Mankind uses the mobile phone as a shovel to dig its own grave. With very rare exceptions of conscious users. If you want to be one of them, you need to be informed and aware of how this thing works and how our enemies use it against us. And in order to become so, you need, among other things, to fully absorb what I’m about to show you.
Perceptive people over 40 years old have often sensed a rift in the logic of events last few years. The powers that be occasionally commit apparently illogical and inexplicable acts, that later make sense in relation with other later events . Like a present response to unpredictable future events. Which is also illogical, unless they have a time-travelling machine, another illogical concept. So we often erase these senselessly convoluted connections from our minds just to maintain sanity.
The mind-trap there is the assumption of unpredictability.
Pre-scripted events and predictive programming are two ways to solve the predictability problem. But sometimes these don’t work either and there’s just no way you can draw a straight timeline and causality.
What if you don’t need to time-travel to see the future?
What if they can simulate it, then build it and tune it up? Which means they can react to what you would’ve done if they didn’t REACT BEFORE THE CAUSE? Remember those stories in media where morons get arrested for resisting arrest and they are too dumb to defend themselves. Add a topping of Minority Report for good taste. And to soften the edges, what if they just can control your edge perception? Here’s how:
“Perhaps your real life is so rich you don’t have time for another.
“Even so, the US Department of Defense (DOD) may already be creating a copy of you in an alternate reality to see how long you can go without food or water, or how you will respond to televised propaganda.
“The DOD is developing a parallel to Planet Earth, with billions of individual “nodes” to reflect every man, woman, and child this side of the dividing line between reality and AR.
“Called the Sentient World Simulation (SWS), it will be a “synthetic mirror of the real world with automated continuous calibration with respect to current real-world information”, according to a concept paper for the project.
“SWS provides an environment for testing Psychological Operations (PSYOP),” the paper reads, so that military leaders can “develop and test multiple courses of action to anticipate and shape behaviors of adversaries, neutrals, and partners”.
SWS also replicates financial institutions, utilities, media outlets, and street corner shops. By applying theories of economics and human psychology, its developers believe they can predict how individuals and mobs will respond to various stressors.
“Yank a country’s water supply. Stage a military coup. SWS will tell you what happens next….
(((Yeah, and New World Order cybersoldiers are gonna be Warcrafting-out on awesome gizmoscapes like this while some nimble illiterate teen with a cheap assault rifle simply shoots them.)))
A powerful ‘sentient’ computer simulation of billions of people and nations that ‘mirrors’ reality is up-and-running and likely tracking your every move
Artificial neural network with chip. Credit: mikemacmarketing / original posted on flickr (Wiki Commons Public Domain)
What if someone created a digital avatar of you and placed it in a massive simulation database –- and you knew nothing about it?
How would you feel about that?
Yes, while you are blissfully ignorant and unaware and just going about your normal life, your “simulated self” is now also going about its own life in a simulated global environment with most of the other eight billion other people inside a simulated planet earth.
Well, what if I were to tell you that this has already happened?
It has!
The server for this world simulation database –- that includes your avatar -– is actually located in (drumroll): Indiana!
That’s right!
It’s called the Sentient World Simulation (SWS). It is up and running, and housed in a building at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana.
The SWS is the brainchild of Dr. Alok R. Chaturvedi, a professor of information systems who is also the founder and director of the SEAS Laboratory at Purdue’s Krannert School of Management.
SEAS stands for Synthetic Environment and Analysis Simulations.
Dr. Chaturvedi outlined his concept for the SWS in a 2006 academic paper titled:
From the abstract of this document, the concept is explained this way:
“The goal of the Sentient World Simulation (SWS) is to build a synthetic mirror of the real world with automated continuous calibration with respect to current real-world information, such as major events, opinion polls, demographic statistics, economic reports, and shifts in trends.”
I should add that the “geography” of an area is modeled at multiple levels, including city, state, country, selected regions of interest and, of course, globally. Some categories for models include military, political, social, economic, informational and infrastructure nodes.
After publishing his 2006 concept paper, it didn’t take long for the thing to get up and running. By 2007, the SWS had already collected massive amounts of data in 62 of the 195 nations on Earth.
It is important to point out that the SWS is a project that was initiated by the U.S. Joint Forces Command.
Some believe, as does futurist Rebecca Hardcastle Wright Ph.D., that SWS has since advanced well beyond 62 countries in the 15 years since 2007 to now encompass most areas of the planet that matter and has swept up the majority of Earth’s 8-billion-person population.
IT’S NOT QUITE ‘THE MATRIX’ YET BUT …
Now let me clarify that your avatar in the SWS is not (probably not yet) a complete duplicate of yourself in terms of image or looks, and it does not possess self-aware consciousness as did Neo and his pals in the Matrix.
It is significant to note that the SWS team at Purdue maintains that they “do not create your identical likeness” and instead used a “depersonalized likeness.” They also say this depersonalized likeness is “not immediately identifiable” and “cannot be replicated.”
Even so, many may find it equally disturbing that each avatar in the SWS virtual reality universe does represent a thorough activity profile of who you are and what you are doing in the real world.
That’s because you are likely “feeding” your avatar every day whether you know it or not.
You do that by participating in the digital world. Every time you engage with cyberspace, the SWS vacuums up that data point and adds it to the profile of your avatar.
For example, when you make a purchase on Amazon, search for something on Google, do your taxes online, text a friend, pay a utility bill, use a debit card to pay for a meal at a restaurant –- that information is funneled to the SWS and your avatar is updated to reflect your ongoing lifestyle.
This creates a “predictive model” of you and tells SWS operators how you are likely to react in certain situations as well as how you will perform or act in a group dynamic situation.
WHY WAS THE SENTIENT WORLD SIMULATION BUILT?
Well …
Remember when former NSA computer consultant Edward Snowden went rogue in 2013 and fled to Hong Kong and then to the Russian Federation along with a treasure trove of highly classified intelligence files on the NSA’s massive global surveillance program?
This surveillance program involved mostly tapping and monitoring millions, if not billions of telephones and internet communication accounts. The overt rationale for the creation of this program was for counterterrorism.
Ostensibly, the NSA wanted to be able to identify terrorist chatter across the telecom and cybernetwork bandwidth as a way to identify and thwart possible major attacks against American interests.
National Security Agency HQ, Fort Meade, Maryland (Public Domain)
Snowden bolted because of the NSA’s ability to tap and monitor private citizens and everyday innocent Americans a fundamental violation of privacy, unconstitutional and the start of a bona fide “Big Brother” nightmare state.
Well, one might consider the SWS the next logical step. It is the NSA wiretap effort on steroids.
With this new system, the information gathering on all citizens of the world can go well beyond listening into their phone chatter, texting or email communications.
Rather, it collects a wide range of data points that essentially provides a complete profile of every person, including what they do, what they like, how they act in certain situations, and so on.
When all this information is dumped into one massive database –- in this case, an actual simulation program –- you not only have real-time data on every individual in every nation on earth -– you also now can massage the data in myriad useful ways.
That includes running gaming simulations on how vast populations will react to specific situations.
For example, let’s say the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) would like to know how the population of the East Coast would react if they knew an enemy had released a deadly virus into the subway system of New York City.
The DoD folks would be eager to “game the scenario” of a bioweapons attack before it happened to that they, in turn, could formulate an effective response by knowing with a high degree of certainty how large populations of people would react.
As Dr. Chaturvedi writes in his concept paper:
“The ability of a synthetic model of the real world to sense, adapt, and react to real events distinguishes SWS from the traditional approach of constructing a simulation to illustrate a phenomenon. Behaviors emerge in the SWS mirror world and are observed much as they are observed in the real world.”
WHO USES SWS DATA?
As you might expect, the SWS has no lack of eager clients consisting of powerful government agencies, private entities and Fortune 500 companies. A short (and by far not exhaustive) list includes:
· The U.S. Department of Defense
· The U.S. Department of Justice
· Eli Lilly
· Lockheed Martin
· The U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Furthermore, SWS has found customers in everything from banks and financial institutions that use it to test psyop events — to Hollywood studios who want to “game out” audience reactions to proposed movie scripts and ideas.
The above is according to Hardcastle Wright in her book 2021 book, Exoconscious Humans. She also said the SWS was used to simulate a cough spreading inside an airplane during the height of COVID. (Exoconscious Humans, Page 160).
NSA poster, circa 1950s-60s (Public Domain)
IS THERE PUBLIC OUTRAGE?
There is some, but as far as I can tell, those sounding an alarm about the intrusiveness of the SWS are few and far between.
One person who is disturbed by the existence of the SWS is software specialist and cryptocurrency advocate Alireza Beikverdi. He wrote in a 2015 article for Cointelegraph.com:
“The project is dangerous and intrusive enough that one of its researchers even quit, citing concerns about the possibility of handing over such a dangerous weapon to a top-secret agency with little accountability.” (Source)
Beikverdi added:
“This not only invades our privacy but can also cause severe damage to society. Knowing that there is a copy of each of us in the virtual world, which can think and behave like us, and whose actions can be predicted by the authorities is a far more intimidating invasion. This will have a negative impact on societies by reducing trust between citizens and government, as well as among people — altering normal human behavior since the populace will be conscious of the fact that there is a copy of them in a virtual world without their consent.” (Source)
Others grumble about the SWS but also express a sense of inevitability. One example is the commentators over at the Everywhere You Go is Bullsh*t webcast. In this video, they state:
“As our lives move online, this (the SWS) is an inevitable part of that. We all want that feeling of safety and this kind of thing provides … and we allowed this to happen. I think as more people become aware that this is the reality of this intense kind of privacy breach is happening, I think eventually we are going to accept it and it is going to get worse — or there will be some kind of rebellion about it and it’s going to be a pretty interesting future.”
ONLY SCRATCHING THE SURFACE
Certainly, the existence of the Sentient World Simulation project at Purdue University has profound implications in and of itself.
However, in conducting research for this story, I quickly found myself drawn into a much deeper and more complex rabbit hole.
When you place the SWS into context with other current facets driving other kinds of technological determinism — such as the race toward fully self-conscious AI, the cybernetic manipulation/transformation of the human body, the transhumanism movement writ large — it becomes apparent that SWS is but one aspect of a rapidly evolving human sphere of fundamental transformations.
Thus, even if you loathe the idea of the SWS and want to implement social and/or political efforts to slow it down or kill it — you’ll be up against an array of technological/social initiatives of profound scope, character, variety and purpose.
Can anyone stop it, or even opt out? That won’t be easy.
CIA’s Gus Hunt On Big Data: We ‘Try To Collect Everything And Hang On To It Forever’
NEW YORK — The CIA’s chief technology officer outlined the agency’s endless appetite for data in a far-ranging speech on Wednesday.
Speaking before a crowd of tech geeks at GigaOM’s Structure:Data conference in New York City, CTO Ira “Gus” Hunt said that the world is increasingly awash in information from text messages, tweets, and videos — and that the agency wants all of it.
“The value of any piece of information is only known when you can connect it with something else that arrives at a future point in time,” Hunt said. “Since you can’t connect dots you don’t have, it drives us into a mode of, we fundamentally try to collect everything and hang on to it forever.”
Hunt’s comments come two days after Federal Computer Week reported that the CIA has committed to a massive, $600 million, 10-year deal with Amazon for cloud computing services. The agency has not commented on that report, but Hunt’s speech, which included multiple references to cloud computing, indicates that it does indeed have interest in storage and analysis capabilities on a massive scale.
The CIA is keenly interested in capabilities for so-called “big data” — the increasingly massive data sets created by digital technology. The agency even has a page on its website pitching big data jobs to prospective employees.
Hunt acknowleded that at some scale, data storage becomes impractical, adding that he meant “forever being in quotes” when he said the agency wants to keep data “forever.” But he also indicated that he was interested in computing capabilities like 1 petabyte of RAM, a massive capacity for on-the-fly calculations that has heretofore been seen only in computers that simulate nuclear explosions.
He referenced the failure to “connect the dots” in the case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the “underwear bomber” who was able to board a plan with an explosive device despite repeated warnings of his intentions. In that case, a White House review found that the CIA had all of the data it needed to identify the would-be bomber, but still failed to stop him. Nevertheless, the agency does not seem to have curbed its ambitions for an endless amount of data.
A slide from Hunt’s presentation.
“It is really very nearly within our grasp to be able to compute on all human generated information,” Hunt said. After that mark is reached, Hunt said, the agency would also like to be able to save and analyze all of the digital breadcrumbs people don’t even know they are creating.
“You’re already a walking sensor platform,” he said, nothing that mobiles, smartphones and iPads come with cameras, accelerometers, light detectors and geolocation capabilities.
“You are aware of the fact that somebody can know where you are at all times, because you carry a mobile device, even if that mobile device is turned off,” he said. “You know this, I hope? Yes? Well, you should.”
Hunt also spoke of mobile apps that will be able to control pacemakers — even involuntarily — and joked about a “dystopian” future where self-driving cars force people to go to the grocery store to pick up milk for their spouses.
Hunt’s speech barely touched on privacy concerns. But he did acknowledge that they exist.
“Technology in this world is moving faster than government or law can keep up,” he said. “It’s moving faster I would argue than you can keep up: You should be asking the question of what are your rights and who owns your data.”
