical and Psychological Effects of Meditation* with Steven Donovan, and Integral Transformative Practice with George Leonard. https://www.esalen.org/ctr-main
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Murphy, Michael, and Rhea A. White. *The Psychic Side of Sports.* Addison-Wesley, 1978; later reissued as *In the Zone: Transcendent Experience in Sports* (1995). https://archive.org/details/psychicsideofsp000murp
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Forty Years Later, Track Two Continues to Expand its Global Reach," Esalen Journal, on Murphy's 1970s interest in Soviet parapsychology, the 1980 founding of the Esalen Soviet-American Exchange Program by Michael and Dulce Murphy and Jim Hickman, the spacebridges, the 1989 Yeltsin visit, and the 2004 renaming to Track Two; and "Michael Murphy Helped Launch Human Potential Movement More Than 40 Years Ago," Voice of America. https://www.esalen.org/post/forty-years-later-track-two-continues-to-expand-its-global-reach
|
||||||
47
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Mira Murati.md
Normal file
47
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Mira Murati.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Technologists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- MiraMurati
|
||||||
|
- OpenAI
|
||||||
|
- ThinkingMachinesLab
|
||||||
|
- ArtificialIntelligence
|
||||||
|
- SiliconValley
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Mira Murati
|
||||||
|
summary: "Mira Murati is the Albanian-born engineer who rose to chief technology officer of OpenAI, oversaw the development of ChatGPT, DALL-E, and Sora, served as interim chief executive during the November 2023 board crisis, left in September 2024, and founded the AI lab Thinking Machines Lab."
|
||||||
|
born: 1988-12-16
|
||||||
|
location: "San Francisco, California"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Mira Murati (born December 16, 1988, in Vlorë, [[Albania]]) is an engineer and technology executive who served as the chief technology officer of [[OpenAI]], where she oversaw the development of [[ChatGPT]], DALL-E, Codex, and the video model Sora, and who briefly served as the company's interim chief executive during the November 2023 board crisis that removed and reinstated [[Sam Altman]]. She left OpenAI in September 2024 and founded the AI lab [[Thinking Machines Lab]] in early 2025.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### From Tesla to OpenAI CTO
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Murati grew up in Albania as the country emerged from communist rule, attended a United World College in Canada, and took a mechanical-engineering degree from [[Dartmouth College]]. After internships at [[Goldman Sachs]] and a stint at the French aerospace group [[Zodiac Aerospace]], she spent three years at [[Tesla, Inc.|Tesla]] as a senior product manager for the Model X during the period when the company shipped early versions of its Autopilot driver-assistance software. In 2016 she joined [[Leap Motion]], a startup building hand- and finger-tracking sensors, as vice president of product and engineering, before moving to OpenAI in 2018.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
At OpenAI Murati began as vice president of applied AI and partnerships and was promoted to chief technology officer in 2022. In that role she led the teams that built and shipped the company's most consequential products: the DALL-E image generators, the Codex model that powers GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, and the Sora text-to-video system. She became one of the most prominent technical executives in the industry, describing OpenAI's iterative-deployment philosophy as a matter of putting "the technology in contact with reality" to learn from how people use it.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Interim CEO and Departure
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
When OpenAI's nonprofit board removed Altman on November 17, 2023, it named Murati interim chief executive. Her tenure lasted only days: within the weekend the board moved to install [[Emmett Shear]], the former chief executive of [[Twitch]], as a second interim leader, and Murati joined the roughly 700 employees who signed a letter demanding Altman's return and threatening to follow him to [[Microsoft]]. Altman was reinstated within the week, and Murati resumed her role as chief technology officer under the reconstituted board.[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On September 25, 2024, Murati announced that she was leaving OpenAI, writing that "there is never an ideal time to step away from a place one cherishes, yet this moment feels right." Her departure came amid a broader exodus of senior research leaders from the company, including [[Ilya Sutskever]], the chief scientist who had left that May, and the research executives Bob McGrew and Barret Zoph, who left around the same time as Murati. Within months she had begun assembling a new lab from the same talent pool.[^4][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Thinking Machines Lab
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In February 2025 Murati launched Thinking Machines Lab, a research company she founded with a team drawn heavily from OpenAI, including the cofounder and reinforcement-learning pioneer [[John Schulman]] as chief scientist, [[Barret Zoph]] as chief technology officer, and early staff such as [[Bob McGrew]], [[Lilian Weng]], [[Andrew Tulloch]], and [[Luke Metz]]. In July 2025 the company closed a roughly 2-billion-dollar seed round at a 12-billion-dollar valuation, led by [[Andreessen Horowitz]], a deal reported as among the largest seed rounds in Silicon Valley history.[^5][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Murati positioned the company around accessible, customizable AI and an open-research posture, saying the lab would unveil its first work within months and would include "a significant open source offering" for researchers and startups building their own models. Bloomberg reported in 2026 that the company was in talks for a funding round that would value it near 50 billion dollars.[^6][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Who is Mira Murati? OpenAI's new interim CEO," *TechCrunch,* November 17, 2023, on her Albanian birth, Dartmouth degree, Zodiac Aerospace, Tesla Model X and Autopilot work, Leap Motion, joining OpenAI in 2018, and the products she oversaw as CTO. https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/17/who-is-mira-murati-openais-new-interim-ceo
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Mira Murati Biography," aidigitalx, on her birthplace of Vlorë, December 16, 1988, her education, and her career path through Tesla and Leap Motion to OpenAI CTO. https://aidigitalx.com/mira-murati-biography-leading-ai-innovator/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Effective Altruism's Role in the OpenAI Chaos, Explained," *Bloomberg,* November 22, 2023, on the November 2023 board crisis, the interim leadership sequence, and Emmett Shear. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-22/effective-altruism-s-role-in-the-openai-chaos-explained
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "OpenAI CTO Mira Murati says she's leaving the company," reporting on the September 25, 2024 departure and the "this moment feels right" statement. *CNBC,* September 25, 2024. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/25/openai-cto-mira-murati-announces-shes-leaving-the-company.html
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "OpenAI cofounder John Schulman is joining Mira Murati's startup," *Fortune,* February 6, 2025, on the founding of Thinking Machines Lab and the OpenAI-derived team. https://www.fortune.com/2025/02/06/openai-john-schulman-mira-muratis-startup-anthropic
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab is worth $12B in seed round," *TechCrunch,* July 15, 2025, on the roughly 2-billion seed round, the 12-billion valuation, the Andreessen Horowitz lead, and the open-source plans. https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/15/mira-muratis-thinking-machines-lab-is-worth-12b-in-seed-round/
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Mira Murati's Thinking Machines seeks $50 billion valuation in funding talks," *Bloomberg/Yahoo Finance,* 2026. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mira-muratis-thinking-machines-seeks-212328387.html
|
||||||
68
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Neal Mohan.md
Normal file
68
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Neal Mohan.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,68 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Technologists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- NealMohan
|
||||||
|
- YouTube
|
||||||
|
- Google
|
||||||
|
- DoubleClick
|
||||||
|
- AdTech
|
||||||
|
- ContentModeration
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Neal Mohan
|
||||||
|
summary: "Neal Mohan is an American technology executive who built Google's display-advertising business after the DoubleClick acquisition, served as YouTube's chief product officer from 2015, and became chief executive of YouTube in February 2023."
|
||||||
|
born: 1973
|
||||||
|
location: "Indiana, United States (born)"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Neal Mohan (born 1973) is an American technology executive who led Google's display-advertising business following the company's acquisition of [[DoubleClick|DoubleClick]] in 2007, became chief product officer of [[YouTube|YouTube]] in 2015, and succeeded [[Susan Wojcicki|Susan Wojcicki]] as chief executive of YouTube in February 2023. He was named among the confirmed 2026 registrants of [[Dialog]], the invitation-only society cofounded by [[Peter Thiel]], in the membership roster leaked to *WIRED* in June 2026, which identified him as the chief executive of YouTube.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### From Indiana to Stanford
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Mohan was born in Indiana in 1973 to a father who had emigrated from India, and has recounted that his father "landed at JFK with 25 dollars in his pocket" after earning a doctorate in civil engineering. The family spent his early childhood in Michigan and moved to India before his high-school years, where Mohan has said he had to acquire "nine years' worth of Hindi and Sanskrit." He returned to the United States for university.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
He took a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from [[Stanford University]] in 1996 and later an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2005, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar. He serves on the Stanford Graduate School of Business management board.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### DoubleClick and the Display-Advertising Build-Out
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Mohan began at the consultancy Andersen Consulting, later Accenture, in 1996, then joined the advertising-technology startup NetGravity, which was absorbed into DoubleClick. After his Stanford MBA and a brief period at [[Microsoft|Microsoft]], he returned to DoubleClick as senior vice president of strategy and product development, a role in which contemporaneous accounts describe him as central to the company's turnaround. Google announced its acquisition of DoubleClick for 3.1 billion dollars in cash on April 13, 2007, then its largest acquisition, buying the firm from the private-equity owner Hellman and Friedman; the deal closed on March 11, 2008, after European Commission clearance.[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
At Google, Mohan led the integration of DoubleClick and rose to senior vice president of display and video advertising, with responsibility for the Google Display Network, AdSense, AdMob, the DoubleClick programmatic platform, and YouTube advertising. The portfolio made him the executive most responsible for assembling Google's display-advertising backbone out of the acquired DoubleClick technology and the company's own ad products.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The 2011 Retention Package
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 2011 Twitter sought to hire Mohan as its chief product officer, and Google countered with a restricted-stock grant reported at roughly 100 million dollars, vesting over three to four years, to keep him. The same TechCrunch report that disclosed the Mohan figure stated that Google gave [[Sundar Pichai|Sundar Pichai]], then leading Chrome, a grant of roughly 50 million dollars in the same period, and that the company may have committed as much as 150 million dollars in stock to retain the two product executives. The episode is frequently misdated to 2013 in later coverage; the original reporting is from April 2011.[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The size of the grant marked Mohan as among the most valued product executives at Google years before he moved to YouTube, and the figure became a recurring point of reference in profiles of his career after his 2023 elevation to the YouTube chief executive role.[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### YouTube Product and the 2023 Chief Executive Appointment
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Mohan became YouTube's chief product officer in 2015, overseeing product, user experience, and trust and safety across the platform. Wojcicki credited him with pivotal roles in the launch of YouTube TV, YouTube Music and Premium, and Shorts, and with leading the trust-and-safety team responsible for content-moderation policy. On February 16, 2023, Wojcicki announced she was stepping down after roughly nine years leading YouTube and about twenty-five years at Google and named Mohan as her successor, the fourth person to lead YouTube. She wrote that with the work across "Shorts, streaming, and subscriptions, together with the promises of AI," Mohan was "the right person to lead us."[^6][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
As chief executive, Mohan oversees a platform reporting more than two billion users and the top position in United States streaming watchtime by Nielsen measurement. YouTube advertising revenue reached 9.2 billion dollars in the fourth quarter of 2023, 10.47 billion dollars in the fourth quarter of 2024, and 11.38 billion dollars in the fourth quarter of 2025, with full-year 2025 revenue across advertising and subscriptions reported above 60 billion dollars. YouTube TV passed eight million subscribers by early 2024, and YouTube Premium and Music passed one hundred million customers. Mohan has stated that YouTube paid more than 100 billion dollars to creators, artists, and media companies over four years.[^8][^9][^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Content Moderation and the AI Posture
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Mohan's January 2026 annual letter named the management of artificial-intelligence "slop" a priority for the year while resisting preemptive bans, stating that as an open platform YouTube allows "a broad range of free expression" and would address low-quality automated content through existing spam and clickbait systems rather than new prohibitions. The letter announced parental controls including the ability to "set the timer to zero" for Shorts, which the company called an industry first, and reported that more than one million channels used YouTube's artificial-intelligence creation tools daily in December 2025. The recommendation algorithm, content-moderation policy, and the boundary between permitted and removed content sit under the chief executive's authority over a platform that reaches a substantial share of the global internet audience.[^11][^12]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Mohan has held outside corporate board seats during his Google tenure. He joined the board of the apparel company Stitch Fix effective October 21, 2020, served on the board of the genetics company [[23andMe|23andMe]], from which he resigned in September 2024 amid the mass departure of independent directors in a dispute with chief executive Anne Wojcicki, and was elected to the board of [[Starbucks|Starbucks]] in an announcement dated January 9, 2024.[^13][^14][^15]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Cameron, Dell, and Yulia Almazova. "Leak Exposes Members of Peter Thiel's Secretive 'Dialog' Society." *WIRED,* June 16, 2026. https://www.wired.com/story/leak-exposes-members-of-peter-thiels-secretive-dialog-society/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "My father landed in US with 25 dollars in pocket: YouTube CEO Neal Mohan shares childhood memories of India." *Business Today,* November 1, 2023. https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/trends/story/my-father-landed-in-us-with-usd-25-in-pocket-youtube-ceo-neal-mohan-shares-childhood-memories-of-india-404104-2023-11-01
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Neal Mohan, MBA '05: CEOs and content creators, be true to yourself." *Stanford Graduate School of Business,* December 2023. https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/neal-mohan-mba-05-ceos-content-creators-be-true-yourself
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Google to buy DoubleClick for 3.1 billion dollars in cash." *CNBC,* April 13, 2007. https://www.cnbc.com/2007/04/13/google-agrees-to-buy-doubleclick-for-31-billion-in-cash.html
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Google said to have high level mole at Twitter, makes massive counteroffers to retain employees." *TechCrunch,* April 6, 2011. https://techcrunch.com/2011/04/06/google-said-to-have-high-level-mole-at-twitter-makes-massive-counteroffers-to-retain-employees/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: Wojcicki, Susan. "A personal update from Susan." *YouTube Official Blog,* February 16, 2023. https://blog.youtube/inside-youtube/a-personal-update-from-susan/
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Susan Wojcicki exiting YouTube CEO role, Neal Mohan to step up." *Deadline,* February 16, 2023. https://deadline.com/2023/02/susan-wojcicki-exiting-youtube-ceo-chief-product-office-neal-mohan-to-step-up-1235262007/
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "Alphabet earnings, Q4 2023." *Tubefilter,* January 31, 2024. https://www.tubefilter.com/2024/01/31/alphabet-google-youtube-earnings-q4-2023-sundar-pichai-philipp-schindler/
|
||||||
|
[^9]: "YouTube total revenue tops 60 billion dollars in 2025." *Variety,* 2026. https://variety.com/2026/digital/news/youtube-2025-total-revenue-ads-subscriptions-alphabet-earnings-1236652260/
|
||||||
|
[^10]: "YouTube TV passes 8 million subscribers." *Variety,* February 2024. https://variety.com/2024/digital/news/youtube-tv-number-subscribers-8-million-1235895606/
|
||||||
|
[^11]: "The future of YouTube, 2026." *YouTube Official Blog,* January 21, 2026. https://blog.youtube/inside-youtube/the-future-of-youtube-2026/
|
||||||
|
[^12]: "YouTube chief says managing 'AI slop' is a priority for 2026." *CNBC,* January 21, 2026. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/21/youtube-chief-says-managing-ai-slop-is-a-priority-for-2026-.html
|
||||||
|
[^13]: "Stitch Fix adds Neal Mohan to board of directors." Stitch Fix newsroom, October 2020. https://newsroom.stitchfix.com/blog/stitch-fix-adds-neal-mohan-chief-product-officer-youtube-and-svp-google-to-board-of-director%E2%80%8Bs/
|
||||||
|
[^14]: "23andMe board resigns, citing differences with CEO Anne Wojcicki." *Entrepreneur,* 2024. https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/23andme-board-resigns-differences-with-ceo-anne-wojcicki/480073
|
||||||
|
[^15]: "Starbucks elects Daniel Servitje, Neal Mohan and Mike Sievert to its board of directors." Starbucks press release, January 9, 2024. https://about.starbucks.com/press/2024/starbucks-elects-servitje-mohan-and-sievert-to-its-board-of-directors/
|
||||||
55
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Nick Land.md
Normal file
55
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Nick Land.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,55 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "New Right"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- NickLand
|
||||||
|
- CCRU
|
||||||
|
- Accelerationism
|
||||||
|
- DarkEnlightenment
|
||||||
|
- Neoreaction
|
||||||
|
- Philosophy
|
||||||
|
- UniversityOfWarwick
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Nick Land
|
||||||
|
summary: "Nick Land is an English philosopher who co-founded the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit at the University of Warwick in the 1990s, originated the right-accelerationist current that fed into the Dark Enlightenment, and whose CCRU-era writings on capitalism and technology as self-reinforcing feedback loops supplied the metaphysical register that Curtis Yarvin's Neoreaction supplied the institutional register for."
|
||||||
|
born: 1962-01-17
|
||||||
|
location: "England"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Nick Land (born January 17, 1962) is an English philosopher who co-founded the [[CCRU|Cybernetic Culture Research Unit]] at the [[University of Warwick|University of Warwick]] in the mid-1990s and originated the [[Accelerationism|right-accelerationist]] philosophical current that feeds into the [[Dark Enlightenment]] and [[Neoreaction]]. Land's CCRU-era writings argued that techno-capitalism functions as a self-reinforcing positive-feedback loop that should be allowed to dissolve existing political structures without restraint, and his subsequent Dark Enlightenment work extended the argument into the explicit framing of liberal democracy as an obstacle to the necessary acceleration. Land's work supplies the metaphysical and technological register that [[Curtis Yarvin]]'s Neoreaction supplies the institutional and procedural register for, and the two are the co-originators of the Dark Enlightenment.[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Warwick Philosophy Department and the CCRU Founding
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Land was appointed to the philosophy department at the University of Warwick in the late 1980s, having completed his doctorate at the [[University of Essex|University of Essex]] on [[Georges Bataille|Georges Bataille]] and the philosophy of excess. His early academic work drew on [[Bataille|Bataille]], [[Friedrich Nietzsche|Nietzsche]], [[Jacques Derrida|Derrida]], and [[Gilles Deleuze|Deleuze]], and his teaching at Warwick acquired a cult following among philosophy students in the early 1990s for its intensity and its departure from the conventional analytic-philosophy curriculum.[^1][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Cybernetic Culture Research Unit emerged from Land's Warwick orbit around 1995, co-founded with [[Sadie Plant|Sadie Plant]] (the cyberfeminist theorist) and incorporating the graduate students who would become the CCRU's core, including [[Mark Fisher|Mark Fisher]], [[Kodwo Eshun|Kodwo Eshun]], Sadie Plant, and [[Steve Goodman|Steve Goodman]] (who subsequently operated as the musician [[Kode9|Kode9]]). The CCRU functioned as a research collective outside the normal departmental structure, blending philosophy, science fiction, cybernetics, [[Afrofuturism|Afrofuturism]], and music theory. The unit's self-described practice was "conceptual production by welding together a wide variety of sources," and its output included academic papers, performative lectures, the [[Virtual Futures|Virtual Futures]] conferences, and a body of hyperstitional texts written as if the fictions they described were real.[^1][^4][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Accelerationist Argument
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Land's CCRU-era argument, developed across the mid-to-late 1990s, held that capitalism and technological change are not instruments to be steered by political will but forces that are themselves doing the steering, and that the human political and institutional apparatus is an obstacle to be dissolved by the acceleration rather than a hand on the tiller. The argument drew on [[Deleuze|Deleuze]] and [[Félix Guattari|Guattari]]'s concept of [[deterritorialization|deterritorialization]], on Bataille's accursed-share economics of excess, and on the cybernetic theory of [[Norbert Wiener|Norbert Wiener]] and [[William S. Burroughs|William S. Burroughs]], to produce the framing that techno-capitalism is an autonomous, self-optimizing process that will dissolve the existing order and that the philosopher's role is to accelerate the dissolution rather than to resist it.[^1][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The CCRU's [[hyperstition|hyperstition]] practice was the methodological complement. Hyperstition is the production of fictions that make themselves real through the act of propagation, and the CCRU's texts operated as if the cybernetic future they described were already operative. The practice is the philosophical ancestor of the [[Chan ARG Ecosystem|chan-ARG hyperstitional tradition]] (including [[TheGame23]]) and of the broader internet-native narrative-production forms that descend from it.[^4][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Warwick Departure and the Shanghai Relocation
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Land left Warwick around 1998 amid what colleagues and students described as a combination of intellectual exhaustion, amphetamine use, and mental-health crisis. The biographical detail is documented in Mark Fisher's writing and in the retrospective accounts of the CCRU members, and it produced the break between Land's academic-philosophy period and his subsequent post-academic work. Land relocated to [[Shanghai|Shanghai]] in the early 2000s and spent the subsequent years writing independently, absorbing the Chinese techno-capitalist environment directly, and developing the argument that the Chinese model of state-directed capitalism represented the acceleration's most advanced form.[^1][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Shanghai relocation marked the transition between the CCRU-era accelerationism (a theoretical-philosophical position developed in the Warwick seminar room) and the subsequent Dark Enlightenment accelerationism (a political position developed in direct contact with the Chinese economic model). Land's Shanghai-period writing extended the acceleration argument into the explicit claim that liberal democracy is the obstacle and that authoritarian-capitalist governance is the acceleration's vehicle.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Dark Enlightenment and the Yarvin Synthesis
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Land's Dark Enlightenment series, written from 2012 onward, fused the accelerationist metaphysics with the NRx institutional program. The series named the broader current and articulated the shared diagnosis: liberal democracy is failing, the Cathedral ([[The Cathedral|Yarvin's term]] for the institutional consensus-producing apparatus) is the mechanism of the failure, and the role of the philosopher is to maintain the intellectual infrastructure for the post-democratic successor. Land's framing supplied the systematic-philosophical case that democratic governance is in fundamental tension with the trajectory of technological capitalism; Yarvin's framing supplied the institutional proposal (the [[Neocameralism|neocameral]] joint-stock state) for what replaces it.[^2][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Land cites Yarvin and Yarvin cites Land, and the [[Peter Thiel]] patronage of Yarvin (documented across multiple years) connects the Land-Yarvin intellectual current to the Thiel commercial network through a single funded relationship. Land's own relationship to the Thiel network is less direct than Yarvin's, but the intellectual lineage runs from Land through Yarvin to Thiel through the shared Dark Enlightenment frame.[^2][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: For Land's career, the CCRU, and the Warwick period, see Mark Fisher's writing, the retrospective accounts of the CCRU members, and the Warwick departmental record.
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Land, Nick. "The Dark Enlightenment" (series), 2012 onward, and the broader Dark Enlightenment writings.
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "What is Nick Land's Philosophy of Accelerationism Really?" *Aeon.* https://aeon.co/essays/what-is-nick-lands-philosophy-of-accelerationism-really
|
||||||
|
[^4]: [[Cybernetic Culture Research Unit|Cybernetic Culture Research Unit]]. See the [[Monoskop|Monoskop]] archive and the Medium retrospective "Forward? A Short History of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit."
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Carstens, Delphi. "Hyperstition: An Introduction" (interview with Nick Land), *Orphan Drift Archive,* 2009, on the CCRU concept of fictions that make themselves real. https://www.orphandriftarchive.com/articles/hyperstition-an-introduction/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: Land's CCRU-era accelerationism is developed across the collected writings of the period; see the CCRU archives.
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Pein, Corey. "The Moldbug Variations." *The Baffler,* 2014, documenting the Yarvin-Land neoreactionary synthesis and Thiel's investment in Yarvin's Tlon/Urbit venture. https://thebaffler.com/latest/the-moldbug-variations-pein ; "Curtis Yarvin, Nick Land and the Dark Utopia of the New Radical Right." *Reset DOC,* 2022. https://www.resetdoc.org/story/curtis-yarvin-nick-land-black-utopia-of-new-radical-right/
|
||||||
40
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Palmer Luckey.md
Normal file
40
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Palmer Luckey.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Technologists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- PalmerLuckey
|
||||||
|
- Anduril
|
||||||
|
- FoundersFund
|
||||||
|
- DefenseTech
|
||||||
|
- Trump
|
||||||
|
summary: "Palmer Luckey is the founder of Oculus VR who, after being pushed out of Facebook in 2017 over a pro-Trump donation, founded the Founders Fund-backed defense contractor Anduril Industries."
|
||||||
|
born: 1992-09-19
|
||||||
|
location: "Orange County, California"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Palmer Luckey (born September 19, 1992) is an American technology entrepreneur who founded the virtual-reality company [[Oculus VR]], sold it to [[Facebook]] in 2014, was pushed out of the company in 2017 after a pro-[[Donald Trump|Trump]] political donation became public, and then founded the defense contractor [[Anduril Industries]] with backing from [[Peter Thiel]]'s [[Founders Fund]].[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Oculus and the Facebook Exit
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Luckey founded Oculus VR in 2012 and sold it to Facebook in 2014 for about two billion dollars. The Daily Beast revealed on September 22, 2016 that he had donated ten thousand dollars to [[Nimble America]], a pro-Trump group founded by two moderators of the [[r/The_Donald]] forum that produced anti-[[Hillary Clinton|Clinton]] internet memes, and that he had posted in support of it under the handle "NimbleRichMan." Luckey acknowledged the donation, saying he had "plenty of money" and that it "sounded like a real jolly good time," and the disclosure prompted a backlash inside the technology industry that saw him removed from public appearances and frozen out of Oculus decisions.[^2][^3][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Luckey left Facebook in March 2017. He later said he had been fired "for no reason at all" and tied it to the donation, and leaked internal emails reported by the Wall Street Journal indicated that [[Mark Zuckerberg]] had personally pressured him to publicly endorse the Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson rather than Trump. Facebook maintained the departure was unrelated to his politics; when Senator [[Ted Cruz]] later asked Zuckerberg in Senate testimony why Luckey had been fired, Zuckerberg declined to answer. Reporting put a settlement at around 100 million dollars, a figure neither party confirmed.[^2][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Anduril Industries
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Luckey founded Anduril Industries in April 2017 with [[Trae Stephens]] of Founders Fund, Brian Schimpf, Matt Grimm, and Joe Chen, three of them [[Palantir Technologies]] alumni, building autonomous-surveillance and weapons systems for the U.S. military and border-security agencies. The company's products are coordinated by an artificial-intelligence command-and-control software layer called Lattice and include the Ghost reconnaissance drone, the Anvil counter-drone interceptor, the reusable Roadrunner air-defense interceptor, the Barracuda cruise-missile family, the Dive-LD undersea vehicle, and the autonomous Sentry surveillance towers deployed along the U.S. border. Luckey also donated one hundred thousand dollars to Trump's 2017 inauguration committee through a shell company called Wings of Time, and he remained a prominent technology-industry supporter of Trump and the defense-tech turn promoted across the Thiel network.[^1][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Founders Fund was the first institutional backer and continued to anchor later rounds, leading a 1.5 billion dollar Series F in August 2024 at a 14 billion dollar valuation and a 2.5 billion dollar Series G in June 2025 at a 30.5 billion dollar valuation, with a one billion dollar check that the firm described as its largest ever. In February 2025 Anduril took over the U.S. Army's Integrated Visual Augmentation System program from [[Microsoft]], a headset effort valued at up to 22 billion dollars over ten years, and in 2025 won a 363 million dollar Customs and Border Protection contract for more than 200 Sentry towers. In 2025 Luckey and [[Joe Lonsdale|Joseph Lonsdale]] also cofounded Erebor, a digital-first national bank backed by Founders Fund and aimed at crypto, AI, and defense companies, which received conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in October 2025.[^7][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Palmer Luckey: From Oculus Founder to Anduril Defense Tech Leader," Built In, on the Oculus sale, the Facebook exit, and the Anduril founding. https://builtin.com/articles/who-is-palmer-luckey
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Palmer Luckey says his Facebook firing changed the way he does business," 2024, on the 2017 departure and his account of it. https://www.aol.com/palmer-luckey-says-facebook-firing-204406748.html
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Palmer Luckey just gave $10,000 to a pro-Trump group dedicated to 'shitposting' and meme magic," *TechCrunch,* September 23, 2016. https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/23/palmer-luckey-nimble-america
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Oculus founder has new border surveillance startup," *Axios,* December 15, 2017. https://www.axios.com/2017/12/15/oculus-founder-has-new-border-surveillance-startup-1513302749
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Collins, Ben, and Gideon Resnick. "Palmer Luckey: The Facebook Near-Billionaire Secretly Funding Trump's Meme Machine," *The Daily Beast,* September 22, 2016, on Nimble America, the r/The_Donald founders, and the "NimbleRichMan" posts. https://www.thedailybeast.com/palmer-luckey-the-facebook-near-billionaire-secretly-funding-trumps-meme-machine
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Palmer Luckey claims he was fired from Facebook for his politics," *CNBC,* May 22, 2019, on the firing, the reported Zuckerberg pressure to back Gary Johnson, and the Cruz exchange. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/22/palmer-luckey-claims-he-was-fired-from-facebook-for-his-politics.html
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Anduril raises $2.5 billion at a $30.5 billion valuation," *TechCrunch,* June 5, 2025, on the Series G and the Founders Fund check; and "Anduril raises $1.5B Series F," *Axios,* August 8, 2024. https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/05/anduril-raises-2-5b-doubling-valuation-to-30-5b/
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "Anduril takes over Army's IVAS program from Microsoft," *Breaking Defense,* February 11, 2025; and "OCC grants conditional approval to Erebor Bank," *CoinDesk,* October 15, 2025, on the Luckey and Lonsdale bank. https://breakingdefense.com/2025/02/anduril-microsoft-ivas/
|
||||||
56
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Reid Hoffman.md
Normal file
56
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Reid Hoffman.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,56 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Technologists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- ReidHoffman
|
||||||
|
- PayPalMafia
|
||||||
|
- LinkedIn
|
||||||
|
- Greylock
|
||||||
|
- JeffreyEpstein
|
||||||
|
- Dialog
|
||||||
|
- Microsoft
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Reid Garrett Hoffman
|
||||||
|
summary: "Reid Hoffman is an American venture capitalist and entrepreneur, a PayPal Mafia principal as cofounder and executive vice president of PayPal, the cofounder and executive chairman of LinkedIn, a Greylock general partner, a 2026 Dialog retreat registrant, and a 2015 Epstein dinner attendee who publicly apologized in 2019 for helping repair Jeffrey Epstein's post-conviction image."
|
||||||
|
born: 1967-08-05
|
||||||
|
location: "Stanford, California (born)"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Reid Hoffman (born August 5, 1967, in [[Stanford, California|Stanford]], [[California]]) is an American venture capitalist and entrepreneur who served as executive vice president and a founding board member of [[PayPal]], cofounded and served as executive chairman of [[LinkedIn]], and joined [[Greylock Partners|Greylock]] as a general partner in 2009. Hoffman is a [[PayPal Mafia]] principal, a 2026 [[Dialog]] retreat registrant per the leaked *WIRED* roster, and a documented attendee at the 2015 Jeffrey Epstein dinner whose guest list also included [[Peter Thiel]], [[Mark Zuckerberg]], [[Elon Musk]], [[Joi Ito]], and Epstein himself. Hoffman publicly apologized in September 2019 for his role in helping repair Epstein's post-conviction public image.[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The PayPal and LinkedIn Trajectory
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Hoffman joined PayPal in its founding period as executive vice president of external relations, serving on the board and managing the company's external positioning through the 2002 sale to [[eBay]]. His role placed him among the PayPal Mafia cohort (alongside Peter Thiel, [[Max Levchin]], Elon Musk, [[David Sacks]], [[Ken Howery]], [[Luke Nosek]], [[Roelof Botha]], and [[Keith Rabois]]) whose subsequent ventures shaped the post-PayPal Silicon Valley generation. Hoffman founded LinkedIn in 2002 (before the eBay sale closed) and built it into the dominant professional-networking platform, taking it public in 2011 and selling it to [[Microsoft]] in 2016 for 26.2 billion dollars.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Microsoft acquisition and Hoffman's subsequent board seat at Microsoft placed him inside the enterprise-software and cloud-infrastructure orbit adjacent to the Thiel commercial network. Hoffman joined Greylock as a general partner in 2009, and his Greylock portfolio overlaps with the broader Silicon Valley venture ecosystem that the [[Founders Fund]] and the Thiel network operate within.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Epstein Relationship and the 2019 Apology
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
*Axios* reported on September 12, 2019 that Hoffman had emailed the outlet to apologize for his role in helping repair [[Jeffrey Epstein|Epstein]]'s post-conviction public image. The apology covered Hoffman's 2015 interactions with Epstein, including introductions Hoffman facilitated related to Epstein's attempts at image rehabilitation and to the MIT donations Epstein was arranging through Joi Ito at the [[MIT Media Lab]]. The *Wall Street Journal* reported in 2023, on the basis of the [[Epstein Files|Epstein calendars]], that Hoffman visited Epstein's private island.[^2][^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The August 2015 dinner that Hoffman hosted in [[Palo Alto]], ostensibly to raise money for the MIT Media Lab (documented in the Epstein Files Transparency Act releases, EFTA00344556 and EFTA00344564), placed him at the same table as Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Joi Ito, and Epstein. Hoffman apologized in September 2019 for his role in the Epstein image-rehabilitation effort. No Epstein victim has made a public allegation against Hoffman.[^2][^3][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Dialog Registration
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Hoffman appears on the leaked 2026 Dialog retreat roster, per *WIRED*'s reporting on the leak. Dialog, cofounded in 2006 by Peter Thiel and [[Auren Hoffman]], convenes U.S. officials, foreign government figures, and Silicon Valley executives at off-the-record annual retreats. Hoffman's presence on the roster places a sitting Greylock general partner and a former Microsoft board member inside the same convening network whose 2026 registrants included [[Cory Booker|Senator Cory Booker]], [[Ted Cruz|Senator Ted Cruz]], [[Jared Polis|Governor Jared Polis]], and the NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe [[Alexus Grynkewich|General Alexus Grynkewich]].[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Hoffman's politics diverge from the Thiel network's Republican alignment. Hoffman has been a prominent [[Democratic Party|Democratic]] donor and operative, supporting [[Joe Biden]] and [[Kamala Harris]] and publicly opposing [[Donald Trump]]. He appears on the roster alongside both Democratic and Republican elected officials.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Musk Clash and the Epstein-Files Politics
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Musk and Hoffman clashed publicly over their respective Epstein ties in 2025-2026. The [[Anadolu Agency|Anadolu Agency]] reported on the online exchange on [[X (social media)|X]], in which each accused the other of the closer Epstein relationship. Musk, whose 2015 Epstein dinner attendance is documented in the Epstein file releases (EFTA00344556), pointed to Hoffman's apology for the image-rehabilitation work. Hoffman, whose apology is documented in the September 2019 [[Axios|Axios]] exclusive, pointed to the broader pattern of Musk's Epstein contacts.[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Hoffman subsequently posted on LinkedIn calling for the full release of the Epstein files and pledging to advocate for victim justice. The public clash is part of the broader political dynamics around the 2025-2026 file releases, in which multiple Silicon Valley principals whose Epstein relationships have been documented have positioned themselves on the question of disclosure. [[ABC News|ABC News]] reported that Hoffman's ties to Epstein face a Trump-ordered investigation, though no Epstein victim has made a public allegation against Hoffman.[^5][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Hoffman has funded Democratic candidates and opposed Trump, while Musk moved to Republican alignment across 2022 to 2024. Both appear on the leaked 2026 Dialog retreat roster.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Cameron, Dell, and Yulia Almazova. "Leak Exposes Members of Peter Thiel's Secretive 'Dialog' Society." *WIRED,* June 16, 2026. https://www.wired.com/story/leak-exposes-members-of-peter-thiels-secretive-dialog-society/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Exclusive: Reid Hoffman apologizes for role in Epstein-linked donations." *Axios,* September 12, 2019. https://www.axios.com/2019/09/12/reid-hoffman-jeffrey-epstein-mit-donations
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman Apologizes for Helping Jeffrey Epstein." *Business Insider,* September 2019. https://www.businessinsider.com/linkedin-founder-reid-hoffman-apologizes-helping-jeffrey-epstein-2019-9
|
||||||
|
[^4]: For the Hoffman visit to the Epstein island, see the *Wall Street Journal* 2023 reporting on the Epstein calendars and the SEC shareholder-proposal filing referencing the visit.