US Govt Develops a Matrix-Like World Simulating the Virtual You
Picture a parallel virtual world that collects information on our virtual identities in real time, tracks our behavior, and is smart enough to interpret this data to simulate a virtual YOU on its own.
It is not surprising that data in the Information Age can be extremely valuable, even a source of power. Now picture a parallel virtual world that collects information on our virtual identities in real time, tracks our behavior, and is smart enough to interpret this data to simulate a virtual YOU on its own. This is exactly the concept of Sentient World Simulation (SWS) that was proposed in a paper by a few researchers in 2006, which has since largely flown under the radar.
Sentient World Simulation
SWS is one of the ongoing projects by secret agencies and organizations such as the NSA. In fact, these organizations have a long history of always seeking new technologies to process a continuous stream of information about the population. However, SWS differs from other information aggregators such as Google in that this technology actually simulates us, while taking our personalities into account, in a parallel virtual world.
SWS is actually a continuously running, continually updated mirror model of the real world in parallel on a computer, designed to predict and evaluate future events and courses of action. Put simply, SWS is a virtual mirror of the real society where individuals, leaders, organizations and institutions are simulated according to real data. The geography of a society is modeled at various levels including city, province, country, region, and world in terms of political, military, economic, social, information and infrastructure nodes.
SWS uses Synthetic Environment for Analysis and Simulation (SEAS), which is designed to be agnostic to the type of simulations and choice of models in order to allow experimentation in the context of multiple and potentially conflicting theories and predictions.
In a complex scenario, a single theory from SWS doesn’t give comprehensive information about the case. It requires a different analysis from different perspectives of the same phenomena by combining all the theories. It’s developed in a way where each component and theory is built on the previous, serving as stepping stones in the development of SWS.
Global Research reported that “U.S. defense, Intel and homeland security officials” are involved in constructing this project. With all the massive data collections, and also all the records from the Internet, SWS has the potential to predict the answers to many complicated queries, as it gets more intelligent the more information it is fed.
Watched Over by Machines
The project is dangerous and intrusive enough that one of its researchers even quit, citing concerns about the possibility of handing over such a dangerous weapon to a top secret agency with little accountability.
“With the entire Internet and thousands of databases for a brain, the device will be able to respond almost instantaneously to complex questions posed by intelligence analysts. As more and more data is collected — through phone calls, credit card receipts, social networks like Facebook and MySpace, GPS tracks, cell phone geolocation, Internet searches, Amazon book purchases, even E-Z Pass toll records — it may one day be possible to know not just where people are and what they are doing, but what and how they think.”
This not only invades our privacy but can also causes severe damage to society. Knowing that there is a copy of each of us in the virtual world, that can think and behave like us, and whose actions can be predicted by the authorities is a far more intimidating invasion. This will have a negative impact on societies by reducing trust between citizens and government, as well as among people — altering normal human behavior, since the populace will be conscious of the fact that there is a copy of them in a virtual world without their consent.
Another thing in the back of everyone’s minds could also be the possibility of a virtual copy doing something that you are doing right now. Perhaps a simulated version of me has actually written this article? The line between actual reality and virtual reality will surely blur as more and more information is collected.
Some people may argue that SWS could also be a beneficial tool for governments and secret agencies to use to prevent terrorism and predict incidents by simulating them in a mirror world. Moreover, these type of models are often justified by the phrase: “If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear.” This phrase has always been the excuse of those who want to downplay increasing threat of a surveillance state and imply guilt for those who express concern.
But while massive data gathering and simulation models could indeed have their benefits for society. Such is the double-edged sword of most breakthrough technology. The centralized control of personal and social information by a single entity gives it immense and unprecedented power.
Decentralization
Blockchain architecture could be used to create a decentralized data network that would not give any particular entity control, mitigating the risk of data misuse. Decentralization, by not giving an advantage to any one entity, is a viable solution that can save us from horrible future scenarios.
While this system is certainly more difficult to build and implement, as it requires the involvement of a lot of people, a decentralized data network not only guarantees and makes sure that the technology isn’t used against the interests of the majority of the population, but also reduces the possibility of censorship, facilitating free speech.
Any new technology can be used for both good and evil. Nevertheless, if these technologies are used transparently and in a way that reduces the possibility of manipulation and centralized control by bad actors, then the relationship between people and their representative government would be drastically improved. Perhaps then we would be able to attain greater individual privacy and realize the vision of Edward Snowden, who described his childhood:
“I grew up with the understanding that the world I lived in was one where people enjoyed a sort of freedom to communicate with each other in privacy, without it being monitored, without it being measured or analyzed or sort of judged by these shadowy figures or systems, any time they mention anything that travels across public lines.”
The NSA’s illegal warrantless wiretapping program. The building of the massive NSA data center in Utah to permanently store copies of all digital communication sent around the world. The UK government’s “Communications Data Bill” to monitor emails, instant messages and other personal information. What was dismissed as crazy conspiracy theory just over a decade ago has become, in this post-9/11 era, the all-too-familiar stuff of newspaper headlines and talking head reportage.
In fact, it was about a decade ago that the tactic of the intelligence agencies seemed to change. Instead of keeping their activities classified–referring to the NSA as “No Such Agency,” for example, or officially denying the existence of Echelon–the government increasingly began shoving this information in the public’s face.
Perhaps the scariest thing about something like the Total Information Awareness Office is not merely that it was proposed in the first place, or that it incorporated such blatantly creepy Orwellian imagery to convey its true nature and purpose, but that, as we sit here 10 years later, and as the core functions of the TIA office are now being openly performed by the NSA, DHS and other governmental agencies, people are now actively making excuses for this nightmarish police state.
“If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear” has always been the rallying cry for those who are too afraid of questioning presumed governmental authority to speak out against the surveillance state and the implied assumption of guilt that goes along with it. With feigned bemusement these moral midgets inevitably ask “What’s so bad about the government spying on you, anyway?”
The answer, of course, is that the very question implies that the agencies tasked with carrying out this constant Big Brother surveillance are themselves above reproach, shining lights of moral rectitude who would never abuse this incredible power for nefarious ends. For the unimaginative out there, Hollywood yarns like “Enemy of the State” have provided fictional examples of what can go wrong if someone, somewhere, abuses this power of information and surveillance to target an innocent person in the wrong place at the wrong time.
To be sure, the power that these technologies give for agencies, or corrupt groups within those agencies, to destroy the lives of targeted individuals, is itself a fitting answer to the question of why government surveillance should be troubling to us. But beyond what can happen to specific, targeted individuals in such a scenario, however, is a much larger question: What if this data, our emails, our phone calls, our credit card transactions, our social media posts, our cell phone GPS logs, and all of the hundreds of other pieces of data that are admittedly being collected on us every day, were being fed into a database so gargantuan it contains a digital version of every single person on the planet? And what if that database were being used by the Department of Defense to war game various scenarios, from public reactions to natural disasters to the likelihood of civil unrest in the wake of a declaration of martial law?
Remarkably, this is precisely what is happening.
It is called the “Sentient World Simulation.” The program’s aim, according to its creator, is to be a “continuously running, continually updated mirror model of the real world that can be used to predict and evaluate future events and courses of action.” In practical terms that equates to a computer simulation of the planet complete with billions of “nodes” representing every person on the earth.
The project is based out of Purdue University in Indiana at the Synthetic Environment for Analysis and Simulations Laboaratory. It is led by Alok Chaturvedi, who in addition to heading up the Purdue lab also makes the project commercially available via his private company, Simulex, Inc. which boasts an array of government clients, including the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice, as well as private sector clients like Eli Lilly and Lockheed Martin.
Chatruvedi’s ambition is to create reliable forecasts of future world events based on imagined scenarios. In order to do this, the simulations “gobble up breaking news, census data, economic indicators, and climactic events in the real world, along with proprietary information such as military intelligence.” Although not explicitly stated, the very type of data on digital communications and transactions now being gobbled up by the NSA, DHS and other government agencies make ideal data for creating reliable models of every individuals’ habits, preferences and behaviors that could be used to fine-tune these simulations and give more reliable results. Using this data, the SEAS Laboratory and its Sentient World Simulation offshoot are able to create detailed, operable real-time simulations of at least 62 nations. “The Iraq and Afghanistan computer models,” according to a 2007 Register report on the project, “each has about five million individual nodes representing things such as hospitals, mosques, pipelines, and people.”
At the time of initial reports on the program five years ago, there were only 62 country-level simulations being run by the US Department of Defense. These simulations grouped humans into composites, with 100 individuals acting as a single node. But already at that time, the US Army had used the systems to create a one-to-one level simulation of potential Army recruits. The ultimate aim would be to archive enough data on each individual to be able to make a computer model of everyone on the planet, one that could be used to predict the behaviors and reactions of every single person in the event of various scenarios.
The program can be used to predict what would happen in the event of a large scale tsunami, for example, or how people would react during a bioterror attack. Businesses can use the models to predict how a new product would fare in the market, what kind of marketing plans would be most effective, or how best to streamline a company’s organization.
The original concept paper for the project was published in 2006 and in 2007 it was reported that both Homeland Security and the Defense Department were already using the system to simulate the American public’s reaction to various crises. In the intervening five years, however, there has been almost no coverage at all of the Sentient World Simulation or its progress in achieving a model of the earth.
There is a very good chance that these types of systems are, at least for the moment, pure quackery. Computers are only as valuable as their programming, after all, and the algorithms required to accurately predict responses in chaotic systems with multiple, dimly-understood variables is orders of magnitude beyond what is currently possible. Or is it? One of the great ironies of our time, as Glenn Greenwald goes on to point out in his speech on the surveillance state, is that although we live in a time when it is possible for nebulous government agencies to know every detail of your life, from what you ate for breakfast to where you shopped last night to who your friends are, we are also living in an age of unprecedented ignorance about what are our own governments are actually doing.
This is the heart of the matter. Somehow we are expected to go along with the sophomoric sophism that “If we have nothing to hide then we have nothing to fear,” yet at the same time we are asked to believe that the government must keep all manner of information secret from the public in order to carry out its work of “protecting” that public.
If the government has nothing to hide, then why doesn’t it release the notes, memoranda and findings of the 9/11 Commission in full and unredacted?
Why doesn’t it release the records of the JFK assassination investigation instead of arguing, as it is, that those records should once again be removed from a declassification review that is to take place in 2013, 50 years after the assassination itself took place?
Why doesn’t it release the full audit trail of what banks received the emergency TARP funds and in what amounts?
Is it because, after all, the government does have something to hide from the public that are its ostensible masters? Is it because the old maxim that “Knowledge is power” is more true than we could ever know, and that the government’s one-way insistence on transparency for the citizens and opacity for itself is a reflection of the power that it holds over us?
The Sentient World Simulation is just one example of one program run by one company for various governmental and Fortune 500 clients. But it is a significant peek behind the curtain at what those who are really running our society want: complete control over every facet of our lives achieved through a complete invasion of everything that was once referred to as “privacy.” To think that this is the only such program that exists, or even that we have any significant details about the ways that the SWS has already been used, would be hopelessly naive.
So where does this leave a public that is at such a disadvantage in this information warfare? A public that is effectively told that anything and everything they do, say or buy, can and will be catalogued by the a.i. control grid even as the details of that grid are to be kept from them? Unfortunately there is no easy way back from the precipice that we were ushered toward with the creation of the national security state and the passage of the National Security Act of 1947. Perhaps we have already stepped over that precipice and there is no going back in the current political paradigm. These are things for an informed, aware, knowledgeable citizenry to decide through a societal dialogue over the nature of and importance of “privacy.”
But without a general awareness that programs like the Sentient World Simulation even exist, what hope do we have in counteracting it?
Wearable exercise trackers provide data that encode information on individual running performance. These data hold great potential for enhancing our understanding of the complex interplay between training and performance. Here we demonstrate feasibility of this idea by applying a previously validated mathematical model to real-world running activities of ≈ 14,000 individuals with ≈ 1.6 million exercise sessions containing duration and distance, with a total distance of ≈ 20 million km. Our model depends on two performance parameters: an aerobic power index and an endurance index. Inclusion of endurance, which describes the decline in sustainable power over duration, offers novel insights into performance: a highly accurate race time prediction and the identification of key parameters such as the lactate threshold, commonly used in exercise physiology. Correlations between performance indices and training volume and intensity are quantified, pointing to an optimal training. Our findings hint at new ways to quantify and predict athletic performance under real-world conditions. Laboratory performance tests provide the gold standard for running performance but do not reflect real running conditions. Here the authors use a large, real world dataset obtained from wearable exercise trackers to extract parameters that accurately predict race times and correlate with training.
Starve the beast of your data by minimizing unnecessary usage. You don’t really need a smartphone half the times you’re out. You’re just being a junkie. Buy a goddam laptop, you need it more than a new expresso machine, tape the camera and the mic, use it wisely to give away a minimum of info etc… whatever you can think of to minimize the authentic data about you.
Intoxicate the beast with fake data: like things 7ou don’t really like, follow people you don’t care about, tag yourself in unrelated things, build a web o fake random connections, be unpredictable, break patterns, do random acts of randomness. When you start getting ads and suggestions you can’t care about, you’re on the good path.
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! Articles can always be subject of later editing as a way of perfecting them
It’s never been about clean new fuels and the environment. It’s about new data streams and control. Think “Pegasus”.
Most laughed and forgot this next minute, I saw it as a prime example of how the manufacturers, the government or any decent hacker can troll you in your computerized car
The first news segment in my video edit is what prompted this report. It’s been released by Israeli tv only a few days ago and it’s nothing but an ad for the Israeli hacking industry.
Many drivers spend hours every day in super-sized smartphones on wheels, mobile Matrix pods, and everything that goes for smartphones goes for computerized cars, in terms of hackability.
Basically, these new cars belong to the best hacker around. Which is, usually, some military/intelligence service or some private basement dweller.
Think Pegasus.
WikiLeaks CIA files: Spy agency looked at ways to hack and control cars to carry out assassinations
The agency allegedly also used tools to hack smartphones and turn smart TVs into covert microphones
WikiLeaks describes Vault 7 as ‘the largest intelligence publication in history’ (REUTERS/Yuri Gripas)
WikiLeaks has alleged that the CIA looked into vehicle interference methods that could potentially enable it to assassinate people without detection.
According to the whistle-blowing organisation, the CIA explored the tactic in October 2014.
It hasn’t included any more details about the alleged practice.
WikiLeaks included the claim in its release announcing ‘Vault 7’, a huge batch of documents, which Julian Assange claims to account for the CIA’s “entire hacking capacity”.
“As of October 2014 the CIA was also looking at infecting the vehicle control systems used by modern cars and trucks,” reads a passage in the release.
“The purpose of such control is not specified, but it would permit the CIA to engage in nearly undetectable assassinations.”
The CIA has also been accused of using malware and hacking tools to turn TVs into covert microphones and remotely break into smartphones.
WikiLeaks describes Vault 7 as “the largest intelligence publication in history” and says that the initial batch of 8,761 files is just the first in a series of releases.
What does your car know about you? We hacked a Chevy to find out.
Our privacy experiment found that automakers collect data through hundreds of sensors and an always-on Internet connection. Driving surveillance is becoming hard to avoid.
Cars now run on data. We hacked one to find out what it knows about you.
Washington Post tech columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler cracked open a Chevrolet to find an always-on Internet connection and data from his smartphone. (Jonathan Baran/The Washington Post)
Behind the wheel, it’s nothing but you, the open road — and your car quietly recording your every move.
On a recent drive, a 2017 Chevrolet collected my precise location. It stored my phone’s ID and the people I called. It judged my acceleration and braking style, beaming back reports to its maker General Motors over an always-on Internet connection.
Cars have become the most sophisticated computers many of us own, filled with hundreds of sensors. Even older models know an awful lot about you. Many copy over personal data as soon as you plug in a smartphone.
But for the thousands you spend to buy a car, the data it produces doesn’t belong to you. My Chevy’s dashboard didn’t say what the car was recording. It wasn’t in the owner’s manual. There was no way to download it.
To glimpse my car data, I had to hack my way in.
We’re at a turning point for driving surveillance: In the 2020 model year, most new cars sold in the United States will come with built-in Internet connections, including 100 percent of Fords, GMs and BMWs and all but one model Toyota and Volkswagen. (This independent cellular service is often included free or sold as an add-on.) Cars are becoming smartphones on wheels, sending and receiving data from apps, insurance firms and pretty much wherever their makers want. Some brands even reserve the right to use the data to track you down if you don’t pay your bills.
When I buy a car, I assume the data I produce is owned by me — or at least is controlled by me. Many automakers do not. They act like how and where we drive, also known as telematics, isn’t personal information.
Cars now run on the new oil: your data. It is fundamental to a future of transportation where vehicles drive themselves and we hop into whatever one is going our way. Data isn’t the enemy. Connected cars already do good things like improve safety and send you service alerts that are much more helpful than a check-engine light in the dash.
But we’ve been down this fraught road before with smart speakers, smart TVs, smartphones and all the other smart things we now realize are playing fast and loose with our personal lives. Once information about our lives gets shared, sold or stolen, we lose control.
There are no federal laws regulating what carmakers can collect or do with our driving data. And carmakers lag in taking steps to protect us and draw lines in the sand. Most hide what they’re collecting and sharing behind privacy policies written in the kind of language only a lawyer’s mother could love.
Car data has a secret life. To find out what a car knows about me, I borrowed some techniques from crime scene investigators.
What your car knows
Jim Mason hacks into cars for a living, but usually just to better understand crashes and thefts. The Caltech-trained engineer works in Oakland, Calif., for a firm called ARCCA that helps reconstruct accidents. He agreed to help conduct a forensic analysis of my privacy.
I chose a Chevrolet as our test subject because its maker GM has had the longest of any automaker to figure out data transparency. It began connecting cars with its OnStar service in 1996, initially to summon emergency assistance. Today GM has more than 11 million 4G LTE data-equipped vehicles on the road, including free basic service and extras you pay for. I found a volunteer, Doug, who let us peer inside his two-year-old Chevy Volt.
I met Mason at an empty warehouse, where he began by explaining one important bit of car anatomy. Modern vehicles don’t just have one computer. There are multiple, interconnected brains that can generate up to 25 gigabytes of data per hour from sensors all over the car. Even with Mason’s gear, we could only access some of these systems.
This kind of hacking isn’t a security risk for most of us — it requires hours of physical access to a vehicle. Mason brought a laptop, special software, a box of circuit boards, and dozens of sockets and screwdrivers.
We focused on the computer with the most accessible data: the infotainment system. You might think of it as the car’s touch-screen audio controls, yet many systems interact with it, from navigation to a synced-up smartphone. The only problem? This computer is buried beneath the dashboard.
After an hour of prying and unscrewing, our Chevy’s interior looked like it had been lobotomized. But Mason had extracted the infotainment computer, about the size of a small lunchbox. He clipped it into a circuit board, which fed into his laptop. The data didn’t copy over in our first few attempts. “There is a lot of trial and error,” said Mason.
(Don’t try this at home. Seriously — we had to take the car into a repair shop to get the infotainment computer reset.)
It was worth the trouble when Mason showed me my data. There on a map was the precise location where I’d driven to take apart the Chevy. There were my other destinations, like the hardware store I’d stopped at to buy some tape.
Among the trove of data points were unique identifiers for my and Doug’s phones, and a detailed log of phone calls from the previous week. There was a long list of contacts, right down to people’s address, emails and even photos.
For a broader view, Mason also extracted the data from a Chevrolet infotainment computer that I bought used on eBay for $375. It contained enough data to reconstruct the Upstate New York travels and relationships of a total stranger. We know he or she frequently called someone listed as “Sweetie,” whose photo we also have. We could see the exact Gulf station where they bought gas, the restaurant where they ate (called Taste China) and the unique identifiers for their Samsung Galaxy Note phones.
Infotainment systems can collect even more. Mason has hacked into Fords that record locations once every few minutes, even when you don’t use the navigation system. He’s seen German cars with 300-gigabyte hard drives — five times as much as a basic iPhone 11. The Tesla Model 3 can collect video snippets from the car’s many cameras. Coming next: face data, used to personalize the vehicle and track driver attention.
In our Chevy, we probably glimpsed just a fraction of what GM knows. We didn’t see what was uploaded to GM’s computers, because we couldn’t access the live OnStar cellular connection. (Researchers have done those kinds of hacks before to prove connected vehicles can be remotely controlled.)
My volunteer car owner Doug asked GM to see the data it collected and shared. The automaker just pointed us to an obtuse privacy policy. Doug also (twice) sent GM a formal request under a 2003 California data law to ask who the company shared his information with. He got no reply.
GM spokesman David Caldwell declined to offer specifics on Doug’s Chevy but said the data GM collects generally falls into three categories: vehicle location, vehicle performance and driver behavior. “Much of this data is highly technical, not linkable to individuals and doesn’t leave the vehicle itself,” he said.
The company, he said, collects real-time data to monitor vehicle performance to improve safety and to help design future products and services.
But there were clues to what more GM knows on its website and app. It offers a Smart Driver score — a measure of good driving — based on how hard you brake and turn and how often you drive late at night. They’ll share that with insurance companies, if you want. With paid OnStar service, I could, on demand, locate the car’s exact location. It also offers in-vehicle WiFi and remote key access for Amazon package deliveries. An OnStar Marketplace connects the vehicle directly with third-party apps for Domino’s, IHOP, Shell and others.
The OnStar privacy policy, possibly only ever read by yours truly, grants the company rights to a broad set of personal and driving data without much detail on when and how often it might collect it. It says: “We may keep the information we collect for as long as necessary” to operate, conduct research or satisfy GM’s contractual obligations. Translation: pretty much forever.
It’s likely GM and other automakers keep just a slice of the data cars generate. But think of that as a temporary phenomenon. Coming 5G cellular networks promise to link cars to the Internet with ultra-fast, ultra-high-capacity connections. As wireless connections get cheaper and data becomes more valuable, anything the car knows about you is fair game.
Protecting yourself
GM’s view, echoed by many other automakers, is that we gave them permission for all of this. “Nothing happens without customer consent,” said GM’s Caldwell.
When my volunteer Doug bought his Chevy, he didn’t even realize OnStar basic service came standard. (I don’t blame him — who really knows what all they’re initialing on a car purchase contract?) There is no button or menu inside the Chevy to shut off OnStar or other data collection, though GM says it has added one to newer vehicles. Customers can press the console OnStar button and ask a representative to remotely disconnect.
What’s the worry? From conversations with industry insiders, I know many automakers haven’t totally figured out what to do with the growing amounts of driving data we generate. But that’s hardly stopping them from collecting it.
Five years ago, 20 automakers signed on to volunteer privacy standards, pledging to “provide customers with clear, meaningful information about the types of information collected and how it is used,” as well as “ways for customers to manage their data.” But when I called eight of the largest automakers, not even one offered a dashboard for customers to look at, download and control their data.
Automakers haven’t had a data reckoning yet, but they’re due for one. GM ran an experiment in which it tracked the radio music tastes of 90,000 volunteer drivers to look for patterns with where they traveled. According to the Detroit Free Press, GM told marketers that the data might help them persuade a country music fan who normally stopped at Tim Horton’s to go to McDonald’s instead.
GM would not tell me exactly what data it collected for that program but said “personal information was not involved” because it was anonymized data. (Privacy advocates have warned that location data is personal because it can be re-identified with individuals because we follow such unique patterns.)
GM’s privacy policy, which the company says it will update before the end of 2019, says it may “use anonymized information or share it with third parties for any legitimate business purpose.” Such as whom? “The details of those third-party relationships are confidential,” said Caldwell.
There are more questions. GM’s privacy policy says it will comply with legal data demands. How often does it share our data with the government? GM doesn’t offer a transparency report like tech companies do.
Automakers say they put data security first. But I suspect they’re just not used to customers demanding transparency. They also probably want to have sole control over the data, given that the industry’s existential threats — self-driving and ride-hailing technologies — are built on it.
But not opening up brings problems, too. Automakers are battling with repair shops in Massachusetts about a proposal that would require car companies to grant owners — and mechanics — access to telematics data. The Auto Care Association says locking out independent shops could give consumers fewer choices and make us end up paying more for service. The automakers say it’s a security and privacy risk.
In 2020, the California Consumer Privacy Act will require any company that collects personal data about the state’s residents to provide access to the data and give people the ability to opt out of its sharing. GM said it would comply with the law but didn’t say how.
Are any carmakers better? Among the privacy policies I read, Toyota’s stood out for drawing a few clear lines in the sand about data sharing. It says it won’t share “personal information” with data resellers, social networks or ad networks — but still carves out the right to share what it calls “vehicle data” with business partners.
Until automakers put even a fraction of the effort they put into TV commercials into giving us control over our data, I’d be wary about using in-vehicle apps or signing up for additional data services. At least smartphone apps like Google Maps let you turn off and delete location history.
And Mason’s hack brought home a scary reality: Simply plugging a smartphone into a car could put your data at risk. If you’re selling your car or returning a lease or rental, take the time to delete the data saved on its infotainment system. An app called Privacy4Cars offers model-by-model directions. Mason gives out gifts of car-lighter USB plugs, which let you charge a phone without connecting it to the car computer. (You can buy inexpensive ones online.)
If you’re buying a new vehicle, tell the dealer you want to know about connected services — and how to turn them off. Few offer an Internet “kill switch,” but they may at least allow you turn off location tracking.
Or, for now at least, you can just buy an old car. Mason, for one, drives a conspicuously non-connected 1992 Toyota.
These being said, we’re dealing here with the perfect tool for the perfect murder. Speaking of which, we will be commemorating soon 10 years since the death of Michael Hastings, in 2013. #NeverForget
Here’s DARPA talking about hacking cars just months before Michael Hasting’s suspicious death:
Nowadays, with the Pentagon, the WEF and the Bilderbergers freaking out about the demise of their low-IQ fake-news media and the advent of independent journalism, this report alone is enough to get us targeted by a bunch of agencies that commonly use Pegasus and likely more advanced technology we haven’t even found out about.
You can’t hope much from a truther who drives computerized cars. Since 2013.