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman's ties to Jeffrey Epstein face Trump-ordered investigation." *ABC News,* 2025. https://abcnews.com/US/linkedin-founder-reid-hoffmans-ties-jeffrey-epstein-face/story?id=127651719
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "2 tech billionaires clash online about ties to Jeffrey Epstein." *Anadolu Agency,* 2025. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/2-tech-billionaires-clash-online-about-ties-to-jeffrey-epstein/3820174
|
||||||
57
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Richard Lynn.md
Normal file
57
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Richard Lynn.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,57 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "New Right"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- RaceScience
|
||||||
|
- Eugenics
|
||||||
|
- PioneerFund
|
||||||
|
- HumanBiodiversity
|
||||||
|
- Psychology
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Richard Lynn
|
||||||
|
summary: "Richard Lynn was a British psychologist who promoted hereditarian claims about racial and national differences in intelligence and 'dysgenics,' ran the Pioneer Fund and the Ulster Institute for Social Research, and whose national-IQ data was repudiated as fundamentally flawed."
|
||||||
|
born: 1930-02-20
|
||||||
|
died: 2023-07-23
|
||||||
|
location: "Bristol, England"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Richard Lynn (1930-2023) was a British psychologist who spent the latter part of his career arguing that races and nations differ in average intelligence for genetic reasons and that modern populations are undergoing "dysgenic" decline. He edited the journal [[Mankind Quarterly]], founded and led the [[Ulster Institute for Social Research]], served as president of the [[Pioneer Fund]] after 2012, and assembled the "national IQ" datasets that other researchers later condemned as methodologically unsound. The [[Southern Poverty Law Center]] classified him as a promoter of scientific racism, and he described himself as a "scientific racist."[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Career
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Lynn was educated at the [[University of Cambridge]] and held posts at the [[University of Exeter]] and in Dublin before becoming professor of psychology at the [[University of Ulster]] from 1972 to 1995. He founded the Ulster Institute for Social Research and became editor-in-chief of Mankind Quarterly, the [[Wickliffe Draper|Draper]]-funded race-science journal. In 2018 Ulster University stripped him of his emeritus professor title after concluding that he had advanced views that were "racist and sexist in nature."[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Born in 1930 and educated at Bristol Grammar School and King's College, Cambridge, Lynn built a four-decade collaboration with the personality psychologist [[Hans Eysenck]] on racial and national differences in intelligence. During his Ulster tenure amid the [[The Troubles|Troubles]] he attributed Ireland's purportedly low average IQ to "selective emigration of the brightest" and a "dysgenic effect of Roman Catholicism," a claim later contradicted by Catholic pupils outperforming Protestant pupils on Northern Ireland GCSE exams. The 2018 stripping of his title followed a student campaign at Ulster, and he published a self-justifying memoir, *Memoirs of a Dissident Psychologist*, through his own Ulster Institute imprint.[^7][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Race, Dysgenics, and National IQ
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Lynn's books included *Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations* (1996), *Eugenics: A Reassessment* (2001), *IQ and the Wealth of Nations* (2002, with the Finnish political scientist [[Tatu Vanhanen]]), and *The Global Bell Curve* (2008). He argued that average IQ differs by race and nation, that sub-Saharan African populations have very low average intelligence, and that welfare and immigration drive a hereditary decline in the gene pool. Mainstream researchers rejected these claims. The psychologist [[Jelte Wicherts]] and colleagues showed that Lynn had reached his low African IQ estimates by selectively excluding studies, and that a systematic reading of the data produced substantially higher figures. In 2020 the [[European Human Behaviour and Evolution Association]] formally warned against using Lynn's national-IQ dataset, concluding that any analysis relying on it was "unsound."[^2][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
*IQ and the Wealth of Nations* asserted that national average IQ correlated with gross domestic product per capita and assigned numbers as low as the high 60s to several African states, figures that critics traced to a handful of unrepresentative test administrations. Lynn also published *Sex Differences in Intelligence* (2017), claiming that adult men have higher average IQ than women, a thesis that critics rejected as resting on outdated head-size measurements and selective sampling. Psychometricians noted that the [[Flynn effect]], the steady rise in raw IQ scores across the twentieth century documented by the psychologist [[James Flynn]], undercut Lynn's claim that measured group gaps reflected fixed genetic endowments, since environmental change alone moved scores by amounts comparable to the gaps Lynn called innate.[^2][^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Pioneer Fund and the Race-Science Network
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Lynn received Pioneer Fund money over many years, and on the death of the psychologist [[J. Philippe Rushton]] in 2012 he became the fund's president. His Ulster Institute publishes Mankind Quarterly, and his contributors and associates overlapped with those of the secret [[London Conference on Intelligence]] held at [[University College London]] from 2014 to 2017, including [[Emil Kirkegaard]], who ran the non-peer-reviewed [[OpenPsych]] repository. His hereditarian framework belongs to the literature popularized by [[Charles Murray]] and [[Richard Herrnstein]]'s *The Bell Curve* and circulated through the [[Human Biodiversity|human-biodiversity]] current associated with [[Steve Sailer]], and his "national IQ" figures were widely reproduced in the [[Neoreaction|neoreactionary]] and [[Curtis Yarvin|Yarvin]]-adjacent online right.[^2][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Lynn's stated aims went beyond research into explicit advocacy. Reviewing [[Raymond Cattell]]'s 1972 tract *A New Morality from Science: Beyondism* in 1974, he wrote that "what is called for here is not genocide, the killing off of the populations of incompetent cultures. But we do need to think realistically in terms of the 'phasing out' of such peoples." In *Eugenics: A Reassessment* (2001) he argued that the postwar condemnation of eugenics had gone too far and that selective breeding and biotechnology should be used to raise intelligence and reduce genetic disease. The Southern Poverty Law Center quoted these passages in classifying him as among the most unapologetic of self-described scientific racists.[^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Repudiation
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In June 2024 a group of seven scientists, writing in *STAT*, called on Elsevier, Springer, and other publishers to retract Lynn's national-IQ articles, citing his methodological flaws, his "explicitly racist agenda," and his history of academic malpractice. The campaign followed years of failed replications and the rejection of his work across mainstream psychology and genetics.[^4][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The retraction authors, including the evolutionary biologist [[Kevin Bird]] and the population geneticist [[Jedidiah Carlson]], catalogued the data underpinning Lynn's national-IQ figures. They reported that his estimate for Angola, a country of some 35 million, rested on a test of 19 people; the Dominican Republic figure came from 34 individuals, Greenland from 40, Uzbekistan from 51, and Botswana from 140 adolescents who may not have been citizens. Lynn published no selection criteria, and he excluded a higher-scoring African sample while keeping several low-scoring studies that lacked basic age data. The authors directed their requests at the Elsevier journals *Intelligence* and *Personality and Individual Differences* and at Springer's *Evolutionary Psychological Science*, reporting that editors had declined to act or had not responded.[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "UU students call for removal of former professor's title," *The Irish News,* February 14, 2018, on Lynn's Ulster career and the title controversy. https://www.irishnews.com/news/2018/02/14/news/uu-students-calls-for-removal-of-former-professor-s-title-1255299/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Journals should retract Richard Lynn's racist 'research' articles," *STAT,* June 20, 2024, on Lynn's national-IQ work, the Ulster Institute, Mankind Quarterly, and the scientific repudiation. https://www.statnews.com/2024/06/20/richard-lynn-racist-research-articles-journals-retractions/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Prof who lost emeritus status for views on race and intelligence has paper flagged," Retraction Watch, August 8, 2019, on the 2018 stripping of his title. https://retractionwatch.com/2019/08/08/prof-who-lost-emeritus-status-for-views-on-race-and-intelligence-has-paper-flagged/
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Another failure to replicate Lynn's estimate of the average IQ of sub-Saharan Africans," Jelte Wicherts et al., *Intelligence,* 2010, on the selective-data critique of Lynn's African IQ figures. https://jeltewicherts.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/wichertsravenafr2010rej.pdf
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Pioneer Fund Assets Divided; New Leadership Appointed," Southern Poverty Law Center, on Rushton's resignation and Lynn's succession as Pioneer Fund president. https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hate-watch/pioneer-fund-assets-divided-new-leadership-appointed/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Journals that published Richard Lynn's racist 'research' articles should retract them," Center for Genetics and Society, June 2024, listing the seven authors (Dan Samorodnitsky, Kevin Bird, Jedidiah Carlson, James Lingford, Jon Phillips, Rebecca Sear, Cathryn Townsend) and the journals targeted; sample-size figures from the accompanying *STAT* article. https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article/journals-published-richard-lynns-racist-research-articles-should-retract-them
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Hans Eysenck," and Lynn, Richard, "Reminiscences of forty years of friendship with Hans Eysenck," on the Cambridge education and the Eysenck collaboration; "Richard Lynn and The Myth of Low Irish IQ," on the Catholicism and GCSE claims. https://medium.com/@leonaburime/the-myth-of-low-irish-iq-how-richard-lynn-built-a-house-of-cards-41ce353a8656
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "UU students call for removal of former professor's title," *The Irish News,* February 14, 2018, on the Ulster student campaign; Lynn, Richard. *Memoirs of a Dissident Psychologist.* Ulster Institute for Social Research. https://www.irishnews.com/news/2018/02/14/news/uu-students-calls-for-removal-of-former-professor-s-title-1255299/
|
||||||
|
[^9]: "Richard Lynn," Southern Poverty Law Center extremist file, quoting his 1974 review of Cattell's *Beyondism* with the "phasing out of such peoples" passage and his eugenics advocacy. https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/richard-lynn/
|
||||||
|
[^10]: "Race and gender in methodologically flawed work of Richard Lynn," on *IQ and the Wealth of Nations,* *Sex Differences in Intelligence,* and the critique of his head-size and sampling methods; Flynn, James R., on the secular rise in IQ scores known as the Flynn effect. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338044465_Race_and_gender_in_methodologically_flawed_work_of_Richard_Lynn
|
||||||
|
|
@ -1,73 +1,111 @@
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
title: Robert Maxwell
|
|
||||||
aliases:
|
|
||||||
- Robert Maxwell
|
|
||||||
- Jan Ludvik Hyman Binyamin Hoch
|
|
||||||
- Ian Maxwell
|
|
||||||
created: 2024-04-25
|
|
||||||
updated: 2026-05-17
|
|
||||||
category: "Intelligence & Government"
|
category: "Intelligence & Government"
|
||||||
tags:
|
tags:
|
||||||
- Person
|
- Person
|
||||||
- PROMIS
|
- RobertMaxwell
|
||||||
- CIA
|
|
||||||
- Mossad
|
- Mossad
|
||||||
|
- MI6
|
||||||
|
- KGB
|
||||||
|
- PROMIS
|
||||||
- Israel
|
- Israel
|
||||||
- Soviet
|
- Soviet
|
||||||
- Politician
|
- MirrorGroup
|
||||||
- Media
|
- Media
|
||||||
- UK
|
- PensionFraud
|
||||||
- BCCI
|
- JeffreyEpstein
|
||||||
summary: "Robert Maxwell was a British media proprietor, Labour MP, and alleged simultaneous asset for Mossad, MI6, and the KGB whose alleged role as the primary international distributor of backdoored PROMIS software to foreign governments became central to the INSLAW scandal narrative; he was found dead in the Atlantic Ocean on November 5, 1991, three months after Danny Casolaro's death."
|
alias:
|
||||||
born: 1923-01-10
|
- Robert Maxwell
|
||||||
|
- Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch
|
||||||
|
- Jan Ludvik Hoch
|
||||||
|
- Ian Robert Maxwell
|
||||||
|
summary: "Robert Maxwell was a British publishing magnate, Labour MP, and alleged simultaneous asset of Mossad, British, and Soviet intelligence whose empire collapsed after he looted the Mirror Group pension funds, who was alleged to be the international distributor of backdoored PROMIS software, and who died at sea off the Canary Islands in 1991 amid contested allegations of foul play."
|
||||||
|
born: 1923-06-10
|
||||||
died: 1991-11-05
|
died: 1991-11-05
|
||||||
location: "London, United Kingdom"
|
location: "London, United Kingdom"
|
||||||
|
created: 2024-04-25
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
Robert Maxwell was born Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch on January 10, 1923, in Slatinské Doly, [[Czechoslovakia]] (now Solotvyno, [[Ukraine]]), the son of a poor Yiddish-speaking Jewish family. His parents and most of his siblings were killed in the Holocaust. He fled through Romania and France, eventually joining the Czech Army in exile in the [[United Kingdom]], then serving in the British Army, where he was awarded the Military Cross by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. He died on November 5, 1991, under disputed circumstances in the Atlantic Ocean near the Canary Islands. He was 68.[^3]
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Media and Business Career
|
Robert Maxwell was a British publishing magnate, Member of Parliament, and proprietor of [[Mirror Group Newspapers]] who built and lost a sprawling media and finance empire before drowning off his yacht near the [[Canary Islands]] in 1991. He was born Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch on June 10, 1923, in Slatinské Doly, Carpathian Ruthenia, then part of Czechoslovakia and now Solotvyno, [[Ukraine]].[^1] After his death, investigators found he had misappropriated hundreds of millions of pounds from his companies' pension funds, and journalists and a self-described former Israeli intelligence officer alleged he had served Israeli, British, and Soviet intelligence services.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
After the war, Maxwell worked in [[British intelligence]] in occupied Berlin, operating under cover as an interpreter. He built a business relationship with the German scientific publishing house [[Springer Verlag]] and in 1948 founded Pergamon Press, which became a major international scientific publisher. He was elected to Parliament as the Labour MP for Buckinghamshire East in 1964 but lost his seat in 1970. A 1971 Board of Trade investigation into his management of Pergamon concluded that Maxwell was "not a suitable person to be at the helm of a publicly quoted company" - a finding that damaged his reputation for the following decade but that he recovered from through continuing commercial activity.[^3]
|
### Origins and War Service
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Maxwell acquired [[Mirror Group]] Newspapers in 1984, becoming proprietor of the *[[Daily Mirror]]*, and purchased the American publisher [[Macmillan]] in 1988. By the late 1980s his media empire encompassed dozens of companies across multiple countries. After his death, investigators discovered that he had looted approximately £750 million from the pension funds of his companies, affecting approximately 32,000 pensioners. His sons [[Ian Maxwell|Ian]] and [[Kevin Maxwell]] were arrested in connection with the pension fraud; both were ultimately acquitted in 1996 after a lengthy trial.[^3]
|
Maxwell came from a poor Yiddish-speaking Orthodox Jewish family in the Carpathian region. His father was Mehel (Mechel) Hoch and his mother Hannah Slomowitz, and Maxwell was one of seven or more children.[^14] After Hungary occupied the region and Nazi Germany took control in 1944, his parents, his grandfather, and three of his siblings were deported to [[Auschwitz]] and murdered there; only Maxwell and two sisters survived the [[Holocaust]].[^14] One sister, Sylvia, was reportedly pulled from a deportation transport in [[Budapest]] by the Swedish diplomat [[Raoul Wallenberg]], who issued her protective papers.[^14] Maxwell himself had left the region in 1939, around age fifteen or sixteen, before the deportations.[^14]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Intelligence Connections
|
He fled westward after the German occupation, joined the Czechoslovak Army in exile in May 1940, and transferred to the British Army, where he rose from private to sergeant before being commissioned.[^1] He served across North West Europe from the [[Normandy]] landings onward, was commissioned into the [[Queen's Royal Regiment]] in January 1945, and on January 29, 1945, while leading his platoon toward Paarlo in the [[Netherlands]], captured a German machine-gun position; for that action he was awarded the [[Military Cross]] and promoted to captain.[^15] Field Marshal [[Bernard Montgomery]] pinned the decoration on him.[^15] In 1945 he married the Frenchwoman Élisabeth Meynard, with whom he had nine children.[^14]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Maxwell maintained simultaneous intelligence relationships with multiple services for decades. His [[Mossad]] connections began in the early 1960s through a meeting arranged with [[Yitzhak Shamir]], then running Mossad operations in Europe, facilitated by [[Aviezer Ya'ari]] of the Israeli [[Mapam Party]]. Maxwell and Shamir became close associates, and Maxwell developed an antipathy toward American predominance in intelligence sharing that aligned with [[Israel|Israeli]] interests. His contacts with Soviet intelligence dated to his wartime and immediate postwar service in Germany; he reportedly provided useful intelligence to the [[KGB]] in parallel with his Mossad relationship, a dual role that both services are described as tolerating because each found him useful.[^1][^3]
|
He became a naturalized British subject on June 19, 1946, and legally changed his name to Ian Robert Maxwell on June 30, 1948.[^1] During the immediate postwar period he served in the Berlin Information Control Unit of the British occupation authorities, and in 1947 he made contact with [[Ferdinand Springer]] of [[Springer-Verlag]], Germany's leading prewar scientific publisher, who had retained large stocks of valuable journal back numbers.[^16] Maxwell agreed to act as Springer's distributor outside Germany through his new British firm, the European Periodicals, Publicity and Advertising Corporation (EPPAC), and in 1949 helped form a joint distribution company, Lange, Maxwell & Springer, in which the Springer interests held a 49 percent stake.[^16]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Role in PROMIS Distribution
|
### Czechoslovak Arms to Israel
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Multiple sources allege that Maxwell served as the primary commercial agent through which a surveillance-modified version of [[PROMIS]] software was distributed internationally following [[Rafael Eitan]]'s [[LAKAM]] operation to obtain and modify the software. According to Gordon Thomas's account in *Gideon's Spies* (1999), drawing on Israeli intelligence sources, Maxwell agreed to market PROMIS for U.S. and Israeli intelligence using his network of companies, aware of the software's general intelligence-gathering capabilities. He received a flat fee of $8 million and a percentage of gross revenues generated through his distribution network. He operated without necessarily knowing the specific technical details of the surveillance trapdoor embedded in the software.[^1][^3]
|
Maxwell has been described in several accounts as having used his contacts among the Czechoslovak Communist leadership to help arrange the supply of arms to the [[Jewish Agency]] and the emerging state of [[Israel]] during the 1947-1949 period, when an international embargo otherwise restricted weapons reaching the Zionist forces.[^17] The clandestine Czechoslovak sales, authorized by foreign minister [[Jan Masaryk]] and beginning with a contract in January 1948, delivered rifles, machine guns, ammunition, and Avia S-199 fighter aircraft to the [[Haganah]], and [[Yitzhak Rabin]] later said that without the Czech arms it was doubtful the war could have been won.[^17]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Maxwell's principal vehicle for PROMIS distribution was [[Degem]], an Israeli-controlled computer company with operations in Israel, Guatemala, and Transkei. His Berlitz language schools and other international holdings provided additional cover for technology sales in countries where direct Israeli involvement would have been problematic. Among the alleged recipients of PROMIS-derived software distributed through Maxwell's network were agencies in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, South Korea, Poland, the Soviet Union, South Africa, Jordan, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Nicaragua. In 1985, an abridged version was allegedly sold to [[Credit Suisse]], providing intelligence access to Israeli accounts held there. In the late 1980s, Maxwell allegedly sold PROMIS to the [[Soviet Union]], with the transaction facilitated by the lifting of [[IBM]] export restrictions - an arrangement that reportedly allowed Degem technicians to install the trapdoor-equipped software on IBM computers delivered to Soviet intelligence.[^1][^3]
|
The specifics of Maxwell's personal role rest largely on later biographical and journalistic accounts rather than contemporaneous documentation, and the principal sources, including the writers John Loftus and Mark Aarons and the author [[Gordon Thomas]], place him as a facilitator and shipper of materiel and aircraft parts rather than a signatory to the state-level contracts.[^17][^9] No declassified Czechoslovak or Israeli record has been published that fixes the precise scope of his involvement, and the claim is therefore reported but not independently confirmed.[^17] His Eastern European Communist contacts from this period, together with the trading relationships his publishing businesses later built across the [[Eastern Bloc]], formed part of the basis on which writers afterward speculated about ties to Soviet and Israeli services.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
[[INSLAW]] alleged that Maxwell contributed $600,000 from a joint U.S.-Israeli intelligence slush fund to secure the dismissal of [[Leigh Ratiner]], INSLAW's lead litigation counsel at Dickstein, Shapiro & Morin, after Maxwell learned that Ratiner's aggressive litigation strategy threatened to expose the international PROMIS distribution network. The dismissal occurred following a meeting between Dickstein partner [[Leonard Garment]] and Deputy Attorney General [[Arnold Burns]]; Ratiner later settled a wrongful dismissal suit against his firm for the same amount. The [[Nicholas J. Bua|Bua Report]] found no credible evidence supporting this allegation.[^2]
|
### Pergamon Press and Mirror Group
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The intelligence community's involvement in Maxwell's PROMIS business also surfaces in accounts involving former Senator [[John Tower]], a friend of Maxwell who was close to the [[George H.W. Bush]] administration. In 1984, Tower allegedly approached Maxwell on behalf of a [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]]-connected group to formalize his role as the PROMIS marketing intermediary.[^1]
|
Maxwell founded [[Pergamon Press]] in 1951, buying three-quarters of the science publisher Butterworth-Springer, and built it into a major international scientific and academic publishing house issuing journals across the sciences.[^1] In 1969 the American financier [[Saul Steinberg]] of [[Leasco]] launched a takeover bid for Pergamon that collapsed amid a dispute over the profitability of an encyclopedia-publishing subsidiary, and Maxwell lost control of Pergamon and was expelled from its board in October 1969 before reacquiring the company in 1974.[^1] A [[Department of Trade and Industry]] inspectors' inquiry into the Leasco affair concluded in 1971 with the finding that, "notwithstanding Mr Maxwell's acknowledged abilities and energy, he is not in our opinion a person who can be relied on to exercise proper stewardship of a publicly quoted company."[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
In 1987, an alleged contribution to the West Australian Labor Party reportedly passed through one of Maxwell's Australian companies and was deposited by the Pergamon Press Trust Fund in Moscow, with [[Richard Babayan]] and [[Earl Brian]] acting on behalf of [[Hadron]] in facilitating the transaction.[^1]
|
He sat as the [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour]] [[Member of Parliament]] for [[Buckingham]] from 1964 to 1970.[^1] In July 1984 he acquired Mirror Group Newspapers, publisher of the [[Daily Mirror]] and other titles, for about 113 million pounds from [[Reed International]].[^1] He expanded into the United States, completing a tender offer of about 2.6 billion dollars for the publisher [[Macmillan]] in November 1988, acquiring the language-school chain [[Berlitz]] and [[Official Airline Guides]], and buying the [[New York Daily News]] in 1991, financing the acquisitions through an increasingly opaque web of public companies and private trusts that left his group heavily indebted.[^3][^18]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Death
|
### Collapse and the Pension Theft
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Maxwell was last heard from by crew aboard his yacht, the *Lady Ghislaine*, at approximately 4:25 a.m. on November 5, 1991, while the vessel was cruising off the Canary Islands. His absence was not discovered until midday, when the yacht's captain, [[Gus Rankin]], could not reach him by telephone. A search of the vessel found nothing. A Spanish Air Force pilot on an aerial search spotted Maxwell's body floating naked in the Atlantic Ocean approximately 20 miles southwest of Gran Canaria and he was recovered by helicopter and transported to a forensic institute in Las Palmas.[^6]
|
By 1991 Maxwell's empire was carrying unsustainable debt, and he was secretly transferring assets among his public companies, [[Maxwell Communication Corporation]] and Mirror Group Newspapers, and his private interests to prop up share prices and service borrowing.[^3] The pension assets of the various Maxwell schemes, covering more than 32,000 members, were largely pooled in a Common Investment Fund managed by a Maxwell-controlled subsidiary, [[Bishopsgate Investment Management]] (BIM), and Maxwell used those assets as collateral for loans to his private companies, pledging pension-fund securities to banks and transferring them to private Maxwell entities for little or no consideration.[^19]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The Spanish judicial investigation under Judge Isabel Oliva concluded on December 13, 1991. Three pathologists who examined Maxwell could not agree on a single cause: one concluded heart attack alone; a second concluded heart attack followed by drowning; a third concluded fall and drowning without a prior cardiac event. Judge Oliva ruled the probable cause of death was "the association of a double mechanism consisting of a previous causal factor of an ischemic heart attack, followed by a concomitant factor of drowning." The ruling was accidental death. No external signs of violence, no toxicological evidence of poisoning, and no traumatic injury causing loss of consciousness were found. Maxwell was buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.[^6]
|
After his death, administrators and the [[Serious Fraud Office]] concluded that roughly 450 to 460 million pounds had been taken from the group's pension funds.[^4][^19] [[Goldman Sachs]], acting on Maxwell's instructions, sold blocks of Mirror Group shares that had been marked as pension-fund property, and BIM went into liquidation in March 1992, with many Mirror Group pensioners facing sharp reductions until a partial rescue was arranged.[^19] A long Department of Trade and Industry inspectors' report published in 2001 catalogued the abuses and criticized City advisers, trustees, and the auditors [[Coopers & Lybrand]] Deloitte; the eventual recovery came through out-of-court settlements, including a March 1995 settlement of about 276 million pounds to the pension schemes.[^20]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Maxwell died 87 days after journalist [[Danny Casolaro]], whose "[[The Octopus]]" investigation had specifically encompassed the PROMIS distribution network and Maxwell's alleged role within it. The proximity of the two deaths was noted by INSLAW and congressional investigators.[^2]
|
His sons [[Kevin Maxwell]] and [[Ian Maxwell]], the latter a BIM director who had signed pension-fund share transfers to the private Maxwell Group, were prosecuted by the Serious Fraud Office and tried at the [[Old Bailey]]; in January 1996, after a trial lasting roughly eight months, a jury acquitted both brothers of conspiracy to defraud the pension funds, and in September 1996 prosecutors decided not to pursue a second trial against Kevin Maxwell.[^5][^19] His daughter [[Ghislaine Maxwell]] later moved to the United States and was convicted in 2021 on federal sex-trafficking charges connected to [[Jeffrey Epstein]].[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Death off the Lady Ghislaine
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Maxwell disappeared from his motor yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, during a cruise off the Canary Islands and was found dead in the Atlantic on November 5, 1991, his body recovered about 20 miles southwest of [[Gran Canaria]] and taken to [[Las Palmas]] for examination.[^7] In the hours before his disappearance he had reportedly been under acute pressure, including an argument by telephone with his son Kevin over loan defaults, and the last contact with crew was logged in the early hours of November 5.[^21] An autopsy noted heart and lung disease and a graze on his left shoulder, with no other significant wounds.[^7][^21]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Three pathologists examining the body reached differing conclusions, one favoring a heart attack alone, another a heart attack followed by drowning, and a third a fall and drowning.[^21] A Spanish judicial proceeding under Judge Isabel Oliva of the Granadilla district court closed the case as most probably accidental, attributing death to "the association of a double mechanism consisting of a previous causal factor of an ischemic heart attack, followed by a concomitant factor of drowning," and a separate inquest in [[England]] in December 1991 likewise returned a verdict of death by heart attack combined with accidental drowning.[^21][^7] The circumstances remained disputed, with competing theories of accident, suicide given the impending exposure of his frauds, and foul play.[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Intelligence Allegations
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Allegations that Maxwell worked for Israeli intelligence were aired publicly in October 1991, shortly before his death, when [[Seymour Hersh]] discussed his book [[The Samson Option]] at a London press conference, asserting that Maxwell and his Daily Mirror foreign editor [[Nicholas Davies]] had links to Israeli intelligence and that Davies was involved in Israeli arms dealing.[^8] Hersh further alleged that Maxwell had relayed information to the Israeli embassy in London that led to the capture of the nuclear whistleblower [[Mordechai Vanunu]], a claim Maxwell denounced as a total invention.[^8] Labour MP [[George Galloway]] and Conservative MP [[Rupert Allason]] raised the espionage claims in the [[House of Commons]] under parliamentary privilege on October 21, 1991, and Maxwell sued Hersh and his British publisher for libel; after Maxwell's death the action lapsed, and the Mirror Group later apologized to Hersh and paid damages.[^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The most detailed espionage account came from [[Ari Ben-Menashe]], a self-described former employee of the Israeli [[Military Intelligence Directorate (Israel)|Military Intelligence Directorate]], who claimed in his 1992 book [[Profits of War]] that Maxwell and Davies were long-time [[Mossad]] assets, and that Davies had tipped him to Vanunu's 1986 approach to the [[Sunday Mirror]] over the photographs Vanunu had taken at [[Dimona]], introducing him to Vanunu's intermediary [[Oscar Guerrero]]; Vanunu was subsequently lured from London to [[Rome]], seized by Israeli operatives, and convicted in Israel.[^10][^22] His maternal relationship to the prime minister's office began, by his own account, through a meeting arranged with [[Yitzhak Shamir]] in the early 1960s.[^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Welsh author Gordon Thomas, in [[Gideon's Spies]] (1999) and the later book Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy (2002), drew partly on Ben-Menashe and on the Israeli operative [[Rafi Eitan]] to allege that Maxwell helped distribute a version of the [[PROMIS]] case-management software that Israeli technicians had fitted with a hidden "trapdoor," enabling Israel to monitor the foreign agencies that bought it, marketing it through the Tel Aviv firm [[Degem Computers]].[^9][^23] In these accounts Maxwell received a flat fee of about 8 million dollars plus a percentage of revenues, and the agencies said to have received the software through his network included those of the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, South Korea, Poland, the Soviet Union, South Africa, Jordan, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Nicaragua, with an abridged version said to have been sold to [[Credit Suisse]] in 1985 and a Soviet sale in the late 1980s facilitated by the lifting of [[IBM]] export restrictions.[^10][^9] INSLAW separately alleged that Maxwell contributed 600,000 dollars from a joint U.S.-Israeli intelligence slush fund to secure the removal of its lead litigation counsel [[Leigh Ratiner]], and that the former senator [[John Tower]] had approached Maxwell in 1984 on behalf of a [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]]-connected group to formalize his role as the PROMIS marketing intermediary; the [[Nicholas J. Bua|Bua Report]] found no credible evidence for these claims.[^10][^25]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Ben-Menashe's reliability has been repeatedly questioned, including by a 1993 congressional task force, and no declassified record has substantiated the PROMIS-distribution or recruitment allegations; an Israeli prime minister's spokesman dismissed Thomas's claims as "unmitigated drivel."[^9][^11] Maxwell was also long rumored to have had contacts with British intelligence and, given his Eastern European origins and trading ties, with the Soviet [[KGB]], though these characterizations rest on journalistic sourcing rather than disclosed files, and no archive of any of the three services has been released that confirms a formal agent relationship.[^2][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Murder Allegations
|
### Murder Allegations
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Two former Israeli intelligence sources made public allegations that Maxwell was murdered on Mossad orders. Former Mossad case officer [[Victor Ostrovsky]], in his 1994 memoir *The Other Side of Deception*, wrote that Maxwell had become a liability to Mossad after his financial empire began collapsing under the weight of debt. Maxwell allegedly threatened to expose Mossad operations unless the agency bailed him out financially. Ostrovsky wrote: "On that cold night Mossad's problems with Robert Maxwell were over."[^4]
|
Two former Israeli intelligence figures alleged that Maxwell was killed on Mossad orders. The former case officer [[Victor Ostrovsky]], in his 1994 memoir *The Other Side of Deception*, wrote that Maxwell had become a liability once his empire began collapsing and had threatened to expose Mossad operations unless the agency rescued him financially, ending the passage with the line, "On that cold night Mossad's problems with Robert Maxwell were over."[^24] Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon, in *Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy* (2002), identified Rafi Eitan as having overseen an assassination and named the operative they said carried it out only by the pseudonym "Efraim," describing the killing as having occurred on the aft deck of the Lady Ghislaine before the body entered the water.[^23] Maxwell's family and the Spanish judicial finding rejected all foul-play theories, and no official inquiry has substantiated them; the proximity of Maxwell's death to that of the journalist [[Danny Casolaro]] 87 days earlier, whose "[[The Octopus]]" investigation had encompassed the PROMIS distribution network, was noted by INSLAW and congressional investigators.[^25][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon, in *Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy* (2002), drawing on sources including Ostrovsky, identified the assassination operation as having been overseen by [[Rafael Eitan]] - the same case officer responsible for running [[Jonathan Pollard]] and, per the PROMIS narrative, for directing the original LAKAM PROMIS operation. Thomas and Dillon identified the operative who carried out the killing as "Efraim," using a pseudonym, and described the death as occurring on the aft deck of the *Lady Ghislaine* before Maxwell's body entered the water.[^5]
|
### Funeral in Jerusalem
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Maxwell's family and the official Spanish judicial finding disputed all foul play theories. The Bua Report found no credible evidence that Maxwell had any connection to the alleged DOJ-orchestrated PROMIS theft or international distribution.[^2]
|
Maxwell's body was flown to Israel, and on November 10, 1991, he was given a state-style funeral and buried on the [[Mount of Olives]] in [[Jerusalem]], one of Judaism's most revered burial grounds.[^12] The ceremony at Jerusalem's convention center drew President [[Chaim Herzog]], Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, and much of the Israeli political establishment, with reporting that at least six serving and former heads of Israeli intelligence were present.[^12][^9] His friend and longtime attorney [[Samuel Pisar]], a Holocaust survivor, recited the Kaddish.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Herzog eulogized him with the words, "He scaled the heights of human endeavor. Kings and princes waited on him."[^12] Shamir praised the connections and investment Maxwell had brought to Israel during the 1980s, reportedly saying that Maxwell had done more for Israel than could then be told.[^13] The scale of the official Israeli observance was later cited by writers who argued it reflected an intelligence relationship, though attendance at a prominent Jewish philanthropist's funeral is not itself evidence of espionage, and no Israeli official has confirmed that Maxwell was an agent.[^12][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Footnotes
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
[^1]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network.* TrineDay, 1992.
|
[^1]: "Robert Maxwell," *Encyclopaedia Britannica.* https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Maxwell
|
||||||
[^2]: U.S. Department of Justice. *Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua to the Attorney General of the United States Regarding the Allegations of Inslaw, Inc.* March 1993.
|
[^2]: "Robert Maxwell's alleged ties to intelligence agencies," *Factually,* 2025. https://factually.co/fact-checks/media/robert-maxwell-intelligence-ties-evidence-9493b2
|
||||||
[^3]: Thomas, Gordon. *Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad.* St. Martin's Press, 1999.
|
[^3]: "Great frauds in history: Robert Maxwell," *MoneyWeek,* 2018. https://moneyweek.com/505757/great-frauds-in-history-robert-maxwell
|
||||||
[^4]: Ostrovsky, Victor. *The Other Side of Deception: A Rogue Agent Exposes the Mossad's Secret Agenda.* HarperCollins, 1994.
|
[^4]: "Maxwell - the fallout," *Association of Mirror Pensioners.* https://www.mirrorpensioners.co.uk/news/maxwell-the-fallout/
|
||||||
[^5]: Thomas, Gordon, and Martin Dillon. *Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy: The Life and Murder of a Media Mogul.* Carroll & Graf, 2002.
|
[^5]: "Media Magnate Maxwell's Sons Acquitted of Charges They Raided Pension Fund," *The Washington Post,* 1996. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1996/01/20/media-magnate-maxwells-sons-acquitted-of-charges-they-raided-pension-fund/1841c6cf-8340-4e9e-876c-9f862b4685b5/
|
||||||
[^6]: UPI. "Robert Maxwell Dies in Mysterious Plunge at Sea," November 5, 1991; UPI. "Foul Play Ruled Out in Maxwell Death," December 13, 1991.
|
[^6]: "Ghislaine Maxwell," *Encyclopaedia Britannica.* https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ghislaine-Maxwell
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "What caused Robert Maxwell's mysterious death in 1991?," *Factually,* 2025. https://factually.co/fact-checks/media/robert-maxwell-mysterious-death-1991-cause-932d42
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "Media Baron Sues Seymour Hersh," *The Washington Post,* 1991. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1991/10/25/media-baron-sues-seymour-hersh/c16c29e2-04ba-4038-9fff-08113fa33b77/
|
||||||
|
[^9]: Pipes, Daniel. "Gideon's Spies by Gordon Thomas," *Commentary,* 1999. https://www.commentary.org/articles/daniel-pipes/gideons-spies-by-gordon-thomas/
|
||||||
|
[^10]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network.* Sheridan Square Press, 1992.
|
||||||
|
[^11]: "Probe by House finds no 'October surprise,'" *The Baltimore Sun,* 1993. https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1993-01-13-1993013111-story.html
|
||||||
|
[^12]: "Maxwell, Colossus Even in Death, Laid to Rest on Mount of Olives," *Jewish Telegraphic Agency,* 1991. https://www.jta.org/archive/maxwell-colossus-even-in-death-laid-to-rest-on-mount-of-olives
|
||||||
|
[^13]: "Maxwell buried on Mount of Olives," *UPI,* 1991. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1991/11/10/Maxwell-buried-on-Mount-of-Olives/4340689749200/
|
||||||
|
[^14]: "Elisabeth Maxwell," *Encyclopaedia Britannica.* https://www.britannica.com/biography/Elisabeth-Maxwell
|
||||||
|
[^15]: "The Second World War medals and orders awarded to Robert Maxwell," *Noonans Mayfair.* https://www.noonans.co.uk/news-and-events/latest-news/502/
|
||||||
|
[^16]: "Maxwell Communication Corp. Plc," *Encyclopedia.com.* https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/economics-business-and-labor/businesses-and-occupations/maxwell-communication-corp-plc
|
||||||
|
[^17]: "During Israel's Dire Need: Arming Israel in 1948," *Aish,* on the Czechoslovak arms shipments to the Haganah authorized by Jan Masaryk and the Avia S-199 aircraft. https://aish.com/during-israels-dire-need-arming-israel-in-1948/
|
||||||
|
[^18]: "Robert Maxwell, who completed a $2.5 billion tender offer," *UPI,* 1988. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1988/11/04/Robert-Maxwell-who-completed-a-25-billion-tender-offer/2052594622800/
|
||||||
|
[^19]: "Unravelling the Web," *Pensions Archive Trust,* 2021, on Bishopsgate Investment Management, the Common Investment Fund, the roughly 450 to 460 million pounds taken, the Goldman Sachs share sales, and the 1995 settlement. https://pensionsarchive.org.uk/2021/11/03/unravelling-the-web/
|
||||||
|
[^20]: "Maxwell report: All the publisher's men," *The CFO,* 2001, on the Department of Trade and Industry inspectors' report and the criticism of Coopers & Lybrand Deloitte. https://the-cfo.io/2001/05/09/maxwell-report-all-the-publishers-men/
|
||||||
|
[^21]: "What caused Robert Maxwell's mysterious death in 1991?," *Factually,* 2025, on the differing pathologists' conclusions and the Judge Oliva ruling. https://factually.co/fact-checks/media/robert-maxwell-mysterious-death-1991-cause-932d42
|
||||||
|
[^22]: Contemporaneous press reporting on the 1986 Mordechai Vanunu affair and the Sunday Mirror's handling of his Dimona account, on which Ben-Menashe's claims about Nicholas Davies and Oscar Guerrero rest.
|
||||||
|
[^23]: Thomas, Gordon, and Martin Dillon. *Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy: The Life and Murder of a Media Mogul.* Carroll & Graf, 2002.
|
||||||
|
[^24]: Ostrovsky, Victor. *The Other Side of Deception: A Rogue Agent Exposes the Mossad's Secret Agenda.* HarperCollins, 1994, on the alleged Mossad motive to eliminate Maxwell as a collapsing liability.
|
||||||
|
[^25]: U.S. Department of Justice. *Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua to the Attorney General of the United States Regarding the Allegations of Inslaw, Inc.* March 1993, on the rejection of the Leigh Ratiner and PROMIS-distribution allegations and the proximity of the Casolaro and Maxwell deaths.
|
||||||
|
|
|
||||||
55
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Sam Harris.md
Normal file
55
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Sam Harris.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,55 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Authors & Journalists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- NewAtheism
|
||||||
|
- Podcasting
|
||||||
|
- Dialog
|
||||||
|
- RaceScience
|
||||||
|
- PeterThiel
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Samuel Benjamin Harris
|
||||||
|
summary: "Sam Harris is an American neuroscientist, New Atheist author, and host of the Making Sense podcast, a registrant of Peter Thiel's Dialog society whose 2017 Forbidden Knowledge episode platformed Charles Murray's race-and-IQ claims and provoked a public dispute with Ezra Klein over race science."
|
||||||
|
born: 1967-04-09
|
||||||
|
location: "Los Angeles, California"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Sam Harris (born April 9, 1967) is an American author, neuroscientist, and podcaster who came to prominence as one of the "Four Horsemen" of the [[New Atheism]] movement and built a large following through his [[Making Sense (podcast)|Making Sense]] podcast. He appears as a registrant of [[Dialog]], the invitation-only society cofounded by [[Peter Thiel]], in the membership records leaked in June 2026, and his 2017 podcast episode "Forbidden Knowledge" gave a sympathetic platform to the race-and-IQ claims of [[Charles Murray]], provoking a prolonged public dispute with the journalist [[Ezra Klein]].[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### New Atheism
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Harris was born in [[Los Angeles]], the son of the actor [[Berkeley Harris]] and the television producer [[Susan Harris]]. He took a BA in philosophy from [[Stanford University]] in 2000 and a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from the [[University of California, Los Angeles]] in 2009, using functional MRI to study the neural basis of belief. His first book, *The End of Faith* (2004), written after the September 11 attacks, won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award and spent thirty-three weeks on the *New York Times* bestseller list. With [[Richard Dawkins]], [[Christopher Hitchens]], and [[Daniel Dennett]], Harris became one of the "Four Horsemen" of New Atheism, the polemical anti-religion current of the mid-2000s. He followed with *Letter to a Christian Nation* (2006), *The Moral Landscape* (2010), and *Waking Up* (2014).[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The "Four Horsemen" label came from a two-hour conversation the four men filmed in Hitchens's Washington apartment in September 2007, released on video and later transcribed as a 2018 book with an introduction by [[Stephen Fry]]. Within the movement Harris became its most contested figure for his statements on Islam, including his argument that the faith was uniquely dangerous and his defense of ethnic profiling at airports, which drew a charged 2014 exchange with the actor [[Ben Affleck]] on *[[Real Time with Bill Maher]]* who called the framing "gross" and "racist." Harris also feuded with the linguist [[Noam Chomsky]] in a 2015 email exchange that Harris published, over the morality of American foreign policy.[^4][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Making Sense
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Harris launched the *Waking Up* podcast in 2013, later renamed *Making Sense*, which became one of the more widely listened-to long-form interview shows and a fixture of the loose network of commentators labeled the "intellectual dark web." The show paired a meditation-and-secularism brand with conversations on politics, science, and free speech, and it placed Harris among the public intellectuals who circulate through Thiel-adjacent and [[Rationalist Community|rationalist]] circles.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The "intellectual dark web" label was coined by the mathematician [[Eric Weinstein]] and popularized by [[Bari Weiss]] in a May 2018 *[[The New York Times|New York Times]]* feature that grouped Harris with [[Jordan Peterson]], [[Ben Shapiro]], [[Joe Rogan]], [[Dave Rubin]], and the Weinstein brothers. Harris built an independent media business around the podcast and the [[Waking Up (app)|Waking Up]] meditation app: in December 2018 he closed his [[Patreon]] account in protest after the platform banned the YouTuber [[Carl Benjamin|Sargon of Akkad]], moving his funding to a direct subscription model, and in November 2022 he deleted his account on [[Twitter]], saying he had blocked roughly 50,000 accounts in his final week over what he described as a flood of conspiracy content after Elon Musk's takeover.[^6][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Forbidden Knowledge and the Klein Dispute
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On April 23, 2017, Harris published episode 73, "Forbidden Knowledge: A Conversation with Charles Murray," presenting Murray, coauthor of *The Bell Curve*, as the victim of a taboo and treating his hereditarian claims about racial IQ differences as suppressed science. The site [[Vox]] published a critique by the researchers [[Eric Turkheimer]], [[Kathryn Paige Harden]], and [[Richard Nisbett]] calling the conversation "pseudoscientific racialist speculation," which triggered a months-long Twitter argument and a two-hour 2018 podcast confrontation between Harris and Vox editor Klein. Klein argued that the framing repackaged "America's most ancient justification for bigotry," while Harris maintained he was defending open inquiry. The episode became a touchstone of the [[Human Biodiversity|human-biodiversity]] discourse that runs through the rationalist and tech-right milieus.[^1][^2][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Turkheimer-Harden-Nisbett essay, titled "Charles Murray is once again peddling junk science about race and IQ," ran in May 2017 and argued that the heritability of IQ within a group says nothing about the cause of differences between groups. The recorded Klein debate aired in April 2018 as a joint episode on both men's podcasts; Harris accused Klein of running a "politically correct moral panic," and Klein countered that Harris mistook his own racial and political priors for pure objectivity. The dispute solidified the line between Harris's "intellectual dark web" defense of open inquiry and the mainstream scientific position that the genetic-difference claim was unsupported.[^5][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Dialog
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Harris appears in the leaked records of Dialog, the secret society cofounded in 2006 by Thiel and [[Auren Hoffman]] that convenes officials, executives, and public figures at off-the-record annual retreats. In June 2026 the hacktivist [[maia arson crimew|crimew]] and the magazine *WIRED* disclosed a registration list of 222 names for Dialog's 2026 retreat, naming Harris alongside [[Elon Musk]], sitting U.S. senators, and a four-star military commander. His listing places him among the cultural figures convened by the same Thiel network that funded the [[Machine Intelligence Research Institute]] and the [[Hereticon]] conference.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
WIRED reported on June 16, 2026 that crimew had extracted the directory directly from hidden code on Dialog's own website. The 2026 retreat was scheduled for August 12 to 16 at the Powerscourt Hotel outside Dublin, and the disclosed list named the senators [[Ted Cruz]] and [[Cory Booker]] and the most senior NATO commander in Europe among the registrants, with a program of off-the-record sessions including "Navigating WWIII" and "Bring Back Nuclear." Harris had long been a public ally of the New Atheism and free-speech causes that overlap with the Thiel-funded rationalist orbit, though his presence on the list did not indicate a stated political alignment with Thiel.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Cameron, Dell, and Yulia Almazova. "Leak Exposes Members of Peter Thiel's Secretive 'Dialog' Society." *WIRED,* June 16, 2026. https://www.wired.com/story/leak-exposes-members-of-peter-thiels-secretive-dialog-society/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Harris, Sam. "Forbidden Knowledge: A Conversation with Charles Murray," *Making Sense* podcast, episode 73, April 23, 2017. https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/73-forbidden-knowledge
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Harris, Sam. *The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason.* W. W. Norton, 2004.