Why voting technology has to stay primitive is why cars have to stay primitive.
these cars are never yours and you’re never safe in them
FOLLOW UPS
JAN. 2023: GOOGLE IS READY TO TAKE FULL CONTROL OVER YOUR CAR
APRIL 2023: The distance between a SILVIEW.media report and a mainstream media scandal is usually 1-2 years
Obviously, these things were known since concept phase, whoever leaked these now, did it to attack Elon Musk. But this changes nothing about the facts we exposed, only cements them, and Musk shouldn’t have had this vulnerability in the first place.
To be continued? Our work and existence, as media and people, is funded solely by our most generous supporters. But we’re not really covering our costs so far, and we’re in dire needs to upgrade our equipment, especially for video production. Help SILVIEW.media survive and grow, please donate here, anything helps. Thank you!
! Articles can always be subject of later editing as a way of perfecting them
When replacement migration happens in white countries, who are they replacing? I mean, it can’t be whites because White Replacement Theory is just a conspiracy theory, ADL and CNN told me so.
— ADL New York / New Jersey (@ADL_NYNJ) May 17, 2022
This came up in 2001, the year that started many migration waves and tsunamis.
United Nations projections indicate that over the next 50 years, the populations of virtually all countries of Europe as well as Japan will face population decline and population ageing. The new challenges of declining and ageing populations will require comprehensive reassessments of many established policies and programmes, including those relating to international migration. Focusing on these two striking and critical population trends, the report considers replacement migration for eight low-fertility countries (France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Russian Federation, United Kingdom and United States) and two regions (Europe and the European Union). Replacement migration refers to the international migration that a country would need to offset population decline and population ageing resulting from low fertility and mortality rates.
NEW REPORT ON REPLACEMENT MIGRATION ISSUED BY UN POPULATION DIVISION
20000317
NEW YORK, 17 March (DESA) — The Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) has released a new report titled “Replacement Migration: Is it a Solution to Declining and Ageing Populations?”. Replacement migration refers to the international migration that a country would need to prevent population decline and population ageing resulting from low fertility and mortality rates.
United Nations projections indicate that between 1995 and 2050, the population of Japan and virtually all countries of Europe will most likely decline. In a number of cases, including Estonia, Bulgaria and Italy, countries would lose between one quarter and one third of their population. Population ageing will be pervasive, bringing the median age of population to historically unprecedented high levels. For instance, in Italy, the median age will rise from 41 years in 2000 to 53 years in 2050. The potential support ratio — i.e., the number of persons of working age (15-64 years) per older person — will often be halved, from 4 or 5 to 2.
Focusing on these two striking and critical trends, the report examines in detail the case of eight low-fertility countries (France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Russian Federation, United Kingdom and United States) and two regions (Europe and the European Union). In each case, alternative scenarios for the period 1995-2050 are considered, highlighting the impact that various levels of immigration would have on population size and population ageing.
Major findings of this report include:
— In the next 50 years, the populations of most developed countries are projected to become smaller and older as a result of low fertility and increased longevity. In contrast, the population of the United States is projected to increase by almost a quarter. Among the countries studied in the report, Italy is projected to register the largest population decline in relative terms, losing 28 per cent of its population between 1995 and 2050, according to the United Nations medium variant projections. The population of the European Union, which in 1995 was larger than that of the United States by 105 million, in 2050, will become smaller by 18 million.
— Population decline is inevitable in the absence of replacement migration. Fertility may rebound in the coming decades, but few believe that it will recover sufficiently in most countries to reach replacement level in the foreseeable future.
— Some immigration is needed to prevent population decline in all countries and regions examined in the report. However, the level of immigration in relation to past experience varies greatly. For the European Union, a continuation of the immigration levels observed in the 1990s would roughly suffice to prevent total population from declining, while for Europe as a whole, immigration would need to double. The Republic of Korea would need a relatively modest net inflow of migrants — a major change, however, for a country which has been a net sender until now. Italy and Japan would need to register notable increases in net immigration. In contrast, France, the United Kingdom and the United States would be able to maintain their total population with fewer immigrants than observed in recent years.
— The numbers of immigrants needed to prevent the decline of the total population are considerably larger than those envisioned by the United Nations projections. The only exception is the United States.
— The numbers of immigrants needed to prevent declines in the working- age population are larger than those needed to prevent declines in total population. In some cases, such as the Republic of Korea, France, the United Kingdom or the United States, they are several times larger. If such flows were to occur, post-1995 immigrants and their descendants would represent a strikingly large share of the total population in 2050 — between 30 and 39 per cent in the case of Japan, Germany and Italy.
— Relative to their population size, Italy and Germany would need the largest number of migrants to maintain the size of their working-age populations. Italy would require 6,500 migrants per million inhabitants annually and Germany, 6,000. The United States would require the smallest number — 1,300 migrants per million inhabitants per year.
— The levels of migration needed to prevent population ageing are many times larger than the migration streams needed to prevent population decline. Maintaining potential support ratios would in all cases entail volumes of immigration entirely out of line with both past experience and reasonable expectations.
— In the absence of immigration, the potential support ratios could be maintained at current levels by increasing the upper limit of the working-age population to roughly 75 years of age.
— The new challenges of declining and ageing populations will require a comprehensive reassessment of many established policies and programmes, with a long-term perspective. Critical issues that need to be addressed include: (a) the appropriate ages for retirement; (b) the levels, types and nature of retirement and health care benefits for the elderly; (c) labour force participation; (d) the assessed amounts of contributions from workers and employers to support retirement and health care benefits for the elderly population; and (e) policies and programmes relating to international migration,
in particular, replacement migration and the integration of large numbers of recent migrants and their descendants.
The report may be accessed on the internet site of the Population Division (http://www.un.org/esa/population/unpop.htm). Further information may be obtained from the office of Joseph Chamie, Director, Population Division, United Nations, New York, NY, 10017, USA; tel. 1-212-963-3179; fax 1-212-963-2147.
Israeli rejection of Palestinian “right of return” is the same as “great replacement theory,” the conspiracy theory that drove the Buffalo shooter, Sen. Bernie Sanders adviser Matt Duss and several commentators said.
To be continued? Our work and existence, as media and people, is funded solely by our most generous supporters. But we’re not really covering our costs so far, and we’re in dire needs to upgrade our equipment, especially for video production. Help SILVIEW.media survive and grow, please donate here, anything helps. Thank you!
! Articles can always be subject of later editing as a way of perfecting them
IF YOU’RE READING THIS, YOU’RE PROBABLY TARGETED BY A GOVERNMENT OR TWO. SO I MADE SOMETHING FOR YOU. SEE DETAILS / ORDER
CIA’s portrait of the Ukrainian nationalist movement doesn’t look any better either. In concordance with almost everything Western media published on them prior to 2022. Basically, mass-mediots are now whitewashing Nazis and sociopaths like they are George Floyds. How many layers of irony can you count here?
“General George S. Patton was assassinated to silence his criticism of allied war leaders, claims Wilcox The newly unearthed diaries of a colourful assassin for the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA, reveal that American spy chiefs wanted Patton dead because he was threatening to expose allied collusion with the Russians that cost American lives.”
Among those who tipped US intelligence of a plot to assassinate Patton was Bandera. He was pointing fingers at the Soviets, of course. But given Patton’s fading political influence, weak to none, and his old age, combined with the high risks involved in such operation, I find Wilcox’s proposition simply dumb. I have a much more plausible one: Bandera attempted again what he has been doing all his life: recruiting allies in his war against Russia. And let me add some insult to injury: Everything we know about them suggest that Bandera’s people would have no issues with killing Patton with their bare hands if they knew they can switch the blame on Russia. Patton was quasi-inoffensive to Russia alive. Only dead he could push US against Russians. And the documents below support this concept better than any other.
But I digress. Knowing that MI6 has been supporting his organization since the 1930’s, same way they support the Azov Battalion today, I figured a while ago there’s no way in Heaven or Hell that American intelligence didn’t attempt to recruit Bandera too. And this book signaled me they’ve been in touch, indeed.
So I started digging and asking around and it didn’t take long until I obtained some CIA files on him released under FOIA for research on other topics.
But first…
INTRODUCTION: MEET STEPAN BANDERA, THE MAN AND THE AZOV BATTALION SPIRITUAL LEADER
Lionized as a nationalist hero in Ukraine, Stepan Bandera was a Nazi sympathizer who left behind a horrific legacy.
Poles being taken away during the Ukrainian Insurgent Army’s 1943–45 campaign of mass killings.
When Western journalists traveled to Kiev in late 2013 to cover the Euromaidan protests, they encountered a historical figure few recognized. It was Stepan Bandera, whose youthful black-and-white image was seemingly everywhere — on barricades, over the entrance to Kiev’s city hall, and on the placards held by demonstrators calling for the overthrow of then-president Viktor Yanukovych.
Bandera was evidently a nationalist of some sort and highly controversial, but why? The Russians said he was a fascist and an antisemite, but Western media were quick to disregard that as Moscow propaganda. So they hedged.
The Washington Postwrote that Bandera had entered into a “tactical relationship with Nazi Germany” and that his followers “were accused of committing atrocities against Poles and Jews,” while the New York Timeswrote that he had been “vilified by Moscow as a pro-Nazi traitor,” a charge seen as unfair “in the eyes of many historians and certainly to western Ukrainians.” Foreign Policy dismissed Bandera as “Moscow’s favorite bogeyman . . . a metonym for all bad Ukrainian things.”
Whoever Bandera was, all were in agreement that he couldn’t have been as nasty as Putin said he was. But thanks to Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe’s Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist, it now seems clear: those terrible Russians were right.
Bandera was indeed as noxious as any personality thrown up by the hellish 1930s and ’40s. The son of a nationalist-minded Greek Catholic priest, Bandera was the sort of self-punishing fanatic who sticks pins under his fingernails to prepare himself for torture at the hands of his enemies. As a university student in Lviv, he is said to have moved on to burning himself with an oil lamp, slamming a door on his fingers, and whipping himself with a belt. “Admit, Stepan!” he would cry out. “No, I don’t admit!”
A priest who heard his confession described him as “an übermensch . . . who placed Ukraine above all,” while a follower said he was the sort of person who “could hypnotize a man. Everything that he said was interesting. You could not stop listening to him.”
Enlisting in the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) at age twenty, he used his growing influence to steer an already-violent group in an even more extreme direction. In 1933, he organized an attack on the Soviet consul in Lviv, which only managed to kill an office secretary. A year later, he directed the assassination of the Polish minister of the interior. He ordered the execution of a pair of alleged informers and was responsible for other deaths as well as the OUN took to robbing banks, post offices, police stations, and private households in search of funds.
What sent Bandera off in such a violent direction? Rossoliński-Liebe’s massive new study takes us through the times and the politics that captured Bandera’s imagination. Galicia had been part of Austro-Hungary prior to the war. But whereas the Polish-controlled western half was incorporated into the newly established Republic of Poland in 1918, the Ukrainian-dominated eastern portion, where Bandera was born in 1909, was not absorbed until 1921, following the Polish–Soviet War and a brief period of independence.
It was a poor fit from the start. Bitter at being deprived of a state of their own, Ukrainian nationalists refused to recognize the takeover and, in 1922, responded with a campaign of arson attacks on some 2,200 Polish-owned farms. The government in Warsaw replied with repression and cultural warfare. It brought in Polish farmers, many of them war veterans, to settle the district and radically change the demographics of the countryside. It closed down Ukrainian schools and even tried to ban the term “Ukrainian,” insisting that students employ the somewhat more vague “Ruthenian” instead.
When the OUN launched another arson and sabotage campaign in summer 1930, Warsaw resorted to mass arrest. By late 1938, as many as 30,000 Ukrainians were languishing in Polish jails. Soon, Polish politicians were talking about the “extermination” of the Ukrainians while a German journalist who traveled through eastern Galicia in early 1939 reported that local Ukrainians were calling for “Uncle Führer” to step in and impose a solution of his own on the Poles.
The conflict in the Polish-Ukrainian borderlands exemplified the ugly ethnic wars that were erupting throughout eastern Europe as a new world war approached. Conceivably, Bandera might have responded to the growing disorder by moving to the political left. Previously, liberal Bolshevik cultural policies in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, had caused a surge in pro-Communist sentiment in the neighboring Polish province of Volhynia.
But a number of factors got in the way: his father’s position in the church, the fact that Galicia, unlike formerly Russian Volhynia, was an ex-Habsburg possession and hence oriented toward Austria and Germany, and, of course, Stalin’s disastrous collectivization policies, which, by the early ’30s, had completely destroyed the Soviet Ukraine as any sort of model worth emulating.
Consequently, Bandera responded by moving ever farther to the right. In high school, he read Mykola Mikhnovs’kyi, a militant nationalist who had died in 1924 and preached a united Ukraine stretching “from the Carpathian Mountains to the Caucasus,” one that would be free of “Russians, Poles, Magyars, Romanians, and Jews.” Entry into the OUN a few years later exposed him to the teachings of Dmytro Dontsov, the group’s “spiritual father,” another ultra-rightist who translated Hitler’s Mein Kampf and Mussolini’s La Dottrina Del Fascismo and taught that ethics should be subordinate to the national struggle.
Entry into the OUN also plunged him into a milieu marked by growing antisemitism. Anti-Jewish hatred had been deeply bound up with the concept of Ukrainian nationhood since at least the seventeenth century when thousands of Ukrainian peasants, maddened by the exactions of the Polish landlords and their Jewish estate managers, engaged in a vicious bloodletting under the leadership of a minor nobleman named Bohdan Khmelnytsky.