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Sam Harris," Edge.org member biography, on the Stanford and UCLA degrees, the New Atheism books, and the podcast. https://www.edge.org/memberbio/sam_harris
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Sam Harris, Charles Murray, and the allure of race science," Ezra Klein, *Vox,* 2018, on the Forbidden Knowledge dispute. https://equitablegrowth.org/should-read-ezra-klein-sam-harris-charles-murray-and-the-allure-of-race-science/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web," Bari Weiss, *The New York Times,* May 8, 2018, coining the term popularly and naming Harris among the group. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/opinion/intellectual-dark-web.html
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Atheist podcaster Sam Harris says he's done with Patreon because of deplatforming," *Fast Company,* December 17, 2018, on the Patreon departure; "#304 - Why I Left Twitter," *Making Sense* with Sam Harris, November 28, 2022, on the Twitter deletion. https://www.fastcompany.com/90283289/atheist-podcaster-sam-harris-says-hes-done-with-patreon-because-of-deplatforming
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Hitchens, Christopher, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett. *The Four Horsemen: The Conversation That Sparked an Atheist Revolution.* Random House, 2018, on the September 2007 filmed conversation; "Affleck, Maher battle over Islam," *Times of Israel,* October 2014, on the "gross and racist" exchange; "Read Noam Chomsky and Sam Harris' Unpleasant Email Exchange," Open Culture, May 2015. https://www.openculture.com/2015/05/read-noam-chomsky-sam-harris-unpleasant-email-exchange.html
|
||||||
|
[^9]: Turkheimer, Eric, Kathryn Paige Harden, and Richard E. Nisbett. "Charles Murray is once again peddling junk science about race and IQ," *Vox,* May 18, 2017, on the critique of the Forbidden Knowledge episode. https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/5/18/15655638/charles-murray-race-iq-sam-harris-science-free-speech
|
||||||
48
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Steven Hoffenberg.md
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48
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Steven Hoffenberg.md
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|
|
@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Organized Crime"
|
||||||
|
tags: [Person, StevenHoffenberg, TowersFinancial, JeffreyEpstein, PonziScheme, Finance, Fraud, SEC]
|
||||||
|
alias: ["Steven Jude Hoffenberg", "Stephen Hoffenberg"]
|
||||||
|
summary: "Founder of Towers Financial Corporation who pleaded guilty in 1995 to a roughly 475 million dollar Ponzi scheme and later claimed Jeffrey Epstein helped architect the fraud, a claim for which Epstein was never charged."
|
||||||
|
born: 1945-01-12
|
||||||
|
died: 2022-08
|
||||||
|
location: Derby, Connecticut
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Steven Jude Hoffenberg founded and ran [[Towers Financial Corporation]], a Manhattan debt-collection and securities firm that collapsed in 1993 and was later found to be one of the largest Ponzi schemes in American history before that of [[Bernard Madoff]]. He pleaded guilty in 1995 to defrauding investors of about 475 million dollars and served roughly 18 years in federal prison. He hired [[Jeffrey Epstein]] as a consultant in the late 1980s and later publicly claimed Epstein had been a co-architect of the Towers fraud.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Early Career
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Hoffenberg was born in Brooklyn in 1945 and entered the debt-collection business in New York in the 1970s, reportedly starting with a small initial investment after dropping out of college.[^6] He built Towers Financial Corporation around the practice of buying delinquent debts, including unpaid hospital bills, bank loans and telephone charges, at steep discounts and pursuing the full balances through aggressive collection.[^6] He briefly held a controlling interest in the [[New York Post]] in the early 1990s during the paper's ownership turmoil.[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Towers Financial and the Ponzi Scheme
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Towers Financial Corporation operated as a debt-collection business that bought portfolios of distressed receivables, including debts owed to hospitals and telephone companies, for fractions of their face value, while raising money from thousands of investors through unsecured promissory notes and bonds.[^1] Prosecutors and the [[Securities and Exchange Commission]] determined that the company functioned as a Ponzi scheme, using money from new investors to pay returns to earlier ones while Hoffenberg diverted proceeds.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
To finance attempted corporate takeovers, Hoffenberg directed Towers to acquire two Illinois insurance companies, United Fire Insurance Co. and Associated Life Insurance Co., in 1987, and prosecutors later found their reserves were looted in the broader fraud.[^3] The Illinois Department of Insurance, then directed by [[James Schacht]], placed the insurers into liquidation and brought a 1991 civil suit that named Jeffrey Epstein in connection with checks drawn on the companies' accounts.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The scheme operated between roughly 1988 and 1993, with claimed annual revenues approaching one billion dollars by the time of its collapse.[^1] The SEC charged Towers in February 1993, and the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in March 1993.[^2] Hoffenberg pleaded guilty in April 1995 to five criminal charges of defrauding investors of roughly 462 to 475 million dollars; in 1997 Judge [[Robert W. Sweet]] sentenced him to 20 years in prison, a one million dollar fine and roughly 463 million dollars in restitution, and he settled a related SEC civil suit for 60 million dollars.[^2] He served about 18 years and was released from federal custody in 2013.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Relationship With Jeffrey Epstein
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Hoffenberg said he hired Jeffrey Epstein around 1987 as a paid consultant, with reporting citing a salary of about 25,000 dollars per month and, in 1988, a two million dollar non-repayable loan, and he set Epstein up in offices at the [[Villard Houses]] in Manhattan.[^2] At the time Epstein was running his own consulting firm, [[International Assets Group]], from his New York apartment after leaving [[Bear Stearns]].[^3] A Towers attorney confirmed Epstein worked at the firm and recalled drafting a consulting agreement, and [[Terrence Corrigan]], a lawyer for an investor-recovery committee, said Epstein appeared on organizational charts as potentially "the number two or number three person at the firm," though the characterization was disputed.[^3] Court records and the 1991 [[Illinois Department of Insurance]] lawsuit referenced a series of checks payable to "Jeff Epstein" or "Jeff Epstein & Co." drawn on the United Fire and United Diversified accounts and totaling about 215,000 dollars.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Hoffenberg and Epstein partnered on attempted corporate takeovers in 1988, using Towers and the captive Illinois insurers as the financing vehicles, including an unsuccessful bid involving [[Pan American World Airways|Pan Am]] and an attempt targeting [[Emery Air Freight]].[^2] A Towers press release identified Epstein as "chairman of the board of directors of Intercontinental Asset Group" and a financial adviser to Towers management in connection with the Pan Am financing.[^3] The Illinois suit alleged Epstein manipulated the price of Emery stock through multiple brokerage accounts he controlled and traded without a broker's license.[^3] Epstein and Hoffenberg traveled together on Hoffenberg's private jet during this period, and Epstein left Towers before its collapse and was never charged in connection with the fraud.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Later Claims and Death
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
After his release, Hoffenberg publicly asserted that Jeffrey Epstein had been central to the Towers fraud, telling CBS News that Epstein was "my partner in what we did raising the billion dollars" and describing him as his "wingman."[^3] He claimed in interviews that Epstein had devised the failed Pan Am and Emery takeover schemes and had misappropriated proceeds from the insurance companies for personal use.[^3] Court documents filed by Hoffenberg alleged Epstein was an "architect" of the scheme, but no charges were ever brought against Epstein over Towers, and investigators said no concrete evidence directly tied him to the criminal conspiracy.[^1] Hoffenberg sued Epstein over the fraud's proceeds in 2019.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Hoffenberg involved himself in politics in his later years, including reported backing of a super PAC associated with the 2016 presidential campaign of [[Bernie Sanders]].[^5] He gave numerous media interviews after Epstein's 2019 arrest and death, presenting himself as a witness to Epstein's origins while acknowledging his own criminal history.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On August 23, 2022 his body was found in advanced decomposition at his apartment in [[Derby, Connecticut]] after a welfare check, prompted when Jeffrey Epstein accuser [[Maria Farmer]] was unable to reach him and contacted police; he was 77.[^2] Farmer told authorities Hoffenberg had recently contracted COVID-19 and had been unable to recover, and investigators estimated he had been dead for at least a week.[^7] An initial autopsy by the Connecticut Office of the Chief Medical Examiner found no signs of trauma or foul play, and police said they believed he died of natural causes pending toxicology results.[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Towers Financial Corporation," summarizing SEC findings and contemporaneous reporting on the Ponzi scheme and Epstein's disputed role. https://www.sec.gov/files/litigation/litreleases/lr15053.txt
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Jeffrey Epstein's mentor, who once ran a Ponzi scheme, was found dead. He was 77," *NPR,* 2022. https://www.npr.org/2022/08/26/1119746511/jeffrey-epstein-mentor-steven-hoffenberg-dead
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Jeffrey Epstein worked at Towers Financial with Steven Hoffenberg, who committed Ponzi scheme crimes," *CBS News,* 2019. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jeffrey-epstein-worked-at-towers-financial-with-stephen-hoffenberg-who-committed-ponzi-scheme-crimes/
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein's old boss says he knows where the mystery millions came from," *Philadelphia Inquirer,* 2019. https://www.inquirer.com/business/jeffrey-epstein-hoffenberg-trump-clinton-20190711.html
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Bernie Sanders Attracts Big Campaign Money Despite Rhetoric," *Time,* 2016. https://time.com/4141201/bernie-sanders-superpac-money/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Steven Hoffenberg: Who is the former Epstein associate and New York Post owner?," *Yahoo News,* 2019, summarizing his Brooklyn origins, the 1970s debt-collection start and the New York Post stake. https://www.yahoo.com/news/steven-hoffenberg-former-epstein-associate-230443969.html
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Who was Steven Hoffenberg? Jeffrey Epstein associate found dead in Connecticut apartment," summarizing the August 2022 welfare check, Maria Farmer's call, and the medical examiner's findings. https://www.sportskeeda.com/pop-culture/news-who-steven-hoffenberg-jeffrey-epstein-associate-found-dead-connecticut-apartment
|
||||||
|
|
@ -2,58 +2,96 @@
|
||||||
category: "Scientists & Researchers"
|
category: "Scientists & Researchers"
|
||||||
tags:
|
tags:
|
||||||
- Person
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- TimothyLeary
|
||||||
- CIA
|
- CIA
|
||||||
- MKULTRA
|
- MKULTRA
|
||||||
- LSD
|
- LSD
|
||||||
- Psilocybin
|
- Psilocybin
|
||||||
- Harvard
|
- Harvard
|
||||||
|
- Psychedelics
|
||||||
- Counterculture
|
- Counterculture
|
||||||
summary: "Harvard psychology lecturer who founded the Psilocybin Research Project in 1960, was fired by Harvard in 1963, and became the counterculture's most visible LSD advocate, operating under documented CIA surveillance while drawing on research networks whose funding traced directly to MKULTRA programs."
|
- Cyberculture
|
||||||
|
- Transhumanism
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Timothy Leary
|
||||||
|
- Tim Leary
|
||||||
|
summary: "Timothy Leary was the Harvard psychologist turned psychedelic evangelist who ran the Harvard Psilocybin Project, coined 'turn on, tune in, drop out,' operated under documented CIA surveillance while drawing on research networks whose funding traced to MKULTRA, and in his final decades became a champion of personal computers, space migration, and life extension."
|
||||||
born: 1920-10-22
|
born: 1920-10-22
|
||||||
died: 1996-05-31
|
died: 1996-05-31
|
||||||
location: Springfield, Massachusetts
|
location: "Springfield, Massachusetts; Beverly Hills, California"
|
||||||
created: 2026-06-03
|
created: 2026-06-03
|
||||||
updated: 2026-06-04
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
Timothy Leary directed clinical research at the Kaiser Foundation Hospital in [[Oakland]] from 1954 to 1959, where he published *The Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality* (1957), which became the basis for personality assessment tools subsequently used by the [[CIA]] and military. He joined [[Harvard University]] as a lecturer in 1959. That year he ate psilocybin mushrooms while on vacation in [[Mexico]], an experience he later described as the most profound of his life, and returned to Harvard with the conviction that psychedelics represented a fundamental tool for psychological research.[^1]
|
|
||||||
|
Timothy Francis Leary (October 22, 1920 to May 31, 1996) was an American psychologist who became the most prominent public advocate of psychedelic drugs in the 1960s and, in his final decades, a promoter of personal computers, space colonization, and radical life extension. Trained as a research psychologist and briefly a respected figure in personality theory, he ran the [[Harvard Psilocybin Project]] from 1960 until his dismissal in 1963, popularized the slogan "turn on, tune in, drop out," and was described by [[Richard Nixon]], according to widely repeated accounts, as "the most dangerous man in America." He drew, often unknowingly, on drug-research networks whose funding traced back to the CIA's [[MKULTRA]] program, and was himself placed under documented [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] surveillance. In his final decades he promoted the personal computer as a tool of consciousness expansion and became a celebrated figure in the [[Transhumanism|transhumanist]] and cyberculture scenes of the 1980s and 1990s.[^1][^2][^12]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### From Personality Psychology to Harvard
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Leary was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, the only child of a Catholic family, attended the College of the Holy Cross, was expelled from the United States Military Academy at West Point after a cheating-and-honor dispute, and finished his bachelor's degree at the University of Alabama. He took a doctorate in psychology at the [[University of California, Berkeley]], in 1950, and his early academic work was conventional and well regarded: he directed clinical research at the Kaiser Foundation Hospital in [[Oakland]] from 1954 to 1959 and published *The Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality* (1957), whose circular model of personality, the "interpersonal circumplex," remained influential in clinical assessment and became the basis for personality-assessment tools later used by the CIA and the military. He joined the faculty of [[Harvard University]]'s Center for Research in Personality in 1959.[^1][^3][^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The turn came in the summer of 1960, when Leary ate psilocybin mushrooms in Cuernavaca, Mexico, an experience he later called more profound than anything in his prior training. Back at Harvard he and his colleague [[Richard Alpert]], later known as Ram Dass, founded a research program to study the psychological effects of psilocybin, which the Swiss firm [[Sandoz]] supplied in synthesized form.[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### The Harvard Psilocybin Project
|
### The Harvard Psilocybin Project
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Leary established the Harvard Psilocybin Project in fall 1960, obtaining psilocybin free from Sandoz Pharmaceuticals. Sessions were conducted in both formal research settings and informal apartment gatherings with music and candlelight. His collaborator was [[Richard Alpert]], an assistant professor of education and psychology. Participants in the project's broader circle included [[Allen Ginsberg]] and [[Peter Orlovsky]] (who visited Leary's house in Newton, Massachusetts in December 1960), and [[Aldous Huxley]], then a visiting lecturer at [[MIT]]. Huxley advised Leary to offer the experience to "talented, well-born, intelligent rich" and to work discreetly within institutions rather than provoking public controversy.[^1]
|
Leary established the project in the fall of 1960, obtaining psilocybin free from Sandoz and running sessions in both formal research settings and informal apartment gatherings with music and candlelight. The studies, by later methodological standards, blurred the line between researcher and subject, with the experimenters frequently taking the drugs alongside their volunteers. [[The Concord Prison Experiment]] (1961 to 1963) administered psilocybin to inmates to test whether the experience reduced recidivism, and the [[Marsh Chapel Experiment]], or "Good Friday Experiment," run by the graduate student [[Walter Pahnke]] in 1962, tested whether the drug could induce genuine mystical experience.[^4][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
His curiosity had been stimulated by [[R. Gordon Wasson|Gordon Wasson]]'s 1957 *Life* magazine article about the discovery of psilocybin mushrooms, an expedition that had been partially facilitated by CIA contractor [[James Moore]], who accompanied Wasson's 1956 Mexico expedition while on the Agency payroll. Soon Leary was quoting in his own published work from CIA contractor [[Harold Abramson]] and others, brought together for scholarly drug conferences by the sometime Agency conduit, the [[Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation|Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation]]. From his base at Harvard, Leary became the most vocal and famous advocate of psychedelic drugs, preaching the gospel of consciousness expansion.[^2]
|
The project's advisers and broader circle traced, in several cases, to networks the CIA had funded. [[Aldous Huxley]], then a visiting lecturer at the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]], urged Leary to offer the experience to "talented, well-born, intelligent rich" people and to work discreetly within institutions rather than provoke public controversy; the poet [[Allen Ginsberg]] and [[Peter Orlovsky]], who visited Leary's house in Newton, Massachusetts in December 1960, pressed the opposite case, that the drugs should be distributed as widely as possible. [[Henry Murray]], chairman of Harvard's Department of Social Relations, who had run the personality-assessment section of the [[Office of Strategic Services|OSS]] during World War II, approved the project and volunteered for it. Leary's own interest had been stimulated by [[R. Gordon Wasson|Gordon Wasson]]'s 1957 *Life* article on Mexican psilocybin mushrooms, an expedition partly facilitated by the CIA contractor [[James Moore]], and he cited in his published work the research of the CIA contractor [[Harold Abramson]] and others brought together for drug conferences by the [[Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation]], a sometime Agency conduit.[^11][^12]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
[[Henry Murray]], chairman of the Harvard Department of Social Relations who had run the Personality Assessments section of the [[Office of Strategic Services|OSS]] during World War II, approved and volunteered for Leary's psilocybin research project.[^1]
|
### The Good Friday Experiment
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### The Good Friday Experiment (1962)
|
In collaboration with the doctoral candidate Walter Pahnke, Leary administered psilocybin double-blind to ten theology students and professors during a Good Friday service at Marsh Chapel at [[Boston University]] in 1962, with ten others receiving a placebo. Nine of the ten psilocybin recipients reported intense religious experiences, and Pahnke's dissertation concluded that the experiences were "indistinguishable from, if not identical with," classical mystical experience.[^5][^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
In collaboration with doctoral candidate Walter Pahnke, Leary administered psilocybin double-blind to ten theology students and professors during a Good Friday service at Marsh Chapel at [[Boston University]] in 1962, with ten others receiving placebos. Nine of the ten psilocybin recipients reported intense religious experiences. Pahnke's dissertation concluded the experiences were "indistinguishable from, if not identical with," classical mystical experience.[^1]
|
The experiment became one of the most cited studies in the psychology of religion, and a long-term follow-up decades later found that most of the original subjects still regarded it as among the most meaningful experiences of their lives. It also exemplified the methodological looseness that alarmed Harvard, since the researchers themselves participated and the setting was a working religious service rather than a laboratory.[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Harvard Firing (1963)
|
### The Harvard Firing
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Tension with Harvard administrators escalated through 1962, triggered in part by a sensationalized *Harvard Crimson* account of a faculty meeting that prompted an FDA investigation. On May 6, 1963, the Harvard Corporation voted to relieve Leary from teaching duty and terminate his salary, on grounds that he had failed to keep classroom appointments. Alpert was separately dismissed on May 27, 1963, the first Harvard faculty firing in the twentieth century, for giving psilocybin to an undergraduate student in an off-campus apartment.[^1]
|
Tension with Harvard administrators escalated through 1962, triggered in part by a sensationalized *Harvard Crimson* account of a faculty meeting that prompted a Food and Drug Administration investigation. On May 6, 1963, the Harvard Corporation voted to relieve Leary of his teaching duties and terminate his salary on the grounds that he had failed to keep classroom appointments. Alpert was separately dismissed on May 27, 1963, for giving psilocybin to an undergraduate in an off-campus apartment, making the two the first Harvard faculty fired in the twentieth century for such reasons. By then federal regulators were tightening control of the drugs, and Leary's work moved outside the university entirely.[^1][^4][^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### IFIF and the Millbrook Period
|
### IFIF, Millbrook, and the League for Spiritual Discovery
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
After leaving Harvard, Leary and Alpert founded the International Federation for Internal Freedom (IFIF), which attracted approximately 3,000 dues-paying members. An attempt to operate a summer session in Zihuatanejo, Mexico was shut down after approximately six weeks by the Mexican government following negative press coverage. Billy Hitchcock, grandson of Gulf Oil founder William Larimer Hitchcock, provided his 4,000-acre Millbrook estate in Dutchess County, [[New York]], at $500 per month. Leary established the Castalia Foundation there and ran high-dose group sessions, published *The Psychedelic Review*, and hosted a wide circle of visitors including Charles Mingus, Alan Watts, R.D. Laing, and journalist Paul Krassner. In April 1966, Dutchess County prosecutor [[G. Gordon Liddy]] led an early-morning raid on the mansion, finding only a small amount of marijuana; the bust was dismissed when the Supreme Court ruled suspects must be informed of their rights upon arrest.[^1]
|
After leaving Harvard, Leary and Alpert founded the International Federation for Internal Freedom (IFIF), which attracted roughly 3,000 dues-paying members, and attempted a summer session in Zihuatanejo, Mexico, that the Mexican government shut down after about six weeks following negative press. The community then settled at a large estate in Millbrook, New York, lent by Billy Hitchcock, an heir to the Mellon and Gulf Oil fortune, who provided the roughly 4,000-acre property in Dutchess County for about 500 dollars a month. There Leary ran the [[Castalia Foundation]], named for the intellectual colony in Hermann Hesse's *The Glass Bead Game*, published *The Psychedelic Review*, hosted high-dose group sessions and a wide circle of visitors including Charles Mingus, [[Alan Watts]], R.D. Laing, and the journalist Paul Krassner, and in 1966 founded a quasi-religion, the [[League for Spiritual Discovery]], whose initials spelled [[LSD]] and which he used to argue for the sacramental, constitutionally protected use of psychedelics.[^3][^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Legal Troubles and Prison
|
With [[Ralph Metzner]] and Alpert he adapted the *Tibetan Book of the Dead* into *The Psychedelic Experience* (1964), a manual for guiding drug sessions that [[John Lennon]] later cited as the source for the song "Tomorrow Never Knows." The Millbrook period coincided with the criminalization of LSD, banned in California in 1966 and federally soon after, and with mounting legal pressure: in April 1966 the Dutchess County assistant district attorney [[G. Gordon Liddy]], later of [[Watergate]], led an early-morning raid on the estate that turned up only a small amount of marijuana, a charge later dismissed. Leary's public role hardened into that of a movement figurehead, the "high priest" of the psychedelic movement, a role he both cultivated and was assigned by a hostile press.[^6][^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
In December 1965, Leary was arrested at the Laredo, Texas border crossing on discovery of marijuana. He was convicted and faced a potential 30-year sentence. In December 1968, a second arrest followed in Laguna Beach, California. Convicted in February 1970 on both the Laredo and California charges, he received a combined 20-year sentence and was held at San Luis Obispo minimum security prison. On September 12, 1970, he escaped by traversing a highwire across the prison fence and was extracted by members of the Weather Underground. He eventually traveled to Algeria, where he expected to work with Eldridge Cleaver's Black Panther office but was placed under effective house arrest by the Panthers over his LSD advocacy. He subsequently traveled to Switzerland before his arrest in Kabul in 1972 and deportation to Los Angeles, where bail was set at $5,000,000, then the highest set for an American citizen. He testified as a federal informant in exchange for reduced sentencing and was paroled in 1976.[^1]
|
### Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Leary gave the counterculture its best-known slogan at the Human Be-In held in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco on January 14, 1967, where he told a crowd of tens of thousands to "turn on, tune in, drop out." He later complained that the phrase was widely misunderstood as a call to passive disengagement, explaining that he meant by it to activate one's neural equipment, to interact harmoniously with the world, and to detach from involuntary commitments, not to drop out of school or society. The line nonetheless became a shorthand for the era and fixed Leary's image as an apostle of dropping out.[^2][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Legal Troubles, Prison, Escape, and Exile
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Leary was first arrested in December 1965 at the Laredo, Texas border crossing on a marijuana charge that carried a potential thirty-year sentence; he fought it to the Supreme Court, which in *Leary v. United States* (1969) struck down the Marihuana Tax Act on self-incrimination grounds. A second arrest followed in Laguna Beach, California, in December 1968, and in February 1970 he was convicted on both the Laredo and California charges and given a combined twenty-year term at the California Men's Colony near San Luis Obispo. On September 12, 1970, he escaped over a highwire across the prison fence in an extraction arranged through the radical [[Weather Underground]], who were paid by the psychedelic-dealing [[Brotherhood of Eternal Love]].[^1][^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
He fled abroad, first to [[Algeria]], where the exiled [[Black Panther]] leader [[Eldridge Cleaver]] briefly held him under a kind of house arrest over his LSD advocacy, then to [[Switzerland]], [[Austria]], and [[Afghanistan]], where American agents seized him in Kabul in 1973 and returned him to Los Angeles, where bail was set at five million dollars, then the highest ever set for an American citizen. Facing decades of confinement, he provided information to federal investigators about the radicals and lawyers who had aided his escape, a cooperation that drew lasting bitterness from former allies, though prosecutors said it led to no convictions. He was paroled in 1976 by Governor [[Jerry Brown]]. The prison years produced a body of idiosyncratic writing in which Leary recast his ideas in the language of neurology and futurism, most notably the "eight-circuit model of consciousness," set out in *Exo-Psychology* (1977, later revised as *Info-Psychology*).[^1][^3][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### CIA Surveillance
|
### CIA Surveillance
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
On November 1, 1963, the CIA issued a memorandum ordering all domestic field offices to report immediately on any involvement with Leary, Alpert, or the International Federation for Internal Freedom. The monitoring preceded Leary's public emergence as an LSD spokesman by several years, covering the period when his research was still primarily academic. Neither the specific content of any CIA reporting on Leary nor any operational use of surveillance findings has been declassified.[^2][^3]
|
On November 1, 1963, the CIA issued a memorandum ordering all domestic field offices to report immediately on any involvement with Leary, Alpert, or the International Federation for Internal Freedom. The monitoring preceded Leary's public emergence as an LSD spokesman by several years, covering the period when his research was still primarily academic. Neither the specific content of any CIA reporting on Leary nor any operational use of surveillance findings has been declassified.[^12][^13]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Leary's research network traced back to CIA-funded programs in ways he likely did not know at the time. Bateson, the anthropologist introduced to [[LSD]] by CIA contractor Harold Abramson, arranged Ginsberg's first LSD experience through a federally funded research program. Ginsberg brought that experience to Leary's house. The Macy Foundation, which had served as a CIA conduit for behavioral research conferences, hosted the scholars whose published work Leary cited. The Geschickter Fund, another CIA front organization, financed related research at overlapping institutions.[^2]
|
Leary's research network traced back to CIA-funded programs in ways he likely did not know at the time. The anthropologist [[Gregory Bateson]], introduced to LSD by Harold Abramson, arranged Ginsberg's first LSD experience through a federally funded research program, and Ginsberg carried that experience to Leary's house. The Macy Foundation, which had served as a CIA conduit for behavioral-research conferences, hosted the scholars whose published work Leary cited, and the Geschickter Fund, another CIA front, financed related research at overlapping institutions.[^12]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Cyberdelic Turn
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
From the late 1970s Leary promoted a futurist program he summarized with the acronym SMI2LE, for Space Migration, Intelligence Increase, and Life Extension, holding that humanity's next evolutionary step lay in leaving the planet, raising intelligence by technological means, and defeating death. In the 1980s and 1990s he recast the personal computer as the successor to the psychedelic drug, telling interviewers that "the PC is the LSD of the 1990s" and adopting "think for yourself, question authority" as a personal motto. He designed early interactive software, performed spoken-word and multimedia shows, appeared at technology conferences, and became a fixture of the "cyberdelic" scene around *Mondo 2000* magazine and the emerging digital culture of the San Francisco Bay Area.[^2][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Leary was associated with the [[Extropianism|extropian]] movement around [[Max More]], shared its interest in cryonics and human enhancement, and at one point planned to have his body or head cryonically preserved. Diagnosed with inoperable prostate cancer, he made his dying a public performance, documenting his decline on an early website and declaring his intent to script his own death; he ultimately decided against cryonic suspension after a falling-out with the provider, and after his death on May 31, 1996, a portion of his ashes was launched into orbit in April 1997 aboard a Celestis rocket that also carried remains of the *Star Trek* creator Gene Roddenberry.[^9][^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### The Finders
|
### The Finders
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
[[Marion David Pettie]], founder of [[The Finders]], stated that he and Leary had a close connection during the 1960s. According to Pettie, when Leary was based in New York, he would send people down to Pettie's communal property in [[Virginia]], and when people at Pettie's place grew tired of something, they would go up to Leary's. Leary gave Pettie LSD, though Pettie claimed he never took it, keeping it in his refrigerator. A person connected with Leary accidentally burned down a house on Pettie's property while installing a sauna, destroying the LSD in the process.[^4]
|
[[Marion David Pettie]], the founder of [[The Finders]], stated that he and Leary had a close connection during the 1960s. According to Pettie, when Leary was based in New York he would send people down to Pettie's communal property in [[Virginia]], and when people at Pettie's place grew tired of something they would go up to Leary's. Leary gave Pettie LSD, which Pettie claimed he never took, keeping it in his refrigerator until a person connected with Leary accidentally burned down a house on the property while installing a sauna, destroying the LSD in the process.[^14]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Footnotes
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
[^1]: Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain, *Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond*. Grove Press, 1985. Chapters 3 and 4.
|
[^1]: "Timothy Leary," *Encyclopædia Britannica,* on the 1920 birth, the Berkeley doctorate, the Harvard appointment and 1963 dismissal, the legal battles, and the death. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Timothy-Leary
|
||||||
[^2]: John D. Marks, *The Search for the Manchurian Candidate*. Times Books, 1979. Chapter 7.
|
[^2]: "Timothy Leary, Pied Piper Of Psychedelic 60's, Dies at 75," *The New York Times,* June 1, 1996, on "turn on, tune in, drop out," the Nixon characterization, and the later computer advocacy. https://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/01/us/timothy-leary-pied-piper-of-psychedelic-60-s-dies-at-75.html
|
||||||
[^3]: CIA memorandum: "International Federation for Internal Freedom (IFIF), ALPERT, Richard, LEARY, Timothy," November 1, 1963. Obtained via FOIA by John Marks, August 1977.
|
[^3]: Greenfield, Robert. *Timothy Leary: A Biography.* Harcourt, 2006, on the early life, the Millbrook years, the escape and exile, and the cooperation with investigators.
|
||||||
[^4]: Kenn Thomas and Len Bracken, "The Finders' Keeper," *Steamshovel Press* #16, 1998.
|
[^4]: "The Harvard Psilocybin Project," on the 1960 to 1963 studies, the Concord Prison and Marsh Chapel experiments, and the 1963 firings; see also Leary, Timothy. *High Priest.* World Publishing, 1968.
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Pahnke, Walter N. "Drugs and Mysticism: An Analysis of the Relationship between Psychedelic Drugs and the Mystical Consciousness," doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 1963, on the Good Friday Experiment.
|
||||||
|
[^6]: Leary, Timothy, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert. *The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead.* University Books, 1964.
|
||||||
|
[^7]: *Leary v. United States,* 395 U.S. 6 (1969); and Leary, Timothy. *Flashbacks: A Personal and Cultural History of an Era.* Tarcher, 1983, on the Human Be-In and the meaning of the slogan.
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Leary, Timothy. *Exo-Psychology: A Manual on the Use of the Human Nervous System According to the Instructions of the Manufacturers* (1977), revised as *Info-Psychology* (1987), on the eight-circuit model.
|
||||||
|
[^9]: "Timothy Leary's Last Trip," *Wired,* and Leary, Timothy. *Chaos and Cyber Culture.* Ronin Publishing, 1994, on SMI2LE, "the PC is the LSD of the 1990s," and the cyberdelic period. https://www.wired.com/1996/05/leary-2/
|
||||||
|
[^10]: "A Send-Off Into Space for Leary and Others," *The New York Times,* April 22, 1997, on the Celestis launch carrying the ashes of Leary and Gene Roddenberry. https://www.nytimes.com/1997/04/22/us/a-send-off-into-space-for-leary-and-others.html
|
||||||
|
[^11]: Lee, Martin A., and Bruce Shlain. *Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond.* Grove Press, 1985, chapters 3 and 4, on the Kaiser research and personality tools, Huxley's advice, Henry Murray's OSS role, IFIF and the Zihuatanejo session, the Millbrook estate, the visitors, and the Liddy raid.
|
||||||
|
[^12]: Marks, John D. *The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control.* Times Books, 1979, chapter 7, on the Wasson and James Moore expedition, Harold Abramson and the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, the CIA surveillance of Leary, Bateson and Ginsberg's first LSD experience, and the Geschickter Fund.
|
||||||
|
[^13]: CIA memorandum, "International Federation for Internal Freedom (IFIF), ALPERT, Richard, LEARY, Timothy," November 1, 1963, obtained via FOIA by John Marks, August 1977.
|
||||||
|
[^14]: Thomas, Kenn, and Len Bracken. "The Finders' Keeper," *Steamshovel Press* no. 16, 1998, on Marion David Pettie's account of his connection with Leary.
|
||||||
|
|
|
||||||
62
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Timothy May.md
Normal file
62
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Timothy May.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,62 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Technologists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- TimothyMay
|
||||||
|
- Cypherpunks
|
||||||
|
- CryptoAnarchy
|
||||||
|
- Cryptography
|
||||||
|
- Libertarianism
|
||||||
|
- Extropianism
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Tim May
|
||||||
|
- Timothy C. May
|
||||||
|
summary: "Timothy May was a former Intel physicist who wrote 'The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto,' cofounded the cypherpunks mailing list, and devised the BlackNet thought experiment."
|
||||||
|
born: 1951-12-21
|
||||||
|
died: 2018-12-13
|
||||||
|
location: "Santa Cruz, California"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Timothy C. May (1951 to 2018), known as Tim May, was an American engineer and writer who became the leading theorist of crypto-anarchism and a founder of the [[Cypherpunks]] movement. He wrote "The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto" in 1988, cofounded the cypherpunks mailing list in 1992 with [[Eric Hughes]] and [[John Gilmore]], and authored the long crypto-anarchist FAQ known as [[The Cyphernomicon|the Cyphernomicon]]. He was an [[Extropianism|extropian]] and a radical libertarian who held that strong encryption and untraceable digital money would dissolve the power of the state over economic and personal life.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Intel Career
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
May took a physics degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1974 and joined [[Intel]] the same year as a staff engineer in its memory products division. In February 1977 he traced random single-bit failures in dynamic memory to alpha particles emitted by trace uranium and thorium in the ceramic chip packaging, which passed through the silicon storage nodes and deposited enough charge to flip a stored bit. He and Murray H. Woods published the finding as "Alpha-Particle-Induced Soft Errors in Dynamic Memories" in IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices in January 1979, and the two received the IEEE W.R.G. Baker Award in 1981. The "soft error" mechanism they identified became a permanent design constraint on memory and logic, mitigated through high-purity packaging materials, polyimide die coatings, larger per-cell charge, and error-correcting codes.[^7][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
May cashed in his Intel stock options and retired in 1986 at the age of thirty-four, devoting himself thereafter to reading and writing on cryptography, physics, mathematics, and politics.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Crypto-Anarchism
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
May wrote "The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto" in 1988 and distributed it at the Crypto '88 and Hackers conferences, recirculating it to the cypherpunks list in 1992. It opened "A specter is haunting the modern world, the specter of crypto anarchy" and argued that cryptographic methods would "fundamentally alter the nature of corporations and of government interference in economic transactions." His 1994 Cyphernomicon laid out the body of crypto-anarchist thought for the list, and he was its most prolific contributor. He summarized his own politics as "keep your hands off my stuff," with the core of libertarianism reduced to "leave me alone."[^2][^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
May drew an explicit parallel between cryptography and the printing press, arguing that just as printing eroded the power of medieval guilds and the social structures around them, public-key cryptography would erode the state's power over economic transactions and the flow of information. He anticipated that this would enable not only privacy but black markets, tax evasion, and the collapse of national borders as constraints on commerce, outcomes he welcomed rather than feared. At the first cypherpunks meeting he ran a "crypto-anarchy game" assigning attendees the roles of citizens and federal agents to dramatize the contest between surveillance and untraceable communication.[^4][^12]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### BlackNet
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
May created [[BlackNet]] as a thought experiment in 1993, an imagined anonymous marketplace in which any information, including trade secrets and classified material, could be bought and sold using anonymous remailers, message pools, and untraceable digital cash, with "nation-states, export laws, patent laws, [and] national security considerations" treated as relics of a pre-cyberspace era. The seed document opened, "Your name has come to our attention. We have reason to believe you may be interested in the products and services our new organization, BlackNet, has to offer," solicited "trade secrets, processes, production methods (esp. in semiconductors)" and "new product plans, from children's toys to cruise missiles," and proposed to pay sellers in an internal currency it called "CryptoCredits." May did not post it to Usenet himself; he leaked it via remailer to the cypherpunks list, attaching a 1024-bit PGP key under the BlackNet name, and Lance Detweiler reposted it to dozens of newsgroups before May admitted authorship.[^9][^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Cyphernomicon also discussed anonymous information markets and, in its more extreme passages, assassination markets, a concept the cypherpunk [[Jim Bell]] developed separately as "assassination politics" in an essay serialized from April 1995. Bell's scheme offered a prize to whoever correctly "predicted" the death of a listed target, settled through public-key encryption and anonymous digital cash routed across a cascade of remailers, reusing the same cryptographic toolkit as BlackNet.[^4][^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Later Views and Death
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
After the cypherpunks faded in the early 2000s, May posted to other online groups and expressed racist sentiments, and the Cyphernomicon itself contained disparaging language about "nonproductive" citizens. He died of natural causes at his home near [[Santa Cruz]], California, in December 2018 at the age of sixty-six, days before his sixty-seventh birthday.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Asked by CoinDesk in October 2018 to mark the tenth anniversary of the Bitcoin white paper, May sent back a thirty-page critique of the cryptocurrency industry that had grown from cypherpunk ideas. He wrote that "I sure don't think it involved bitcoin exchanges that have draconian rules about KYC, AML, passports, freezes on accounts and laws about reporting 'suspicious activity' to the local secret police," warned that the talk of "governance" and "regulation" risked creating "a surveillance state, a dossier society," and said of the speculative mania, "I think Satoshi would barf." The cryptographers around him, including [[Hal Finney]], [[Nick Szabo]], and [[Wei Dai]], produced the digital-cash designs that preceded [[Bitcoin]], and May is frequently invoked as a forerunner of the cryptocurrency movement and the [[Satoshi Nakamoto|Satoshi]]-era crypto-libertarian politics.[^4][^13]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Tim May, Father of 'Crypto Anarchy,' Is Dead at 66," *Reason,* December 2018, on his Intel career, the alpha particle work, his 1986 retirement, the manifesto, the cypherpunks, BlackNet, and his politics. https://reason.com/2018/12/16/tim-may-influential-writer-on-crypto-ana/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Influential cypherpunk and crypto-anarchist Tim May dies aged 67," *The Register,* December 2018. https://www.theregister.com/2018/12/17/timothy_c_may/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: May, Timothy C. "The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto," 1988, recirculated 1992. https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/crypto-anarchy.html
|
||||||
|
[^4]: May, Timothy C. *The Cyphernomicon,* 1994. https://nakamotoinstitute.org/static/docs/cyphernomicon.txt
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Dark Markets: Tim May's BlackNet," *Chainrift Research,* on the BlackNet thought experiment and anonymous information markets. https://medium.com/chainrift-research/dark-markets-tim-mays-blacknet-7b7738e0617c
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "The Extropian Roots of Bitcoin," *CCN,* on May, the extropians, and the cypherpunk forerunners of Bitcoin. https://www.ccn.com/extropian-roots-bitcoin/
|
||||||
|
[^7]: May, Timothy C., and Murray H. Woods. "Alpha-Particle-Induced Soft Errors in Dynamic Memories," *IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices,* vol. 26, no. 1, January 1979, pp. 2-9. DOI: 10.1109/T-ED.1979.19370.