Ukraine was the scene of even more gruesome pogroms during the Russian Civil War. But antisemitic passions rose a further notch in 1926 when a Jewish anarchist named Sholom Schwartzbard assassinated the exiled Ukrainian leader Symon Petliura in Paris.
“I have killed a great assassin,” declared Schwartzbard, who had lost fourteen family members in the pogroms that swept through the Ukraine when Petliura headed up a short-lived anti-Bolshevik republic in 1919–1920, on surrendering to the police. But after hearing testimony from survivors about impaled babies, children cast into flames, and other anti-Jewish atrocities, a French jury acquitted him in just thirty-five minutes.
The verdict caused a sensation, not least on the Ukrainian right. Dontsov denounced Schwartzbard as “an agent of Russian imperialism,” declaring:
Jews are guilty, terribly guilty, because they helped consolidate Russian rule in Ukraine, but “the Jew is not guilty of everything.” Russian imperialism is guilty of everything. Only when Russia falls in Ukraine will we be able to settle the Jewish question in our country in a way that suits the interest of the Ukrainian people.
While the Bolsheviks were the main enemy, Jews were their forward striking force, so the most effective way of countering one was by thoroughly eliminating the other. In 1935, OUN members smashed windows in Jewish houses and then, a year later, burned around a hundred Jewish families out of their homes in the town of Kostopil in what is now western Ukraine. They marked the tenth anniversary of Petliura’s assassination by distributing leaflets with the message: “Attention, kill and beat the Jews for our Ukrainian leader Symon Petliura, the Jews should be removed from Ukraine, long live the Ukrainian state.”
By this point, Bandera was already in jail serving a life sentence following a pair of highly publicized murder trials in which he taunted the court by giving the fascist salute and crying out, Slava Ukraïni – “Glory to Ukraine.” But he was able to escape following the German takeover of western Poland beginning on September 1, 1939 and make his way to Lviv, the capital of eastern Galicia.
But the Soviet incursion on September 17 sent him fleeing in the opposite direction. Eventually, he and the rest of the OUN leadership settled in German-controlled Cracow, about two hundred miles to the west, where they set about preparing the organization for further battles still to come.
The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, which the OUN leadership seems to have gotten wind of months ahead of time, was the moment they had been waiting for. Not only did it promise to free the Ukraine from Soviet control, but it also held out the prospect of unifying all Ukrainians in a single state. The dream of a greater Ukraine would thus be realized.
A month earlier, Bandera and his chief lieutenants — Stepan Lenkavs’kyi, Stepan Shukhevych, and Iaroslav Stets’ko — had put the finishing touches on an internal party document entitled “The Struggle and Activities of the OUN in Wartime,” a to-do list for when the Wehrmacht crossed the Soviet border.
It called on members to take advantage of the “favorable situation” posed by a “war between Moscow and other states” to create a national revolution that would draw up all Ukraine in its vortex. It conceived of revolution as a great purification process in which “Muscovites, Poles, and Jews” would be “destroyed . . . in particular those who protect the [Soviet] regime.” Although the OUN regarded the Nazis as allies, the document stressed that OUN activists should commence the revolution as soon as possible so as present the Wehrmacht with a fait accompli:
We treat the coming German army as the army of allies. We try before their coming to put life in order, on our own as it should be. We inform them that the Ukrainian authority is already established, it is under the control of the OUN under the leadership of Stepan Bandera; all matters are regulated by the OUN and the local authorities are ready to establish friendly relations with the army, in order to fight together against Moscow.
The document continued that “it is permissible to liquidate undesirable Poles . . . NKVD people, informers, provocateurs . . . all important Ukrainians who, in the critical time, would try to make ‘their politics’ and thereby threaten the decisive mind-set of the Ukrainian nation,” adding that only one party would be permitted under the new order — the OUN.
Although Bandera and his followers would later try to paint the alliance with the Third Reich as no more than “tactical,” an attempt to pit one totalitarian state against another, it was in fact deep-rooted and ideological. Bandera envisioned the Ukraine as a classic one-party state with himself in the role of führer, or providnyk, and expected that a new Ukraine would take its place under the Nazi umbrella, much as Jozef Tiso’s new fascist regime had in Slovakia or Ante Pavelić’s in Croatia.
Certain high-ranking Nazis thought along similar lines, most notably Alfred Rosenberg, the newly appointed Reich minister for the occupied eastern territories. But Hitler was obviously of a different mind. He saw Slavs as “an inferior race,” incapable of organizing a state, and viewed Ukrainians in particular as “just as lazy, disorganized, and nihilistic-Asiatic as the Greater Russians.”
Instead of a partner, he saw them as an obstacle. Obsessed with the British naval blockade of World War I, which had caused as many as 750,000 deaths from starvation and disease, he was determined to block any similar effort by the Allies by expropriating eastern grain supplies on an unprecedented scale. Hence the importance of the Ukraine, the great granary on the Black Sea. “I need the Ukraine in order that no one is able to starve us again like in the last war,” he declared in August 1939. Grain seizures on such a scale would mean condemning vast numbers to starvation, twenty-five million or more in all.
Yet not only did the Nazis not care, but annihilation on such a scale accorded perfectly with their plans for a racial makeover of what they viewed as the eastern frontier. The result was the famous Generalplan Ost, the great Nazi blueprint that called for killing or expelling up to 80 percent of the Slavic population and its replacement by Volksdeutsche, settlers from old Germany, and Waffen-SS veterans.
Plainly, there was no room in such a scheme for a self-governing Ukraine. When Stets’ko announced the formation of a Ukrainian state “under the leadership of Stepan Bandera” in Lviv just eight days after the Nazi invasion, a couple of German officers warned him that the question of Ukrainian independence was up to Hitler alone. Nazi officials gave Bandera the same message a few days later at a meeting in Cracow.
Subsequently, they escorted both Bandera and Stets’ko to Berlin and placed them under house arrest. When Hitler decided on July 19, 1941 to partition the Ukraine by incorporating eastern Galicia into the “General Government,” as Nazi-ruled Poland was known, OUN members were stunned.
Instead of unifying the Ukraine, the Nazis were dismembering it. When graffiti appeared declaring, “Away with foreign authority! Long live Stepan Bandera,” the Nazis responded by shooting a number of OUN members and, by December 1941, placing some 1,500 under arrest.
Still, as Rossoliński-Liebe shows, Bandera and his followers continued to long for an Axis victory. As strained as relations with the Nazis might be, there could be no talk of neutrality in the epic struggle between Moscow and Berlin.
In a letter to Alfred Rosenberg in August 1941, Bandera offered to meet German objections by reconsidering the question of Ukrainian independence. On December 9, he sent him another letter pleading for reconciliation: “German and Ukrainian interests in Eastern Europe are identical. For both sides, it is a vital necessity to consolidate (normalize) Ukraine in the best and fastest way and to include it in the European spiritual, economic, and political system.”
Ukrainian nationalism, he went on, had taken shape “in a spirit similar to the National Socialist ideas” and was needed to “spiritually cure the Ukrainian youth” who had been poisoned by their upbringing under the Soviets. Although the Germans were in no mood to listen, their attitude changed once their fortunes began to shift. Desperate for manpower following their defeat at Stalingrad, they agreed to the formation of a Ukrainian division in the Waffen-SS, known the Galizien, which would eventually grow to 14,000 members.
Rather than disbanding the OUN, the Nazis had meanwhile revamped it as a German-run police force. The OUN had played a leading role in the anti-Jewish pogroms that broke out in Lviv and dozens of other Ukrainian cities on the heels of the German invasion, and now they served the Nazis by patrolling the ghettoes and assisting in deportations, raids, and shootings.
But beginning in early 1943, OUN members deserted the police en masse in order to form a militia of their own that would eventually call itself the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukraïns’ka Povstans’ka Armiia, or UPA). Taking advantage of the chaos behind German lines, their first major act was an ethnic cleansing campaign aimed at driving Poles out of eastern Galicia and Volhynia. “When it comes to the Polish question, this is not a military but a minority question,” a Polish underground source quoted a UPA leader as saying. “We will solve it as Hitler solved the Jewish question.”
Citing the Polish historian Grezegorz Motyka, Rossoliński-Liebe says that the UPA killed close to 100,000 Poles between 1943 and 1945 and that Orthodox priests blessed the axes, pitchforks, scythes, sickles, knives, and sticks that the peasants it mobilized used to finish them off.
Simultaneously, UPA attacks on Jews continued at such a ferocious level that Jews actually sought the protection of the Germans. “The Banderite bands and the local nationalists raided every night, decimating the Jews,” a survivor testified in 1948. “Jews sheltered in the camps where Germans were stationed, fearing an attack by Banderites. Some German soldiers were brought to protect the camps and thereby also the Jews.”
Rossoliński-Liebe carries the story of Bandera and his movement through the Nazi defeat when the Galizien division fought alongside the retreating Wehrmacht and then into the postwar period when those left behind in the Ukraine mounted a desperate rearguard resistance against the encroaching Soviets.
This war-after-the-war was a deadly serious affair in which OUN fighters killed not only informers, collaborators, and eastern Ukrainians transferred to Galicia and Volhynia to work as teachers or administrators, but their families as well. “Soon the Bolsheviks will conduct the grain levy,” they warned on one occasion. “Anyone among you who brings grain to the collection points will be killed like a dog, and your entire family butchered.”
Mutilated corpses appeared with signs proclaiming, “For collaboration with the NKVD.” According to a 1973 KGB report, more than 30,000 people fell victim to the OUN before the Soviets managed to wipe out resistance in 1950, including some 15,000 peasants and collective-farm workers and more than 8,000 soldiers, militia members, and security personnel.
Even given the barbarity of the times, the group’s actions stood out.
Stepan Bandera is an important book that combines biography and sociology as it lays out the story of an important radical nationalist and the organization he led. But what makes it so relevant, of course, is the OUN’s powerful resurgence since the 1991.
Although Western intelligence eagerly embraced Bandera and his supporters as the Cold War began to stir — “Ukrainian emigration in the territory of Germany, Austria, France, Italy, in the greatest majority is a healthy, uncompromising element in the fight against the Bolsheviks,” a US Army intelligence agent noted in 1947 — the movement’s long-term prospects did not seem to be very promising, especially after a Soviet agent managed to slip through Bandera’s security ring in Munich in 1959 and kill him with a blast from a cyanide spray gun.
With that, the Banderites seemed to be going the way of all other “captive nations,” far-right exiles who gathered from time to time to sing the old songs but who otherwise seemed to be relics from a bygone era.
What saved them, of course, was the Soviet collapse. OUN veterans hastened back at the first opportunity. Stets’ko had died in Munich in 1986, but his widow, Iaroslava, returned in his place, according to Rossoliński-Liebe, founding a far-right party called the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists and winning a spot in parliament. Iurii Shukhevych, the son of the exiled UPA leader Roman Shukhevych, established another ultra-right group calling itself the Ukrainian National Assembly. Even Bandera’s grandson, Stephen, made an appearance, touring Ukraine as he unveiled monuments, attended rallies, and praised his grandfather as the “symbol of the Ukrainian nation.”
A homegrown group of Banderites meanwhile formed the Social-National Party of Ukraine, later known as Svoboda. In a 2004 speech, their leader, the charismatic Oleh Tiahnybok, paid tribute to the fighters of the UPA:
The enemy came and took their Ukraine. But they were not afraid; likewise we must not be afraid. They hung their machine guns on their necks and went into the woods. They fought against the Russians, Germans, Jews, and other scum who wanted to take away our Ukrainian state! And therefore our task — for every one of you, the young, the old, the gray-headed and the youthful — is to defend our native land!
Except for the omission of the Poles, the speech was an indication of how little things had changed. The movement was as xenophobic, antisemitic, and obsessed with violence as ever, except that now, for the first time in half a century, thousands of people were listening to what it had to say.
One might think that the liberal West would want nothing to do with such elements, but the response was no less unscrupulous than it was during the opening years of the Cold War. Because the banderivtsi were anti-Russian, they had to be democratic. Because they were democratic, their ultra-right trappings had to be inconsequential.
The Bandera portraits that were increasingly prominent as the Euromaidan protests turned more and more violent, the wolfsangel that was formerly a symbol of the SS but was now taken up by the Azov Battalion and other militias, the old OUN war cry of “Glory to Ukraine, glory to the heroes” that was now ubiquitous among anti-Yanukovych protesters — all had to be ignored, discounted, or whitewashed.
Citing unnamed “academic commentators,” the Guardianannounced in March 2014 that Svoboda “appears to have mellowed” and was now “eschewing xenophobia.” US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt said that Svoboda members “have demonstrated their democratic bona fides,” while the historian Anne Applebaum announced in the New Republic that nationalism was a good thing and that what Ukrainians needed was more of it: “They need more occasions when they can shout, ‘Slava Ukraini – Heroyam Slava’ – ‘Glory to Ukraine, Glory to its Heroes,’ which was, yes, the slogan of the controversial Ukrainian Revolutionary Army [sic] in the 1940s, but has been adopted to a new context.”
Many, like Alina Polyakova at the Atlantic Council, voiced similar defenses: “The Russian government and its proxies in eastern Ukraine have consistently branded Kyiv’s government a fascist junta and accused it of having Nazi sympathizers. Moscow’s propaganda is outrageous and wrong.” Given Ukraine’s deepening economic woes, she continued, “should Ukraine watchers be concerned about the potential growth of extreme right-wing parties?” Her answer: “Absolutely not.”
That was on June 9. A few weeks later, Polyakova executed a 180-degree turn. “Ukraine’s government,” she declared on July 24, “has a problem on its hands: A far-right group has tapped into growing frustration among Ukrainians over the declining economy and tepid support from the West.”
As a result, Right Sector was now a “dangerous” force, “a thorn in Kyiv’s side,” one of a number of right-wing groups “taking advantage of public frustration to ratchet up support for their misguided agenda.” The international community would have to step up economic aid and political support, she warned, if it didn’t want Ukraine to fall into the hands of the radical right.
What had happened? On July 11, a bloody shootout had erupted in the western town of Mukacheve between heavily armed members of the neo-Nazi Right Sector and supporters of a local politician named Mykhailo Lanio.
The details are murky, and it is unclear whether the Right Sector was attempting to put a stop to highly lucrative cigarette smuggling in the border province of Zakarpattia or was trying to muscle in on the trade. One thing, however, was obvious: given the disarray in its own military, the Ukrainian government had grown increasingly dependent on private Banderite militias like Right Sector to battle pro-Russian separatists in the east and, as a consequence, was increasingly at the mercy of rampaging ultra-rightists whom it was unable to control.
Thanks to the military support that had flown their way, groups like the Right Sector and the neo-Nazi Azov Brigade were bigger than ever, battle-hardened and heavily armed, and fed up with rich politicians who made peace with the Russians and continued to rake in profits while the economy sank to new depths. Yet there was little the government in Kiev could do in response.
A few weeks later, on August 31, hundreds of Right Sector supporters battled with police in Kiev as the Ukrainian parliament voted in favor of the Minsk II accords aimed at defusing the crisis in the east. Three people were killed when a Right Sector supporter lobbed a grenade in the middle of the fracas and more than a hundred injured as the country hurtled toward civil war.
Polyakova’s nervousness was justified. Given Ukraine’s desperate economic straits — economic output is expected to fall 10 percent this year after dropping 7.5 percent in 2014, inflation is running at 57 percent due to the collapse of the hryvnia, while external debt now stands at 158 percent of GDP — there was a distinct whiff of Weimar in the air.
Although Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko labeled the attack “a stab in the back,” this was the same leader who in May signed a law making it a crime to “publicly exhibit a disrespectful attitude” toward the OUN or UPA. Once again, centrists who began by placating the fascists have wound up at their mercy.
[Photo: 100th-anniversary Ukrainian stamp honoring Stepan Bandera (1909-1959) wikipedia..]
Gaither Stewart
Editor’s Note
It is clear that there is a resurgence of movement towards nationalism, fascism, and dictatorial rule across the globe. I say resurgence because this is not the first time we have seen far-right populism rise and strike fear into the hearts of democracies. While the world has seen this before, it does not mean that it is the same each time. It is clear that it is combining with (or driven by) the monopoly capitalism of our time and the almost record level of income inequality. This makes a close look at figures like Stepan Bander, and the insightful historical discussion by Gaither Stewart particularly timely.
I also appreciate tying the history of Eastern Europe, Nazism, and Russian influence particularly important as I think that many Americans are still scratching their heads over events in Ukraine; events that reverberate even today.
The U.S.’ role in Ukraine under the Obama administration is an excellent example with the problems with U.S. foreign policy and intervention. We have followed a policy of doing what we think is in our own best interests – even if that means supporting dictators, or even fascist governments. It has been said that it is actually easier for the U.S. to pursue its interests with dictators rather than with democracies. Democracies are both cumbersome and messy – particularly if the people’s interests are captured and they apply pressure that may counter U.S. “influence”.
The case study of both Ukraine and Bandera are pertinent not only to the environment with Ukraine, but with Russia, P{oland, and the EU. We are at least as deep into this convoluted situation as any other nation involved.
Gaither Stewart There was no sun, no shadows. The star Wormwood had fallen from the heavens and polluted the earth’s waters and after diminishing the shadows, had erased them. The falling of the stars had darkened the earth until all shadows vanished. And in the darkness the seventh seal of judgment loosed from the bottomless pit Abaddon the Destroyer together with the plague of Nazism that swooped down on earth to kill the third part of men and then to hover over the shadowless fields, writing its messages in the earth. (My adaptation of the revelations of the Seventh seal)
Adolf Hitler left a deadly legacy behind him. He must have thought that Abaddon himself had scripted his great historical role: to decimate mankind. As history continues to show us his suicide in the bunker in a Berlin overrun by Red Army soldiers was not the end of Nazism that he constructed in his own image: he was the Destroyer, risen from the fire of the bottomless depths to destroy mankind. An irony of history is that his Nazism—in power in Germany for only twelve years (1933-1945)—was to sweep over the earth, one might think as per the biblical Revelations. We have seen that continuity in postwar Germany and in the USA, in Operation Condor in Chile and Argentina which wiped out the best of the youth of both countries, and in Mexico under the “revolutionary” Fascist dictatorship. And today in Ukraine we witness in action Nazism in its crudest form. The diaspora of Nazism and Nazis and of the children they have spawned and continue to spawn recalls the falling star of Wormwood still spreading darkness over the Earth.
The spirit of Ukrainian Nazi, Stepan Bandera, assassinated in Munich in 1959, defines and infects the U.S.-constructed, assembled, and managed Nazi-inspired government in Kiev brought about by the Maidan coup and the overthrow of the legally elected government of Ukraine. The Nazi spirit of Stepan Bandera, a disgusting and hated man, thrives and spawns its own children.
Western journalists covering the Euromaidan riots and murders in Kiev in late February of 2014 encountered an historical image that few recognized. The black-and-white image of pasty-faced Stepan Bandera was plastered everywhere in the Ukraine capital— on barricades, over the entrance to Kiev’s city hall, and on placards held by demonstrators calling for the overthrow of the Russian-friendly president, Viktor Yanukovych. So who in the hell is this Bandera, the journalists thought.
People like Victoria “Fuck the EU” Nuland defined Bandera as a Ukrainian nationalist. The U.S. State Department spokeswoman accepted only praise and support for a Nazi regime in Kiev … come hell or high water and fuck European Union objections or warnings not to disturb the Russian bear on the border. Russians said he was a Nazi and an anti-Semite but Western media obediently labeled such words as Moscow propaganda. As a result of U.S. involvement foreign journalists quickly hedged in their reports from the Kiev Maidan. The Washington Post reported that Bandera had had only a “tactical relationship’ with Nazi Germany and that his followers “were only accused of committing atrocities against Poles and Jews.” According to the New York Times Bandera had been slandered by Moscow as a pro-Nazi traitor. Foreign Policy dismissed Bandera as “Moscow’s favorite bogeyman and metonym for all bad Ukrainian things.” Whoever Bandera was, he couldn’t have been as nasty as Putin claimed.
Maidan, aka Independence Square in Kiev.
(Picture of Independence Square (Majdan Nezalezhnosti) in Kiev, often known simply as “Maidan”, where the U.S. coup gave birth to the Nazi-led Ukraine, of which Stefan Bandera was one of the most illustrious forefathers Maidan is a proto-Indo-European word probably of Persian origin and used in Turkish, Pakistani, Indian languages for a large space, meeting place, parade grounds. I encountered the word in Tehran where on a famous Meydan the Shah’s soldiers killed hundreds or thousands of protesters during the Iranian Islamic Revolution. Though not used in Russian, it somehow seeped into the Ukrainian language.)
Especially in Central Europe historical figures flash across the horizon and then quickly fade away into the gossamer past and oblivion. But this man Bandera? Who was he? The name of Stepan Bandera (b, 1909 in West Ukraine, d. Munich1959) is today the symbol of Ukrainian Nazism, the symbol of the ideology and practice of the big, new-old nation of Ukraine, vassal of the USA, and a former Republic of the Soviet Union. But in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv—better known as Kiev—once one of Russia’s major cities, the name Stepan Bandera lives again. To his memory are dedicated streets, squares and monuments in Nazi Ukraine, especially in his native West Ukraine. Today, Nazis of all nationalities pay homage to his memory. In 2010, the pro-West President Victor Yushchenko issued a decree naming Bandera “Hero of the Ukraine”. This decree was annulled that same year by his pro-Russian successor Victor Yanukovich. Then again, in 2015, a year after the Maidan coup and the overthrow of the democratic government, a great majority of the new Nazi-infested government run by the sons of Bandera and his Svoboda and the Right Sektor parties voted unanimously to proclaim Bandera a national hero. Men of the infamous Nachtigall (Nightingale) battalion that fought side by side with the Nazi Wehrmacht, exterminating Jews and Ukrainians alike; at the same time the people of the apparatus of Ukrainian Nazism were also termed national heroes … and they were in power. I will note here that in those days Ukraine invited members of the Association of Foreign Journalists in Rome of which I was a member to visit Bandera’s native Lviv. One still wonders that the European Union did not protest against the coup, against a Nazi-led government in the middle of Europe, the question that prompted the famous response of Victoria Nuland, the real organizer of the Maidan: “Fuck the EU.” That is, official America told official Europe to fuck off. America ordered Europe to fall in line and obey orders. Real history is ugly, brutal and vulgar. Real history is real people doing ugly or beautiful things that seldom reach the pages of written history.
Aaron Good has a PhD in Political Science from Temple University. His dissertation, “American Exception: Hegemony and the Tripartite State,” examined the state, elite criminality, and US hegemony. It was an expansion of a previously published article, “American Exception: Hegemony and the Dissimulation of the State.” Prior to completing his doctorate, he worked on the 2008 Obama campaign in Missouri. Born and raised in Indiana, he has since lived and worked in Taiwan and Shanghai. He currently resides with his wife and son in the greater Philadelphia area where he has been a history and social science instructor. – SOURCE
But informed people know better. Informed people know who Stepan Bandera and his followers are. Those terrible Russians were of course right all the time. For the vast majority of Russians, the term Banderovtsy or Banderite is today even worse than Liberal applied to that small minority who worship Western things, yearn for America, the European Union and NATO and detest Putin and Russian nationalists. Much, much worse than Alex Navalny about whose pitiful existence many are unaware; but everybody knows what a Banderite is.
Already in his lifetime the little Bandera—he stood 5 feet and 2 inches—a Russian-hating, West Ukrainian Nazi—was detested literally by everybody: his political opponents within the Ukrainian independence movement hated him, as did many of his own allies and followers; Jews and Russian-speaking ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine hate and revile him as a fascist traitor to his country and a terrorist who collaborated with the Nazis and whose followers murdered thousands of Ukrainians; even his German Nazi masters considered him despicable because he betrayed and murdered his own people; the masses of displaced Ukrainians living in West Germany after World War II hated him for his crimes against other Ukrainians; elements of the post-war German government and many of Germany’s American occupiers hated him… even those he served; Poles hated him for his crimes against the Polish people; Russians hated him in a special way because Bandera, in his German SS uniform, was responsible for the elimination of hundreds of thousands of Russians, soldiers, prisoners of war and civilians alike; today his figure is hated by all Russians because of everything he stood for; Ukrainian immigrants in Russia hate him and dislike being called Banderites because they are Ukrainian.
Yet, nationalists in western Ukraine today revere him as a patriotic freedom-fighter, a martyr who led the struggle for independence from the Soviet Union: Bandera remains a hero in the eyes of the growing number of extreme rightists and Nazis in today’s nationalist, jingoistic Ukraine, among Ukrainian nationalists abroad and right-wing extremists elsewhere. To the joy of re-flowering Nazi-Fascist organizations and parties across Europe, the Nazi- Banderite Svoboda (Freedom) and Pravy Sektor (Right Sector) parties run things in today’s Ukraine. Bandera’s image is honored on a postage stamp while his memory has assumed founder-of-Ukrainian-nationalism proportions. Moscow Avenue in the Ukraine capital of Kyiv was changed to Bandera Avenue. Still, on the other hand, articles galore have emerged in the international press of the life of an ugly and justifiably hated man, especially in Polish, German and English writings which can be seen on the Internet.
Bandera was the son of a nationalist-minded Greek Catholic priest in Western Ukraine, formally known as Eastern Galicia-Volhynia. Stepan grew up as a self-punishing fanatic who is said to have stuck pins under his fingernails to prepare himself for torture at the hands of enemies. And that as a university student in Lviv (Lvov), he whipped himself with a belt. “Admit, Stepan!” he would cry out. “No, I don’t admit!” Yet, his followers found Bandera hypnotic: “You couldn’t stop listening to him.”
Stepan enlisted in the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) at age twenty where he steered an already violent faction into more extreme directions. In 1933, he organized an attack on the Soviet consul in Lviv, killing an office secretary. A year later, he directed the assassination of the Polish Interior Minister. He ordered the execution of two alleged informers and was responsible for other deaths as well when the OUN took to robbing banks, post offices, police stations, and private households in search of funds.