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Baumann, Robert. "Soft Errors in Advanced Computer Systems," *IEEE Design & Test of Computers,* May-June 2005, on the alpha-particle soft-error mechanism, critical charge, and mitigation. "IEEE W.R.G. Baker Award," IEEE Engineering and Technology History Wiki, listing the 1981 award to May and Woods. https://ethw.org/IEEE_W.R.G._Baker_Award
|
||||||
|
[^9]: May, Timothy C. "Introduction to BlackNet," 1993, archived at MIT CSAIL. https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/crypto/cypherpunks/blacknet.txt
|
||||||
|
[^10]: May, Timothy C. "True Nyms and Crypto Anarchy," in *True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier,* ed. James Frenkel, Tor, 2001, on the BlackNet leak via remailer, the Detweiler repost, and May's admission of authorship. https://gwern.net/doc/bitcoin/1996-may.pdf
|
||||||
|
[^11]: Bell, Jim. "Assassination Politics," Part 1, April 1995. https://jrbooksonline.com/PDF_Books/AP.pdf
|
||||||
|
[^12]: May, Timothy C. "The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto," 1988, on the printing-press analogy and the dissolution of state control over transactions; and *The Cyphernomicon,* 1994, on the crypto-anarchy game. https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/crypto-anarchy.html
|
||||||
|
[^13]: "Enough With the ICO-Me-So-Horny-Get-Rich-Quick-Lambo Crypto," *CoinDesk,* October 19, 2018, on May's KYC, AML, and "surveillance state" critique and the "Satoshi would barf" remark. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2018/10/19/enough-with-the-ico-me-so-horny-get-rich-quick-lambo-crypto
|
||||||
58
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/William MacAskill.md
Normal file
58
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/William MacAskill.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,58 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "AI & Effective Altruism"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- EffectiveAltruism
|
||||||
|
- Longtermism
|
||||||
|
- Oxford
|
||||||
|
- SamBankmanFried
|
||||||
|
- FTX
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Will MacAskill
|
||||||
|
- William David MacAskill
|
||||||
|
summary: "William MacAskill is a Scottish moral philosopher at Oxford who cofounded effective altruism through Giving What We Can, 80,000 Hours, and the Centre for Effective Altruism, wrote the longtermist book What We Owe the Future, recruited Sam Bankman-Fried into earning-to-give, and resigned from the FTX Future Fund when the exchange collapsed in 2022."
|
||||||
|
born: 1987-03-24
|
||||||
|
location: "Oxford, England"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
William MacAskill (born March 24, 1987) is a Scottish moral philosopher and an associate professor at the [[University of Oxford]] who is one of the originators of the [[Effective Altruism]] movement. He cofounded its principal organizations, popularized the philosophy of [[Longtermism|longtermism]] in his 2022 book *What We Owe the Future*, and recruited the cryptocurrency entrepreneur [[Sam Bankman-Fried]] into the movement's "earning to give" strategy. When Bankman-Fried's [[FTX]] exchange collapsed in 2022, MacAskill resigned from the FTX Future Fund advisory board he had helped lead, and the fraud became the central reputational event of his career.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Oxford and the Founding of Effective Altruism
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Born William Crouch in [[Glasgow]], MacAskill took a BA in philosophy at Jesus College, [[Cambridge]] in 2008 and a BPhil and DPhil at Oxford, completing the doctorate at St Anne's College in 2014 under [[John Broome]] and [[Krister Bykvist]]. In 2009, as a graduate student, he and the philosopher [[Toby Ord]] cofounded [[Giving What We Can]], a society whose members pledge to donate at least ten percent of their income to the most cost-effective charities. In 2011 he cofounded [[80,000 Hours]], which advises on high-impact careers, with [[Benjamin Todd]], and the two organizations were placed under an umbrella body, the [[Centre for Effective Altruism]], the same year. MacAskill's 2015 book *Doing Good Better* served as the movement's popular introduction.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Born William Crouch, he and his wife the philosopher Amanda Hall married in 2013 and adopted the surname MacAskill, her grandmother's maiden name; after their 2015 divorce she became Amanda Askell and went on to lead personality-alignment work at [[Anthropic]]. The Centre for Effective Altruism and 80,000 Hours were folded under the umbrella charity [[Effective Ventures]], one of the institutions that had to repay FTX money after the collapse, returning 26,786,503 dollars to the bankruptcy estate in 2024 and spinning its constituent projects out as independent legal entities. MacAskill held a post at Oxford's [[Global Priorities Institute]] and later joined the research nonprofit Forethought, where in March 2025 he and Fin Moorhouse published "Preparing for the Intelligence Explosion," arguing that AI could compress a century of change into a decade and that society should plan now for the resulting upheavals.[^9][^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Longtermism and What We Owe the Future
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
MacAskill's work moved with the movement toward longtermism, the view he defined as "the idea that positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority of our time." His 2022 book *What We Owe the Future* argued that because future people vastly outnumber the living, shaping the far future, including by reducing the risk of human extinction from advanced artificial intelligence, is a moral priority of the first order. The book was promoted heavily, with appearances including *The Daily Show*, and arrived alongside the academic longtermism of [[Nick Bostrom]] and the [[Future of Humanity Institute]]. MacAskill has stated that he gives away half his income.[^4][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The promotional campaign behind *What We Owe the Future* was unusually expensive for a philosophy book, with a marketing budget reported in the millions of dollars, much of it drawn from effective-altruism funders including the [[FTX Future Fund]]. The book reached the *New York Times* bestseller list, and MacAskill appeared on *The Daily Show* and on the cover of *TIME* in August 2022, weeks before FTX collapsed. Critics including the philosopher [[Émile P. Torres]] argued that *What We Owe the Future* downplayed how far the longtermist framework, taken seriously, could license sacrificing present welfare for speculative future populations.[^5][^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Recruitment of Sam Bankman-Fried
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 2012 MacAskill spoke at the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]], where Bankman-Fried, then a physics undergraduate, heard him present the earning-to-give idea: that a person can do more good by maximizing income and donating it than by direct charitable work. MacAskill advised Bankman-Fried to pursue high-paying quantitative trading, and Bankman-Fried went to [[Jane Street Capital]] before founding [[Alameda Research]] and FTX. He became the movement's largest single funder. MacAskill served as an unpaid adviser to the FTX Future Fund, announced in 2022, which directed FTX money to longtermist and AI-safety causes.[^6][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
MacAskill stayed close to Bankman-Fried as the fortune grew. He introduced Bankman-Fried to Elon Musk in 2022 in an attempt to interest the entrepreneur in a joint bid for Twitter, a text exchange that surfaced in the discovery for Musk's later Twitter litigation. After the collapse, federal prosecutors named MacAskill in court filings as one of the public figures Bankman-Fried had cultivated, and the Future Fund's leadership conceded it had relied on a benefactor whose business it did not scrutinize.[^7][^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The FTX Collapse and Fallout
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
A March 2023 *TIME* investigation reported that effective-altruism leaders, MacAskill among them, had been warned about Bankman-Fried's conduct years before the collapse. When FTX failed in November 2022, the entire Future Fund team, including [[Nick Beckstead]] and [[Leopold Aschenbrenner]], resigned, stating they had been "shocked" and condemning any deception by FTX leadership "in the strongest possible terms." Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud in November 2023. The episode destroyed the movement's largest funding source, drew scrutiny to MacAskill's role in shaping Bankman-Fried's worldview, and discredited effective altruism's public standing.[^2][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The *TIME* account stated that figures connected to the movement, including the entrepreneurs Tara Mac Aulay and others who had worked with Bankman-Fried at Alameda Research in 2018, had raised concerns about his honesty and management directly to MacAskill years before FTX's rise. MacAskill issued a public statement after the collapse saying that if Bankman-Fried's conduct was as alleged he had been "completely deceived," that he felt "blindsided," and that the fraud betrayed everything effective altruism stood for. He largely withdrew from public commentary for a period before re-emerging through Forethought to focus on the governance of advanced AI rather than on the cause-prioritization and earning-to-give framing he had built the movement on.[^8][^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "William MacAskill," EA Forum topic page, on the 1987 birth, Cambridge and Oxford degrees, and the founding of Giving What We Can, 80,000 Hours, and the Centre for Effective Altruism. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/topics/william-macaskill
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Sam Bankman-Fried's 'Effective Altruism' Team Resigns Amid FTX Meltdown," *Gizmodo,* November 2022. https://gizmodo.com/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-effective-altruism-crypto-1849773116
|
||||||
|
[^3]: MacAskill, William. *Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference.* Gotham Books, 2015.
|
||||||
|
[^4]: MacAskill, William. *What We Owe the Future.* Basic Books, 2022.
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Giving on the Edge: Effective Altruism's Post-SBF Comeback," *The Hollywood Reporter,* on the *What We Owe the Future* promotion and the 50-percent giving claim. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/effective-altruism-sam-bankman-fried-comeback-1236327219/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Sam Bankman-Fried," 80,000 Hours profile, on the MIT talk and Bankman-Fried's adoption of earning-to-give and route to Jane Street Capital. https://80000hours.org/stories/sam-bankman-fried/
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Who Is William MacAskill, the Oxford Philosopher Who Shaped Sam Bankman-Fried's Worldview?" Yahoo Finance, 2022. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/william-macaskill-oxford-philosopher-shaped-145807409.html
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "Exclusive: Effective Altruist Leaders Were Warned About Sam Bankman-Fried Years Before FTX Collapsed," *TIME,* March 2023. https://time.com/6262810/sam-bankman-fried-effective-altruism-alameda-ftx/
|
||||||
|
[^9]: "EV updates: FTX settlement and the future of EV," EA Forum, on Effective Ventures' 26,786,503-dollar repayment and the spinning-out of its projects; "William MacAskill" and "Amanda Askell," on the 2013 marriage, the adopted surname, and the 2015 divorce. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HjsfHwqasyQMWRzZN/ev-updates-ftx-settlement-and-the-future-of-ev
|
||||||
|
[^10]: MacAskill, William, and Fin Moorhouse. "Preparing for the Intelligence Explosion," Forethought, March 11, 2025. https://www.forethought.org/research/preparing-for-the-intelligence-explosion
|
||||||
|
[^11]: "Sam Bankman-Fried, Elon Musk, and a secret text," *Semafor,* November 22, 2022, on MacAskill's March 2022 introduction of Bankman-Fried to Musk over a joint Twitter bid. https://www.semafor.com/article/11/22/2022/sam-bankman-fried-elon-and-a-secret-text
|
||||||
71
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Carl Schmitt.md
Normal file
71
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Carl Schmitt.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,71 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Scientists & Researchers"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- CarlSchmitt
|
||||||
|
- PoliticalTheology
|
||||||
|
- Jurisprudence
|
||||||
|
- Nazism
|
||||||
|
- Katechon
|
||||||
|
- PeterThiel
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Carl Schmitt
|
||||||
|
- Schmitt
|
||||||
|
summary: "Carl Schmitt was the German jurist and Nazi-era 'crown jurist' who theorized the state of exception, the friend-enemy distinction, political theology, and the katechon, and whose work was revived on the contemporary right and woven through Peter Thiel's 'Straussian Moment' essay and 2025 Antichrist lectures."
|
||||||
|
born: 1888-07-11
|
||||||
|
died: 1985-04-07
|
||||||
|
location: "Plettenberg, Germany"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
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|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
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|
|
||||||
|
Carl Schmitt (July 11, 1888 to April 7, 1985) was a German jurist and political theorist whose work on sovereignty, the state of exception, the friend-enemy distinction, and political theology made him one of the most influential and contested thinkers of the twentieth century. He joined the [[Nazi Party]] in 1933 and became known as the "crown jurist" of the Third Reich, providing legal justification for the regime before falling from official favor in 1936. His writings were rehabilitated in the postwar decades and underwent a marked revival on the contemporary right; [[Peter Thiel]] drew on Schmitt in his 2007 essay "[[Leo Strauss|The Straussian Moment]]" and on Schmitt's concept of the katechon in his 2025 lectures on the [[Antichrist]].[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Life and Career
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Schmitt was born in Plettenberg, in Westphalia, into a Catholic family, and studied law at Berlin, Munich, and Strasbourg, taking his doctorate at Strasbourg in 1910 and his habilitation in 1916. He held chairs at Greifswald, Bonn, the Handelshochschule in Berlin, Cologne, and from 1933 the University of Berlin, and he became one of the leading constitutional lawyers of the [[Weimar Republic]]. During the republic's final crisis he advised the presidential governments of Heinrich Bruning, Franz von Papen, and Kurt von Schleicher on the use of emergency powers under Article 48 of the Weimar constitution, and in 1932 he argued the government's side in the Preussenschlag case, defending the Reich's removal of the elected Prussian state government.[^1][^3]
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|
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|
After Adolf Hitler took power Schmitt joined the Nazi Party on May 1, 1933, was appointed a Prussian state councillor by Hermann Goring, and became president of the Union of National Socialist Jurists. He wrote in defense of the regime's lawless violence, most notoriously in the 1934 article "The Fuhrer Protects the Law," which justified the extrajudicial killings of the Night of the Long Knives, and he organized a 1936 conference on purging German law of Jewish influence. In December 1936 the SS journal Das Schwarze Korps attacked him as an opportunist whose Catholicism and earlier associations made his conversion suspect, and he lost his Party offices while retaining his Berlin chair and state councillorship. Interned by the Allies after the war and questioned at Nuremberg, he refused to undergo denazification and was barred from teaching, returning to Plettenberg, where he continued to write and receive visitors until his death in 1985.[^1][^4]
|
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|
||||||
|
### The State of Exception and Sovereignty
|
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|
|
||||||
|
Schmitt's *Political Theology* (1922) opens with the sentence "Sovereign is he who decides on the exception," locating the essence of sovereign power not in the normal operation of law but in the authority to suspend the legal order in an emergency, the Ausnahmezustand or state of exception. On this decisionist account the validity of law rests ultimately on a concrete decision rather than on an impersonal norm, and the genuine sovereign is whoever can determine that an exceptional situation exists and what is to be done about it. The argument was a frontal assault on the liberal and positivist legal theory, associated with Hans Kelsen, that sought to dissolve sovereignty into a self-sufficient hierarchy of norms.[^5][^6]
|
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|
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|
The same book advanced his thesis of political theology, that "all significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts," both in their historical origin, where the omnipotent lawgiver replaced the omnipotent God, and in their structure, where the exception stands to the legal order as the miracle stands to the laws of nature. In *The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy* (1923) he attacked liberal parliamentarism as a system of endless discussion incapable of decision, and in *Legality and Legitimacy* (1932) he argued that the Weimar constitution's neutrality toward its own enemies left it unable to defend itself, an analysis later read as preparing the ground for the regime that followed.[^5][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Concept of the Political
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In *The Concept of the Political* (1927, expanded 1932) Schmitt held that the specifically political distinction, irreducible to the moral, aesthetic, or economic, is that between friend and enemy. The enemy, the hostis, is the public adversary, the other with whom conflict can in the extreme case mean physical killing, and the reality of this possibility is what gives political life its seriousness. Liberalism, he argued, tries to dissolve the political into the spheres of ethics and economics and so cannot grasp it, yet the friend-enemy grouping persists beneath the liberal surface. Strauss's 1932 "Notes" on the book pressed exactly this point, arguing that Schmitt's affirmation of the political remained dependent on the liberalism it opposed, and Schmitt revised passages of the third edition in response.[^8][^9]
|
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|
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|
Schmitt's later *The Nomos of the Earth* (1950) developed a theory of international order grounded in the appropriation of land and the historical jus publicum Europaeum, the European law of nations that he argued had once "bracketed" war by treating the enemy as a legitimate equal rather than a criminal to be annihilated. He lamented the dissolution of this order into a moralized, total enmity, a theme that runs into his late reflections on partisan warfare in *Theory of the Partisan* (1963).[^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Katechon
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Drawing on the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, in which the Apostle Paul writes of "the one who now restrains" the coming of the lawless one, Schmitt made the figure of the katechon, Greek for the restrainer, a recurring element of his thought. In the essay "Three Possibilities for a Christian Conception of History" (1950) and in *The Nomos of the Earth* he treated the katechon as the power that holds back the Antichrist and the end of history, identifying it variously with the Roman Empire, the medieval German emperors, and other concrete bearers of order, and he called it the only Christian conception that made historical action possible by giving a meaning to the interval before the end. The concept supplied a theology of the restraining state for a thinker who saw chaos as the alternative to order.[^11][^12]
|
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|
|
||||||
|
In his postwar notebooks, published as *Glossarium*, Schmitt returned repeatedly to the katechon and wrote that he believed in it as the only way a Christian could make sense of history, adding that for every age one must name its bearer. Later scholarship has read the idea as the theological core of his politics: an account of authority whose task is to delay catastrophe rather than to achieve perfection, and which therefore justifies the sovereign who maintains order against the forces of dissolution. [[Rene Girard]]'s late *Battling to the End* (2007) likewise turned to the Pauline drama of restraint and apocalypse.[^16]
|
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|
|
||||||
|
### The Postwar Revival
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Schmitt's reception broadened far beyond the right after the war, taken up by thinkers as varied as the Marxists Walter Benjamin and Giorgio Agamben, whose *State of Exception* (2003) made Schmitt central to debates over post-September 11 emergency powers, the political theorist Chantal Mouffe, and, on the contemporary right, the editor [[Curtis Yarvin]] and writers associated with [[Neoreaction]] and with [[Nick Land]]. The German scholar [[Heinrich Meier]] reconstructed Schmitt's exchange with Strauss in *Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue* (1995).[^13]
|
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|
|
||||||
|
Thiel's "The Straussian Moment" enlists Schmitt's friend-enemy distinction to argue that the West, after the [[September 11 attacks]], had to recognize a real enemy that the optimistic Enlightenment anthropology of Hobbes and Locke could not name. In the four-part Antichrist lectures Thiel delivered in [[San Francisco]] in September 2025, audio of which was reported by the *Washington Post* and *Reason*, he framed his argument through Schmitt's katechon, casting the American imperium as at once the natural candidate for the restrainer that holds back the Antichrist and a candidate for the one-world tyranny he equated with the Antichrist itself; he named [[Eliezer Yudkowsky]], [[Nick Bostrom]], and Greta Thunberg among those he called legionnaires of the Antichrist for advocating global governance to halt technology.[^14][^15]
|
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|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Carl Schmitt," *Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,* on the 1888 Plettenberg birth, the Weimar career, the 1933 Nazi Party membership, the "crown jurist" role, the 1936 fall, and the postwar refusal of denazification. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schmitt/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Carl Schmitt," *Encyclopædia Britannica,* biography of the German jurist and theorist of political realism. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Carl-Schmitt
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Bendersky, Joseph W. *Carl Schmitt: Theorist for the Reich.* Princeton University Press, 1983, on the Weimar advisory roles and the Preussenschlag case.
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "The Nazi Jurist," *Claremont Review of Books,* on the 1934 defense of the Night of the Long Knives, the 1936 anti-Jewish law conference, and the Das Schwarze Korps attack. https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/the-nazi-jurist/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Schmitt, Carl. *Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty* (1922), trans. George Schwab, MIT Press, 1985.
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Carl Schmitt," *Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,* on the decision, the exception, and the critique of Kelsen's normativism. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schmitt/
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Schmitt, Carl. *The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy* (1923); *Legality and Legitimacy* (1932).
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Schmitt, Carl. *The Concept of the Political* (1927, expanded 1932), trans. George Schwab, University of Chicago Press, 1996.
|
||||||
|
[^9]: Strauss, Leo. "Notes on Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political" (1932); on Schmitt's praise and the third-edition revisions, see Meier below. https://contemporarythinkers.org/leo-strauss/essay/notes-on-carl-schmitt-the-concept-of-the-political/
|
||||||
|
[^10]: Schmitt, Carl. *The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum* (1950), trans. G. L. Ulmen, Telos Press, 2003; and *Theory of the Partisan* (1963).
|
||||||
|
[^11]: Schmitt, Carl. "Three Possibilities for a Christian Conception of History" (1950); and *The Nomos of the Earth,* on the katechon as the restrainer of the Antichrist.
|
||||||
|
[^12]: "It's Carl Schmitt's Moment," *Democracy Journal,* on the katechon, the state of exception, and the contemporary revival. https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/77/its-carl-schmitts-moment/
|
||||||
|
[^13]: Meier, Heinrich. *Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue,* trans. J. Harvey Lomax, University of Chicago Press, 1995; and Agamben, Giorgio. *State of Exception,* University of Chicago Press, 2005.
|
||||||
|
[^14]: Thiel, Peter. "The Straussian Moment," in *Politics and Apocalypse,* ed. Robert Hamerton-Kelly, Michigan State University Press, 2007.
|
||||||
|
[^15]: "What billionaire Peter Thiel said in his private 'Antichrist lectures,'" *Washington Post,* October 10, 2025, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/10/10/peter-thiel-antichrist-lectures-leaked/; and "I Listened to Over 7 Hours of Peter Thiel's Leaked Antichrist Lectures," *Reason,* October 14, 2025, on Thiel's use of Schmitt's katechon. https://reason.com/2025/10/14/i-listened-to-over-7-hours-of-peter-thiels-leaked-antichrist-lectures-theyre-surprisingly-libertarian/
|
||||||
|
[^16]: Schmitt, Carl. *Glossarium: Aufzeichnungen der Jahre 1947 bis 1951,* on the katechon and the demand to name its bearer in each age; and "The modern Epimetheus: Carl Schmitt's katechontism as reactionary chronopolitics," *Frontiers in Political Science,* 2022, on the katechon as the theological core of his politics. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpos.2022.957094/full
|
||||||
83
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Chamath Palihapitiya.md
Normal file
83
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Chamath Palihapitiya.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,83 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Technologists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- ChamathPalihapitiya
|
||||||
|
- SocialCapital
|
||||||
|
- Facebook
|
||||||
|
- SPAC
|
||||||
|
- AllInPodcast
|
||||||
|
- VentureCapital
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Chamath Palihapitiya
|
||||||
|
summary: "Chamath Palihapitiya is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian-American venture capitalist who ran Facebook's user-growth team, founded Social Capital, sponsored the Social Capital Hedosophia SPACs that took Virgin Galactic, Opendoor, Clover Health, and SoFi public, and cohosts the All-In Podcast."
|
||||||
|
born: 1976-09-03
|
||||||
|
location: "Sri Lanka (born); Ottawa, Canada (raised)"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Chamath Palihapitiya (born September 3, 1976) is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian-American venture capitalist who ran the user-growth team at [[Facebook]] from 2007 to 2011, founded the firm [[Social Capital|Social Capital]] in 2011, sponsored the Social Capital Hedosophia series of blank-check companies that took [[Virgin Galactic|Virgin Galactic]], [[Opendoor|Opendoor]], [[Clover Health|Clover Health]], and [[SoFi|SoFi]] public in 2019 through 2021, and cohosts the [[All-In Podcast|All-In Podcast]] with [[David Sacks]], [[Jason Calacanis|Jason Calacanis]], and [[David Friedberg|David Friedberg]]. He was named among the confirmed 2026 registrants of [[Dialog]], the invitation-only society cofounded by [[Peter Thiel]], in the membership roster leaked to *WIRED* in June 2026.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### From Ottawa to Facebook
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Palihapitiya was born in Sri Lanka and raised in Ottawa, Canada, after his family emigrated when he was a small child and remained in Canada following his father's posting to the Sri Lankan diplomatic mission. He has described a financially precarious childhood and work at a Burger King from the age of fourteen. He took a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Waterloo in 1999 and began his career as an associate at the Canadian bank BMO Nesbitt Burns.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
He moved to Silicon Valley and held roles at the music-software maker Winamp and at AOL, where he ran the instant-messaging division, before joining Facebook in 2007. At Facebook he led the user-growth organization, the team credited with the data-driven acquisition and retention methods that carried the service toward one billion users. He left Facebook in 2011. His compensation at Facebook was paid substantially in equity, and the stake became the basis of the fortune he carried into venture investing, though no reputable source has published a specific figure for its size at his departure.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The 2017 Stanford Remarks
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
At a [[Stanford Graduate School of Business|Stanford Graduate School of Business]] event recorded on November 10, 2017, and widely reported the following month, Palihapitiya said he felt "tremendous guilt" about his work at Facebook and that "the short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works. No civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth." He added that he does not allow his own children to use "this shit." Facebook responded that Palihapitiya had not worked at the company in more than six years and that it had changed substantially since his tenure.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Palihapitiya softened the remarks after the coverage, describing Facebook as "an amazing company" and stating that social media's impact to that point had been "mostly overwhelmingly good," while maintaining that the advertising business model "allows us to conflate and confuse truth and popularity."[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Social Capital and the Partner Exodus
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Palihapitiya founded the Palo Alto venture firm The Social+Capital Partnership in 2011, later renamed Social Capital, with early partners including Mamoon Hamid, Ted Maidenberg, and his then-wife Brigette Lau. The firm's portfolio included Slack, Box, and SoFi. Beginning in 2017 and accelerating through 2018, the firm lost most of its investing partners: Hamid left for [[Kleiner Perkins|Kleiner Perkins]], Marc Mezvinsky departed, and Maidenberg, Arjun Sethi, and Jonathan Hsu left in 2018 to cofound Tribe Capital.[^5][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 2018 Social Capital stopped accepting outside capital and converted to a holding-company model that invests off its own balance sheet rather than from limited-partner funds. The shift removed the firm from the conventional venture structure of raising and deploying third-party money, and it positioned the SPAC vehicles Palihapitiya launched the following year as the firm's primary public-facing investment activity.[^5][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Social Capital Hedosophia SPACs
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Through Social Capital Hedosophia, a series of special-purpose acquisition companies cofounded with the financier Ian Osborne and tickered IPOA through IPOF, Palihapitiya became the most prominent sponsor of the 2020 to 2021 SPAC wave, drawing the "SPAC king" label. The first vehicle, IPOA, merged with Virgin Galactic in a deal announced July 9, 2019, at an enterprise value of roughly 1.5 billion dollars, with IPOA contributing about 800 million dollars and Palihapitiya adding roughly 100 million dollars personally; the transaction created the first publicly traded human-spaceflight company. IPOB merged with the home-flipping company Opendoor in a 4.8 billion dollar deal in 2020, IPOC with the [[Medicare Advantage|Medicare Advantage]] insurer Clover Health at a 3.7 billion dollar enterprise value, and IPOE with the consumer-finance company SoFi at 8.65 billion dollars. IPOD and IPOF found no targets and liquidated in October 2022, returning capital to investors.[^7][^8][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Most of the completed deals fell sharply from their post-merger highs. On March 5, 2021, Palihapitiya sold his entire remaining personal stake in Virgin Galactic, 6.2 million shares at an average of 34.32 dollars for roughly 213 million dollars, while retaining an indirect position through Social Capital Hedosophia; the sale drew criticism given his public promotion of the company. A second SPAC series under the Social Capital Suvretta name, tickered DNAA through DNAD, produced two completed mergers that also collapsed and two further liquidations.[^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Clover Health, Hindenburg, and the SEC Letter
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On February 4, 2021, the short-seller [[Hindenburg Research|Hindenburg Research]] published a report alleging that Clover Health had failed to disclose a Department of Justice investigation, stating it had obtained a civil investigative demand covering roughly twelve aspects of the company's business and its Clover Assistant software, and accusing Palihapitiya of misleading investors. Hindenburg disclosed that it held no position in the stock. Clover subsequently confirmed it had received a document-preservation request from the Securities and Exchange Commission covering the period from January 1, 2020, tied to the report's claims.[^11][^12]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Palihapitiya posted a "you're welcome" reply on the platform then known as Twitter around February 3, 2021, shortly before the Hindenburg report drew wide attention. He was later named in shareholder suits within the broader 2021 to 2023 wave of SPAC litigation alleging that sponsors profited from discounted founder shares while promoting mergers to retail investors. No reputable source has reported a formal Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement action against Palihapitiya personally; the disclosed regulatory inquiry was directed at Clover Health.[^11][^13]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Uyghur Remarks
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On a January 2022 episode of the All-In Podcast, Palihapitiya said, "Nobody cares about what's happening to the Uyghurs," telling a cohost, "you bring it up because you really care, and I think it's nice that you care, the rest of us don't care," and placing the issue "below my line" of concerns relative to supply chains, climate, American health care, and a possible conflict over Taiwan. The remarks drew immediate backlash. The Golden State Warriors, in which Palihapitiya then held an ownership stake, publicly stated that he "does not speak on behalf of our franchise" and that "his views certainly don't reflect those of our organization."[^14][^15]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Palihapitiya issued a clarification, writing that he came across "as lacking empathy," that he acknowledged that "entirely," and that as a refugee whose family fled a country "with its own human rights issues," he believed "human rights matter, whether in China, the United States, or elsewhere."[^14]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The All-In Podcast and the Political Turn
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The All-In Podcast launched on March 19, 2020, with Palihapitiya, Calacanis, Sacks, and Friedberg as the rotating cohosts known as "the besties." The program became a media channel for the cohort's positions on technology regulation, cryptocurrency, and defense procurement. Palihapitiya had been a Democratic donor in earlier election cycles before moving toward the technology-right alignment that the podcast came to represent.[^16]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 2024 Palihapitiya cohosted a San Francisco fundraiser for [[Donald Trump|Trump]] with Sacks that reporting described as raising roughly 12 million dollars, and the All-In cohosts interviewed Trump on the podcast on June 20, 2024. Federal Election Commission records show Palihapitiya contributed to the 2024 effort to elect Trump. He had earlier held a passive minority stake in the Golden State Warriors, acquired around 2010 to 2011 for roughly 25 million dollars and sold in tranches in December 2021 and July 2022.[^16][^17][^18]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Cameron, Dell, and Yulia Almazova. "Leak Exposes Members of Peter Thiel's Secretive 'Dialog' Society." *WIRED,* June 16, 2026. https://www.wired.com/story/leak-exposes-members-of-peter-thiels-secretive-dialog-society/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "How Canadian Facebook billionaire Chamath Palihapitiya plans to change the world." *The Globe and Mail,* 2017. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-magazine/how-canadian-facebook-billionaire-chamath-palihapitiya-plans-to-change-the-world/article34109864/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Levy, Steven. "The Untold History of Facebook's Most Controversial Growth Tool." *Marker,* 2020. https://marker.medium.com/the-untold-history-of-facebooks-most-controversial-growth-tool-2ea3bfeaaa66
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Former Facebook exec says social media is ripping apart society." *Fortune,* December 12, 2017. https://fortune.com/2017/12/12/chamath-palihapitiya-facebook-society/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Social Capital is no longer raising outside money." *Fortune,* June 19, 2018. https://fortune.com/2018/06/19/social-capital-departures/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "The mass exodus at Social Capital continues." *TechCrunch,* August 31, 2018. https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/31/the-mass-exodus-at-social-capital-continues/
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Palihapitiya finds next '10x idea' with 4.8 billion dollar SPAC deal for Opendoor." *CNBC,* September 15, 2020. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/15/palihapitiya-finds-next-10x-idea-with-4point8-billion-spac-deal-for-real-estate-start-up-opendoor.html
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "Palihapitiya-backed Clover Health shares fall on critical report by short seller." *CNBC,* February 4, 2021. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/04/palihapitiya-backed-clover-health-shares-fall-on-critical-report-by-short-seller-.html
|
||||||
|
[^9]: "Chamath Palihapitiya's 14 SPAC and PIPE deals, tracking lifetime performance." *Benzinga,* March 2021. https://www.benzinga.com/news/21/03/20045351/chamath-palihapitiyas-14-spac-pipe-deals-tracking-lifetime-performance-and-the-past-weeks
|
||||||
|
[^10]: "Virgin Galactic drops 10% after chairman Chamath Palihapitiya dumps his 213 million dollar personal stake." *CNBC,* March 5, 2021. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/05/chamath-palihapitiya-sells-virgin-galactic-spce-stake.html
|
||||||
|
[^11]: "Palihapitiya-backed Clover Health shares fall on critical report by short seller." *CNBC,* February 4, 2021. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/04/palihapitiya-backed-clover-health-shares-fall-on-critical-report-by-short-seller-.html
|
||||||
|
[^12]: Clover Health Investments, Corp. Form 424B3 prospectus supplement, 2021. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001801170/000119312521029642/d120078d424b3.htm
|
||||||
|
[^13]: "Billionaire Chamath Palihapitiya joins SPAC leaders facing lawsuits." *Crain's New York Business* (Bloomberg), June 2, 2023. https://www.crainsnewyork.com/finance/billionaire-chamath-palihapitiya-joins-spac-leaders-facing-lawsuits
|
||||||
|
[^14]: "Chamath Palihapitiya says 'nobody cares' about Uyghur genocide in China." *CNBC,* January 17, 2022. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/17/chamath-palihapitiya-says-nobody-cares-about-uyghur-genocide-in-china.html
|
||||||
|
[^15]: "Chamath Palihapitiya: Golden State Warriors distance themselves from co-owner over Uyghur comments." *CNN,* January 18, 2022. https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/18/sport/chamath-palihapitiya-golden-state-warriors-uyghurs-spt-intl
|
||||||
|
[^16]: "All-In's bros explain how they got so rich and powerful." *Slate,* January 2023. https://slate.com/technology/2023/01/all-in-podcast-elon-musk-david-sacks-jason-calacanis-chamath-palihapitiya-david-friedberg.html
|
||||||
|
[^17]: "Two tech investors to host Trump at June San Francisco fundraiser." Reuters, 2024. https://www.aol.com/news/two-tech-investors-host-trump-195355695.html
|
||||||
|
[^18]: "Chamath Palihapitiya sells remaining Golden State Warriors stake." *Sportico,* July 2022. https://www.sportico.com/personalities/owners/2022/chamath-palihapitiya-sells-warriors-stake-1234680551/
|
||||||
37
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/David Sacks.md
Normal file
37
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/David Sacks.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Technologists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- DavidSacks
|
||||||
|
- PayPalMafia
|
||||||
|
- Yammer
|
||||||
|
- AllInPodcast
|
||||||
|
- Trump
|
||||||
|
- CryptoCzar
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- David O. Sacks
|
||||||
|
summary: "David Sacks is a South African-born American entrepreneur and political figure who served as chief operating officer of PayPal, founded Yammer, cohosted the All-In Podcast, and was appointed White House AI and cryptocurrency czar under the second Trump administration."
|
||||||
|
born: 1972-05-25
|
||||||
|
location: "Cape Town, South Africa (born)"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[[David Sacks|David Sacks]] (born May 25, 1972, in [[Cape Town|Cape Town]], [[South Africa|South Africa]]) is a [[PayPal Mafia|PayPal Mafia]] principal who served as chief operating officer of [[PayPal]], founded [[Yammer|Yammer]] (the enterprise social network, acquired by [[Microsoft|Microsoft]] in 2012 for 1.2 billion dollars), produced the film *[[Thank You for Smoking|Thank You for Smoking]]* (2005), and was appointed Special Advisor on Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrency (the "AI and crypto czar") under the second [[Donald Trump|Trump]] administration. Sacks cohosted the [[All-In Podcast|All-In Podcast]], which became a media channel for the PayPal Mafia cohort's political positions during the 2022-2025 period.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The PayPal COO Role and the Post-PayPal Ventures
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Sacks served as chief operating officer at PayPal through the 2002 eBay acquisition, managing the company's operations alongside [[Peter Thiel|Thiel]] (chief executive) and [[Max Levchin|Levchin]] (chief technology officer). The COO role placed Sacks in operational control of the company's day-to-day execution during the period when the anti-fraud architecture was built and the PayPal Mafia cohort was formed. After the eBay sale, Sacks founded Yammer, the enterprise social network that applied consumer-social-networking patterns to corporate communications. Microsoft acquired Yammer in 2012.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Sacks subsequently founded [[Craft Ventures|Craft Ventures]], a venture capital firm whose portfolio overlaps with the PayPal Mafia and Thiel-network commercial ecosystem. Sacks also produced the film *Thank You for Smoking* (2005), an adaptation of the [[Christopher Buckley|Christopher Buckley]] satirical novel about tobacco-industry lobbying.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The All-In Podcast and the Trump AI/Crypto Role
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The All-In Podcast, cohosted by Sacks with [[Chamath Palihapitiya|Chamath Palihapitiya]], [[Jason Calacanis|Jason Calacanis]], and [[David Friedberg|David Friedberg]], became a media channel for the PayPal Mafia cohort's political positions during the 2022-2025 period. The podcast's audience overlaps with the [[Dialog]] invitation list and the [[Founders Fund|Founders Fund]] portfolio community. Sacks used the platform to advance the positions on AI regulation, cryptocurrency policy, and defense procurement that he subsequently entered the government to implement.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In the second Trump administration, Sacks received the Special Advisor on Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrency appointment. The role covers federal AI policy, cryptocurrency regulation, and the broader technology-policy agenda. Sacks's appointment placed a PayPal Mafia principal in the executive branch with authority over the technology sectors that the Thiel-network commercial infrastructure operates in.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: For Sacks's PayPal COO role and the post-PayPal ventures, see the PayPal Mafia page and the contemporaneous Silicon Valley press.
|
||||||
|
[^2]: For the All-In Podcast and the Trump AI/crypto czar role, see the contemporaneous press coverage of the second Trump administration appointments.
|
||||||
51
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Derek Parfit.md
Normal file
51
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Derek Parfit.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,51 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Scientists & Researchers"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- Utilitarianism
|
||||||
|
- Longtermism
|
||||||
|
- Oxford
|
||||||
|
- PopulationEthics
|
||||||
|
- PersonalIdentity
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Derek Parfit
|
||||||
|
- Derek Antony Parfit
|
||||||
|
summary: "Derek Parfit was an Oxford philosopher at All Souls College whose 1984 Reasons and Persons set out the non-identity problem and the Repugnant Conclusion, becoming a foundation of longtermism, and who lived with austere single-mindedness."
|
||||||
|
born: 1942-12-11
|
||||||
|
died: 2017-01-02
|
||||||
|
location: "Oxford, England"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Derek Antony Parfit (December 11, 1942 to January 2, 2017) was a British moral philosopher and a fellow of All Souls College, [[University of Oxford|Oxford]], whose 1984 book *Reasons and Persons* reshaped the philosophy of personal identity and population ethics. His treatment of obligations to future generations, including the non-identity problem and the Repugnant Conclusion, became a load-bearing part of the case for [[Longtermism|longtermism]], and his work is cited as foundational by [[Nick Bostrom]], [[Toby Ord]], and [[William MacAskill]].[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### All Souls and an Ascetic Life
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Parfit was born in Chengdu, China, to British medical missionaries, educated at Eton, and read modern history at Balliol College, Oxford, graduating in 1964. He won a fellowship at All Souls College, the research-only Oxford college admitting a handful of fellows by examination, and it remained his academic home for the rest of his life, with visiting professorships at Harvard, New York University, and Rutgers in his later decades. He married the philosopher Janet Radcliffe Richards in 2010, having met her in 1982.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
His working life was famously austere. As Larissa MacFarquhar reported in a 2011 *New Yorker* profile, Parfit wore the same gray trousers and white shirt so as not to lose time choosing clothes, ate as little varied a diet as possible, and kept only one serious interest outside philosophy: photographing the same buildings in Oxford, Venice, and St. Petersburg year after year, then paying to have the images retouched toward an exacting ideal. He was a member of Giving What We Can and supported effective altruism, pledging to donate at least a tenth of his income. David Edmonds, whose 2023 biography *Parfit: A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality* drew the fullest portrait of him, wrote that Parfit single-mindedly tried to rescue secular morality by arguing it has an objective rational basis, holding that if he could not show there are objective facts about right and wrong his life would be futile.[^4][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Reasons and Persons
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
*Reasons and Persons*, published by Oxford University Press in 1984, was organized in four parts addressing self-defeating ethical theories, rationality and time, personal identity, and future generations. Its third part advanced a reductionist or "bundle" account of personal identity, on which what matters in survival is psychological continuity and connectedness (Parfit's "Relation R") rather than a deep further fact of identity, a view he argued should loosen the grip of self-interest on practical reason. He drew on the work of [[Henry Sidgwick]], whose 1874 *The Methods of Ethics* he held to contain the largest number of true and important claims of any work in the history of ethics.[^2][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The fourth part, on future generations, introduced the non-identity problem: because policies and even the timing of a conception change which particular people come to exist, a choice that leaves future people worse off than others who might have existed harms no determinate person, since those worse-off people owe their very existence to the choice. Parfit's "depletion" example, in which present generations consume resources for a small near-term gain at the cost of distant welfare, showed that person-affecting moral views struggle to condemn outcomes most people find clearly wrong. He concluded that personal identity is in this respect irrelevant to ethics, pushing toward impersonal principles that weigh outcomes by their total value.[^7][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Repugnant Conclusion
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Within population ethics Parfit framed the Repugnant Conclusion, which he stated as the claim that "for any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better even though its members have lives that are barely worth living." Total utilitarianism, by valuing the sum of welfare, implies that a vast population with lives barely worth living can be better than a smaller flourishing one, and Parfit's "Mere Addition Paradox" traced a chain of individually plausible steps that lead there. He spent much of his later life searching, without final success, for a "Theory X" that would avoid the conclusion while preserving the impartial weighing of future lives.[^8][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Parfit's argument that future people count equally and could vastly outnumber the living, so that the value of the far future dominates moral calculation, was developed by Bostrom and Ord at the [[Future of Humanity Institute]], and MacAskill's 2022 *What We Owe the Future* drew its title and its core argument from Parfit's question of what the living owe to those who will exist. Parfit's final work, the multi-volume *On What Matters* (Oxford University Press, 2011 and 2017), argued that Kantian, contractualist, and consequentialist ethics converge on the same moral truths, what he called the view that they are "climbing the same mountain."[^9][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Derek Parfit," British Academy memoir, on the 1942 Chengdu birth, the 2017 death, Eton, Balliol, the All Souls fellowship, and the visiting posts. https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/publishing/memoirs/19/derek-parfit-1942-2017/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Parfit, Derek. *Reasons and Persons.* Oxford University Press, 1984.