A study by the German writer Rossoliński-Liebe of what drove Bandera’s violence takes us through the times and the politics that captured Bandera’s imagination. Galicia—more or less Western Ukraine —had been part of Austro-Hungary prior to WWI. The Polish-controlled western half of Galicia was incorporated into the newly established Republic of Poland in 1918; the Ukrainian-dominated eastern portion (of West Ukraine) where Bandera was born was absorbed also by Poland in 1921 following the Polish-Soviet War and in that period enjoyed a brief period of independence. Bitter at being deprived of a state of their own, Ukrainian nationalists there refused to recognize the Polish takeover and in 1922 responded with arson attacks on thousands of Polish-owned farms. Warsaw resorted to mass arrests. By late 1938, some 30,000 Ukrainian-Poles languished in Polish jails. Polish politicians spoke of the “extermination” of the Ukrainians while a German journalist who traveled through eastern Galicia in early 1939 reported that local Ukrainians were calling for Hitler to intervene and impose a solution of his own on the Poles. The conflict in the Polish-Ukrainian borderlands of mixed peoples, languages and cultures exemplified the ethnic wars that erupted throughout Eastern Europe as the legions of Adolf Hitler and Nazism approached in WW Two.
Bandera meanwhile moved ever farther to the right, reading the works of militant nationalists who dreamed of a united Ukraine stretching “from the Carpathian Mountains to the Caucasus, a Ukraine free of Russians, Poles, Magyars, Romanians, and Jews. He studied the works of Dmytro Dontsov, the ultra-rightist spiritual father who translated Hitler’s Mein Kampf and Mussolini’s La Dottrina Del Fascismo, and taught that ethics should be subordinate to the national struggle.
I have included a brief excursion into the lands of North Central Europe—Poland and Ukraine (including former Galicia)—because precisely these lands were the Lebensraum (Living Space) Hitler pinpointed for German expansion, the main reason for Germany’s quiet and rapid rearmament. Lebensraum was one of the pillars of Nazi Germany’s foreign policy. One small problem was that like Palestine these lands were inhabited by other peoples. So according to Hitler’s Aryan ideology the peoples of those lands had to be eliminated and peopled by German settlers. Here in a nutshell we have German Nazism in action: rearmament, anti-Semitism against the massive Jewry, the Ostjuden, and racism concerning the non-Aryan Slavic untermenschen.
The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) was marked by extreme anti-Semitism, a message which far overshadowed the spread of socialist ideas spreading in these borderlands since the beginning of the twentieth century. Historically, however, anti-Jewish hatred had branded Ukrainian nationhood since the seventeenth century when Ukrainian peasants, maddened by the exactions of the Polish landlords and their putative Jewish estate managers, engaged in vicious pogroms. Nevertheless, while the influence of the OUN spread in Ukraine, Socialism was also taking firm hold. The gruesome pogroms during the Russian Civil War resulted in waves of Jewish emigration to Israel and accelerated the early acquisition of Palestinian lands by legal Jewish emigrants, the subject of a Spanish novel, Dispara, yo ya estoy Muerto (Shoot, I’m Already Dead), by Julia Navarro. A curiosity in the novelist’s presentation was that many of the early Jewish settlers who bought their lands near Jerusalem legally were Socialists/Communists and their small farms and orchards were organized as communist collectives. Still, in Ukraine anti-Semitic passions intensified in 1926 when a Jewish anarchist named Sholom Schwartzbard assassinated the exiled right-wing extremist Ukrainian political leader, Symon Petliura, in Paris. Such events spurred on the Jewish flight from East Europe to Palestine in the years following the Balfour Declaration in 1917 pertaining to the British commitment to the creation of a state of Israel in Palestine.
POLISH-UKRAINIAN-RUSSIAN RELATIONS
Exactly where Russia’s real western border lies—or should lie—is one of the most contentious circumstances in Eastern Europe today. Some understanding of social-political currents in the huge area between Germany and Russia—that is, Poland and Ukraine—can shed light on the significance of the US fascist coup in Kiev of 2014 and the emergence of a fake country under US/NATO dominance. Ukraine with its 233,000 square miles is approximately the size of France with 248,000 square miles.
Stretching back centuries, the memory of the centuries-long confusion of past East Europe appeared like an open invitation to Hitler and Nazi Germany in the quest for Lebensraum and continues to influence EU/German policies of the present. So that the era beginning from World War II provides a useful starting point in understanding the current political role of Nazi Ukraine. Since Ukraine was part of the USSR, the Soviet Union’s western border was its (of the Ukrainian Socialst Republic) frontier with Poland. Today’s Russia borders with a NATO-controlled and occupied Ukraine. Not the same thing at all.
Western Ukraine, particularly the city of Lviv-Lvov, occupies a special part of the Polish psyche—something like Kosovo for Serbs which NATO stole, and where the USA built a huge military base, Camp Bondsteel. Therefore the separation of the former western portion of Ukraine, former Galicia, from the Polish state after WWII was hard for Poles to accept despite the socialist ideology in East Europe at the time when nationalism was not supposed to take on emotional significance. Socialist solidarity between peoples counted more than nationalism; emphasis was on economics, not nationality. Nonetheless, the border changes proved to be a strategic miscalculation caused by blindness to the ever-present nationalism. At the time there was little that Poland could do about what it felt was the unfair dislocation of its eastern provinces (with its many Ukrainians and peoples of complex and uncertain feelings of nationality).
Contemporary Poland has believed that the influence of the EU can re-establish its cultural and historical hegemony in its eastern regions. Poland also believes it can rival Russia in terms of influence in those now western regions of Ukraine: whereas Russia’s influence is dominant in East Ukraine. Thus the German-dominated European Union, via Poland, has a strong influence in West Ukraine. On the other hand, the EU is also concerned about the quasi Fascist government of Poland: it worries that an unpredictable super-nationalistic Poland could consider a Polexit from the European Union, a defection that could topple an already shaky union. Moreover, such fears and hopes create confusion over both Polish and Ukrainian state identity.
Polish nationalists dream of their former great state. A kind of Polish Exceptionalism emerged from the influence of Polish Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla) and Solidarity’s historical victory over the communist government in 1989. Aided by God via the Polish Pope, Poles successfully defied Soviet power. Today Poles feel they have a future historical role because of their Exceptionalism. Poles believe their historical legacy entitles them to a major presence in Eastern Europe. And it wants its eastern lands back. Therefore Poland’s special opposition to Russia and its historical legacy. In order to pursue this destiny, after the end of the Cold War Poland decided on its pro-Western course of political and military development. Poland exploits concepts of putative Exceptionalism also within the institutions of the EU and NATO in order to advance its national interests at Russia’s expense. Poland uses what it subjectively considers Russian Guilt to justify Polish Exceptionalism, thereby damaging Russia’s soft power potential. (See: Russian Guilt and Polish Exceptionalism by Andrew Korybko, August 1, 2017 for more on the above)
Stepan Bandera In the Post-War
In such confusion, nationalism and Nazism flourished and men like Stepan Bandera and Adolf Hitler played their particular roles. During the postwar of the late 1940s and early 50s, Stepan Bandera was an immigrant in West Germany. He worked for the BND, the German Intelligence Service, and its forerunner, the Gehlen Org, a top secret organization established in a Munich suburb run by Hitler’s former intelligence chief in East Europe, General Reinhard Gehlen. Financed by the USA, the Gehlen Org specialized in espionage and training of spies to be infiltrated into the Soviet Union. Bandera and his wife, Yaroslava, and their three children had also settled in Munich. While the Germans and Americans used Bandera only sparingly and for many he seemed forgotten, the Soviet Union had not forgotten him. Repeated attempts were reportedly made on his life. Yet Bandera remained in Munich, living under the name of Stepan Popel, still a thorn in the side of his many enemies.
On October 15th of 1959, Bandera was killed at his apartment on Kreittmayrstrasse 7 in downtown Munich near the Main Rail Station, allegedly by the KGB assassin Bogdan Stashinsky. According to the police report Bandera had let his bodyguards off that day. When Stashinsky produced his cyanide gun inside a rolled-up newspaper, Bandera didn’t even draw his own gun. Shot in the face, the fifty-year-old Bandera died on a third-floor landing before the ambulance arrived. A medical examination established that the cause of his death was poison by cyanide gas. Stepan Bandera was buried in the Waldfriedhof Cemetery in Munich.
Bandera’s murder was one of the most publicized assassinations of the Cold War. In the sensational show trial in 1962 in the Federal Constitutional Court in the city of Karlsruhe, the 30-year old alleged assassin, Bogdan Stashinsky, a self-declared Soviet citizen, was both defendant as well as star witness about the “nefarious” KGB. He allegedly defected to Germany together with his wife in 1961 and after spilling the beans to the CIA was handed over to German authorities. The young man was presented as a KGB killer and spy; he confessed to having assassinated another Ukrainian émigré in the 1950s. After weeks of testimony, Stashinsky (in reality, a patsy) was condemned to only eight years in prison — for at least two assassinations! The whole affair stank to high heaven. It smelled of false flag operation.
Some reports claimed that the Bandera faction of the OUN had been backed by British MI6 since the 1930s. In any case, Banderites were associated with the CIA in the post-war for espionage in the Soviet Union. Yet American intelligence organizations too described Bandera as “extremely dangerous”, traveling around in disguise, killer, counterfeiter and political abductor. When the Bavarian government cracked down, Bandera promptly offered his services to the German BND intelligence despite the CIA’s growing mistrust of him.
I fictionalized the Bandera-Stashinsky story in the political novel, The Trojan Spy, from which the following excerpts:
Truth is elusive, many-sided. In any case, a young Ukrainian KGB agent by the name of Stashinsky was later tried in Karlsruhe and convicted for the murder of Bandera with a poison spray concocted in Moscow. They said he was an agent of “Smersh”.… A Russian acronym for Death To Spies. Once a top secret NKVD organization for its wet work. For the assassination of enemies. Killers all. Maybe they wanted to enlist him. But I doubt it. One said that during the Nazi occupation of the Ukraine, Stashinsky learned enough German to pass for a German and that he was hired by the KGB already at the age of nineteen after he was caught on a train without a ticket. All unlikely. Not KGB style. He admitted he worked in Germany…. He traveled around Germany…. He had a supervisor in Berlin…. But it’s a long jump from that to Smersh. I’ve always suspected Ukrainian émigré political opponents of Bandera’s murder. Western Ukrainian émigrés were always killing Eastern Ukrainians. With German and American help. That is, if Bandera was even murdered. He might have had a heart attack. As in a fairytale the cold-blooded assassin Stashinsky allegedly repented after he saw a newsreel in an East Berlin theater of poor Bandera lying in his coffin and his wife and children weeping. Can you imagine that touching scene? Oh, the soft heart of a KGB killer! ….Unimaginable….It’s a ridiculous story from beginning to end. Not even the stuff of mythology. Who knows what really happened? Once he got back to East Berlin after killing Bandera, the handsome young Ukrainian fell head over heels in love with a German woman … who hated the Soviet Union….When she learned Stashinsky was a KGB agent, she convinced him of the perfidy of Communism and they escaped to West Germany the day before the Wall was built. Soap opera stuff. An American story, the whole Stashinsky affair. A Reader’s Digest story. The naiveté is disgusting….
Two feature films have been made about Stepan Bandera – Assassination: An October Murder in Munich (1995) and The Undefeated (2000), both directed by Oles Yanchuk—plus a number of documentary films.
A veteran journalist, essayist, and internationally recognized novelist. His latest novel is Time of Exile (Punto Press), the third volume in his Europe Trilogy, of which the first two volumes (The Trojan Spy, Lily Pad Roll) have also been published by Punto Press. These are thrillers that have been compared to the best of John le Carré, focusing on the work of Western intelligence services, the stealthy strategy of tension, and the gradual encirclement of Russia, a topic of compelling relevance in our time. His newest novella, Words Unspoken, is available in multiple formats.
How Russia foiled an US-UK program for grooming Nazis and sending them behind Russian lines SHARE VIDEO
The CIA reports show that U.S. officials knew they were subsidizing numerous Third Reich veterans who had committed horrible crimes against humanity, but these atrocities were overlooked as the anti-Communist crusade acquired its own momentum. For Nazis who would otherwise have been charged with war crimes, signing on with American intelligence enabled them to avoid a prison term. “The real winners of the cold war were Nazi war criminals, many of whom were able to escape justice because the East and West became so rapidly focused after the war on challenging each other,” says Eli Rosenbaum, director of the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations and America’s chief Nazi hunter. Rosenbaum serves on a Clinton-appointed Interagency Working Group (IWG) committee of U.S. scholars, public officials, and former intelligence officers who helped prepare the CIA records for declassification. Many Nazi criminals “received light punishment, no punishment at all, or received compensation because Western spy agencies considered them useful assets in the cold war,” the IWG team stated after releasing 18,000 pages of redacted CIA material. (More installments are pending.) … The decision to recruit Nazi operatives had a negative impact on U.S.-Soviet relations and set the stage for Washington’s tolerance of human rights abuses and other criminal acts in the name of anti-Communism. With that fateful sub-rosa embrace, the die was cast for a litany of antidemocratic CIA interventions around the world.
As CIA describes it, Ukrainian Nationalism used to look more like a pirate boat, but with masons. As I see it, it still does.