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Derek Parfit's quest for perfection," *New Statesman,* on the All Souls fellowship and the Venice and St. Petersburg photography. https://www.newstatesman.com/2018/06/derek-parfit-minds-eye-photographs-philosophy-narrative-projects
|
||||||
|
[^4]: MacFarquhar, Larissa. "How to Be Good," *The New Yorker,* September 5, 2011, on the gray trousers and white shirt, the minimal diet, and the photography as his one outside interest. https://www.stafforini.com/docs/MacFarquhar%20-%20How%20to%20be%20good.pdf
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Edmonds, David. *Parfit: A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality.* Princeton University Press, 2023; "Parfit: A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality," Uehiro Oxford Institute, on the attempt to rescue secular morality on a rational basis. https://www.uehiro.ox.ac.uk/parfit-a-philosopher-and-his-mission-to-save-morality
|
||||||
|
[^6]: de Lazari-Radek, Katarzyna, and Peter Singer. *The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and Contemporary Ethics.* Oxford University Press, 2014, on Parfit's estimate of *The Methods of Ethics.*
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Parfit, Derek. "Future Generations: Further Problems," *Philosophy and Public Affairs,* on the depletion case and the non-identity problem. https://www.stafforini.com/docs/Parfit%20-%20Future%20generations.pdf
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "The Repugnant Conclusion," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, quoting Parfit's formulation and the Mere Addition Paradox. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant-conclusion/
|
||||||
|
[^9]: Parfit, Derek. *On What Matters,* vols. 1 and 2. Oxford University Press, 2011; MacAskill, William. *What We Owe the Future.* Basic Books, 2022.
|
||||||
65
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Eric Schmidt.md
Normal file
65
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Eric Schmidt.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,65 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Technologists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- EricSchmidt
|
||||||
|
- Google
|
||||||
|
- ArtificialIntelligence
|
||||||
|
- NationalSecurity
|
||||||
|
- Philanthropy
|
||||||
|
summary: "Eric Schmidt is the former Google chief executive turned billionaire investor and architect of US national-security artificial-intelligence policy, who chaired two Pentagon advisory bodies while privately funding the AI and defense startups those bodies promoted."
|
||||||
|
born: 1955-04-27
|
||||||
|
location: "Atherton, California"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Eric Emerson Schmidt (born April 27, 1955) is an American engineer, billionaire investor, and former chief executive of [[Google]], whom he ran from 2001 to 2011 before serving as the company's executive chairman from 2011 to 2015 and executive chairman of its parent [[Alphabet]] from 2015 to 2017. After leaving Google's board in 2019 he reoriented his energy and fortune toward [[Artificial Intelligence]] investment and United States national-security technology policy, chairing the [[Defense Innovation Board]] and the [[National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence]] while building a network of investment vehicles, the philanthropy [[Schmidt Futures]], and the think tank [[Special Competitive Studies Project]]. He coauthored two books on AI with the former secretary of state [[Henry Kissinger]].[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Google and the Fortune
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Schmidt took a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University and a doctorate in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, worked at [[Sun Microsystems]] and ran the software firm Novell, then was recruited in 2001 by Google founders [[Larry Page]] and [[Sergey Brin]] to provide what their investors at [[Kleiner Perkins]] and [[Sequoia Capital]] called "adult supervision." He served as chief executive through the company's 2004 initial public offering and its growth into the dominant search and advertising company in the world, stepping into the executive chairman role in 2011 when Page resumed the chief-executive title.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The bulk of Schmidt's wealth derives from his roughly one-percent economic interest in Alphabet. According to a February 2025 securities filing he held about 49 million Alphabet Class A and Class B shares, and an analysis of company filings found he had collected roughly 7.9 billion dollars from sales of Google stock over the years. His net worth has been reported in a wide range depending on method and timing, commonly cited near 30 to 40 billion dollars and placed higher by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index as Alphabet's share price climbed through 2025 and 2026.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Pentagon Advisory Boards
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In March 2016 Defense Secretary [[Ash Carter]] appointed Schmidt to chair the newly created Defense Innovation Board, an advisory body bringing Silicon Valley figures to the Pentagon; he led it until 2020. The board's recommendations preceded the creation of the Pentagon's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, the department's adoption of agile software practices, and a set of AI ethical principles for the military. Schmidt remained a major holder of Alphabet stock throughout, and the [[Tech Transparency Project]] reported that his suggesting of technologies and vendors to the Pentagon stirred the concern of at least one government ethics official.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 2018 Schmidt was named chairman of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, a congressionally chartered body cochaired with the former deputy defense secretary [[Robert Work]], which ran until 2021. Its March 2021 final report concluded that the United States was not prepared to defend against or compete with [[China]] in AI and urged that the Defense Department and intelligence community become "AI-ready" by 2025. CNBC reported in October 2022 that roughly five months after his appointment Schmidt made a seed investment in an AI logistics startup named Beacon, the first of several direct investments in AI companies he made during his commission tenure, while continuing to hold billions of dollars in Alphabet stock; government ethics advisers told the network the arrangement presented a significant conflict of interest, though there was no indication he broke any rule.[^4][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Investment Vehicles
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Schmidt invests through several entities: the venture firm Innovation Endeavors, the earlier Tomorrow Ventures, and his family office Hillspire LLC, which manages his fortune and from which his AI startup investments have been tracked. CNBC reported in January 2025 that his family-office apparatus had backed 22 private AI firms since 2019. Among his national-security holdings is [[Rebellion Defense]], an AI defense-software company launched in 2019 with backing that included Innovation Endeavors.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
His firms also hold positions in companies that profit from the emerging technologies he advocated to the government, including 5G and quantum computing, and he is executive chairman of the AI investment firm Steel Perlot. In 2021 Schmidt's foundation money helped seed America's Frontier Fund, a public-private investment vehicle modeled on the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] arm [[In-Q-Tel]] of the kind his own commission had recommended, run by the former In-Q-Tel chief executive Gilman Louie and staffed partly by former Schmidt Futures personnel. His charitable money also flowed toward China: while chairing the AI commission, his private foundation put nearly 17 million dollars into a fund feeding the Chinese private-equity group Hillhouse Capital, which holds an extensive portfolio of Chinese AI companies.[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Anthropic Investment
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Schmidt was an early backer of the AI company [[Anthropic]], founded in 2021 by former [[OpenAI]] researchers from the [[Effective Altruism]] milieu. His name appears among the participants in Anthropic's first outside round, the 124-million-dollar Series A announced in May 2021 and led by the Estonian programmer [[Jaan Tallinn]], alongside [[Dustin Moskovitz]], the investor James McClave, and the Center for Emerging Risk Research. The investment placed Schmidt in the company before the strategic stakes later taken by Google and [[Amazon (company)|Amazon]] carried its valuation into the hundreds of billions of dollars.[^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Series A was a small fraction of Schmidt's broader AI footprint. Through Hillspire and Innovation Endeavors he accumulated positions across dozens of AI companies, and his backing of a safety-focused lab like Anthropic sat alongside investments in defense and logistics AI firms that sell to the government, several made while he chaired federal AI advisory bodies.[^2][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The OSTP Salary Controversy
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
A March 2022 Politico investigation by Alex Thompson reported that Schmidt Futures had quietly paid the salaries of staff working inside the White House [[Office of Science and Technology Policy]] under its director [[Eric Lander]], President [[Joe Biden]]'s science adviser. Schmidt Futures' chief innovation officer [[Tom Kalil]] remained on Schmidt's payroll for four months while serving ostensibly as an unpaid consultant at the office, and the philanthropy indirectly paid the salary of the office's chief of staff Marc Aidinoff for about six weeks. More than a dozen people in the roughly 140-person office had ties to Schmidt.[^6][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The arrangement alarmed the office's general counsel Rachel Wallace, who raised what reporting described as significant ethical concerns given Schmidt's financial interests in AI and other areas overlapping the office's work. Lander resigned in February 2022 after a separate Politico report found credible evidence he had bullied Wallace and violated workplace standards. Schmidt called the salary story "largely false," saying its thesis of undue influence over the office was "unsubstantiated."[^6][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Kissinger Books
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Schmidt coauthored two books with Kissinger framing AI as a force reshaping geopolitics and human self-understanding. *The Age of AI: And Our Human Future*, written with Kissinger and the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]] computer scientist Daniel Huttenlocher, was published in November 2021. Its central argument was that AI represents an epochal shift in human affairs comparable to the printing press and the Enlightenment.[^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The sequel *Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit*, written with Kissinger and the former [[Microsoft]] research chief [[Craig Mundie]], was published by Little, Brown on November 19, 2024, nearly a year after Kissinger's death in November 2023 at age 100, making it the statesman's final book.[^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Eric Schmidt," Britannica, on his Princeton and Berkeley education, Sun Microsystems and Novell careers, recruitment to Google in 2001, the chief-executive tenure to 2011, and the executive-chairman roles at Google and Alphabet. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Eric-Schmidt
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Eric Schmidt's family office invests in 22 AI startups," CNBC, January 21, 2025, on the Hillspire family office, the 22 AI investments since 2019, the roughly 49 million Alphabet shares per a February 2025 filing, and the approximately 7.9 billion dollars collected from Google stock sales. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/21/eric-schmidts-family-office-invests-ai-startups.html
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Eric Schmidt's Unseen Influence Over US Defense Spending," Tech Transparency Project, on the Defense Innovation Board chairmanship (2016-2020) under Ash Carter, the ethics-official concern over vendor suggestions, Innovation Endeavors, Tomorrow Ventures, Hillspire, the Rebellion Defense stake, and America's Frontier Fund. https://www.techtransparencyproject.org/articles/eric-schmidts-unseen-influence-over-us-defense-spending
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "How Google's former CEO Eric Schmidt helped write A.I. laws in Washington without publicly disclosing investments in A.I. start-ups," CNBC, October 24, 2022, on the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, the Beacon seed investment five months after appointment, the direct AI startup investments during his tenure, and the nearly 17 million dollars into a Hillhouse-feeding fund. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/24/how-googles-former-ceo-eric-schmidt-helped-write-ai-laws-in-washington-without-publicly-disclosing-investments-in-ai-start-ups.html
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence: 2021 Final Report," NSCAI, March 2021, on the commission's 2018-2021 run, the Schmidt and Work cochairs, and the finding that the US must be AI-ready by 2025 to compete with China. https://www.nscai.gov/2021-final-report/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt says story alleging his foundation indirectly paid White House science staffers is 'largely false,'" CNBC, March 29, 2022, on the Politico report, Tom Kalil's four months on the payroll as an unpaid consultant, the six weeks of Marc Aidinoff's salary, general counsel Rachel Wallace's concerns, and Schmidt's response. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/29/ex-google-ceo-eric-schmidt-responds-to-white-house-related-allegations.html
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "How Eric Schmidt built an expansive AI influence operation," Politico (Alex Thompson), March 28, 2022, on the OSTP salary arrangements, Eric Lander's resignation in February 2022, and the dozen-plus Schmidt-tied staff in the 140-person office. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/28/google-eric-schmidt-white-house-00020712
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit," PR Newswire, on the November 19, 2024 Little, Brown publication with Kissinger and Craig Mundie as Kissinger's last book following his November 2023 death, and *The Age of AI* (2021) with Kissinger and Daniel Huttenlocher. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/genesis-artificial-intelligence-hope-and-the-human-spirit-by-henry-a-kissinger-eric-schmidt-and-craig-mundie-302221817.html
|
||||||
|
[^9]: "Anthropic raises $124 million to build more reliable, general AI systems," Anthropic, May 2021, on the Series A led by Jaan Tallinn with participation from Eric Schmidt, Dustin Moskovitz, James McClave, and the Center for Emerging Risk Research. https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-raises-124-million-to-build-more-reliable-general-ai-systems
|
||||||
49
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Ilya Sutskever.md
Normal file
49
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Ilya Sutskever.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Technologists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- IlyaSutskever
|
||||||
|
- OpenAI
|
||||||
|
- SafeSuperintelligence
|
||||||
|
- ArtificialIntelligence
|
||||||
|
- DeepLearning
|
||||||
|
- AISafety
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Ilya
|
||||||
|
summary: "Ilya Sutskever is the deep-learning researcher who co-built AlexNet under Geoffrey Hinton, cofounded OpenAI as its chief scientist, voted to remove and then reinstate Sam Altman in the November 2023 board crisis, and left in May 2024 to cofound Safe Superintelligence."
|
||||||
|
born: 1986-12-08
|
||||||
|
location: "Palo Alto, California"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Ilya Sutskever (born December 8, 1986) is a machine-learning researcher who cofounded [[OpenAI]] and served as its chief scientist until 2024, and who cofounded the lab [[Safe Superintelligence]] in June 2024. Born in Nizhny Novgorod in the [[Soviet Union]], he emigrated to [[Israel]] as a child and later to Canada, and took his doctorate at the [[University of Toronto]] under [[Geoffrey Hinton]], with whom he built the 2012 neural network AlexNet that is widely credited with igniting the modern deep-learning era. He was one of the directors who voted to fire OpenAI chief executive [[Sam Altman]] on November 17, 2023, then publicly reversed himself days later, and he departed the company in May 2024.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### From Hinton's Lab to Google to OpenAI
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Sutskever completed his PhD in computer science at the University of Toronto in 2012, advised by Hinton. That year he, Hinton, and fellow graduate student Alex Krizhevsky built AlexNet, a deep convolutional neural network that won the ImageNet image-recognition competition by a wide margin and demonstrated that GPU-trained deep networks could outperform every competing approach. The three packaged the work into a company, DNNresearch, which [[Google]] acquired in 2013, bringing Sutskever to Google Brain, where he co-developed sequence-to-sequence learning, a method that applied deep networks to ordered data such as words and sentences and underpinned advances in machine translation.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 2015 Sutskever left Google to become a cofounder and the chief scientist of OpenAI, recruited by Altman and [[Elon Musk]] into the nonprofit they launched that December with a billion-dollar funding pledge. Over the next several years he directed the research that produced the GPT family of large language models and, in late 2022, [[ChatGPT]]. In a 2023 MIT Technology Review interview he described his growing preoccupation with AI safety and alignment, saying that he had begun to spend much of his time on the problem of controlling systems far more capable than humans.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The November 2023 Board Crisis
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On November 17, 2023, OpenAI's nonprofit board removed Altman as chief executive, saying he had not been "consistently candid" in his communications with the directors. Sutskever was one of the four voting directors who ousted him, alongside [[Adam D'Angelo]], [[Tasha McCauley]], and [[Helen Toner]], the latter two tied to the [[Effective Altruism]] movement, and he was reported to have delivered the news to Altman. The board's stated concern centered on the pace of commercialization relative to safety, and the episode was read across the industry as a clash between OpenAI's safety-focused governance and its commercial trajectory.[^4][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Within days the move collapsed. Roughly 700 OpenAI employees signed a letter threatening to resign and follow Altman to [[Microsoft]], and on November 20 Sutskever signed that letter and posted on the platform X that he "deeply regret[ted]" his participation in the board's actions and would do everything he could to reunite the company. Altman was reinstated under a reconstituted board, and Sutskever lost his board seat while remaining an employee. He largely vanished from public view in the months that followed before announcing his departure on May 14, 2024, thanking the company and saying he was confident OpenAI would build artificial general intelligence that is "safe and beneficial."[^4][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Safe Superintelligence
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In June 2024 Sutskever announced Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI), a lab he cofounded with the investor and former Apple AI executive [[Daniel Gross]] and the former OpenAI researcher [[Daniel Levy]], declaring in a launch statement that the company had "one goal and one product: a safe superintelligence" and that it would pursue that aim with no near-term commercial products to divert it. The company raised 1 billion dollars at a 5-billion-dollar valuation in September 2024, then a further 2 billion dollars at a 32-billion-dollar valuation reported in April 2025, with backers including [[Andreessen Horowitz]], Greenoaks, Sequoia Capital, DST Global, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Alphabet, and Nvidia.[^6][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In June 2024 Meta Platforms attempted to acquire SSI; Sutskever rebuffed the approach, and Meta instead hired Gross, who left SSI on June 29, 2025 to join Meta's superintelligence division. Sutskever, who had been a cofounder, then became chief executive of SSI, with Levy as president, writing that the company would remain independent: "We have the compute, we have the team, and we know what to do. Together we will keep building safe superintelligence."[^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Ilya Sutskever: From Hinton's Lab to OpenAI," LinkedIn, on AlexNet, DNNresearch, the Google acquisition, and sequence-to-sequence learning. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/story-ilya-sutskever-before-during-after-co-founding-openai-joshi-xhc9f
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "OpenAI's chief scientist thinks humans could one day merge with machines," *MIT Technology Review,* October 26, 2023, on Sutskever's biography, the AlexNet work with Hinton and Krizhevsky, and his focus on AI safety. https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/10/26/1082398/exclusive-ilya-sutskever-openais-chief-scientist-on-his-hopes-and-fears-for-the-future-of-ai/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "OpenAI launches as a nonprofit with a billion-dollar pledge," IEEE Spectrum, December 11, 2015, on the founding and Sutskever's role as chief scientist. https://spectrum.ieee.org/billiondollar-nonprofit-ai-research-lab-to-open-in-san-francisco
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Effective Altruism's Role in the OpenAI Chaos, Explained," *Bloomberg,* November 22, 2023, on the board vote, the four directors, and the "not consistently candid" statement. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-22/effective-altruism-s-role-in-the-openai-chaos-explained
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist, is leaving the company," reporting on the November 20, 2023 regret post, the employee letter, and the May 14, 2024 departure. *CNBC,* May 14, 2024. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/14/ilya-sutskever-openai-co-founder-and-chief-scientist-is-leaving.html
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Safe Superintelligence Inc.," company launch statement, June 2024, on the "one goal and one product" mission and the cofounders. https://ssi.inc/
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever's Safe Superintelligence reportedly valued at $32B," *TechCrunch,* April 12, 2025, on the 1-billion September 2024 round at a 5-billion valuation, the 2-billion round at a 32-billion valuation, and the investor roster. https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/12/openai-co-founder-ilya-sutskevers-safe-superintelligence-reportedly-valued-at-32b
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "Ilya Sutskever is CEO of Safe Superintelligence after Meta hired Gross," *CNBC,* July 3, 2025, on the failed Meta acquisition, Gross's June 29 departure, and Sutskever becoming CEO with Levy as president. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/03/ilya-sutskever-is-ceo-of-safe-superintelligence-after-meta-hired-gross.html
|
||||||
58
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/J. Philippe Rushton.md
Normal file
58
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/J. Philippe Rushton.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,58 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "New Right"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- RaceScience
|
||||||
|
- PioneerFund
|
||||||
|
- Eugenics
|
||||||
|
- HumanBiodiversity
|
||||||
|
- Psychology
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- John Philippe Rushton
|
||||||
|
- Jean-Philippe Rushton
|
||||||
|
summary: "J. Philippe Rushton was a British-Canadian psychologist at the University of Western Ontario and president of the Pioneer Fund whose book Race, Evolution, and Behavior applied r/K selection theory to claim a racial hierarchy of intelligence and behavior, work the scientific community condemned as racist and methodologically flawed."
|
||||||
|
born: 1943-12-03
|
||||||
|
died: 2012-10-02
|
||||||
|
location: "London, Ontario, Canada"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
J. Philippe Rushton (December 3, 1943 to October 2, 2012) was a British-Canadian psychologist at the [[University of Western Ontario]] who became the most prominent academic exponent of a ranked racial hierarchy in intelligence, behavior, and reproduction, and who led the [[Pioneer Fund]] from 2002 until his death. His 1995 book *Race, Evolution, and Behavior* applied [[r/K selection theory]] from population biology to human races, claiming that Asians, whites, and blacks fall on a fixed evolutionary continuum. The scientific community rejected the work as racist and methodologically flawed, and the [[Southern Poverty Law Center]] classified him as a promoter of scientific racism.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Race, Evolution, and Behavior
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Rushton argued that the three groups he labeled "Mongoloid," "Caucasoid," and "Negroid" differ in a suite of traits including brain size, intelligence, sexual behavior, family stability, and reproductive rate, with Asians and blacks at opposite ends and whites in between. He cast blacks as the most "r-selected," presenting them as more fertile, more impulsive, and less intelligent, and Asians as the most "K-selected." To support these claims he ran a paid survey on sexual behavior at Toronto's [[Eaton Centre]] shopping mall, paying respondents to answer questions about genital size and sexual habits, work for which the University of Western Ontario censured him for proceeding without ethics-board approval.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[[Transaction Publishers]] issued the book in 1995 and a condensed "Special Abridged Edition" in 1999, and in 2000 the publisher mass-mailed thousands of free copies of the abridged version to academics, drawing organized protest from sociologists and a public reversal in which Transaction withdrew the book and apologized. Rushton thereafter published the abridged edition through the Pioneer Fund's own [[Charles Darwin Research Institute]] and distributed it widely to social scientists and journalists, and he promoted the racial-hierarchy thesis at the white-nationalist [[American Renaissance]] conferences run by [[Jared Taylor]].[^3][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The 1989 Controversy
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Rushton presented his racial theories at a 1989 meeting of the [[American Association for the Advancement of Science]], whose officials publicly called his research "highly suspect." Ontario premier [[David Peterson]] denounced him, the Ontario Provincial Police investigated, the [[Ontario Human Rights Commission]] examined his conduct, and the geneticist [[David Suzuki]] challenged him to a public debate. The provincial attorney-general Ian Scott declined to prosecute, calling the theories "loony but not criminal." The university kept him on but reprimanded him over the unapproved research.[^2][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Suzuki debate took place before a packed hall at the University of Western Ontario in 1989, with Suzuki declaring, "There will always be Rushtons in the world. We must be prepared to root them out." Ontario premier Peterson called for Rushton's dismissal, and the police investigated whether his lectures violated Canada's hate-speech provisions under the Criminal Code before Scott's office declined to proceed. The university defended his academic freedom while condemning the content of his work, and for a period after the furor disrupted his classes Rushton delivered his lectures by videotape.[^4][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Pioneer Fund Presidency
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Rushton received more than a million dollars in Pioneer Fund grants over his career, money he used in part to buy out his teaching duties, and in 2002 he became president of the fund, the [[Wickliffe Draper|Draper]]-founded foundation that has financed race-and-intelligence research since 1937. He served until shortly before his death, when he nominated the psychologist [[Richard Lynn]] as his successor. His r/K framework and his collaborations with Lynn appeared in the journal [[Mankind Quarterly]], and his work supplied citations for [[Charles Murray]] and [[Richard Herrnstein]]'s *The Bell Curve* and for the [[Human Biodiversity|human-biodiversity]] network associated with [[Steve Sailer]].[^1][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Born in Bournemouth, England in 1943, Rushton took a doctorate from the [[London School of Economics]] in 1973, taught at [[York University]] and the [[University of Toronto]], and moved to Western Ontario, where he was made full professor in 1985. After Harry Weyher's death he became Pioneer Fund president in 2002 and channeled much of the fund's money to his own Charles Darwin Research Institute in Port Huron, [[Michigan]]; tax records show that the institute received $473,835 in 2002, roughly 73 percent of the fund's grants that year. He died of cancer in London, Ontario, on October 2, 2012.[^1][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Scientific Condemnation
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Reviewers across psychology and biology dismissed *Race, Evolution, and Behavior*. The University of Washington psychologist [[David Barash]] wrote that "bad science and virulent racial prejudice drip like pus from nearly every page" of the book. In 2020 the psychology department at the University of Western Ontario issued a statement saying much of Rushton's research "was racist," was "deeply flawed from a scientific standpoint," and showed how "the impact of flawed science lingers on." By 2021 several of his articles had been retracted as scientifically flawed, unethical, and not replicable.[^2][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In June 2020 the journal *[[Personality and Individual Differences]]* retracted a 2012 paper Rushton coauthored with [[Donald Templer]] that linked skin pigmentation to aggression and sexuality, and in December 2020 the journal *Psychological Reports* retracted two further Rushton papers from 1990 and 1991 on race and brain size, with the notice citing a misunderstanding of human genetic variation, the inappropriate application of ecological theory to human populations, the misuse of heritability, and the failure to replicate his findings. The wave of retractions reflected a broader reckoning across psychology with hereditarian work funded by the Pioneer Fund.[^6][^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Philippe Rushton, professor who pushed limits with race studies, dead at 68," *The Globe and Mail,* October 2012, on his birth in Bournemouth, his Western Ontario career, the Pioneer Fund presidency, and his racial claims. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/philippe-rushton-professor-who-pushed-limits-with-race-studies-dead-at-68/article4901806/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Jean-Philippe Rushton," Southern Poverty Law Center extremist file, on his theories, the Pioneer Fund, and the scientific-racism classification. https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/jean-philippe-rushton/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Rushton, J. Philippe. *Race, Evolution, and Behavior: A Life History Perspective.* Transaction Publishers, 1995.
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Leading race 'scientist' dies in Canada," *Salon,* October 6, 2012, on the 1989 AAAS controversy, the Eaton Centre survey, and the Ontario investigations. https://www.salon.com/2012/10/06/leading_race_scientist_dies_in_canada/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Key Race Scientist Takes Reins at Pioneer Fund," Southern Poverty Law Center, 2002, on Rushton becoming Pioneer Fund president. https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2002/key-race-scientist-takes-reins-pioneer-fund
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Psychology journal retracts two articles for being unethical, scientifically flawed, and based on racist ideas and agenda," Retraction Watch, December 29, 2020, on the *Psychological Reports* retractions of Rushton's 1990 and 1991 brain-size papers and the June 2020 *Personality and Individual Differences* retraction of the 2012 Rushton-Templer paper. https://retractionwatch.com/2020/12/29/psychology-journal-retracts-two-articles-for-being-unethical-scientifically-flawed-and-based-on-racist-ideas-and-agenda
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Jean-Philippe Rushton," Southern Poverty Law Center extremist file, on the abridged edition mailed in bulk to academics around 2000, his American Renaissance appearances, and the Charles Darwin Research Institute. https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/jean-philippe-rushton/
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "Leading race 'scientist' dies in Canada," *Salon,* October 6, 2012, on the 1989 Suzuki debate, the "root them out" quote, and Rushton teaching by videotape. https://www.salon.com/2012/10/06/leading_race_scientist_dies_in_canada/
|
||||||
|
[^9]: "Key Race Scientist Takes Reins at Pioneer Fund," Southern Poverty Law Center, 2002, on Rushton's LSE doctorate, his Western Ontario career, the 2002 presidency, and the $473,835 routed to his Charles Darwin Research Institute. https://www.splcenter.org/resources/reports/key-race-scientist-takes-reins-pioneer-fund/
|
||||||
|
[^10]: "Journal retracts paper linking skin color to aggression and sexuality," Retraction Watch, June 2020, on the retraction of the 2012 Rushton-Templer paper in *Personality and Individual Differences.* https://retractionwatch.com/2020/12/29/psychology-journal-retracts-two-articles-for-being-unethical-scientifically-flawed-and-based-on-racist-ideas-and-agenda
|
||||||
55
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Jared Polis.md
Normal file
55
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Jared Polis.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,55 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Political Figure"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- JaredPolis
|
||||||
|
- DemocraticParty
|
||||||
|
- Colorado
|
||||||
|
- Governor
|
||||||
|
- TechEntrepreneur
|
||||||
|
- Cryptocurrency
|
||||||
|
- Dialog
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Jared Schutz Polis
|
||||||
|
- Governor Jared Polis
|
||||||
|
summary: "Jared Polis is the governor of Colorado, the first openly gay person elected a U.S. governor, a technology entrepreneur who founded ProFlowers and cofounded Techstars, and a name on the leaked 2026 roster of Peter Thiel's Dialog society."
|
||||||
|
born: 1975-05-12
|
||||||
|
location: "Boulder, Colorado (born); Colorado (political base)"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Jared Schutz Polis (born May 12, 1975, in [[Boulder, Colorado|Boulder]], [[Colorado]]) is an American politician and technology entrepreneur who served in the [[United States House of Representatives]] from 2009 to 2019 and has been governor of Colorado since January 2019, the first openly gay man elected governor of a U.S. state. In June 2026 Polis was named by *WIRED* among the figures surfaced in the leak of [[Dialog]], the invitation-only society cofounded by [[Peter Thiel]] and [[Auren Hoffman]]. Polis built a fortune in internet commerce before entering politics and has used the governorship to position Colorado as a crypto-friendly jurisdiction.[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Entrepreneurial Fortune
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Polis grew up partly in [[La Jolla]], California, and earned a degree in politics from [[Princeton University]]. His parents, Stephen Schutz and Susan Polis Schutz, founded the greeting-card company [[Blue Mountain Arts]]; Polis built its online arm, Blue Mountain Arts.com, which sold to [[Excite@Home]] in 1999 in a cash-and-stock deal reported at roughly 780 million dollars. He went on to found the online florist [[ProFlowers]], which went public and was later sold in a transaction valued at around 477 million dollars.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 2006 Polis cofounded the startup accelerator [[Techstars]] in Boulder with [[David Cohen]], [[Brad Feld]], and David Brown, one of the earliest and most influential American accelerator programs. His commercial record placed him among the wealthiest members of Congress when he was elected, and he financed much of his own political activity, having earlier won a seat on the [[Colorado State Board of Education]].[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Congress and the Governorship
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Polis was elected to the U.S. House from Colorado's 2nd congressional district in 2008 and served from January 2009 to January 2019, aligning with the progressive wing of the [[Democratic Party]] on education and civil-rights issues while pursuing technology and internet-freedom causes. In 2018 he won the Colorado governorship, becoming the first openly gay man and the first [[Jewish people|Jewish]] person elected governor of the state, and he was reelected in 2022.[^2][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In office Polis pursued a self-styled libertarian-tinged Democratic agenda, including aggressive moves on income-tax reduction and a deregulatory posture on emerging technologies. His administration's embrace of digital and blockchain technology became a defining policy signature, building on positions he had taken in Congress.[^4][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Cryptocurrency Policy
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Polis has a long record of cryptocurrency engagement. In 2014, as a member of Congress, he became the first federal lawmaker to accept campaign donations in [[Bitcoin]], and in 2016 he cofounded the Congressional Blockchain Caucus. As governor he announced that Colorado would accept cryptocurrency, either Bitcoin or [[Ethereum]], for state tax and fee payments beginning in the summer of 2022, the first U.S. state to do so, with plans to extend the option to services such as driver's license renewals and hunting and fishing licenses.[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Polis structured the program so the state would not hold crypto reserves: a payment processor converts the digital assets to U.S. dollars before they enter the state treasury, functioning like a credit-card layer. He characterized the move as practical rather than ideological, calling crypto acceptance "frankly not as exciting as it sounds. It's a basic convenience thing," and projected that only about one percent of residents would use it initially.[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The 2026 Dialog Leak
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The June 16, 2026 *WIRED* report identified Polis on the Dialog roster as "Governor of Colorado," listing him among the political figures surfaced when the hacktivist [[maia arson crimew|crimew]] located a member directory in the source code of Dialog's website and a separate source provided the publication with the 222-name registration list for the society's retreat near [[Dublin]], scheduled for August 12 through 16, 2026. *WIRED* placed Polis alongside [[Cory Booker|Senator Cory Booker]] and [[Ted Cruz|Senator Ted Cruz]] among the elected officials on the list.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
A spokesperson for Polis disputed any membership, saying the governor "does not know why his name is associated with the organization in any way or appeared on their website." The denial did not address whether Polis had attended any Dialog event, and it left unexplained the presence of his name in the records crimew pulled from the site's code.[^1][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Cameron, Dell, and Yulia Almazova. "Leak Exposes Members of Peter Thiel's Secretive 'Dialog' Society." *WIRED,* June 16, 2026. https://www.wired.com/story/leak-exposes-members-of-peter-thiels-secretive-dialog-society/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Profile: Entrepreneur Jared Polis sees governor's race as a chance to turn good ideas into reality." *Colorado Springs Gazette,* September 30, 2018. https://gazette.com/2018/09/30/profile-entrepreneur-jared-polis-sees-governors-race-as-a-chance-to-turn-good-ideas-into-reality-af2d0222-c1b2-11e8-8b2b-afa916b3b182/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Congressman Jared Polis: Before TechStars Were Stars." *Startup Grind.* https://www.startupgrind.com/blog/congressman-jared-polis-before-techstars-were-stars/
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Jared Polis: what to know about Colorado's Democratic governor." *Colorado Public Radio,* October 17, 2022. https://www.cpr.org/2022/10/17/vg-2022-colorado-governor-race-jared-polis-democrat/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Colorado's governor wants to be a haven for crypto as a 'basic convenience thing.'" *Associated Press / AOL,* 2022. https://www.aol.com/colorados-governor-wants-haven-crypto-130752609.html
|
||||||
|
[^6]: Statement of a spokesperson for Governor Jared Polis, quoted in "What is Peter Thiel's secret 'Dialog' society and how it got exposed after website leak." *The Express Tribune,* June 2026. https://tribune.com.pk/story/2614092/what-is-peter-thiels-secret-dialog-society-and-how-it-got-exposed-after-website-leak
|
||||||
60
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Jes Staley.md
Normal file
60
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Jes Staley.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,60 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Organized Crime"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- JeffreyEpstein
|
||||||
|
- JPMorgan
|
||||||
|
- Barclays
|
||||||
|
- Banking
|
||||||
|
- JesStaley
|
||||||
|
- FinancialConductAuthority
|
||||||
|
- PrivateBanking
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- James Edward Staley
|
||||||
|
- James E. Staley
|
||||||
|
summary: "Career JPMorgan banker who managed Jeffrey Epstein's private-banking relationship, later became Barclays chief executive, and was banned from senior UK finance roles in 2023 for misleading the regulator about the nature and timing of his Epstein relationship."
|
||||||
|
born: 1956-12-27
|
||||||
|
location: "Boston, Massachusetts"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
James Edward Staley is an American banker who spent more than three decades at [[JPMorgan Chase]], rose to run its asset management and then its investment bank, and served as group chief executive of [[Barclays]] from December 2015 until November 2021. During his JPMorgan years he was the senior executive who managed and advocated for the bank's relationship with [[Jeffrey Epstein]], a private-banking client from 1998 to 2013. In October 2023 the [[Financial Conduct Authority]] banned Staley from holding senior management functions in UK financial services and fined him for recklessly approving a letter that misled the regulator about his relationship with Epstein, a decision the [[Upper Tribunal]] upheld in June 2025.[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### JPMorgan Career
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Staley joined Morgan Guaranty Trust Company of New York in 1979 after graduating from Bowdoin College, and spent the 1980s in the bank's Latin America division, including as head of corporate finance for Brazil and as general manager of the firm's Brazilian brokerage.[^4] He led [[JPMorgan Asset Management]] from 2001 to 2009 and then ran the corporate and investment bank from 2009 to 2013.[^5] At the height of his JPMorgan career he was discussed as a potential successor to chief executive [[Jamie Dimon]].[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Staley managed the private-banking relationship between JPMorgan and Epstein, who became a client of the bank's private bank in 1998.[^6] In a July 2011 email, JPMorgan general counsel [[Stephen Cutler]] wrote to Staley and asset-and-wealth-management head [[Mary Erdoes]] that Epstein was "not an honorable person in any way" and "should not be a client," and Cutler later testified that Staley and Erdoes made the decision to keep Epstein.[^6] Epstein also functioned as a source of referrals and introductions for Staley and the bank, including to wealthy potential clients.[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 2013 Staley left JPMorgan after more than 30 years to become a managing partner at the hedge fund [[BlueMountain Capital]].[^4] JPMorgan terminated its banking relationship with Epstein the same year.[^6] After BlueMountain, Staley was recruited to lead Barclays, joining as group chief executive on December 1, 2015.[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Epstein Emails and the 2015 Island Visit
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Court filings in litigation brought against JPMorgan by the [[Government of the United States Virgin Islands]] disclosed that Staley exchanged roughly 1,200 emails with Epstein from his JPMorgan account between 2008 and 2012.[^7] In a message dated November 1, 2009, sent from Epstein while Epstein was serving his Florida sentence, Epstein wrote, "I deeply appreciate our friendship. I have few so profound."[^7] In a 2010 exchange Staley wrote "That was fun. Say hi to Snow White," and when Epstein asked "what character would you like next," Staley answered "Beauty and the Beast"; Staley later said he had no recollection of the messages.[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Staley and his family visited Epstein's private island, [[Little Saint James]] in the [[U.S. Virgin Islands]], on more than one occasion.[^7] After an April 2015 visit, which Staley described as his last in-person meeting with Epstein, Staley emailed Epstein, "Thanks for the flight and thanks for the lunch. Your place is crazy, and special ... I count u as a deep friend. The girls seemed to enjoy the sail. All the best Jes."[^8] The April 2015 trip occurred months before Staley was named Barclays chief executive in October 2015.[^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
JPMorgan filed a third-party complaint against Staley in the [[United States District Court for the Southern District of New York]] on March 9, 2023, within the Virgin Islands action.[^9] The complaint asserted indemnification, contribution, breach of fiduciary duty, and "faithless servant" claims, alleging Staley concealed his personal activities with Epstein, and sought to recover compensation paid to him from at least 2006 through 2013.[^9] Staley moved to dismiss, arguing JPMorgan was using him as a "shield" for the bank's own failures.[^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Barclays and the FCA Ban
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
While Barclays chief executive, Staley was separately sanctioned for attempting to identify a whistleblower who had sent letters criticizing a senior Barclays hire; in 2018 the FCA and the [[Prudential Regulation Authority]] fined him 642,430 pounds and Barclays cut his pay.[^11] Staley remained chief executive until November 2021, when he resigned as the FCA and PRA conclusions about his Epstein relationship became known.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The FCA's case centered on an October 2019 letter that Barclays sent to the regulator, which Staley approved, stating that he "did not have a close relationship" with Epstein and had "ceased contact" with Epstein before joining Barclays.[^1] The FCA found those statements misleading, citing emails in which Staley described Epstein as one of his "deepest" and "most cherished" friends, and evidence that Staley was in contact with Epstein in the days before his Barclays appointment was announced on October 28, 2015, and indirectly in 2016 and 2017.[^1] On October 12, 2023 the FCA issued a decision banning Staley from senior management functions and imposing a fine of about 1.8 million pounds, with the penalties suspended pending his appeal.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Upper Tribunal heard Staley's reference and, on June 26, 2025, dismissed it and upheld the prohibition, finding that he had acted recklessly and with a lack of integrity and that the evidence of his Epstein relationship was "overwhelming."[^3] The tribunal reduced the financial penalty from about 1.8 million pounds to 1.1 million pounds, reflecting deferred Barclays shares that he forfeited.[^3] During the proceedings Staley testified that he had a sexual encounter with a member of Epstein's staff years earlier, and he maintained that he had not been dishonest.[^12]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "FCA fines former Barclays CEO and bans him from senior roles," *Central Banking,* 2023. https://www.centralbanking.com/regulation/banking/7959957/fca-fines-former-barclays-ceo-and-bans-him-from-senior-roles
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "FCA: Staley misled regulators about his relationship with Epstein," *Banking Dive,* 2023. https://www.bankingdive.com/news/fca-staley-misled-regulators-relationship-jeffrey-epstein/733373/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Upper Tribunal upholds Jes Staley ban," Financial Conduct Authority, 2025. https://www.fca.org.uk/news/press-releases/upper-tribunal-upholds-jes-staley-ban
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Jes Staley," Bank Policy Institute, accessed 2026. https://bpi.com/people/jes-staley/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "James E. Staley appointed Group Chief Executive," Barclays PLC, October 28, 2015. https://home.barclays/content/dam/home-barclays/documents/news/2015/october/281015_RNS.pdf
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "JPMorgan kept Epstein as client for years after warnings, deposition shows," *The Washington Post,* 2023. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/05/26/epstein-jpmorgan-client-sex-offender-warnings/
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Lawsuit alleges Jeffrey Epstein sent JPMorgan Chase exec photos of young women," *CNN Business,* 2023. https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/17/business/epstein-jpmorgan-emails
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "High flyer to pariah: the saga of Epstein-linked banker Jes Staley," *inkl / Agence France-Presse,* 2025. https://www.inkl.com/news/high-flyer-to-pariah-the-saga-of-epstein-linked-banker-jes-staley
|
||||||
|
[^9]: "JPMorgan Sues Ex-Executive Associated With Jeffrey Epstein," *Time,* 2023. https://time.com/6261243/jpmorgan-lawsuit-jes-staley-epstein-trafficking/
|
||||||
|
[^10]: "Jes Staley Says JPMorgan Using Him as 'Shield' for Epstein Failures," *U.S. News & World Report / Reuters,* 2023. https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2023-04-24/jes-staley-seeks-to-dismiss-jpmorgan-chase-lawsuit-over-jeffrey-epstein
|
||||||
|
[^11]: "Ex-Barclays CEO Staley's lifetime FCA ban to remain," *Banking Dive,* 2025. https://www.bankingdive.com/news/jes-staley-fca-lifetime-ban-banking-epstein-barclays-uk/751754/
|
||||||
|
[^12]: "Former Barclays CEO Jes Staley slept with Epstein assistant, court hears," *Yahoo / PA Media,* 2025. https://www.yahoo.com/news/former-barclays-ceo-jes-staley-181703399.html
|
||||||
39
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/John Schulman.md
Normal file
39
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/John Schulman.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Technologists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- JohnSchulman
|
||||||
|
- OpenAI
|
||||||
|
- Anthropic
|
||||||
|
- ThinkingMachinesLab
|
||||||
|
- ArtificialIntelligence
|
||||||
|
- ReinforcementLearning
|
||||||
|
summary: "John Schulman is an OpenAI cofounder and reinforcement-learning researcher who created the PPO algorithm, helped build ChatGPT and the RLHF alignment behind it, left OpenAI for Anthropic in August 2024, and then cofounded Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab as chief scientist."
|
||||||
|
location: "San Francisco, California"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
John Schulman is a machine-learning researcher who cofounded [[OpenAI]] in 2015, where he helped develop reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) and led the creation of [[ChatGPT]], and who is regarded as one of the principal architects of the alignment methods that made conversational language models usable. He left OpenAI for [[Anthropic]] in August 2024, departed Anthropic roughly six months later, and in February 2025 became a cofounder and chief scientist of [[Thinking Machines Lab]], the company founded by the former OpenAI chief technology officer [[Mira Murati]].[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Reinforcement Learning and the Road to OpenAI
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Schulman studied physics at Caltech, briefly pursued neuroscience, and took his doctorate in computer science at the [[University of California, Berkeley]], advised by Pieter Abbeel, working on robotics and reinforcement learning. During and shortly after his PhD he developed two foundational reinforcement-learning algorithms: Trust Region Policy Optimization (TRPO), with coauthors including Sergey Levine and Michael Jordan, and Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO), published in 2017, which simplified TRPO while preserving its stability and became one of the most widely used and most cited methods in the field.[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
He joined OpenAI as a member of its founding team in 2015, immediately after finishing at Berkeley. PPO later became the workhorse algorithm of RLHF, the technique that fine-tunes a language model on human preference judgments to make its outputs more helpful and less harmful, and which OpenAI used to turn its raw GPT models into the aligned systems that culminated in ChatGPT. Schulman co-led OpenAI's post-training team and is widely credited as a leader of the effort that produced ChatGPT after its November 2022 release.[^4][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Anthropic, Then Thinking Machines Lab
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On August 5, 2024 Schulman announced that he was leaving OpenAI to join Anthropic, the rival lab founded by former OpenAI researchers around AI safety. He wrote that the move "stems from my desire to deepen my focus on AI alignment, and to start a new chapter of my career where I can return to hands-on technical work," and he joined Anthropic's alignment-science team. His departure came amid a wave of exits from OpenAI's safety and research leadership, including the chief scientist [[Ilya Sutskever]] and Murati.[^1][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Schulman's time at Anthropic was brief. In February 2025 he left to cofound Thinking Machines Lab with Murati, taking the role of chief scientist, in a company assembled largely from former OpenAI researchers including Barret Zoph and Bob McGrew. The lab raised a roughly 2-billion-dollar seed round at a 12-billion-dollar valuation in July 2025, led by [[Andreessen Horowitz]], with Schulman among its named cofounders.[^2][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "OpenAI Co-Founder John Schulman Departs for AI Rival Anthropic," *Bloomberg,* August 6, 2024, on the August 2024 move and the "deepen my focus on AI alignment" statement. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-06/openai-co-founder-john-schulman-departs-for-ai-rival-anthropic
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "OpenAI cofounder John Schulman is joining Mira Murati's startup after brief stint at Anthropic," *Fortune,* February 6, 2025, on his Anthropic departure and joining Thinking Machines Lab as chief scientist. https://www.fortune.com/2025/02/06/openai-john-schulman-mira-muratis-startup-anthropic
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms," Schulman et al., 2017, the PPO paper. https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.06347
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO): The Key to LLM Alignment," Cameron R. Wolfe, on Schulman's Caltech and Berkeley training under Abbeel, the TRPO and PPO work, and PPO's role in RLHF. https://cameronrwolfe.substack.com/p/proximal-policy-optimization-ppo
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "How John Schulman Created OpenAI," KITRUM, on his joining the OpenAI founding team in 2015, leading the creation of ChatGPT, and co-leading the post-training team. https://kitrum.com/blog/the-inspiring-story-john-schulman-co-founder-of-openai/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "OpenAI co-founder John Schulman joins rival LLM developer Anthropic," SiliconANGLE, August 6, 2024, on the move and the broader departures from OpenAI. https://siliconangle.com/2024/08/06/openai-co-founder-john-schulman-joins-rival-llm-developer-anthropic/
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab is worth $12B in seed round," *TechCrunch,* July 15, 2025, on the seed round, valuation, and the cofounders including Schulman. https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/15/mira-muratis-thinking-machines-lab-is-worth-12b-in-seed-round/
|
||||||
47
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Julian Savulescu.md
Normal file
47
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Julian Savulescu.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Scientists & Researchers"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- Bioethics
|
||||||
|
- Transhumanism
|
||||||
|
- HumanEnhancement
|
||||||
|
- Oxford
|
||||||
|
- EffectiveAltruism
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Julian Savulescu
|
||||||
|
summary: "Julian Savulescu is an Oxford bioethicist who founded the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, edited the Journal of Medical Ethics, and advanced 'procreative beneficence' and the case for human genetic and moral enhancement."
|
||||||
|
born: 1963
|
||||||
|
location: "Oxford, England; Singapore"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Julian Savulescu (born 1963) is an Australian bioethicist who held the Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics at the [[University of Oxford]] and founded its [[Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics|Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics]]. He is best known for the principle of "procreative beneficence," which holds that prospective parents have a moral reason to select the children expected to have the best lives, and for his advocacy, with Ingmar Persson, of biomedical moral enhancement. He trained under Peter Singer and then Derek Parfit before founding his own program in applied ethics at the [[Effective Altruism|effective-altruism]]-adjacent Oxford centers.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### From Singer and Parfit to the Uehiro Chair
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Savulescu studied medicine at Monash University in [[Melbourne]] before completing a doctorate under [[Peter Singer]] on ethical questions in end-of-life care. As a Sir Robert Menzies Medical Scholar he moved to Oxford between 1994 and 1997 to work under [[Derek Parfit]]. He thus passed directly through the two figures who carried classical utilitarianism into late-twentieth-century moral philosophy before establishing his own program in applied ethics.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 2002 he was appointed to the Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics, endowed by the Japanese philanthropist Eiji Uehiro, and in 2003 he founded and directed the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, which was renamed the Uehiro Oxford Institute in 2024. He served as editor-in-chief of the *Journal of Medical Ethics*, the leading English-language bioethics journal, and from August 2022 also held the Chen Su Lan Centennial Professorship in Medical Ethics and directed the Centre for Biomedical Ethics at the National University of Singapore.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Procreative Beneficence
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In "Procreative Beneficence: Why We Should Select the Best Children," published in the journal *Bioethics* in 2001, Savulescu argued that when couples using in-vitro fertilization can choose among embryos, they have a moral obligation to select, on the available genetic information, the child expected to have the best prospects for a good life, including non-disease traits such as temperament or intelligence. He defended the principle as following from a general duty to do the most good and distinguished it from coercive state eugenics by locating the choice with parents.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Critics charged that procreative beneficence revived eugenic reasoning by treating some lives as preferable to bring into existence than others and that the appeal to "best life prospects" smuggled contested social judgments into reproductive medicine. Savulescu extended the position across later work on embryo selection, gene editing, and what he termed liberal eugenics, arguing that enhancement technologies should be permitted where they improve expected welfare without coercion.[^4][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Human and Moral Enhancement
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Savulescu was a leading academic proponent of human enhancement, the use of biotechnology to extend human physical, cognitive, and emotional capacities beyond the species norm. In 2009 he and [[Nick Bostrom]] co-edited the volume *Human Enhancement* (Oxford University Press), bringing the Uehiro Centre's bioethics together with the transhumanist program of Bostrom's [[Future of Humanity Institute]], the two Oxford centers that became the institutional base for radical-enhancement and existential-risk research.[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In *Unfit for the Future: The Need for Moral Enhancement* (Oxford University Press, 2012), written with the Swedish philosopher Ingmar Persson, Savulescu argued that human moral psychology evolved for small groups and is now mismatched against globalized technology capable of "ultimate harm," such as engineered pandemics, climate collapse, or weapons that could end the species. They concluded that traditional moral education would work too slowly and that researchers should investigate biomedical means of enhancing human moral motivation. The framing of technology-driven extinction risk overlapped with the existential-risk agenda that [[Toby Ord]] and [[William MacAskill]], who emerged from the same Oxford practical-ethics environment and co-founded [[Giving What We Can]] in 2009, later built into longtermism.[^7][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Professor Julian Savulescu," Uehiro Oxford Institute, on the Uehiro Chair, the founding of the Oxford Uehiro Centre in 2003 and its 2024 renaming, the *Journal of Medical Ethics* editorship, and the National University of Singapore appointment. https://www.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-julian-savulescu
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Training Transhumanists at Oxford University," Europe in the World, University of Notre Dame, on the Future of Humanity Institute, the Uehiro Centre, procreative beneficence, and human enhancement. https://eitw.nd.edu/articles/training-transhumanists-at-oxford-university/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Julian Savulescu," Centre for Biomedical Ethics, National University of Singapore, on the doctorate under Peter Singer and the Menzies scholarship at Oxford under Derek Parfit. https://medicine.nus.edu.sg/cbme/people_uri/julian-savulescu-bioethics/
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Savulescu, Julian. "Procreative Beneficence: Why We Should Select the Best Children." *Bioethics,* vol. 15, no. 5-6, 2001. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12058767/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Interview with Julian Savulescu on Genetic Selection and Enhancement," Practical Ethics (University of Oxford blog), 2019. https://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2019/11/interview-with-julian-savulescu-on-genetic-selection-and-enhancement/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: Bostrom, Nick, and Julian Savulescu, eds. *Human Enhancement.* Oxford University Press, 2009.
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Persson, Ingmar, and Julian Savulescu. *Unfit for the Future: The Need for Moral Enhancement.* Oxford University Press, 2012, on the mismatch between human moral nature and "ultimate harm." https://global.oup.com/academic/product/unfit-for-the-future-9780199653645
|
||||||
67
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Leo Strauss.md
Normal file
67
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Leo Strauss.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,67 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Scientists & Researchers"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- LeoStrauss
|
||||||
|
- PoliticalPhilosophy
|
||||||
|
- Esotericism
|
||||||
|
- Neoconservatism
|
||||||
|
- PeterThiel
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Leo Strauss
|
||||||
|
- Strauss
|
||||||
|
summary: "Leo Strauss was a German-American political philosopher at the University of Chicago whose doctrine of esoteric writing, critique of liberal modernity, and revival of the ancients shaped American neoconservatism and supplied one of the three pillars of Peter Thiel's 2007 essay 'The Straussian Moment.'"
|
||||||
|
born: 1899-09-20
|
||||||
|
died: 1973-10-18
|
||||||
|
location: "Kirchhain, Germany; Chicago, Illinois"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Leo Strauss (September 20, 1899 to October 18, 1973) was a German-born political philosopher who taught for nearly two decades at the [[University of Chicago]] and who founded the school of interpretation known as Straussianism. His central claims were that the great philosophers of the past practiced esoteric writing, concealing a dangerous teaching beneath a salutary surface; that modern liberal philosophy represents a decline from classical political philosophy; and that the conflict between reason and revelation, which he called the theological-political problem, is the permanent theme of Western thought. His students and their students became a recognizable presence in American conservatism, and his name attaches to the intellectual genealogy of [[Neoconservatism|neoconservatism]]. [[Peter Thiel]] titled his 2007 essay "The Straussian Moment" after him.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Life and Career
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Strauss was born in Kirchhain, in Hesse, into an observant Jewish family, and studied at the [[University of Marburg]] and the University of Hamburg, taking his doctorate in 1921 with a dissertation on the epistemology of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi supervised by the neo-Kantian philosopher [[Ernst Cassirer]]. In the early 1920s he attended the Freiburg lectures of [[Edmund Husserl]] and encountered the early work of [[Martin Heidegger]], whom he regarded for the rest of his life as the most formidable thinker of the age. He worked at the Academy for Jewish Research in Berlin, where he edited part of the jubilee edition of [[Moses Mendelssohn]], and published his first book, *Spinoza's Critique of Religion*, in 1930.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 1932 a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship took Strauss out of Germany to France and then England, and he never returned; the rise of the Nazi regime in 1933 made his exile permanent. He completed *The Political Philosophy of Hobbes* in England, emigrated to the United States in 1937, and from 1938 to 1948 taught at the [[New School for Social Research]] in New York. In 1949 he joined the University of Chicago, where he was Robert Maynard Hutchins Distinguished Service Professor and taught until 1967, the period in which he trained the bulk of his students and produced his major interpretive works. He spent a year at Claremont Men's College in 1968 and then moved to [[St. John's College]] in Annapolis as scholar in residence, where he died in 1973.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Esoteric Writing and Persecution
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Strauss's most distinctive doctrine, set out in *Persecution and the Art of Writing* (1952), holds that under conditions of persecution philosophers learned to write on two levels at once. The surface, or exoteric, teaching conformed to the moral and religious opinions of the city and protected the author from reprisal, while a hidden, or esoteric, teaching, addressed to careful readers and signaled by deliberate contradictions, omissions, and errors, communicated the philosopher's real and potentially subversive thought. Strauss developed the reading through studies of [[Maimonides]], Judah Halevi, and Spinoza, arguing that modern scholars had lost the very art of reading "between the lines" that earlier readers took for granted.[^4][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Behind the contingent fact of persecution Strauss placed a permanent tension between philosophy and the political community. Philosophy questions the authoritative opinions on which any society rests, and so the pursuit of truth is always potentially corrosive of the beliefs that hold a city together. The classical solution, in Strauss's account, was a politic reticence: the philosopher tempers the public expression of the truth and grants the city the salutary myths it requires, a posture connected to the Platonic notion of the noble lie, the gennaion pseudos of the *Republic*, the medicinal falsehood the rulers tell for the good of the whole. Critics, notably Shadia Drury in *The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss* (1988), read this as an esoteric endorsement of rule by a deceiving elite, a reading Strauss's defenders dispute.[^4][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Critique of Modernity
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Strauss argued that classical political philosophy, oriented by an idea of the naturally best regime and the question of how one ought to live, was abandoned by modern thought in favor of lower but supposedly more solid foundations. In *Natural Right and History* (1953) he traced the collapse of the classical doctrine of natural right into modern natural rights and then into the historicism and value-relativism he regarded as the characteristic disease of the twentieth century, a relativism he thought left liberal democracy defenseless against its enemies. He described modernity as unfolding in "three waves," the first beginning with [[Niccolo Machiavelli|Machiavelli]] and [[Thomas Hobbes|Hobbes]], the second with [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau|Rousseau]], the third with [[Friedrich Nietzsche|Nietzsche]], each lowering the horizon further until thought arrived at the nihilism he associated with Heidegger.[^2][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The recovery he proposed was a return to the ancients, achieved by reading Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, and the medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophers on their own terms rather than through the assumptions of progress. Works such as *On Tyranny* (1948), a commentary on Xenophon's *Hiero* that occasioned his published exchange with the Hegelian [[Alexandre Kojeve]], *Thoughts on Machiavelli* (1958), and *The City and Man* (1964) enacted this return. Underlying all of it was what Strauss called the theological-political problem, the unresolved quarrel between the claims of reason ("Athens") and the claims of revelation ("Jerusalem"), which he held no philosophy had ever refuted and which he treated as the animating tension of the Western tradition.[^7][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Schmitt Exchange
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 1932 Strauss published "Notes on Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political," a close and critical review of the jurist [[Carl Schmitt]]'s book. Strauss argued that Schmitt, in seeking to ground the political in the friend-enemy distinction and to escape the liberalism he attacked, in fact remained within the liberal horizon he wished to overcome, because he could give no positive account of why the political was worth affirming. Schmitt privately praised the review as the one penetrating response his book had received, revised passages of the third edition in light of it, and supplied a recommendation that supported Strauss's Rockefeller fellowship.[^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The German scholar [[Heinrich Meier]] reconstructed this episode in *Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue* (German 1988, English 1995), arguing that the exchange concerned, beneath its ostensible subject, the deeper quarrel between political philosophy and political theology. Thiel set the two thinkers' names side by side in "The Straussian Moment."[^9][^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Students, Neoconservatism, and the Straussian Moment
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Strauss trained a large cohort of students at Chicago, among them Allan Bloom, Harvey Mansfield (at Harvard), Harry Jaffa, and Walter Berns, and a later generation including the analyst [[Paul Wolfowitz]] and the journalist William Kristol moved into government and the policy press, which is why commentators traced a line from Strauss to the foreign policy of the [[George W. Bush]] administration, though the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that Strauss's own writing addressed no policy questions. The "Straussian" reading also split into rival camps, an East Coast school around Mansfield and an interpretively bolder West Coast school around Jaffa and the [[Claremont Institute]], which became influential on the [[Trump]]-era right.[^2][^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Thiel's "The Straussian Moment," published in *Politics and Apocalypse* (2007), takes Strauss as one of three twentieth-century thinkers, with Schmitt and [[Rene Girard]], who saw past the optimistic anthropology of Enlightenment liberalism. Thiel reads the [[September 11 attacks]] as evidence that the Hobbesian and Lockean account of human beings as fearful, economically motivated, and threatened only by recognized states had failed, and he invokes Strauss's distinction between the exoteric surface and the esoteric core to argue that the modern state conceals its hardest necessities, a logic he extends to covert intelligence and to the surveillance work of his company [[Palantir]]. The essay treats the Straussian recovery of the ancients as possibly the last and best resource of the West while voicing the suspicion, drawn from Girard, that even the Straussian moment of triumph may prove brief.[^12][^13]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Leo Strauss," *Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,* on the Kirchhain birth, the 1921 Hamburg doctorate under Ernst Cassirer, Husserl and Heidegger, the Berlin and New School years, and the Chicago career. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/strauss-leo/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Leo Strauss," *Encyclopædia Britannica,* on Straussianism, the critique of modernity, and the disputed line to neoconservatism. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leo-Strauss
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Strauss, Leo. *Spinoza's Critique of Religion* (1930); *The Political Philosophy of Hobbes* (1936).
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Strauss, Leo. *Persecution and the Art of Writing.* Free Press, 1952.
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Morality, Nature, and Esotericism in Leo Strauss's Persecution and the Art of Writing," *The Review of Politics,* Cambridge, on the strong and weak accounts of esotericism. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/review-of-politics/article/abs/morality-nature-and-esotericism-in-leo-strausss-persecution-and-the-art-of-writing/AE252D909A9FE588A1ADED672DFA6C0F
|
||||||
|
[^6]: Drury, Shadia B. *The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss.* St. Martin's Press, 1988. See also Drury, "The Esoteric Philosophy of Leo Strauss," *Political Theory* 13, no. 3 (1985).
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Strauss, Leo. *Natural Right and History.* University of Chicago Press, 1953; and "The Three Waves of Modernity," in *An Introduction to Political Philosophy* (1989).
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Strauss, Leo. *On Tyranny* (1948, rev. ed. with the Kojève exchange 1963); *Thoughts on Machiavelli* (1958); *The City and Man* (1964).
|
||||||
|
[^9]: Strauss, Leo. "Notes on Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political" (1932), reprinted in *Spinoza's Critique of Religion* and in Meier's volume below; on Schmitt's June 1932 praise and the third-edition revisions. https://contemporarythinkers.org/leo-strauss/essay/notes-on-carl-schmitt-the-concept-of-the-political/
|
||||||
|
[^10]: Meier, Heinrich. *Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue,* trans. J. Harvey Lomax. University of Chicago Press, 1995.
|
||||||
|
[^11]: "Leo Strauss," *Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,* rejecting the claim that Strauss is responsible for Iraq-war policy and noting his work "does not concern policy issues of any sort." https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/strauss-leo/
|
||||||
|
[^12]: Thiel, Peter. "The Straussian Moment," in *Politics and Apocalypse,* ed. Robert Hamerton-Kelly, Michigan State University Press, 2007, pp. 189 to 218.
|
||||||
|
[^13]: "Peter Thiel's The Straussian Moment Explained," summary of the essay's use of Strauss, Schmitt, and Girard, the September 11 framing, and the esoteric concealment argument. https://vistasofinsight.substack.com/p/peter-thiels-the-straussian-moment
|
||||||
66
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Martin Nowak.md
Normal file
66
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Martin Nowak.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,66 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Scientists & Researchers"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- JeffreyEpstein
|
||||||
|
- Harvard
|
||||||
|
- SciencePhilanthropy
|
||||||
|
- EvolutionaryDynamics
|
||||||
|
- MathematicalBiology
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Martin Nowak
|
||||||
|
- Martin A. Nowak
|
||||||
|
summary: "Martin Nowak is a Harvard mathematical biologist who directed the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, which Jeffrey Epstein helped establish with a 2003 gift, and whom Harvard sanctioned in 2021 for hosting Epstein on campus after his 2008 conviction."
|
||||||
|
born: 1965-04-07
|
||||||
|
location: "Cambridge, Massachusetts"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Martin A. Nowak (born April 7, 1965) is an Austrian-born mathematical biologist at [[Harvard University]] who directed the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics (PED) from its founding in 2003. The program was established with help from a $6.5 million gift from [[Jeffrey Epstein]], the largest single donation Epstein made to Harvard, and a 2020 university report found that Nowak gave Epstein an office and campus access used for more than forty visits after Epstein's 2008 sex-crimes conviction. Harvard sanctioned Nowak in 2021.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Mathematical Biology at Harvard
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Nowak trained in biochemistry and mathematics at the University of Vienna before working at the University of Oxford and the [[Institute for Advanced Study]] in Princeton. He joined Harvard in 2003 as professor of mathematics and biology and became the founding director of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, which applied mathematical models to evolution, cooperation, cancer, and the dynamics of infectious disease. His books include *Evolutionary Dynamics* (Harvard University Press, 2006) and *SuperCooperators* (Free Press, 2011).[^3][^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Nowak's central research concerns the evolution of cooperation, set out in his 2006 *Science* paper "Five Rules for the Evolution of Cooperation," which catalogued kin selection, direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, network reciprocity, and group selection as the mechanisms by which natural selection can favor cooperative behavior. In a 2010 *Nature* paper, "The Evolution of Eusociality," Nowak with [[Corina Tarnita]] and the biologist [[E. O. Wilson]] challenged the dominance of inclusive-fitness theory, prompting a rebuttal signed by more than 130 biologists.[^8][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Program for Evolutionary Dynamics was created in 2003 under Harvard President [[Lawrence Summers]] following a proposal that, according to Harvard's later review, originated with Epstein and the mathematician [[Benedict Gross]]. Epstein told *Vanity Fair* that he had been reluctant to attach his name to the program and that Summers persuaded him to fund it. The program operated out of an office suite at One Brattle Square in Harvard Square rather than on the main campus.[^2][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Epstein's Donations and Campus Access
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
A review of Harvard's ties to Epstein, commissioned by President [[Lawrence Bacow]] in September 2019 and released on May 1, 2020, found that Epstein gave Harvard $9,179,000 across 22 gifts between 1998 and 2008, of which the $6.5 million for the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics in 2003 was the largest. The review was conducted by the Office of the General Counsel under [[Diane Lopez]] with the law firm [[Foley Hoag]], drew on more than 250,000 pages of documents, and interviewed over forty people. It found that Harvard stopped accepting Epstein gifts after his 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor for prostitution, with the decision to halt gifts made under President [[Drew Faust]] between 2007 and 2008, though Epstein gave $736,000 after his 2006 arrest but before the conviction.[^2][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Epstein held a formal Harvard appointment as a visiting fellow in the psychology department for the 2005 to 2006 academic year, secured through department chair [[Stephen Kosslyn]] despite Epstein's lacking the doctoral degree the position normally required; Epstein reapplied for 2006 to 2007 but withdrew after his September 2006 arrest. The report found that Epstein retained a dedicated office at PED, identified as Office 610 and known internally as "Jeffrey's Office," to which he brought his own rug and hung his own photographs, with keycard and passcode access and a Harvard telephone line that remained until 2017.[^2][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The report found that Epstein visited the program more than forty times between 2010 and 2018, including six visits in 2018, often accompanied by young women in their twenties described as assistants. It found that Nowak approved posting on the PED website in 2014 a webpage featuring Epstein's photograph, biography, and charitable links under a tab labeled "Friends," on which Epstein was the only entry, and that the review described the program's account of Epstein's support as "flattering and false." Summers, former Faculty of Arts and Sciences dean [[Henry Rosovsky]], and law professor [[Alan Dershowitz]] were among those recorded as attending PED events.[^2][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Sanctions and Aftermath
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On March 26, 2021, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences [[Claudine Gay]] announced that Nowak had violated several university policies and imposed sanctions: he was barred for two years from serving as principal investigator on new grants, prohibited for two years from taking on new undergraduate, graduate, or doctoral advisees, and allowed to continue teaching undergraduate courses. Harvard announced that the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics would be closed and that Nowak's research would move into the mathematics department. Nowak had been placed on paid administrative leave in May 2020.[^1][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Harvard reported that it had identified $200,937 in unspent Epstein funds, which it pledged to direct to organizations supporting victims of human trafficking, and stated it would not accept future gifts from Epstein or his estate. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences lifted the sanctions in 2023, restoring Nowak's research and advising privileges in March of that year.[^2][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The 2026 Files and Renewed Leave
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In February 2026 the journal *Nature* reported, drawing on U.S. Department of Justice files, that Epstein's involvement with Nowak's work ran deeper than the 2020 review had described, including that Epstein reviewed page proofs of the 2010 eusociality paper and gave advice on responding to its critics. Nowak's name appears more than 8,000 times in the released files. *Nature* also reported that in 2009 Epstein routed scholarship money through Corina Tarnita, then Nowak's PhD student, to two young women studying mathematics at the University of Iași in Romania; Tarnita, by then at [[Princeton University]], told *Nature* the payments were legitimate scholarships and that she wished she had never known Epstein.[^10][^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
A March 10, 2014 email chain published from the files showed Nowak writing to Epstein that "our spy was captured after completing her mission," to which Epstein replied "did you torture her." Nowak later said on his website that the line came from the video game *Civilization II*, where the response signals a successful operation. The files also showed that an Epstein assistant arranged 2014 travel for Nowak and a female Harvard graduate student to Epstein's Caribbean island.[^12][^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On February 25, 2026, Harvard placed Nowak on paid administrative leave a second time, with FAS Dean [[Hopi Hoekstra]] citing new information from the released Department of Justice documents. In April 2026 Nowak resigned from the [[Austrian Academy of Sciences]] amid the renewed scrutiny.[^7][^13]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Gay Levies Sanctions Against Prof. Nowak for Contacts With Jeffrey Epstein," *The Harvard Crimson,* March 26, 2021, on the $6.5 million PED gift, the 40-plus visits, the sanctions, the program closure, and the May 2020 leave. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2021/3/26/gay-sanctions-nowak-epstein/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Harvard Asked Its Lawyers to Review the University's Ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Here's What They Found," *The Harvard Crimson,* May 2, 2020, on the $9,179,000 in 22 gifts from 1998 to 2008, Office 610 with keycard access, the telephone line to 2017, the visit count, the unspent $200,937, and the halt on gifts. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2020/5/2/harvard-concludes-epstein-review/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Nowak, Martin A. *Evolutionary Dynamics: Exploring the Equations of Life.* Harvard University Press, 2006.
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Why did Jeffrey Epstein cultivate famous scientists?," *Scientific American,* 2019, on the establishment of PED under Summers and Epstein's account to Vanity Fair. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-did-jeffrey-epstein-cultivate-famous-scientists/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Report Concerning Jeffrey E. Epstein's Connections to Harvard University," Harvard University Office of the General Counsel, May 2020, on the donation totals, the establishment of PED, and the gift policy. https://ogc.harvard.edu/file_url/208
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Martin Nowak Sanctioned for Jeffrey Epstein Involvement," *Harvard Magazine,* March 2021, on the policy violations, the website descriptions, and the terms of the sanctions. https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2021/03/martin-nowak-sanctioned-for-jeffrey-epstein-involvement
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Harvard Places Math Professor Martin Nowak on Paid Administrative Leave Over Epstein Ties," *The Harvard Crimson,* February 25, 2026, on the 2023 restoration and the renewed leave. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/2/25/nowak-leave-epstein/
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Nowak, Martin A. "Five Rules for the Evolution of Cooperation," *Science* 314, no. 5805 (2006): 1560-1563, on kin selection, direct and indirect reciprocity, network reciprocity, and group selection. https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.1133755
|
||||||
|
[^9]: Nowak, Martin A., Corina E. Tarnita, and Edward O. Wilson. "The Evolution of Eusociality," *Nature* 466 (2010): 1057-1062, the paper that drew a rebuttal signed by more than 130 biologists.
|
||||||
|
[^10]: "Martin Nowak Placed on Leave a Second Time," *Harvard Magazine,* February 2026, on the Nature reporting, the page-proof advice on the eusociality paper, the 2014 island travel, and the second leave announced February 27, 2026. https://www.harvardmagazine.com/university-news/martin-nowak-harvard-administrative-leave-epstein
|
||||||
|
[^11]: "Did you torture her?: Emails of Jeffrey Epstein and Martin Nowak reveal shocking details," *WION,* February 2026, on the Romanian scholarships routed through Tarnita, the Iasi students, and the island travel for Nowak and a graduate student. https://www.wionews.com/photos/-did-you-torture-her-emails-of-jeffrey-epstein-and-martin-nowak-reveal-shocking-details-all-about-6-5-million-to-harvard-and-private-travels-1770656438037
|
||||||
|
[^12]: "Professor Corina Tarnita on the Epstein Files: 'I Wish I Had Never Known Him'," *Princeton Alumni Weekly,* 2026, on the March 10, 2014 "spy"/"torture" email exchange, Nowak's Civilization II explanation, and Tarnita's account of the scholarships. https://paw.princeton.edu/article/professor-corina-tarnita-epstein-files-i-wish-i-had-never-known-him
|
||||||
|
[^13]: "Harvard Professor Martin Nowak Resigns From Austrian Academy Amid Epstein Scrutiny," *The Harvard Crimson,* April 2, 2026, on Nowak's resignation from the Austrian Academy of Sciences. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/4/2/nowak-austrian-academy-resignation/
|
||||||
38
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Maximilian Snyder.md
Normal file
38
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Maximilian Snyder.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- Zizians
|
||||||
|
- Violence
|
||||||
|
- DeathPenalty
|
||||||
|
- Vallejo
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Maximilian Bentley Snyder
|
||||||
|
summary: "Maximilian Snyder is a former University of Oxford student connected to the Zizian group who was charged with the January 2025 capital murder of Vallejo landlord Curtis Lind, allegedly to prevent Lind from testifying against other members of the group."
|
||||||
|
location: "Vallejo, California"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Maximilian Bentley Snyder is a young man connected to the [[The Zizians|Zizian]] group who was charged with the January 17, 2025 murder of [[Curtis Lind]], an 82-year-old [[Vallejo]] landlord, in a killing that [[Solano County]] prosecutors allege was carried out to stop Lind from testifying against other members of the group. Snyder studied philosophy and computer science at the [[University of Oxford]] from 2020 to 2024.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Lind Killing and Prosecution
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Lind had survived a 2022 sword attack by Zizian-affiliated tenants and was scheduled to testify in April 2025 against [[Suri Dao]] and [[Alexander Leatham]], the two charged in that attack. On January 17, 2025, Lind was stabbed to death on his Lemon Street property; prosecutors charged Snyder with murder and alleged the killing was meant to prevent his testimony. Snyder pleaded not guilty to capital murder in March 2025 and was held without bail at the Solano County Jail in Fairfield, with prosecutors indicating he could face the death penalty under California law.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The complaint charged a special circumstance, alleging that "the victim, C.L., was a witness to a crime" who "was intentionally killed for the purpose of preventing his testimony in a criminal proceeding," the statutory basis for a capital case. Snyder was arrested on January 24, 2025 by Redding Police Department officers and transported to the Solano County Jail. He hummed and sang to himself during his arraignment, behavior reporters noted from the courtroom, and his case moved slowly through 2025 as he returned to court in June to set a date for a preliminary hearing.[^1][^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Youngblut Marriage License
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Snyder had applied for a marriage license with [[Teresa Youngblut]], the member charged in the January 20, 2025 killing of Border Patrol agent [[David Maland]] in [[Vermont]]. The application was made in Washington in November 2024, and Snyder and Youngblut had both attended Lakeside School, a private high school in [[Seattle]]. The marriage-license record was one of the first documented links investigators drew between the California and Vermont killings.[^4][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Federal prosecutors in Vermont said Youngblut had been in contact with Snyder, placing the two killings, Lind's on January 17 and Maland's on January 20, within a single network operating across the country in the same week. The Oxford background set Snyder among the highly educated recruits who populated the group; he had studied philosophy and computer science there from 2020 to 2024 before the Vallejo killing put him in custody. By early 2026 he was one of at least seven people associated with the group fighting charges across three states.[^5][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "22-year-old University of Oxford grad charged with murder of elderly landlord," *The Tab,* March 7, 2025. https://thetab.com/2025/03/07/22-year-old-university-of-oxford-grad-charged-with-murder-of-elderly-landlord
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "How a California math genius spiraled into Zizian ideology and violence," *Open Vallejo,* March 12, 2025. https://openvallejo.org/2025/03/12/how-a-california-math-genius-spiraled-into-zizian-ideology-and-violence/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Defendant linked to 'Zizians' pleads not guilty to capital murder," *Open Vallejo,* March 26, 2025. https://openvallejo.org/2025/03/26/defendant-linked-to-zizians-pleads-not-guilty-to-capital-murder/
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Suspects in killings of Vermont border patrol agent and California man connected by marriage license, extreme ideology," *VTDigger,* January 27, 2025. https://vtdigger.org/2025/01/27/suspects-in-killings-of-vermont-border-patrol-agent-and-california-man-connected-by-marriage-license-extreme-ideology/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "A timeline of cultlike 'Zizian' group tied to killing of a Border Patrol agent in Vermont," Associated Press via PBS NewsHour, 2025; on the November 2024 marriage-license application and the Youngblut contact. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/a-timeline-of-cultlike-zizian-group-tied-to-killing-of-a-border-patrol-agent-in-vermont
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "A year after border agent's killing, 7 Zizians fight charges in 3 states," WHYY, 2026. https://whyy.org/articles/border-agent-killing-zizian-criminal-charges-california-pennsylvania-vermont/
|
||||||
52
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Mike Solana.md
Normal file
52
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Mike Solana.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,52 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "New Right"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- MikeSolana
|
||||||
|
- FoundersFund
|
||||||
|
- PirateWires
|
||||||
|
- Hereticon
|
||||||
|
- PeterThiel
|
||||||
|
- Media
|
||||||
|
summary: "Mike Solana is a Founders Fund executive and the founder and editor-in-chief of the Substack publication Pirate Wires, who has worked with Peter Thiel for more than ten years and serves as the organizer of the Hereticon 'conference for thoughtcrime' and the chief marketing officer of Founders Fund."
|
||||||
|
location: "San Francisco, California"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Mike Solana is a [[Founders Fund]] executive and the founder and editor-in-chief of the Substack publication [[Pirate Wires]], who has worked with [[Peter Thiel]] for more than ten years. Solana holds three documented positions within the Thiel network: chief marketing officer of Founders Fund (formerly vice president), founder and editor-in-chief of Pirate Wires (the media arm), and organizer of [[Hereticon]] (the "conference for thoughtcrime"). Across the three roles he operates the media-and-propaganda layer of the Thiel Influence Network, distinct from the commercial layer (the Founders Fund portfolio) and the convening layer ([[Dialog]] and Hereticon).[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Founders Fund Role
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Solana's senior position at Founders Fund places him inside the operational core of the Thiel commercial network. His official title has evolved from vice president to chief marketing officer, and his tenure spans more than ten years of working directly with Peter Thiel. The *Founders Fund* team page lists him as CMO, and his role encompasses the firm's external communications, the *Anatomy of Next* podcast that Founders Fund produces, and the programming for Hereticon. The CMO role at a venture firm is structurally the position that controls the public framing of the firm's thesis, which in Founders Fund's case is the *[[Zero to One]]* monopoly-and-defense argument.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Founders Fund podcast *Anatomy of Next* has published Hereticon sessions including "Apocalypse Ball" by Solana and a session with Thiel revisiting his 1995 essay *The Diversity Myth* on its thirtieth anniversary. The podcast functions as the audio-distribution channel for the conference programming that Solana curates, and the cross-publication (the podcast releasing sessions from the private conference) carries the Hereticon content to a broader audience than the invitation-only attendees.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Pirate Wires and the Media Layer
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Pirate Wires is the media outlet Solana founded in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, originally launched on Substack and later migrated to its own domain at piratewires.com. The publication covers the intersection of technology, politics, and culture from the Thiel-network perspective and has positioned itself as the in-house media voice of the Founders Fund network. Solana's own Substack bio describes him self-mockingly as "billionaire media tycoon and mayor of san francisco," a posture consistent with the publication's bombastic editorial register.[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The launch mission statement, published as "Welcome to Pirate Wires," declared the outlet "an American media company writing at the intersection of technology, politics, and culture." *The Atlantic* profiled Solana in October 2024 as "The Most Opinionated Man in America," describing him as a "Peter Thiel protege" whose Pirate Wires newsletter had become required reading among what the magazine called the anti-woke investor class. The *Digg* coverage of the launch characterized Pirate Wires as a "Founders Fund-backed media franchise" intended to replace the traditional venture-capital communication model (the polite TechCrunch launch piece) with direct ideological combat.[^3][^4][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The media-layer function is distinct from the convening function. Pirate Wires produces the public framing of the Thiel-network positions on tech-policy questions (deplatforming, content moderation, AI regulation, defense procurement) and distributes that framing through a subscription model that reaches a broader audience than the Dialog or Hereticon invitation lists. The Solana *Reason* interview (May 2022) laid out the editorial posture directly: Solana argued that tech figures and journalists had become "natural enemies" over the question of who controls the boundary of acceptable discourse, and the framing has structured Pirate Wires' subsequent coverage. The publication has run pieces defending portfolio companies and network principals under media scrutiny, including the "Substack Billionaire" piece defending [[Coinbase]] against *New York Times* coverage, and the recurring editorial line tracks the Founders Fund commercial and political positions across defense tech, cryptocurrency, and the anti-regulation frame.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Hereticon and the Convening Layer
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Solana is the organizer and public face of Hereticon, the Founders Fund conference self-described as "a conference for thoughtcrime." The conference was announced in October 2019 and held its inaugural event January 10 through 13, 2022, with programming spanning immortality research, UFO claims, doomsday prepping, defense-technology ethics, and ideological heterodoxy. The *Reason* interview with Solana around the inaugural event covered the deliberate privacy of the venue, the refusal of press access, and the framing of the conference as a venue for ideas excluded from mainstream forums.[^1][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Solana's role across the three positions (Founders Fund CMO, Pirate Wires editor, Hereticon organizer) places a single individual in control of the firm's public communications, the media outlet that frames its positions, and the private conference that convenes the principals. The *Anatomy of Next* podcast, which Solana also controls, distributes selected Hereticon sessions to a broader audience than the invitation-only attendees, including the "Apocalypse Ball" session and the Thiel session revisiting *The Diversity Myth* on its thirtieth anniversary. The cross-publication carries the private conference's content into the public layer that Pirate Wires serves, and the combination of the three properties constitutes an integrated media-and-convening operation under a single editor.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Atlantic Profile and the Public Persona
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
*The Atlantic* profile (October 2024) is the most detailed public record on Solana's role and worldview. The profile describes him as the public-facing voice of the Thiel network's positions on culture-war and tech-policy questions, positioned against what he frames as a captured mainstream institutional press. The profile documents the relationship between Pirate Wires' editorial line and the Founders Fund portfolio interests (defense tech, cryptocurrency, anti-regulation), and the recurring pattern in which the outlet's positions track the commercial and political positions of the network whose media arm it is.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The profile's framing of Solana as "not an obvious fit for Founders Fund" when he joined documents the career trajectory: a humanities-and-media background figure who entered the venture firm and built the media infrastructure around it rather than building a portfolio of investments. The trajectory is the inverse of the [[Blake Masters]] or [[JD Vance]] pattern (operatives placed into electoral politics from inside the commercial orbit); Solana was placed into the commercial orbit to build its media arm, and the *Atlantic* profile is the document of that role.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Founders Fund. "Michael Solana" team page. https://foundersfund.com/team/michael-solana/ ; Founders Fund. "Anatomy of Next" podcast, Hereticon episodes. https://foundersfund.com/anatomy-of-next/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Mike Solana Wants You To Commit Thoughtcrimes." *Reason,* May 15, 2022. https://reason.com/2022/05/15/mike-solana-wants-you-to-commit-thoughtcrimes/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "The Most Opinionated Man in America." *The Atlantic,* October 2024. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/10/mike-solana-pirate-wires/680355/
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Mike Solana, Pirate Wires editor-in-chief, launches a Founders Fund-backed media franchise." *Digg,* 2022. https://digg.com/tech/r5s3pf8h
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Peter Thiel's VC Firm Founders Fund Announces Hereticon." *Business Insider,* October 2019. https://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-vc-firm-founders-fund-hereticon-conference-immortality-ufo-2019-10
|
||||||
|
[^6]: Pirate Wires. "Welcome to Pirate Wires" launch post. https://www.piratewires.com/p/welcome-to-pirate-wires ; "Substack Billionaire." *Pirate Wires.* https://www.piratewires.com/p/substack-billionaire
|
||||||
51
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Nick Szabo.md
Normal file
51
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Nick Szabo.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,51 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Technologists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- NickSzabo
|
||||||
|
- Cryptography
|
||||||
|
- Cypherpunks
|
||||||
|
- SmartContracts
|
||||||
|
- Bitcoin
|
||||||
|
- DigitalCash
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Nicholas Szabo
|
||||||
|
summary: "Nick Szabo is a computer scientist and legal scholar who proposed the digital-cash scheme bit gold, coined the concept of smart contracts, and is recurrently and consistently denied to be Satoshi Nakamoto."
|
||||||
|
location: "United States"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Nick Szabo is an American computer scientist, cryptographer, and legal scholar associated with the [[Cypherpunks]] movement who designed several of the conceptual building blocks of cryptocurrency. He coined the term "smart contract" in the 1990s, proposed the digital-cash scheme "bit gold" that prefigured [[Bitcoin]], and wrote the essay "The God Protocols." He is among the most frequently named candidates for the pseudonymous Bitcoin creator [[Satoshi Nakamoto]], a claim he has consistently denied.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Smart Contracts
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Szabo studied computer science at the [[University of Washington]] and later took a law degree from [[George Washington University]]. In the mid-1990s he introduced the idea of the smart contract, a self-executing agreement whose terms are written directly into code so that obligations are enforced automatically without a trusted intermediary, set out in his 1996 paper "Smart Contracts: Building Blocks for Digital Markets." The concept later became foundational to blockchain platforms such as [[Ethereum]].[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Szabo's canonical illustration was the vending machine, which he called "the primitive ancestor of smart contracts": a device that takes in coins and dispenses product and change through a mechanism that enforces the bargain within a loss limited to the cash in the till. He developed the idea formally in "Formalizing and Securing Relationships on Public Networks," published in First Monday in September 1997, which set out four contractual objectives that cryptographic protocols could secure: observability, verifiability, privity, and enforceability. His skepticism toward trusted intermediaries was shaped by roughly six months consulting for [[David Chaum]]'s DigiCash in Amsterdam, where he concluded that the centralized design, which let the operator alter balances, was a fatal flaw and pushed him toward decentralized money.[^7][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The God Protocols and Bit Gold
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In his 1997 essay "The God Protocols," Szabo imagined an ideal trusted third party, a hypothetical deity to whom parties could hand their inputs and receive correct outputs, and asked how far cryptography could approximate that ideal without an actual trusted party. He first described "bit gold" in the late 1990s and expanded it in a 2005 blog post, proposing a scarce digital asset produced through proof-of-work and chained cryptographically so that it could be created, transferred, and verified online with minimal trust, mirroring the properties of physical gold. Bit gold was a direct conceptual precursor to Bitcoin, alongside [[Hal Finney]]'s reusable proof-of-work and [[Wei Dai]]'s b-money.[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In the bit gold design, set out on his Unenumerated blog in December 2005, a participant generated a proof-of-work string from a challenge, had it securely timestamped, and entered it in a distributed property title registry, with the last string created supplying the challenge bits for the next so that the records formed an unforgeable chain of title. Szabo grounded the scheme in the argument of his 2002 essay "Shelling Out: The Origins of Money," which held that money began with "collectibles" whose value rested on "unforgeably costly" production, the same property bit gold sought to recreate digitally. He flagged in advance the design's central weakness, that hidden advances in computer architecture could create undetected supply gluts, and located the title registry's security in the Byzantine quorum scheme of his 1998 essay "Secure Property Titles with Owner Authority."[^9][^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Satoshi Speculation
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
A 2014 linguistic study comparing eleven candidates against the Bitcoin white paper found Szabo's writing the closest match, with its lead researcher Jack Grieve calling the similarities "uncanny." In May 2015 the journalist [[Nathaniel Popper]] named Szabo as a leading Satoshi candidate in the *New York Times,* reporting that many Bitcoin insiders considered him the most likely author; Szabo replied "I'm not Satoshi." He has repeatedly rejected the attribution, writing in 2014 that "you got it wrong doxing me as Satoshi." Popper's book *Digital Gold* (2015) examined the case at length, and later documentary and press investigations through 2026 named various suspects without conclusive proof.[^2][^5][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The circumstantial case against Szabo rests on more than stylometry. He had spent more than a decade designing the exact components Bitcoin assembled, his April 2008 blog request for help coding bit gold came months before the white paper appeared in October 2008, and bit gold went undeployed even after Bitcoin proved the design worked, which some read as the behavior of a creator who had moved on under a pseudonym. Szabo has pointed to the absence of any documentary link, and the stylometric finding was never published in a peer-reviewed venue, leaving the attribution unproven. The 2024 HBO documentary "Money Electric" instead named the developer Peter Todd, who denied it, and no court filing or release through 2026 has resolved the question.[^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Notable Crypto Personalities: Nick Szabo," *The Block,* on his career, smart contracts, and bit gold. https://www.theblock.co/profile/350036/nick-szabo
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Satoshi Files: Nick Szabo," *CoinMarketCap,* on the Satoshi speculation, the linguistic study, and Szabo's denials. https://coinmarketcap.com/academy/article/satoshi-files-nick-szabo
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Szabo, Nick. "Smart Contracts: Building Blocks for Digital Markets," 1996; "The God Protocols," 1997; "Bit Gold," 2005. http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2005/12/bit-gold.html
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "The Extropian Roots of Bitcoin," *CCN,* on bit gold and the cypherpunk precursors of Bitcoin. https://www.ccn.com/extropian-roots-bitcoin/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "What's in a Name: Linguistic Study Identifies Nick Szabo as the Real Satoshi Nakamoto," *Cointelegraph,* on the Grieve study. https://cointelegraph.com/news/what_s_in_a_name_linguistic_study_identifies_nick_szabo_as_the_real_satoshi_nakamoto
|
||||||
|
[^6]: Popper, Nathaniel. *Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money.* Harper, 2015; and "Decoding the Enigma of Satoshi Nakamoto," *New York Times,* 15 May 2015.
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Szabo, Nick. "The Idea of Smart Contracts," 1997, on the vending machine as the primitive ancestor of smart contracts. https://nakamotoinstitute.org/library/the-idea-of-smart-contracts/
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Szabo, Nick. "Formalizing and Securing Relationships on Public Networks," *First Monday,* vol. 2, no. 9, 1 September 1997. https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/548 Van Wirdum, Aaron. "The Genesis Files: With Bit Gold, Szabo Was Inches Away From Inventing Bitcoin," *Bitcoin Magazine,* July 12, 2018, on his DigiCash consulting. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/genesis-files-bit-gold-szabo-was-inches-away-inventing-bitcoin
|
||||||
|
[^9]: Szabo, Nick. "Bit Gold," Unenumerated, December 29, 2005. http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2005/12/bit-gold.html
|
||||||
|
[^10]: Szabo, Nick. "Shelling Out: The Origins of Money," 2002, https://nakamotoinstitute.org/library/shelling-out/; and "Secure Property Titles with Owner Authority," 1998, on the Byzantine quorum title registry. https://nakamotoinstitute.org/library/secure-property-titles/
|
||||||
|
[^11]: Van Wirdum, Aaron. "The Genesis Files: With Bit Gold, Szabo Was Inches Away From Inventing Bitcoin," *Bitcoin Magazine,* July 12, 2018, on the April 2008 coding request and the undeployed design; and "Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery," HBO, October 2024, naming Peter Todd, who denied it. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/genesis-files-bit-gold-szabo-was-inches-away-inventing-bitcoin
|
||||||
55
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Peter Singer.md
Normal file
55
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Peter Singer.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,55 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Scientists & Researchers"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- Utilitarianism
|
||||||
|
- EffectiveAltruism
|
||||||
|
- AnimalRights
|
||||||
|
- Bioethics
|
||||||
|
- Princeton
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Peter Singer
|
||||||
|
- Peter Albert David Singer
|
||||||
|
summary: "Peter Singer is an Australian utilitarian philosopher at Princeton whose 1972 essay 'Famine, Affluence, and Morality' and its drowning-child argument became the founding text of effective altruism, and who wrote Animal Liberation in 1975."
|
||||||
|
born: 1946-07-06
|
||||||
|
location: "Princeton, New Jersey; Melbourne, Australia"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Peter Singer (born July 6, 1946) is an Australian moral philosopher, long the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at [[Princeton University]], whose utilitarian arguments for aiding the global poor and for the moral status of animals made him one of the most widely read and most protested philosophers of the late twentieth century. His 1972 essay "Famine, Affluence, and Morality" and its drowning-child thought experiment are routinely cited as the founding text of the [[Effective Altruism]] movement, and he keynoted the movement's 2013 summit.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Education and Career
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Singer was born in [[Melbourne]] to Austrian Jewish refugees who had fled Vienna after the 1938 Nazi annexation of [[Austria]]; three of his grandparents died in the Holocaust, and his maternal grandfather, the classicist David Ernst Oppenheim, was murdered at Theresienstadt. He took a BA in 1967 and an MA in 1969 at the [[University of Melbourne]], the latter on the thesis "Why Should I Be Moral?", then a BPhil at [[University of Oxford|Oxford]] in 1971 under R. M. Hare. He held a Radcliffe lectureship at University College, Oxford, and a visiting post at New York University before returning to Australia.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
At Monash University he twice chaired the philosophy department and founded the Centre for Human Bioethics. In 1999 he was appointed the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton's University Center for Human Values, a post he held until his final lecture in 2023. His applied work in *Practical Ethics* (1979) extended utilitarian reasoning to abortion, euthanasia, severe infant disability, and the treatment of animals, and his stated positions on infanticide in cases of severe disability drew organized protests in Germany and Switzerland in 1989 and 1990 and a public campaign against his Princeton appointment, with the publisher Steve Forbes withdrawing donations to the university.[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Famine, Affluence, and Morality
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
"Famine, Affluence, and Morality," published in *Philosophy and Public Affairs* in 1972, argued from a single premise: "If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it." Singer illustrated it with a child drowning in a shallow pond: a passerby who could wade in and save the child at the cost only of muddy clothes is plainly obligated to do so, and Singer held that the geographic distance of a dying child abroad makes no moral difference to the same obligation. The essay concluded that affluent people are bound to give away income up to the point of marginal sacrifice toward famine relief.[^1][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The essay became one of the most reprinted pieces in modern moral philosophy and supplied effective altruism its motivating intuition; movement organizers and [[William MacAskill]] have described the drowning-child argument as the writing that did more than any other to launch the movement. Singer joined [[Giving What We Can]] in November 2009, pledging at least ten percent of his income, the year [[Toby Ord]] and MacAskill founded the society.[^2][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Animal Liberation and the Expanding Circle
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
*Animal Liberation*, published in 1975, argued that the interests of all sentient beings deserve equal consideration and that disregarding animal suffering on the basis of species, which Singer following Richard Ryder called "speciesism," is a prejudice structurally like racism. The book became the foundational text of the modern animal-rights movement and the intellectual basis for the farmed-animal-welfare cause that effective altruism later adopted as a priority; Singer has served on the board of Animal Charity Evaluators.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
*The Expanding Circle*, published in 1981, drew on sociobiology to argue that the scope of beings a person treats as morally considerable has widened over history from kin to tribe to nation to all humanity and, Singer urged, should widen further to all sentient life, with impartial reason as the engine of that expansion. Singer's normative position was for decades a preference utilitarianism, on which an act's rightness depends on how far it satisfies the preferences of those affected; in *The Point of View of the Universe* (2014), written with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek, he returned to a hedonistic utilitarianism descended from [[Henry Sidgwick]].[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Life You Can Save and Effective Altruism
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Singer's 2009 book *The Life You Can Save* restated the case for effective giving against global poverty and gave its name to a charity Singer co-founded in 2013 with the psychologist Charlie Bresler, which evaluates and recommends high-impact poverty charities. His 2013 TED talk "The why and how of effective altruism" and his 2015 book *The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically* placed him at the public head of the movement.[^7][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 2013 Singer delivered a keynote at the Effective Altruism Summit, a week-long gathering in the [[San Francisco Bay Area]] that brought together the Oxford philosophers, the charity evaluator [[GiveWell]], and the [[Rationalist Community]]. The 2013 summit was the same event that [[Peter Thiel]] keynoted, and the year before [[Sam Bankman-Fried]] adopted the earning-to-give strategy MacAskill had presented to him. Singer was awarded the inaugural Berggruen Prize in 2021, donating the one-million-dollar award.[^2][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Singer, Peter. "Famine, Affluence, and Morality." *Philosophy and Public Affairs,* vol. 1, no. 3, 1972, on the central principle and the drowning-child argument. Reprinted at Giving What We Can. https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/get-involved/videos-books-and-essays/famine-affluence-and-morality-peter-singer
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Peter Singer's Keynote, Effective Altruism Summit 2013," on the 2013 Bay Area summit address; "The drowning child," Princeton University Press, on the argument's role in launching the movement. https://press.princeton.edu/ideas/the-drowning-child
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Peter Singer," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Princeton University Center for Human Values, on the 1946 birth, the Melbourne and Oxford degrees, Monash, the 1999 Princeton appointment, *Animal Liberation,* and the disability protests. https://uchv.princeton.edu/people/peter-singer
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Singer, Peter. *Practical Ethics.* Cambridge University Press, 1979.
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Death in a Shallow Pond," Princeton University Press (David Edmonds), on the reprinting history and the argument's foundational role in effective altruism. https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691254029/death-in-a-shallow-pond
|
||||||
|
[^6]: Singer, Peter. *The Expanding Circle: Ethics and Sociobiology.* Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1981; de Lazari-Radek, Katarzyna, and Peter Singer. *The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and Contemporary Ethics.* Oxford University Press, 2014.
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "About Us," The Life You Can Save, on the 2009 book, the 2013 co-founding with Charlie Bresler, and the charity's mission. https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/about-us/
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Singer, Peter. "The why and how of effective altruism," TED2013; Singer, Peter. *The Most Good You Can Do.* Yale University Press, 2015. https://www.ted.com/talks/peter_singer_the_why_and_how_of_effective_altruism
|
||||||
39
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Steve Sailer.md
Normal file
39
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Steve Sailer.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "New Right"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- SteveSailer
|
||||||
|
- HumanBiodiversity
|
||||||
|
- RaceScience
|
||||||
|
- AltRight
|
||||||
|
- Immigration
|
||||||
|
summary: "Steve Sailer is an American journalist and blogger who popularized the term human biodiversity, founded its discussion network in the late 1990s, and originated the white-turnout 'Sailer Strategy,' becoming a connective figure between hereditarian race science and the alt-right."
|
||||||
|
born: 1958-12-20
|
||||||
|
location: "Los Angeles, California"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Steve Sailer (born December 20, 1958) is an American journalist and blogger who became the leading popularizer of [[Human Biodiversity|human biodiversity]], the euphemism for hereditarian claims about race and intelligence, and a connective figure between academic race science and the [[Alt-Right|alt-right]]. He founded the Human Biodiversity Discussion Group in the late 1990s, wrote for paleoconservative and anti-immigration outlets, and originated an electoral theory that anticipated the racial politics of the [[Donald Trump|Trump]] era.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Human Biodiversity and the Sailer Strategy
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Sailer organized an invitation-only Human Biodiversity Discussion Group around 1998 and built an audience for hereditarian arguments through his columns and blog. He drew on the race-and-IQ framework of [[Charles Murray]] and [[Richard Herrnstein]]'s *The Bell Curve* and presented average group differences in intelligence as genetically grounded, a position mainstream science rejects as scientific racism. In 2000 he advanced what became known as the "Sailer Strategy," the argument that the Republican Party should win national elections by maximizing turnout among white voters rather than courting minorities, a thesis later echoed in the [[Steve Bannon|Bannon]]-era nationalist politics.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Sailer created a "Roster of Human Biodiversity Discussion Group Members" dated March 3, 1999, and later styled the listserv the Human Biodiversity Institute. The invitation-only group drew academics in race-and-IQ and sex-difference research along with sympathetic journalists, among them the science writer [[Razib Khan]] and the anthropologist [[Gregory Cochran]]. After the 2016 election the columnist [[Michael Barone]] credited Sailer with having mapped in 2001 the white-turnout electoral route that Trump later followed, and the writer's racial-realignment thesis circulated in nationalist circles around Bannon.[^5][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Outlets and Influence
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Sailer wrote film criticism and political commentary for [[United Press International]] and *[[National Review]]* before parting with the latter, and he became a regular contributor to the anti-immigration website [[VDARE]] and to *[[Taki's Magazine]]*. His framing of "noticing" group differences and his immigration-restrictionist "citizenism" circulated widely in the online right and were cited by alt-right and neoreactionary writers, placing his work in the same hereditarian substrate that runs through [[Curtis Yarvin]]'s [[Neoreaction|neoreaction]] and the race-science discourse that surfaced inside the [[Rationalist Community]]. The [[Southern Poverty Law Center]] classifies Sailer as a promoter of racist pseudoscience.[^2][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Born in 1958 and adopted by a Lockheed engineer, Sailer grew up in Studio City and took a degree from [[Rice University]] in 1980 and an MBA from the [[University of California, Los Angeles|UCLA]] in 1982. He wrote a *National Review* column from 1994 until he was pushed out in 1997 around the time [[Rich Lowry]] succeeded [[John O'Sullivan]] as editor. His "citizenism," coined in the mid-2000s, held that Americans should weigh the welfare of fellow citizens above that of foreigners, a frame later adopted by the columnist [[John Derbyshire]]; in February 2024 the new-right house [[Passage Publishing]] issued a collected volume of his work titled *Noticing: An Essential Reader, 1973-2023*.[^2][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Human Biodiversity, Open Borders, IQ, and Western Civilization," CAIRCO, documenting Sailer's role in popularizing "human biodiversity" and the discussion group; recorded as the movement's self-description, not an endorsement. https://www.cairco.org/highlights/open-borders-iq-and-western-civilization
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Steve Sailer," Southern Poverty Law Center extremist file. https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/steve-sailer
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Sailer, Steve, columns on the "Sailer Strategy," 2000 onward; collected in *Noticing: An Essential Reader,* 2024.
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Herrnstein, Richard J., and Charles Murray. *The Bell Curve.* Free Press, 1994, the hereditarian framework Sailer drew upon.
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Human Biodiversity Institute," documenting the March 3, 1999 roster of the Human Biodiversity Discussion Group and its membership; treated as a record of the group's self-description, not an endorsement.
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Steve Sailer," Southern Poverty Law Center extremist file, on the HBD group, the discussion list, and the Sailer Strategy. https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/steve-sailer
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Noticing: An Essential Reader (1973-2023)," Passage Publishing, 2024, on the collected volume; biographical details on the Rice and UCLA degrees and the 1994-1997 National Review column from contemporaneous reporting. https://passage.press/products/noticingpaperback
|
||||||
51
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Toby Ord.md
Normal file
51
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Toby Ord.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,51 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "AI & Effective Altruism"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- EffectiveAltruism
|
||||||
|
- Longtermism
|
||||||
|
- Oxford
|
||||||
|
- ExistentialRisk
|
||||||
|
- FutureOfHumanityInstitute
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Toby Ord
|
||||||
|
- Toby David Godfrey Ord
|
||||||
|
summary: "Toby Ord is an Australian moral philosopher at Oxford who cofounded Giving What We Can and the effective altruism movement, was a senior research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute, and wrote The Precipice, which argues there is a one-in-six chance humanity suffers an existential catastrophe this century."
|
||||||
|
born: 1979
|
||||||
|
location: "Oxford, England"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Toby Ord (born July 1979) is an Australian moral philosopher at the [[University of Oxford]] who cofounded the [[Effective Altruism]] movement and became one of the leading academic theorists of existential risk. He founded [[Giving What We Can]], the pledge society that anchored the movement's early growth, was a senior research fellow at the [[Future of Humanity Institute]], and wrote *The Precipice*, a 2020 book arguing that humanity faces a roughly one-in-six chance of an existential catastrophe within the next hundred years.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Giving What We Can
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Ord was born in [[Melbourne]] and studied computer science before switching to philosophy at the [[University of Melbourne]], then moved to Oxford for graduate work. There he calculated that he could earn roughly 1.5 million pounds over his career and give away about a million of it while keeping a graduate student's standard of living, and he pledged to donate everything above a fixed personal income. In 2009 he and the philosopher [[William MacAskill]] founded Giving What We Can, an international society whose members pledge at least ten percent of their income to the most cost-effective charities; its members have collectively pledged well over a billion dollars. The pledge model, paired with the charity-evaluation work of [[GiveWell]] and [[Holden Karnofsky]], formed the practical core of effective altruism.[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Ord launched Giving What We Can in November 2009 alongside his wife, the physician Bernadette Young, with whom he committed to capping his own annual spending and donating the rest. He set his personal living allowance at about 18,000 pounds a year, giving away everything earned above it toward a lifetime target of one million pounds, with the bulk going to the SCI Foundation and Deworm the World (both deworming programs), the [[Against Malaria Foundation]], and the poverty-research lab J-PAL. The society grew from a handful of Oxford members to more than 9,000, and by March 2022 the pledges of its members totaled more than 2.5 billion dollars in expected lifetime giving.[^3][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Future of Humanity Institute and Existential Risk
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Ord was a senior research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute, the Oxford center founded by [[Nick Bostrom]] in 2005 that became the academic headquarters of [[Longtermism|longtermism]]. His research moved from the ethics of global poverty toward existential risk, the danger of events that would permanently destroy humanity's long-term potential, the same focus that animated Bostrom's work and the AI-safety concerns of the [[Rationalist Community]]. Ord has advised the [[World Health Organization]], the [[World Bank]], the [[World Economic Forum]], the U.S. National Intelligence Council, and the UK Prime Minister's Office.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Future of Humanity Institute closed on April 16, 2024 after nineteen years, with Oxford's Faculty of Philosophy declining to renew the remaining staff contracts following a 2020 freeze on its hiring and fundraising; Bostrom called it "death by bureaucracy." The shutdown followed a period of reputational damage, including the 2023 resurfacing of a 1996 email in which Bostrom had used a racial slur, for which he apologized and which prompted an Oxford inquiry. Ord had by then moved to the Oxford Martin School's AI Governance Initiative, continuing the existential-risk work the institute had housed.[^8][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Precipice
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
*The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity*, published in 2020, surveyed the catastrophes that could end the human story, natural and anthropogenic, and assigned probabilities to each. Ord judged engineered pandemics and unaligned artificial intelligence the gravest near-term threats and estimated the combined chance of an existential catastrophe this century at about one in six. The book argued that reducing such risks should rank among the highest global priorities, the central claim of the longtermist program that MacAskill later developed in *What We Owe the Future* and that the [[FTX Future Fund]] of [[Sam Bankman-Fried]] funded before its 2022 collapse.[^5][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Ord's Table 6.1 gave per-century estimates that placed unaligned artificial intelligence at roughly one in ten, engineered pandemics at one in thirty, nuclear war and climate change at one in a thousand each, and all natural risks combined (asteroids, supervolcanoes, naturally arising pandemics) at only about one in ten thousand. He stressed that the anthropogenic figures were order-of-magnitude judgments that could "easily be a factor of 3 higher or lower," and that the era of human-made existential risk had begun only with the atomic bomb in 1945, which he called the start of the "Precipice." His framing of AI as the single largest source of extinction risk became a load-bearing premise for the AI-safety funding that flowed from [[Open Philanthropy]] and the FTX Future Fund into the labs and research centers.[^2][^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Toby Ord," Giving What We Can profile, on the Oxford position, the Future of Humanity Institute fellowship, and advisory roles. https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/people/toby-ord
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Ord, Toby. *The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity.* Bloomsbury, 2020.
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Toby Ord: Why I'm giving £1m to charity," *BBC News,* 2010, on the career-earnings calculation and the pledge. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-11950843
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Our history," Giving What We Can, on the 2009 founding with William MacAskill and the cumulative pledge total. https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/about-us/history
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity," Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, on the one-in-six estimate and the book's argument. https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/the-precipice-existential-risk-and-the-future-of-humanity/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Existential risk and the future of humanity (Toby Ord)," EA Forum, on the book's risk taxonomy and probability estimates. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/BAfEgTaK5BsperQEc/existential-risk-and-the-future-of-humanity-toby-ord
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Toby Ord: Why I'm giving £1m to charity," *BBC News,* 2010, on the 18,000-pound living allowance and the named charities; "Oxford-based charity receives more than $2.5 billion in pledges," University of Oxford, March 1, 2022. https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2022-03-01-oxford-based-charity-receives-more-25-billion-pledges-community-effective-givers
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "Oxford shuts down institute run by Elon Musk-backed philosopher," *The Guardian,* April 20, 2024, on the April 16, 2024 closure and "death by bureaucracy." https://www.oxfordstudent.com/2024/04/20/oxford-shuts-down-elon-musk-funded-future-of-humanity-institute/
|
||||||
|
[^9]: "Looking Back at the Future of Humanity Institute," *Asterisk,* on the 2020 hiring freeze, the contract non-renewals, and the institute's nineteen-year run. https://asteriskmag.com/issues/08/looking-back-at-the-future-of-humanity-institute
|
||||||
|
[^10]: "Some thoughts on Toby Ord's existential risk estimates," EA Forum, reproducing Table 6.1 with the one-in-ten AI figure and the order-of-magnitude caveat. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Z5KZ2cui8WDjyF6gJ/some-thoughts-on-toby-ord-s-existential-risk-estimates
|
||||||
45
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Tom Pritzker.md
Normal file
45
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Tom Pritzker.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,45 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Crime & Abuse Networks"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- TomPritzker
|
||||||
|
- Hyatt
|
||||||
|
- JeffreyEpstein
|
||||||
|
- SecretSociety
|
||||||
|
- Billionaire
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Thomas J. Pritzker
|
||||||
|
- Thomas Pritzker
|
||||||
|
summary: "Thomas J. Pritzker is the billionaire executive chairman of Hyatt Hotels Corporation and chairman of the Pritzker family's business empire, whose 2011 correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein used the phrase 'secret society' (Epstein Files document EFTA02407727), establishing a parallel 'secret society' channel through Epstein independent of the Peter Thiel correspondence."
|
||||||
|
born: 1950-06-06
|
||||||
|
location: "Chicago, Illinois (family base)"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Thomas J. Pritzker (born June 6, 1950) is an American billionaire businessman, the executive chairman of [[Hyatt Hotels Corporation]], and the chairman of the broader [[Pritzker Organization|Pritzker family]] business empire. The Pritzker family's holdings span hotels (Hyatt), industrial manufacturing ([[Marmon Group|Marmon Group/Trinity Industries]]), finance, and the philanthropic [[Pritzker Foundation|Pritzker Foundation]], and the family's cumulative wealth places it among the wealthiest American business dynasties. Pritzker's correspondence with [[Jeffrey Epstein]] in 2011, documented in the EFTA releases as document [[EFTA02407727|EFTA02407727]], used the phrase "secret society," establishing a second documented "secret society" channel through Epstein independent of the [[Peter Thiel]] correspondence.[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Pritzker Family and the Hyatt Empire
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The [[Pritzker family|Pritzker family]] built its wealth across the twentieth century through a diversified holding structure anchored by Hyatt (founded by Pritzker's father [[Donald Pritzker|Donald]] and uncle [[Jay Pritzker|Jay]] in 1957), the Marmon Group industrial conglomerate, the [[Superior Bank|Superior Bank]] (which failed in 2001 in an early instance of the securitization-driven banking collapses), and a range of venture and private-equity holdings. Thomas Pritzker succeeded his father and uncle as the principal executive of the family's business operations and took Hyatt public in 2009.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Pritzker family's philanthropic arm, the Pritzker Foundation, has funded the [[Pritzker School of Medicine|Pritzker School of Medicine]] at the [[University of Chicago]], the [[Pritzker Military Museum & Library|Pritzker Military Museum & Library]], and a range of cultural and educational institutions in [[Chicago]] and nationally. [[J.B. Pritzker|J.B. Pritzker]], Thomas's cousin, is the current [[Governor of Illinois|Governor of Illinois]] and a prominent [[Democratic Party|Democratic]] political figure. The family's political and philanthropic footprint spans both parties and multiple institutional sectors.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Epstein Correspondence and the "Secret Society" Email
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The EFTA releases include document EFTA02407727, a 2011 correspondence between Pritzker and Jeffrey Epstein in which Pritzker used the phrase "secret society." Epstein's reply, per the document, was "Remind me next month." The document is indexed in the [[Epstein Files|Epstein file]] aggregators and cited in the secondary reporting on the Epstein-Pritzker relationship. The correspondence is dated 2011, three years after Epstein's 2008 federal non-prosecution agreement.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Pritzker "secret society" email runs parallel to the Thiel-Epstein "secret society idea" correspondence (documented in [[EFTA01738574|EFTA01738574]], dated February 2016). The two are independent channels: the Thiel correspondence records Epstein reporting that Thiel "LOVED the secret socieity [sic] idea," and the Pritzker correspondence records Pritzker himself using the phrase. Whether the two channels refer to the same "secret society" concept or to separate projects is not established in the primary documents. The 2011 Pritzker email predates the 2016 Thiel email by five years.[^2][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Pritzker-Epstein Relationship
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The *Wall Street Journal* reported in 2023, on the basis of the Epstein calendars, that Pritzker was among the business figures who met with Epstein repeatedly in the post-2008-conviction period. Pritzker's meetings with Epstein occurred in the 2011-2014 window and included discussions that Pritzker's representatives framed as relating to philanthropic and business matters. The *Wall Street Journal* reporting placed Pritzker alongside [[William Burns]], [[Noam Chomsky]], and the former Goldman Sachs lawyer [[Kathryn Ruemmler|Kathryn Ruemmler]] in the group of establishment figures whose Epstein meetings were documented in the calendars.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Pritzker-Epstein relationship is the parallel establishment channel to the Thiel-Epstein relationship. Both channels run through Epstein in the post-2008-conviction period, both involve "secret society" language, and both connect Epstein to principals of major business and institutional networks (the Pritzker hotel-and-finance empire and the Thiel technology-and-defense empire respectively). The question of whether the two channels intersect, beyond the shared Epstein intermediary, is not documented in the primary sources currently available.[^2][^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Hyatt Hotels Corporation, "Board of Directors: Thomas J. Pritzker," documenting his role as executive chairman (assumed 2004), the November 2009 IPO, and his Marmon Holdings chairmanship. https://investors.hyatt.com/governance/board-of-directors/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: EFTA02407727, Epstein Files Transparency Act release. The 2011 Pritzker-Epstein correspondence using the phrase "secret society," with Epstein's reply "Remind me next month." Documented in the Epstein file aggregators.
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Jeffrey Epstein's Private Calendar" series, *Wall Street Journal,* 2023, documenting the Pritzker-Epstein meetings from the Epstein calendars.
|
||||||
|
[^4]: For the parallel Thiel-Epstein "secret society idea" correspondence, see EFTA01738574 (February 6, 2016) and the Peter Thiel and [[Thiel Influence Network]] pages.
|
||||||
67
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Trae Stephens.md
Normal file
67
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Trae Stephens.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,67 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Technologists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- TraeStephens
|
||||||
|
- Anduril
|
||||||
|
- FoundersFund
|
||||||
|
- Palantir
|
||||||
|
- DefenseTech
|
||||||
|
- Trump
|
||||||
|
summary: "Trae Stephens is a Founders Fund partner and cofounder of Anduril Industries who began as an intelligence-community linguist and early Palantir employee, led the Department of Defense team on Donald Trump's 2016 transition, and whose ACTS 17 Collective hosted Peter Thiel's 2025 Antichrist lectures."
|
||||||
|
born: 1983
|
||||||
|
location: "San Francisco, California"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Trae Stephens is an American investor and defense-technology executive who is a partner at [[Founders Fund]], the cofounder and executive chairman of [[Anduril Industries]], an early employee of [[Palantir Technologies]], and the official who led the Department of Defense team on [[Donald Trump]]'s 2016 presidential transition. He holds positions at [[Peter Thiel]]'s venture firm, Thiel's original government-data company, and the defense startup the firm bankrolled, and his ACTS 17 Collective hosted Thiel's 2025 lecture series on the [[Antichrist]].[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Intelligence Community Origins
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Stephens entered [[Georgetown University]]'s School of Foreign Service after the September 11 attacks, studying Arabic and security studies and graduating in 2006. He began his career in the office of then-Congressman [[Rob Portman]] and in the political-affairs office of the Embassy of Afghanistan in Washington, in the period following the installation of [[Hamid Karzai]]'s transitional government. He then worked as a computational linguist inside the United States intelligence community, building enterprise tools for Arabic and Persian name-matching and data enrichment.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
While in that intelligence-community role Stephens saw a demonstration of Palantir's software and left to join the company in 2008. Palantir had been founded in 2003 with early backing from the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] venture arm [[In-Q-Tel]], and Stephens joined as one of its early employees while the company was still small.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Palantir
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
At Palantir, Stephens led teams focused on the company's growth in the intelligence and defense market and on its international expansion, working with large government organizations on data-analysis deployments. He was described as a forward-deployed engineer, the Palantir job category that embeds technical staff directly inside client agencies, though his function centered on managing the company's sales pipeline. He also served as an adjunct faculty member at Georgetown during the period.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
His six years at Palantir, from 2008 to roughly 2014, overlapped with the company's expansion from a post-September 11 counterterrorism contractor into a fixture of the U.S. intelligence and defense procurement system. The relationships he built on the government side of that business carried into his subsequent venture-capital and defense-startup work.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Founders Fund
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Stephens joined Founders Fund in 2013 and became a partner in 2014, concentrating his investing on startups operating in the government and defense-technology space. His investing centered on the firm's defense and government portfolio, which grew into Founders Fund's distinguishing focus over the following decade.[^1][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
From the Founders Fund position Stephens became one of the principal architects of the firm's defense-and-government portfolio, and he has argued publicly that the defense-technology sector faces a coming shakeout in which a small number of companies, Anduril among them, consolidate the market. He sits on the boards of several portfolio companies and is affiliated with the [[Federalist Society]].[^4][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Anduril Industries
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Stephens cofounded Anduril Industries in 2017 with [[Palmer Luckey]] and a group of Palantir and Oculus alumni, taking the role of executive chairman while Founders Fund served as the first institutional backer. Anduril builds autonomous-surveillance and weapons systems, including the Lattice software platform, drones, and border-surveillance towers, for the U.S. military and border-security agencies.[^1][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Anduril closed a 2.5 billion dollar Series G round in 2025 led by Founders Fund, which wrote a single one-billion-dollar check, the largest in the firm's history. Stephens became a billionaire on the strength of the round in June 2025. The round routed Founders Fund capital into a company Stephens had cofounded while he remained a partner at the firm writing the check.[^6][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The 2016 Pentagon Transition
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In late 2016 Stephens served on President-elect Trump's transition team, where he led the Department of Defense landing team responsible for reviewing the Pentagon and staffing its incoming leadership. The placement put a Founders Fund partner and former Palantir executive in charge of the defense-agency transition for an administration that Thiel had publicly endorsed and helped staff, during the same period Thiel placed associates including [[Kevin Harrington]] onto the National Security Council.[^2][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Anduril, which Stephens cofounded the following year, went on to win contracts across the Defense Department and the border-security agencies whose incoming leadership the transition he led had helped review and staff.[^6][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Faith and the ACTS 17 Collective
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Stephens is an openly Christian investor who has spoken through the Faith Driven Investor network about integrating his religious convictions with venture capital and defense work. With his wife, [[Michelle Stephens]], he is associated with the [[ACTS 17 Collective]], a San Francisco group that convenes technology figures around Christianity.[^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The ACTS 17 Collective, run by Michelle Stephens, hosted Peter Thiel's four-part lecture series on the Antichrist at the [[Commonwealth Club]] in September and October 2025. The lectures were off the record, and a recording later reached the *Washington Post*, which reported on them in October 2025.[^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Trae Stephens," Founders Fund team page, on his partner role, the Anduril cofounding, and the Palantir and intelligence-community background. https://foundersfund.com/team/trae-stephens/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Trae Stephens (SFS'06)," Georgetown University School of Foreign Service alumni profile, on the Arabic and security-studies degree, the Portman and Afghan-embassy roles, and the Trump transition. https://sfs.georgetown.edu/alumni/trae-stephens-sfs06/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Trae Stephens," Federalist Society biography, on the computational-linguist intelligence-community role, the 2008 move to Palantir, and the Georgetown adjunct appointment. https://fedsoc.org/bio/trae-stephens
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Anduril's Trae Stephens says defense tech is headed for a shakeout," *Fortune,* June 5, 2026. https://fortune.com/2026/06/05/anduril-trae-stephens-founders-fund-defense-tech-ipo-palantir-venture-capital/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "The Investor Who Called Defense Tech's Big Moment," *Newcomer,* on Stephens's defense-investing thesis. https://www.newcomer.co/p/the-investor-who-called-defense-techs
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "Trae Stephens," Anduril Industries leadership and the Series G round; company records and contemporaneous reporting, 2025.
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Anduril raises $2.5 billion Series G led by Founders Fund," reporting on the one-billion-dollar Founders Fund check and Stephens's billionaire status, June 2025.
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "Trae Stephens to lead Trump's Department of Defense transition," contemporaneous reporting on the late-2016 Pentagon landing team. See also the Georgetown SFS profile.
|
||||||
|
[^9]: "Trae Stephens," Faith Driven Investor biography, on his Christian investing identity. https://faithdriveninvestor.org/bios/trae-stephens/
|
||||||
|
[^10]: "Peter Thiel is delivering 4 private sold-out lectures at a club in San Francisco about the Antichrist," *Fortune,* September 2, 2025, on the ACTS 17 Collective and Michelle Stephens hosting the series. https://fortune.com/2025/09/02/peter-thiel-antichrist-lectures-commonwealth-club-san-francisco-acts-17-collective-rene-girard/
|
||||||
73
10 - PEOPLE/(T-Z)/Alan Watts.md
Normal file
73
10 - PEOPLE/(T-Z)/Alan Watts.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,73 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Authors & Journalists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- AlanWatts
|
||||||
|
- Zen
|
||||||
|
- Counterculture
|
||||||
|
- Psychedelics
|
||||||
|
- HumanPotentialMovement
|
||||||
|
- Pacifica
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Alan Watts
|
||||||
|
- Alan Wilson Watts
|
||||||
|
summary: "Alan Watts was the British-born interpreter of Zen Buddhism, Vedanta, and Taoism for Western audiences whose books and Pacifica radio talks shaped the spiritual vocabulary of the 1960s counterculture."
|
||||||
|
born: 1915-01-06
|
||||||
|
died: 1973-11-16
|
||||||
|
location: "Chislehurst, England; San Francisco Bay Area, California"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Alan Wilson Watts (January 6, 1915 to November 16, 1973) was an English-born writer, lecturer, and former Episcopal priest who became one of the most widely read interpreters of Zen Buddhism, Vedanta, and Taoism for Western readers. Born in Chislehurst, outside London, he published his first pamphlet on Zen at twenty, emigrated to the United States in 1938, was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1944, and left the church in 1950. He moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1951 to teach at the American Academy of Asian Studies, built a large lay following through weekly talks on the Pacifica radio station [[KPFA]], and wrote more than twenty-five books, among them *The Way of Zen* (1957) and *The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are* (1966). He died at his cabin on Mount Tamalpais in Marin County on November 16, 1973.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Way of Zen
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
*The Way of Zen*, published by Pantheon in 1957, was among the first books to present Zen Buddhism to a general English-speaking audience and became a bestseller. Watts traced Zen's roots through Indian Buddhism and Chinese Taoism into the Ch'an and Zen schools of China and Japan, devoting the first half of the book to the historical and philosophical background of the tradition and the second half to its principles and practice. He had been reading and writing about Zen since his teens in England, where he encountered the work of the Japanese scholar [[D. T. Suzuki]] and the Buddhist Lodge in London under Christmas Humphreys, and he published *The Spirit of Zen* in 1936 at the age of twenty-one.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Watts followed *The Way of Zen* with *Nature, Man and Woman* (1958) and a series of books extending his comparative reading of Eastern and Western thought. His exposition stressed the experiential and nondual core of Zen over its monastic discipline, an emphasis that drew criticism from practitioners who held that he wrote about Zen without sustained formal training under a teacher. He addressed the charge directly in the 1959 essay "Beat Zen, Square Zen, and Zen," distinguishing his approach both from the casual appropriation of Zen by the Beat writers and from the rigid formalism he saw in some Western converts.[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The American Academy of Asian Studies
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The American Academy of Asian Studies was founded in San Francisco in 1950 by the businessman Louis Gainsborough, with the Stanford comparative-religion scholar [[Frederic Spiegelberg]] as director of studies. Watts joined the faculty in early 1951 at Spiegelberg's invitation to teach Buddhism and comparative philosophy, and when financial trouble forced Gainsborough to step back in late 1952 Watts took over administrative leadership, serving as the academy's dean through the mid-1950s. The faculty included the Indian philosopher Haridas Chaudhuri and the Japanese painter Saburo Hasegawa, who taught Watts the aesthetics of sumi-e ink painting and the tea ceremony.[^5][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The academy ran an influential program of weekly Friday-evening colloquia and trained a circle of students and teachers who carried Asian philosophy into Bay Area intellectual life. Among the students who passed through its orbit was Richard "Dick" Price, who studied with Watts and later cofounded the [[Esalen Institute]] with [[Michael Murphy]]. The academy's educational successor, through Chaudhuri's later Cultural Integration Fellowship, became the California Institute of Asian Studies, incorporated in 1968 and renamed the California Institute of Integral Studies in 1980.[^5][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### KPFA and the Pacifica Talks
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Watts began broadcasting on the listener-sponsored Pacifica station KPFA in Berkeley in 1953 with a program called "The Great Books of Asia," and in 1956 launched "Way Beyond the West," an unscripted weekly talk on Eastern philosophy and religion that ran for years and was syndicated to other Pacifica stations. Like the other volunteer programmers at the noncommercial station, Watts was unpaid for the broadcasts, which he delivered as extemporaneous monologues. The recordings circulated long after his death and supplied the source material for many of the audio lectures by which he is still widely known.[^1][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The radio talks made Watts a familiar voice in the popular reception of Zen, Taoism, and Vedanta on the West Coast and reached an audience far larger than his books alone. He continued recording lectures through the 1960s, often produced by his son Mark Watts, and lived for part of this period on a converted ferryboat, the *Vallejo*, moored at Gate 5 in the Sausalito waterfront community alongside the painter Jean Varda and, earlier, the philosopher Gerald Heard's circle.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Book and the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
*The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are*, published by Pantheon in 1966, set out Watts's central thesis in plain language: that the felt sense of being a separate ego, a skin-encapsulated self set against an external world, is a social and linguistic illusion, and that each person is an expression of the whole universe rather than a stranger dropped into it. Drawing on the Vedanta doctrine that the individual self (atman) is identical with the ground of all being (Brahman), Watts argued that the conventional self-image is a cultural taboo enforced by upbringing and language, and that seeing through it is the aim of the religious traditions he interpreted.[^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Watts framed the book as the message he would want to pass to his own children about who and what they were, and it became one of his most enduring works. He had developed the same nondual argument across earlier books including *Psychotherapy East and West* (1961), in which he proposed that Buddhism and Taoism function less as religions than as forms of psychotherapy aimed at liberating people from artificial constraints of self-definition, comparing their methods with those of Western psychoanalysis and the humanistic psychologies then emerging.[^9][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Psychedelics and The New Alchemy
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Watts experimented with [[mescaline]] and [[LSD]] beginning in the late 1950s, taking the drugs in controlled settings as part of his inquiry into whether the states they produced corresponded to the mystical experiences described in the contemplative traditions. He published his first account of these experiments as the essay "The New Alchemy," which appeared in his 1960 collection *This Is It and Other Essays on Zen and Spiritual Experience*, identifying mescaline and LSD as the two chemicals most useful for producing a shift of consciousness. He developed the theme at greater length in *The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness* (1962), for which [[Timothy Leary]] and [[Richard Alpert]] wrote an introduction.[^10][^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Watts maintained that psychedelics could offer genuine glimpses of mystical awareness but were instruments rather than ends, comparable to a telescope or a piano, and he warned against mistaking the chemically induced experience for the realization itself, summarizing his view with the remark that "when you get the message, hang up the phone." He admired [[Aldous Huxley]]'s *The Doors of Perception* (1954), and his own essays on the drugs were among the texts that gave the psychedelic movement its vocabulary.[^10][^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Esalen and the Human Potential Movement
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Watts was present at the Esalen Institute from its earliest days at Big Sur, giving one of the first lecture programs there in January 1962, the year the institute opened, and returning to lead seminars through the 1960s. His interpretations of Zen, Taoism, and Vedanta, together with the framework of "human potentialities" he shared with Huxley, supplied part of the intellectual basis for the seminars that Murphy and Price built into the Human Potential movement. The anthropologist [[Gregory Bateson]], who would spend his last years at Esalen, was among the figures Watts lectured alongside in this period.[^2][^12]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Watts spent his final years dividing his time between the *Vallejo* houseboat in Sausalito and the cabin on Mount Tamalpais, lecturing widely and recording prolifically, and he published his autobiography *In My Own Way* in 1972. He died in his sleep at the Mount Tamalpais cabin on November 16, 1973, at the age of fifty-eight; his collaboration with Al Chung-liang Huang on Taoism appeared posthumously as *Tao: The Watercourse Way* in 1975.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "About Alan Watts," Alan Watts Organization biography, on his birth on January 6, 1915 in Chislehurst, ordination as an Episcopal priest in 1944, departure from the priesthood in 1950, arrival in San Francisco in 1951, teaching at the American Academy of Asian Studies, the KPFA programs "The Great Books of Asia" (1953) and "Way Beyond the West" (1956), his books, and his death on Mount Tamalpais on November 16, 1973. https://alanwatts.org/biography
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Watts, Alan. *In My Own Way: An Autobiography 1915 to 1965.* Pantheon, 1972, on his life, the Sausalito houseboat *Vallejo*, the Mount Tamalpais cabin, and his association with Esalen and Gregory Bateson.
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Watts, Alan. *The Way of Zen.* Pantheon, 1957; and Watts, Alan. *The Spirit of Zen.* John Murray, 1936, on his early study of Zen through D. T. Suzuki and the London Buddhist Lodge.
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Watts, Alan. "Beat Zen, Square Zen, and Zen." *Chicago Review,* 1958; reprinted by City Lights, 1959, on his distinction from Beat and convert appropriations of Zen.
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "The American Academy of Asian Studies," Mysterium / Charles Cameron, on the 1950 founding by Louis Gainsborough, Frederic Spiegelberg as director of studies, Watts becoming administrator in 1952 and dean through the mid-1950s, and faculty including Haridas Chaudhuri and Saburo Hasegawa. https://www.mysterium.com/aaas.html
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "A Brief History of California Institute of Integral Studies," CIIS, on the academy's descent through Haridas Chaudhuri's Cultural Integration Fellowship to the California Institute of Asian Studies and the 1980 renaming to the California Institute of Integral Studies. https://www.ciis.edu/discover-ciis/our-history
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "KPFA Fund Drive: Alan Watts, Way Beyond the West," KPFA / Pacifica Radio, on Watts's unpaid volunteer broadcasts and the long run of "Way Beyond the West." https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-september-12-2016/
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Watts, Alan. *The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are.* Pantheon, 1966, on the illusion of the separate ego and the identity of atman and Brahman.
|
||||||
|
[^9]: Watts, Alan. *Psychotherapy East and West.* Pantheon, 1961, on Buddhism and Taoism as forms of psychotherapy compared with Western psychoanalysis.
|
||||||
|
[^10]: Watts, Alan. "The New Alchemy," in *This Is It and Other Essays on Zen and Spiritual Experience.* Pantheon, 1960, on mescaline and LSD as the two chemicals most useful for changing consciousness, and the "hang up the phone" formulation. https://druglibrary.org/schaffer/lsd/alchemy.htm
|
||||||
|
[^11]: Watts, Alan. *The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness.* Pantheon, 1962, with an introduction by Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert.
|
||||||
|
[^12]: "A History of Esalen Institute," Steven Harper, on Watts's lecture at Big Sur in January 1962 and Dick Price's earlier study with Watts. https://www.stevenkharper.com/ahistoryofesaleninstitute.html
|
||||||
34
10 - PEOPLE/(T-Z)/Cari Tuna.md
Normal file
34
10 - PEOPLE/(T-Z)/Cari Tuna.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Philanthropists & Benefactors"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- CariTuna
|
||||||
|
- OpenPhilanthropy
|
||||||
|
- EffectiveAltruism
|
||||||
|
- Philanthropy
|
||||||
|
summary: "Cari Tuna is a former Wall Street Journal reporter who, with her husband Dustin Moskovitz, leads Good Ventures and Open Philanthropy, making her a principal director of the largest sustained funding source for the effective-altruism movement."
|
||||||
|
location: "San Francisco, California"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Cari Tuna is an American former journalist who, with her husband [[Dustin Moskovitz]], directs the philanthropic apparatus that became the largest sustained funder of the [[Effective Altruism]] movement. She is the president of Good Ventures, the foundation she and Moskovitz established in 2011, and a leader of [[Open Philanthropy]], the grantmaking organization that channels their [[Facebook]]-derived fortune toward global health, longtermism, and AI-safety work.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### From Journalism to Philanthropy
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Tuna worked as a reporter for the *Wall Street Journal* before leaving to manage the couple's giving full time. She and Moskovitz, among the youngest signatories of the Giving Pledge, committed to donating the majority of their wealth, and they built Good Ventures and Open Philanthropy as the vehicles for doing so according to the evidence-and-reasoning methodology of effective altruism. Tuna became the public face of the operation, articulating its "give where it does the most good" framework.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Tuna and Moskovitz married in 2013 and signed the Giving Pledge in 2014 in their late twenties and early thirties, among the youngest people to do so. Tuna serves as president of Good Ventures and chairs the board of the grantmaking organization, the legal and governance counterpart to the staff research that [[Holden Karnofsky]] and [[Alexander Berger]] ran. She has described the couple's decision to delegate cause selection to a professional staff applying cost-effectiveness analysis rather than directing the money toward causes of personal sentiment, the organizing principle that distinguished their approach from conventional billionaire philanthropy.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Open Philanthropy
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
As a leader of Open Philanthropy, Tuna helped direct more than four billion dollars in grants across global health, scientific research, pandemic preparedness, farm-animal welfare, and the prevention of catastrophic risks from advanced artificial intelligence. The longtermist and AI-risk portion of that giving made Open Philanthropy the principal institutional patron of the AI-safety community around the [[Machine Intelligence Research Institute]], the [[Future of Humanity Institute]], and the AI company [[Anthropic]], the durable counterpart to the short-lived [[FTX Future Fund]] of [[Sam Bankman-Fried]].[^2][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The grantmaking arm rebranded as Coefficient Giving in November 2025, shifting toward multi-donor funds that other philanthropists could join, while Good Ventures remained the dominant source of its money. Tuna chairs the Good Ventures board that supplies that capital, leaving her with formal control over the largest single pool of effective-altruism funding even as professional staff make the grant decisions. The structure concentrated a substantial share of global AI-safety funding under one foundation, drawing criticism that the field examining the AI labs depended financially on a single donor couple who were also early investors in one of those labs.[^2][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Giving in the Light of Reason," *Stanford Social Innovation Review,* on Cari Tuna, Good Ventures, and the Open Philanthropy methodology. https://ssir.org/articles/entry/giving_in_the_light_of_reason
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "How Dependent is the Effective Altruism Movement on Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna?" EA Forum. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4BJSXH9ho4eYNT73P/how-dependent-is-the-effective-altruism-movement-on-dustin
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Cari Tuna," EA Forum topic entry on Good Ventures and the Giving Pledge. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/topics/cari-tuna
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "How Effective is Effective Altruism?" *Inside Philanthropy,* March 16, 2023. https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2023-3-16-how-effective-is-effective-altruism-a-deep-dive-into-two-of-open-philanthropys-ea-inspired-programs
|
||||||
76
10 - PEOPLE/(T-Z)/Curtis Yarvin.md
Normal file
76
10 - PEOPLE/(T-Z)/Curtis Yarvin.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,76 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "New Right"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- CurtisYarvin
|
||||||
|
- Moldbug
|
||||||
|
- Neoreaction
|
||||||
|
- DarkEnlightenment
|
||||||
|
- PeterThiel
|
||||||
|
- NRx
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Curtis Guy Yarvin
|
||||||
|
- Moldbug
|
||||||
|
- "Unqualified Reservations"
|
||||||
|
summary: "Curtis Yarvin, who writes under the pen name Moldbug, is an American software developer and political writer whose blog Unqualified Reservations (2007 onward) founded the neoreactionary movement and co-originated the Dark Enlightenment, and who is the most prominent intellectual patronized by Peter Thiel."
|
||||||
|
born: 1973-06-25
|
||||||
|
location: "United States"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-17
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-17
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Curtis Yarvin (born June 25, 1973) is an American software developer and political writer who publishes under the pen name [[Moldbug]] and is the founder of the [[Neoreaction]] (NRx) movement and co-originator of the [[Dark Enlightenment]] ideological current. His blog *Unqualified Reservations*, active from April 2007 through 2014, argued that liberal democracy is a failing state form and should be replaced by a corporate, monarchical government organized under what he termed [[Neocameralism]]. Yarvin is the most prominent intellectual financially patronized by [[Peter Thiel]], and his work is the ideological spine of the Thiel network's argument that concentrated private capacity should replace decentralized democratic government.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Unqualified Reservations Blog (2007-2014)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Yarvin began writing *Unqualified Reservations* in April 2007, adopting the Moldbug persona and a deliberately archaic, allusive prose style modeled in part on the 19th-century reactionary writers ([[Thomas Carlyle|Thomas Carlyle]], [[Joseph de Maistre|Joseph de Maistre]]) he cited. The blog is preserved in full chronological archive at unqualified-reservations.org and in the [[Princeton University|Princeton University]] Digital Collections. The central arguments, developed across hundreds of long-form posts through 2014, held that the 20th-century liberal democratic state is a theocratic successor to [[Mainline Protestantism|mainline Protestant Christianity]], which Yarvin termed [[The Cathedral|The Cathedral]].[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The early blog output established the diagnostic frame. "The Ultracalvinist Hypothesis: In Perspective" (June 2007) argued that mainline Protestantism had secularized into the universalist academic-and-media consensus without losing its religious character. "Carlyle Rages Against the Coming of the Light" (June 2007) established Yarvin's debt to the Carlyle tradition of reactionary social criticism. The "How Dawkins Got Pwned" seven-part series critiqued [[Richard Dawkins|Richard Dawkins]] and New Atheism for failing to recognize the religious structure of their own secular universalism.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Core Essay Series
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
"An Open Letter to Open-Minded Progressives" (April 2008) is the most-cited single *Unqualified Reservations* essay. The Open Letter makes the case that progressivism is a non-falsifiable religious framework rather than an empirical political position, and that no productive political argument is possible with someone operating inside the progressive framework. The essay is preserved in the Princeton University Digital Collections and is routinely cited in the academic literature on neoreaction as the canonical entry point to Yarvin's thought.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The "Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations" series (2007-2009) is the systematic exposition. Chapter 5, "The Modern Structure" (February 2009), laid out the Cathedral thesis in its most structured form. The Gentle Introduction was later compiled into a standalone ebook volume (2015) described by the archive as a "concentrated dose" of the blog's core themes.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The "Patchwork: A Political System for the 21st Century" series (2008) is the constructive neocameral proposal. Chapter 3, "What We Have and What's So Bad About It" (November 27, 2008), described the "Mencist vision" of sovereign joint-stock "patches" (corporate city-states) replacing nation-states. The Patchwork series was later published as a standalone ebook and preserved at Princeton University Digital Collections. "Why Carlyle Matters" (July 16, 2009) is the later essay that re-articulated the Carlyle debt for readers who had arrived at the blog through the Patchwork and Gentle Introduction material.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
"The Path to (Dark) Enlightenment" (March 2013) is the later retrospective post that indexed the major works and consolidated the argument as the neoreactionary movement began to attract broader attention. The post runs through the full sequence from the ultracalvinist hypothesis through the Cathedral thesis to the neocameral proposal, and it functions as the internal map of the *Unqualified Reservations* corpus.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Neocameral Proposal
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Yarvin's neocameral proposal, developed primarily in the Patchwork series, argues that sovereign territory should be owned as corporate property by shareholders who appoint a chief executive with absolute operational authority. The executive's incentive to maintain the capital value of the territory (and thus the share price) would produce better governance than the electoral incentive structure. The model is explicitly modeled on the governance of [[Singapore]] under [[Lee Kuan Yew|Lee Kuan Yew]] and on the chartered-company colonial model of the [[British East India Company|British East India Company]].[^1] The term derives from the cameralism of 18th-century [[Prussia|Prussia]], which Yarvin updates by substituting a joint-stock ownership structure for the hereditary monarch.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The enforcement mechanism is cryptographic: in the Patchwork formulation, the shareholders "hold the master encryption keys" to the state's security forces (Yarvin's "invincible robot armies"), so that physical control of the means of violence tracks ownership of the equity rather than the will of any officeholder, eliminating the coup risk that would otherwise constrain an absolute executive.[^5] Yarvin pairs this with two doctrines from the earlier *Unqualified Reservations* posts: "formalism," which holds that real power relationships should be openly titled as property rather than disguised behind democratic ritual, and the preference for "exit over voice," under which residents who dislike a patch's management relocate to a competing patch rather than vote, the patches competing for tax-paying residents as firms compete for customers. He describes the resulting entity, which he abbreviates "Sov," as a "clean, lean and mean revenue-extracting machine" whose goal is "loot," disciplined only by the shareholders' interest in not destroying the asset's resale value.[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Dark Enlightenment and Nick Land
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Dark Enlightenment is the broader current that formed around Yarvin's writing and that of the British philosopher [[Nick Land]]. Land, a former member of the [[CCRU]] at the [[University of Warwick]], had developed a body of work on right-accelerationism that argued capitalism and technological change should be allowed to dissolve the existing political order without restraint. Land's framing supplied the metaphysical and technological register; Yarvin's supplied the political and institutional register. The synthesis was named the Dark Enlightenment in a 2012 essay, and the neoreactionary current is the political-organizational expression of the broader Dark Enlightenment frame.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Neoreaction and the violent Accelerationism of the [[James Mason]] *[[Siege]]* tradition share a diagnosis but diverge on method. The accelerationist tradition ([[Atomwaffen Division]], [[The Base]], [[Terrorgram Collective]]) holds that liberal democracy should be collapsed by targeted violence to produce revolutionary conditions; Yarvin and Land hold that liberal democracy is collapsing of its own contradictions and that the role of the neoreactionary is to build the institutional successor, not to hasten the collapse. The two currents cite some of the same sources and attract some of the same readers, but the operational programs are incompatible: neoreaction is procedural and capital-intensive; violent accelerationism is paramilitary and cell-based.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Thiel Patronage
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Thiel patronage converts the neoreactionary current from an online subculture into a funded intellectual project. Thiel's 2009 [[Cato Unbound]] essay "The Education of a Libertarian" declared "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible," a formulation tracking Yarvin's argument, and Thiel has provided financial support to Yarvin across multiple years. The patronage is documented in public reporting and in Yarvin's own references to his funding; the precise amounts and the legal structure of the support are not fully public.[^1][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The funding connects the Dark Enlightenment intellectual current to the [[PayPal Mafia]] commercial network through a single recurring capital relationship. Yarvin's arguments are funded by the principal whose commercial firms ([[Palantir Technologies|Palantir Technologies]], [[Founders Fund|Founders Fund]], the [[Dialog]] convening network) operationalize the privatization-of-state-capacity thesis Yarvin articulates. The 2026 Dialog leak did not name Yarvin as a registrant.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Urbit and the Software Project
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Yarvin's parallel project is [[Urbit]], a personal-server computing stack he began developing in 2002 and continued through his writing career. Urbit is a decentralized peer-to-peer network in which each user owns a permanent digital address (a "planet," "star," or "galaxy" in Urbit's hierarchy) as a digital asset, with the architecture intended to make the user sovereign over their own computing environment rather than dependent on centralized cloud providers.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Urbit's development was housed at Yarvin's company Tlon until his departure, and the project has continued under subsequent stewardship. Yarvin's writing is explicit that the computing architecture prototypes the political architecture: sovereign digital property held by individuals replaces the platform-mediated computing that Yarvin reads as a continuation of the democratic state's jurisdictional claim. The project extends neoreaction from a political program into a full-stack alternative institutional design.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Political Reception
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[[Steve Bannon]], during the first [[Donald Trump|Trump]] administration, was reported to have read and discussed Yarvin's work. [[Michael Anton]] (a national-security official in both Trump administrations) has engaged publicly with neoreactionary arguments. [[JD Vance]], the Thiel-funded senator and current vice president, has been associated with the broader intellectual orbit, though Vance has publicly distanced himself from Yarvin's more extreme claims.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Yarvin has spoken at the [[National Conservatism Conference]] and published in [[The American Mind]], the journal of the [[Claremont Institute]]. He has spoken publicly about his relationship with the Thiel network and about the neoreactionary current's trajectory from blog subculture into executive-branch adjacency under the second Trump administration.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Yarvin, Curtis (Moldbug). *Unqualified Reservations* (blog), April 2007 through 2014. Full chronological archive at https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/. Key posts: "The Ultracalvinist Hypothesis: In Perspective" (June 2007, https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/06/ultracalvinist-hypothesis-in/); "An Open Letter to Open-Minded Progressives" (April 2008, https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2008/04/open-letter-to-open-minded-progressives/); "A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations," Chapter 5: "The Modern Structure" (February 2009, https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2009/02/gentle-introduction-to-unqualified/); "Patchwork: A Political System for the 21st Century," Chapter 3 (November 27, 2008, https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2008/11/patchwork-3-what-we-have-and-whats-so/); "Why Carlyle Matters" (July 16, 2009, https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2009/07/why-carlyle-matters/); "The Path to (Dark) Enlightenment" (March 2013, https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2013/03/the-path-to-dark-enlightenment/).
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Land, Nick. "The Dark Enlightenment" (series), 2012 onward.
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "An Open Letter to Open-Minded Progressives" is preserved in the Princeton University Digital Collections: https://digital-collections.princeton.edu/i/open-letter-openminded-progressives/item/a08ef362-6b48-4cf2-bfbc-5401855e0eea
|
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|
[^4]: Cameron, Dell, and Yulia Almazova. "Leak Exposes Members of Peter Thiel's Secretive 'Dialog' Society." *WIRED,* June 16, 2026. https://www.wired.com/story/leak-exposes-members-of-peter-thiels-secretive-dialog-society/ ; and public reporting on the Thiel-Yarvin patronage and the neoreactionary orbit's presence in the second Trump administration.
|
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|
[^5]: Yarvin, Curtis (Mencius Moldbug). "Patchwork: A Political System for the 21st Century," Chapter 3 (November 27, 2008). https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2008/11/patchwork-3-what-we-have-and-whats-so/ . The "master encryption keys for the government's invincible robot armies," the "Sov" abbreviation, and the "clean, lean and mean revenue-extracting machine... loot" formulations are Yarvin's own; for the "formalism" and "exit over voice" doctrines see "A Formalist Manifesto" (April 2007) at the same archive.
|
||||||
83
10 - PEOPLE/(T-Z)/Donald Trump.md
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83
10 - PEOPLE/(T-Z)/Donald Trump.md
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|
|
@ -0,0 +1,83 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Political Figure"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- DonaldTrump
|
||||||
|
- PeterThiel
|
||||||
|
- RepublicanParty
|
||||||
|
- President
|
||||||
|
- Palantir
|
||||||
|
- JDVance
|
||||||
|
- LeonardLeo
|
||||||
|
- DarkMoney
|
||||||
|
- FederalistSociety
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Donald John Trump
|
||||||
|
summary: "Donald Trump is the 45th and 47th President of the United States whose two administrations functioned as the political vehicle through which the Peter Thiel commercial network, the Leonard Leo judicial-selection network, and the Jared Kushner Middle East network exercised documented federal power, including Palantir's expanded government contracting, the Federalist Society Supreme Court confirmations, and the Kushner-MBS relationship that produced the Abraham Accords."
|
||||||
|
born: 1946-06-14
|
||||||
|
location: "Queens, New York City (born)"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-06-18
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Donald Trump (born June 14, 1946) is the 45th and 47th [[President of the United States]], serving 2017-2021 and 2025-present. His two administrations functioned as the political vehicle through which the [[Peter Thiel|Peter Thiel]] commercial network ([[Palantir Technologies|Palantir]] contracting expansion, [[Clearview AI]] seed funding, [[Founders Fund]] defense portfolio), the [[Leonard Leo|Leonard Leo]] judicial-selection network (the [[Neil Gorsuch|Gorsuch]], [[Brett Kavanaugh|Kavanaugh]], [[Amy Coney Barrett|Barrett]] Supreme Court confirmations), and the [[Jared Kushner|Jared Kushner]] Middle East network ([[Abraham Accords|Abraham Accords]], U.S.-[[Saudi Arabia|Saudi Arabia]] arms sales, the documented [[Mohammed bin Salman|MBS]] WhatsApp channel) exercised documented federal power. Thiel spoke at the 2016 [[Republican National Convention|Republican National Convention]] endorsing Trump, served on the transition executive committee, and placed associates including [[Kevin Harrington|Kevin Harrington]] on the [[National Security Council|National Security Council]].[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The 2016 Thiel Endorsement and the Transition
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Thiel endorsed Trump at the July 2016 Republican National Convention in [[Cleveland|Cleveland]], the first openly gay speaker at a Republican convention in sixteen years, and donated over one million dollars to Trump-supporting super PACs alongside the [[Mercer family|Mercer family]], the Republican donors who funded [[Breitbart|Breitbart]] and the [[Cambridge Analytica|Cambridge Analytica]] data operation. After the November 2016 election, Trump placed Thiel on the transition team's executive committee. Thiel used the position to place Harrington as Senior Director for Strategic Planning on the National Security Council and a Thiel aide as White House Deputy Chief Technology Officer. *Politico* reported that companies Thiel backed, especially Palantir, stood to benefit from the transition role.[^1][^2][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Mercer family connection was the other documented channel of the 2016 operation. [[Robert Mercer|Robert Mercer]] and his daughter [[Rebekah Mercer|Rebekah Mercer]] funded Breitbart News (where [[Steve Bannon|Steve Bannon]] served as executive chairman before becoming the Trump campaign CEO in August 2016), Cambridge Analytica (the data-targeting firm that deployed psychographic profiling of voters using Facebook data acquired through the [[ Aleksandr Kogan | Aleksandr Kogan / Joseph Chancellor ]] academic-researcher channel), and the [[Government Accountability Institute|Government Accountability Institute]] (the research nonprofit that produced *Clinton Cash*). The Mercer-Breitbart-Cambridge Analytica infrastructure was the documented digital-and-media backbone of the 2016 campaign, and the convergence with the Thiel commercial network (Palantir, Founders Fund) through the shared Trump support produced the documented 2016 alignment of the Silicon Valley billionaire network with the Republican political operation.[^4][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Palantir Contracting Expansion
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The first Trump administration produced the documented expansion of Palantir's government contracting. The [[U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement|ICE]] contracts (FALCON, ICM, ImmigrationOS, ELITE) expanded through the administration's immigration-enforcement escalation. The [[Customs and Border Protection|CBP]] and [[Department of Defense|DoD]] contracts grew alongside the border-enforcement and defense-spending increases. The [[In-Q-Tel|In-Q-Tel]]-seeded relationship between Palantir and the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] deepened as Palantir's Gotham platform became the standard data-fusion tool across multiple agencies. Thiel chaired Palantir throughout, while simultaneously placing associates in the NSC and running the [[Dialog]] convening network whose government-side attendees included the congressional oversight and military-command principals responsible for the agencies Palantir serves.[^3][^5]
|
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|
|
||||||
|
The second administration (2025-present) has extended the contracting expansion. ICE awarded Palantir the 30 million dollar [[ImmigrationOS|ImmigrationOS]] contract for the administration's mass-deportation operations. Palantir signed the January 2024 strategic partnership with the [[Israeli Ministry of Defense|Israeli Ministry of Defense]] for "war-related missions" in the [[Gaza war|Gaza war]], placing the [[Palantir Gotham|Gotham]] "AI-powered kill chain" platform in an active combat zone. The [[Anduril Industries|Anduril]] [[Sentry Tower|Sentry Tower]] deployment expanded to over 350 towers covering 30 percent of the southern border under a 363 million dollar CBP contract. The documented combination of Palantir (case management and targeting), Anduril (autonomous detection), and Clearview (facial identification) across the deportation and border-enforcement pipelines constitutes the commercial operation of the [[Thiel Influence Network|Thiel network]] against the documented target populations.[^3][^5][^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Supreme Court and the Leo Network
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Trump's three Supreme Court appointments (Gorsuch 2017, Kavanaugh 2018, Barrett 2020) were selected and shepherded through the Leonard Leo / [[Federalist Society|Federalist Society]] pipeline. Leo advised Trump on all three selections and the [[Judicial Crisis Network|Judicial Crisis Network]] (now the [[Concord Fund|Concord Fund]]) dark-money operation funded the confirmation campaigns. The conservative supermajority produced by the confirmations has been the structural outcome that shapes U.S. law on reproductive rights, gun regulation, campaign finance, and executive power. The Leo operation and the Thiel operation overlap through the shared [[Teneo Network|Teneo Network]] institutional terrain and the shared 501(c)(4) dark-money infrastructure.[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Kavanaugh confirmation (2018) was the most contested of the three and drew the he documented engagement of the Thiel-aligned political infrastructure. The confirmation followed the [[Christine Blasey Ford|Christine Blasey Ford]] sexual-assault allegations and the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, and the conservative dark-money operation that funded the confirmation campaign (the JCN / Concord Fund network) spent millions on advertising and grassroots mobilization. Leo personally managed the confirmation strategy. The Kavanaugh confirmation solidified the conservative supermajority that produced the 2022 [[Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization|Dobbs]] decision overturning [[Roe v. Wade|Roe v. Wade]].[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Kushner Middle East Policy
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and senior advisor, handled the Middle East portfolio that produced the Abraham Accords (2020 normalization agreements between [[Israel|Israel]] and the [[United Arab Emirates|UAE]], [[Bahrain|Bahrain]], [[Sudan|Sudan]], and [[Morocco|Morocco]]). The accords broke with the prior U.S. framework that had conditioned normalization on Israeli-Palestinian progress, and Kushner led the negotiation alongside the administration's recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the [[Golan Heights|Golan Heights]] and the relocation of the U.S. embassy to [[Jerusalem|Jerusalem]].[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The U.S.-Saudi Arabia arms sales proceeded over congressional opposition, with the administration invoking emergency authority to bypass the congressional review process. The arms sales ran through the period of the [[Jamal Khashoggi|Khashoggi]] murder (October 2018), after which the CIA assessed with high confidence that MBS had ordered the assassination. Kushner maintained his relationship with MBS after the murder and maintained the WhatsApp channel the CIA assessed as compromised.[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
After the administration ended, the [[Public Investment Fund|Saudi sovereign wealth fund]] committed 2 billion dollars to Kushner's [[Affinity Partners|Affinity Partners]] fund despite the fund's own due-diligence panel rejecting the deal as "unsatisfactory in all aspects." The Kushner-MBS channel, the [[NSO Group|NSO Group]] Pegasus surveillance of Khashoggi's associates, and the Abraham Accords together constitute the documented Middle East policy outcome.[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The 2024 Campaign and the Second Administration
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Thiel funded the 2022 [[JD Vance|JD Vance]] Senate campaign (approximately fifteen million dollars) and the [[Blake Masters|Blake Masters]] campaign (approximately fifteen million dollars), and brokered Vance's selection as Trump's 2024 vice-presidential running mate. The Vance selection compressed a three-and-a-half-year path from private citizen to Vice President on a single-donor financial base.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The [[Heritage Foundation|Heritage Foundation]]'s [[Project 2025|Project 2025]] produced the personnel pipeline for the second administration. [[ProPublica|ProPublica]] reported that [[Paul Dans|Paul Dans]], the Project 2025 director, created a personnel database of over 10,000 vetted candidates ("a conservative LinkedIn") to staff a second Trump term. [[NBC News|NBC News]] reported that several prominent Project 2025 authors secured executive-branch roles. [[Center for American Progress|CAP]] documented that 80 percent of Project 2025's authors were former Trump administration officials or close advisors, and 140 people who worked for Trump contributed to the project. Trump publicly disavowed Project 2025 during the campaign but the personnel overlap is documented.[^1][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The second Trump administration (2025-present) has produced the documented expansion of Palantir's ICE contracting (the 30 million dollar ImmigrationOS contract), the Palantir-Israel strategic partnership for "war-related missions" in the Gaza war, and the [[Department of Government Efficiency|DOGE]] access to federal systems. [[David Sacks|David Sacks]], the PayPal Mafia COO, received the White House AI and cryptocurrency czar appointment. The DOGE, led by [[Elon Musk|Musk]], produced the documented [[NLRB Data Exfiltration|NLRB data exfiltration]] with Russian IP login attempts and the documented exfiltration of union-organizing records.[^1][^3][^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[[Howard Lutnick|Howard Lutnick]], the [[Cantor Fitzgerald|Cantor Fitzgerald]] CEO whose Epstein emails are documented in the 2026 file releases, received the [[Secretary of Commerce|Secretary of Commerce]] appointment. [[Pam Bondi|Pam Bondi]], who declared the [[Jeffrey Epstein|Epstein]] files release "complete" amid the "300 names" controversy (which included impossible entries for [[Elvis Presley|Elvis]], [[Princess Diana|Princess Diana]], and [[Kurt Cobain|Kurt Cobain]]), received the [[Attorney General|Attorney General]] appointment. [[Todd Blanche|Todd Blanche]], the deputy attorney general who announced the 3.5 million page Epstein-files publication, was previously Trump's personal defense attorney in the Manhattan criminal case. The second-administration personnel pattern places documented Epstein-network contacts (Lutnick) and Epstein-files oversight figures (Bondi, Blanche) in the executive branch.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Epstein Relationship
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Trump and Epstein socialized from the late 1980s through 2004, mostly in [[Palm Beach, Florida|Palm Beach]] and New York. Archival [[NBC]] footage from 1992 shows the two men together at [[Mar-a-Lago]] watching dancers, with [[Ghislaine Maxwell]] present, and photographs place Trump, [[Melania Trump]], Epstein, and Maxwell together in the period. In a 2002 [[New York Magazine]] profile Trump said of Epstein, "I've known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy," adding that "he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side." Epstein's address books listed multiple Trump telephone numbers, and Trump's name appears roughly seven times in the flight logs of Epstein's aircraft (the [[Lolita Express]]) on domestic legs, with no log entry placing Trump on [[Little St. James]].[^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The relationship broke in 2004 over a Palm Beach property. In November 2004 Trump outbid Epstein for the oceanfront mansion [[Maison de l'Amitie]], paying 41.35 million dollars, and the bankruptcy trustee for the estate described the two men lobbying him and disparaging each other's finances. Trump later said he had a falling out with Epstein "a long time ago" and had thrown him out of Mar-a-Lago as "persona non grata" for poaching club staff. Little public record of contact survives after 2004. [[Maria Farmer]], who reported Epstein to the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] in 1996, said she had also flagged a 1990s encounter involving Trump, an account that remains an uncorroborated allegation. No allegation of criminal wrongdoing by Trump in connection with Epstein has been established in any court or official finding.[^12]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The relationship returned as a political liability across 2025. As president, Trump presided over the Justice Department that handled the file releases; he denied authoring the 2003 "birthday book" letter that the [[Wall Street Journal]] reported bore his signature and a drawing of a nude woman, dismissed the report as fake, and filed a multibillion-dollar defamation suit against the paper. After months of pressure from members of his own coalition demanding disclosure, Trump signed the [[Epstein Files Transparency Act]] in November 2025. The staged releases, the missing "client list" that Bondi had promised, and the unexplained redactions kept the Trump-Epstein history in continuous national coverage through the end of 2025.[^13]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: For Thiel's 2016 endorsement, the RNC speech, and the transition team role, see the contemporaneous press (*Guardian*, *Politico*, *ABC News*) and the Peter Thiel page.
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Peter Thiel goes 'big league', joining Trump's presidential transition team." *The Guardian,* November 11, 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/11/peter-thiel-joins-donald-trump-transition-team ; "Thiel could gain from Trump transition." *Politico,* December 2016. https://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/peter-thiel-trump-transition-benefits-232233
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Cameron, Dell, and Yulia Almazova. "Leak Exposes Members of Peter Thiel's Secretive 'Dialog' Society." *WIRED,* June 16, 2026. https://www.wired.com/story/leak-exposes-members-of-peter-thiels-secretive-dialog-society/
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Who Is Kevin Harrington, the Peter Thiel Associate Who Just Joined the National Security Council Staff?" *Gizmodo,* February 2017. https://gizmodo.com/who-is-kevin-harrington-the-peter-thiel-associate-who-1791925769 ; "Disrupting the White House: Peter Thiel's Influence is Shaping the National Security Council." *Just Security,* 2017. https://www.justsecurity.org/37466/disrupting-white-house-peter-thiels-influence-shaping-national-security-council/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "ICE to Use ImmigrationOS by Palantir, a New AI System, to Track Immigrants' Movements." *American Immigration Council,* April 2025. https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/ice-immigrationos-palantir-ai-track-immigrants/ ; "ICE enlists Palantir to develop all-seeing 'ImmigrationOS' eye to speed up deportations." *The Register,* April 21, 2025. https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/21/ice_enlists_palantir_to_develop/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: "We Don't Talk About Leonard: The Man Behind the Right's Supreme Court Supermajority." *ProPublica,* March 2023. https://www.propublica.org/article/we-dont-talk-about-leonard-leo-supreme-court-supermajority
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "Chairwoman Maloney Launches Probe of Saudi Government's $2 Billion Investment in Affinity Partners." House Committee on Oversight, June 2, 2022, citing the PIF screening panel that rated the firm's due diligence "unsatisfactory in all aspects" before MBS overruled it. https://oversightdemocrats.house.gov/news/press-releases/chairwoman-maloney-launches-probe-of-saudi-government-s-2-billion-investment-in
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "Whistleblower details how DOGE may have taken sensitive NLRB data." *NPR,* April 15, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/04/15/nx-s1-5355896/doge-nlrb-elon-musk-spacex-security ; "User with Russian IP address tried to log into NLRB systems following DOGE access, whistleblower says." *Nextgov/FCW,* April 2025. https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2025/04/user-russian-ip-address-tried-log-nlrb-systems-following-doge-access-whistleblower-says/404574/
|
||||||
|
[^9]: For the Mercer-Breitbart-Cambridge Analytica infrastructure, see the contemporaneous press coverage of the 2016 campaign digital operation and the Cambridge Analytica documentation. For the Government Accountability Institute and *Clinton Cash*, see the published record. For Project 2025: "Paul Dans, the Man Behind Project 2025's Most Radical Plans." *ProPublica.* https://www.propublica.org/article/project-2025-trump-campaign-heritage-foundation-paul-dans ; "The key Project 2025 authors now staffing the Trump administration." *NBC News.* https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/key-project-2025-authors-now-staffing-trump-administration-rcna195107
|
||||||
|
[^10]: "Anduril Wins $363 Million CBP Contract to Deploy Over 200 Extended Range AI Surveillance Towers." *The Defense News,* 2025. https://www.thedefensenews.com/Anduril-Wins-363-Million-CBP-Contract-to-Deploy-Over-200-Extended-Range-AI-Surveillance-Towers/ ; "CBP to strengthen 'tactical targeting,' 'counter-network analysis' with Clearview AI." *FedScoop,* 2026. https://fedscoop.com/dhs-cbp-contract-biometric-facial-recognition-ai/
|
||||||
|
[^11]: "Trump called Epstein a 'terrific guy' who enjoyed 'younger' women before denying relationship with him." *Washington Post,* July 8, 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-called-epstein-a-terrific-guy-before-denying-relationship-with-him/2019/07/08/a01e0f00-a1be-11e9-bd56-eac6bb02d01d_story.html ; "Trump and Epstein: A Timeline of Their Relationship." *Time,* 2025. https://time.com/7333365/trump-epstein-relationship-timeline/
|
||||||
|
[^12]: "What we know about the Trump-Epstein falling out." *PolitiFact,* July 31, 2025. https://www.politifact.com/article/2025/jul/31/what-we-know-about-the-trump-epstein-falling-out/ ; "President Donald Trump explains why he kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago." *Fox News,* 2025. https://www.foxnews.com/us/jeffrey-epstein-thrown-out-mar-a-lago-hiring-help-trump
|
||||||
|
[^13]: "Birthday letter to Epstein bore Trump's signature, drawing of naked woman, Wall Street Journal reports." *CNN,* July 17, 2025. https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/17/politics/epstein-birthday-letter-trump ; U.S. Department of Justice, Epstein Files Transparency Act disclosures. https://www.justice.gov/epstein/doj-disclosures
|
||||||
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