“However, the ‘strength of these movements such as the Bandera, Melnik, and “Taras Bulba” groups were partly dissipated by righting among themselves. Their attitude towards the Soviet ‘partisans was largely hostile, although the Ukrainians did in some cases propose to the Soviet partisans neutrality so both sides would be free to fight the Germans, A, German report of August 9th, 1943, states “Fortunately, no agreement has thus far been effected between the Ukrainian nationalist and Soviet bands, On the contrary, these groups are bitter enemies, and only recently engaged in a three-day battle at Ostrog about twenty-five miles southeast of Rovno, with both sides suffering several hundred casualties.” The more important Ukrainian groups were committed to a struggle against the Germans as well as against the Soviets. The same German report states that “the Ukrainians directed their efforts exclusively against the German civil administration with the avowed purpose of bringing as much Ukrainian territory as possible under their control, They freely admitted that they had no interest whatsoever in attacking the German military and German supply lines, since before any independent Ukraine could be established the German and Soviet armies would have to destroy each other.”
“Despite the fact that the OUN (Bandera) was more aggressively chauvinistic and (in this sense) less pro-German than the OUN (Melnik), the SD concluded that the Bandera faction rep- resented less potential danger to German objectives than did the Melnik faction.’ 14. As they played with Arab nationalists, so the Germans toyed with the nationalists of the Eastern territories. By maintaining a discreet silence about what the future held in store, they permitted the leaders to believe that independence was just around the corner. At the time of the report, the SD had been told that OUN (Melnik) was British oriented and anything but sympathetic to the anti-Jewish campaign. While this policy of devious procrastination did not make for solid friendships, it did avoid stirring up dangerous enmities.* In 1942 the SD reported that the OUN (Bandera) and OUN (Melnik) were rivals which contributed greatly to the German cause.”
CIA – “STUDY OF INTELLIGENCE AND COUNTERINTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES ON THE EASTERN FRONT AND IN ADJACENT AREAS DURING WW II”
ORGANIZATIONS PERSONALITIES OF UKRAINIAN LIBERATION MOVEMENT Organizations
UVO (Ukraine’ka Viys’kova Organizatsiya, Ukrainian Military Organization) (Ukraine) Ukrain’skyy Natsional’nyy Soyuz, Ukrainian National Union (Paris). OUN (Organizatsiya Ukrain’skikh Natsionalistyy, Organization of Ukrainiin Nationalists) (Ukraine). SB (Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, Security Service of the OUN) (Ukraine). Bandera Group (Ukraine). Melnik Group (Ukraine). “Taras Bulba” (Borovets) Partisan Unit (Galicia). UPA ,(Ukrainska Povstancheska Armiya, Ukrainian Revolutionary Army) (Western Ukraine and Galicia). UNS (Ukrain’ska Natsional’na Samookhorona, Ukrainian National Self- defense) (Western Ukraine). UNRA (Ukrain’ska Natsionalna Revolutsiyna Armiya, Ukrainian National Revolutionary Army) (Eastern Ukraine). OUNRP (Organizatsiya Ulraintskoy Revolutsyynoy Partii, Organization of,Zhe Ukrainian National Revolutionary Party) (Ukraine). Hetman Movement (Ukraine). Union or the Liberation of the Ukraine (Paris). UNANKOR (Ukrainian National Cossack Movement) (Berlin). KNOD (Cozatsko Natsionalne Oposytsiyne Dvizheniye, Cossack National Opposition Movement) (Prague). UNAKOTO (Ukrainske Natsionalne Kozatske Tovarishchestvo, Ukrainian National Cossack Association) (Rumania). UKO (Ukrainska Kulturna Organizatsiya, Ukrainian Cultural Organi- zation) (Bulgaria). Ukrain’ska Sel’skokhosyayska Ob’yednannya, Ukrainian Agricultural Association (Bulgaria).
Leading Personalities of the Ukrainian Liberation Movement
Alekseyev, Konstantin — Cossack general; member, Ukrainian National Cossack Association (UNAKOTO).
Bandera, Stefan — Leading nationalist and cofounDer of OUN. Sentenced to 8 years in prison in Poland because of illegal political activities. After death of Colonel Konovalets, assumed leadership of entire OUN. Course of action taken by him within the Ukrainian liberation movement is known under the name of “Bandera Movement”; pursued his aims ruthlessly and fought simultaneously against the Soviets, Poles, and Germans. At present in protective custody.
Boroshchenko — Ukrainian writer; leading member of UPA. Borovets — Undercover name: Taras Bulba. In 194] formed a Ukrainian militia in Galicia and Volhynia to combat Bolshevist partisans and dispersed parts of the Red Army; organized the Ukrainian units into the so-called “Sich” units which were outlawed in 1943. Fled with some of his partisans into the woods and continued his fight against Bolshevists and Poles.
Galyp, Jacob — Engineer; lived in Paris and acted as liaison man between the Cossack liberation movements (KNOD) in Prague and England. Belonged to a masonic lodge.
Gulay, Diomid — Leader of Ukrainian National Cossack Association (UNAKOTO). Kapustyanskiy, Mikola — General; one of the oldest Ukrainian nationalists; belonged to the Petlyura Army after World War I; subsequently emigrated to Paris and entered Ukrainian National Union in 1921; as a good speaker and journalist propagandized nationalism among Ukrainian emigrants in Europe and the USA; cofounder of OUN.
Konovalets — Colonel; was one of the oldest and best known leaders of Ukrainian liberation movement and Ukrainian National Self- Defense (UNS); was founder and, together with Melnik, leader of OUN. Was shot in Amsterdam in 1938.
Kosenko — Leading member of “Union for the Liberation of the Ukraine” in Paris.
Lebed’, Stefan — Cover name: Vilnyy; political leader of UPA; had illegally taken active part in politics earlier and has been known as extremely radical. Attempted to gain military control of the UPA, but did not succeed. Consequent split between Lebed’ and Sukhevich was aggravated by the fact that Lebed’ got in touch with Communist partisan leader K)lpakov in order to cooperate with the Bolshevists.
Lebeda, Daria — Wife of Stefan Lebed’; had also worked politically in earlier years; was imprisoned for 5 years for illegal political activity during the Polish period.
Markotun — Ukrainian emigrant in Paris; freemason. Known as liaison man between Cossack liberation movement and England.
Milnik, Andreas — Engineer; one of the oldest members of Ukrainian resistance movement; took part in Ukrainian war of independence in 1918-20. Emigrated later to Paris and there founded, together with other famous Ukrainian nationalists, the Ukrainian National Union. Took part in unification of various groups in OUN in 1929. After death of Colonel Konovalets, was defeated by Itefan Bandera in struggle for leadership of OUN. His followers left OUN under his leadership and formed the so-called Melnik group.
Orlov, Y. N. — Ukrainian emigrant in Bulgaria, representing there the interests of national Ukrainian organization, “Khleboroby.” Main task to observe the treatment of Ukrainians shipped to Germany for forced labor.
Parashchuk, Michael — Leading member of Union for the Liberation of the Ukraine in Paris.
Proshivskiy, .0. — Ukrainian emigrant; leader of Union for the Liberation of the Ukraine in Bulgaria, and liaison man between the latter in Paris and Bulgaria.
Poltavets-Ostranitsa — Colonel; real leader of UNANKOR (Ukrainian National Cossack Movement). In spite of his pro-German attitude is known as the spokesman of British politics among Ukrainian emigrants.
Salskiy — General; leading member of Union for the Liberation of the Ukraine in Paris.
Small-Strotskiy — Leading member of Union for the Liberation of the Ukraine in Paris.
Sokolovskiy, Yuriy — Leading member of Milnik group and OUN. Was shot by followers of Bandera group in 1943.
Sukhevich, Stefan — Military leader of UPA; has taken active part in Polish politics and is suspected of participating in assassination of Pierratskis, Polish Minister of Interior. In 1939-40 stayed in training camps of German army and police in Cracow, Neuhammer, Brandenburg, and Frankfurt-Oder; later assigned in the east for partisan warfare. Was to be arrested with other Ukrainian officers because of illegal participation in the Bandera group, but succeeded in escaping at the Lemberg station and in getting in touch with Lebed’.
Sushko, Roman -? Colonel; one of the cofounders and leading members of OUN; was assassinated by members of Bandera group at the end of 1943. Was to be follower and friend of Melnik.
Udovich, Alexander — General; leading member of Union for the Liberation of the Ukraine in Paris.
Volkov — General; leading member of National-Ukrainian organization, “Khleboroby.
10+ REASONS FOR CIA TO DOUBT THE OFFICIAL NARRATIVE ON BANDERA’S DEATH
What happened after World War II in Ukraine? There was a resistance movement by Ukrainian nationalists, supported by a certain organization I know, and it lasted for years. In the ’50s, what were the Soviets doing? They were killing Ukrainian resistance leaders in West Germany, the ‘wet affairs.’ During my time there they killed two. One was Stepan Bandera.”
BONUS: GUESS WHO BECAME a prosperous US CITIZEN, INSTEAD OF BANDERA
Note to self: find out if Kissinger had to do with this too.
The CIA and “Uncle Louie”
How alleged Ukrainian war criminal Mykola Lebed ended up publishing Agency-funded propaganda in the US
Mykola Lebed was sentenced to death in Poland in 1934. He died in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1998. By various accounts, he was an assassin, a freedom fighter, a terrorist, a hero, a villain, a prisoner, a refugee, a Nazi collaborator, a Nazi target, a writer, and a war criminal. To the Central Intelligence Agency, which bankrolled his activities for close to half a century, he was known as “Uncle Louie.”
This last couple of documents were dug out by The Last American Vagabond, who, about same time as I, was doing parallel diggings on the same topic, and now we can beautifully complete each other.
Bander and Lebed’s successor. Kept the line. SOURCE
ORGANIZATIONS, PERSONALITIES OF UKRAINIAN LIBERATION MOVEMENT
Document Type: CREST [1] Collection: General CIA Records [2]Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-00809A000600330323-6 Source
As a history scholar, I’m extremely happy with this recent finding, it’s worth every minute and more! And it has everything to do with this report, proving the Banderites were just the beginning of something that evolved into a standard operation for the US Government. Sometimes it feels like the US employed more Nazis than Nazi Germany. Needs urgent denazification maybe.
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! Articles can always be subject of later editing as a way of perfecting them
Everything you didn’t like about Pentagon’s DARPA, CIA’s In-Q-Tel, and more, but with funds stolen from Queen’s subjects and European peasantry. The business of high-tech slavery is the future and the future is now! Advanced by slave work of course.
UK to host world-leading Nato Defence Innovation Headquarters
The UK will partner with Estonia on the Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) programme to maintain NATO’s technological edge.
The United Kingdom, in partnership with Estonia, will host the European HQ of a programme for NATO allies to accelerate, test, evaluate and validate new technologies that address critical defence challenges and contribute to Alliance deterrence.
Announced today by the NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, the Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) will see transatlantic cooperation on critical technologies and help NATO work more closely with industry and academia.
The UK’s accelerator will be twinned with a new accelerator in Tallinn, Estonia to encourage the sharing of expertise, explore the use of virtual sites to trial vehicles, including autonomous ones, and test cyber innovations.
As hosts, the UK and Estonia will:
Support start-up companies with funding, guidance and business expertise through twinned accelerator networks.
Offer the use of ‘deep tech’ test centres to assess technological solutions to military problems, utilising the Defence BattleLab.
Work with NATO to develop a virtual marketplace to connect start-ups with trusted investors, as well as a rapid acquisition service to connect products to buyers at pace.
UK Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace said:
The UK and Estonia are two of the most innovative countries in NATO and our hosting of DIANA will harness that innovation for the benefit of all Allies tackling future military threats.
The UK has a vibrant tech community, combining the academia, financiers, and high-tech start-ups that make it an ideal place to develop the next generation of military technologies.
Estonia was the natural partner for the UK given its international leadership in cyber, autonomy and AI, and our close partnership forged through the Enhanced Forward Presence.
Ranked in the world’s top ten innovative universities, Imperial College London will bring together academia, industry and government by hosting the headquarters of DIANA and a DIANA Accelerator at the Innovation Hub (IHUB) in the White City Innovation District, in a space shared with the UK’s Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA), Major Defence Contractors and The US Department of Defence’s Tri-Service Office.
Supported by DASA, the UK and Estonia DIANA HQ is expected to be operational from July 2022. DIANA is essential to delivering the NATO 2030 vision and ensuring that the Alliance develops the military capabilities needed to deter and defend against existing and future threats.
Estonian Defence Minister, Kalle Laanet.
The goal of DIANA is to support deep technologies companies that contribute to defence. It will bring together talented innovators with new technologies end-users in the area of defence. We are very glad to see that the good cooperation we have with the UK will expand even further and also encompass our universities and private sector more,
Cooperation between the UK and Estonia is working well on every level because we have a common understanding of defence policy. Good relations with Allies is a cornerstone of Estonian defence policy, and a successful start to this programme for us is a sign that this cornerstone is strong.
Co- Director, Institute for Security Science and Technology, Imperial College London, Professor Deeph Chana, said:
As one of the top STEM-B universities in the world, in one of the most diverse cities, Imperial College London is uniquely placed to power a progressive, responsible and holistic dual-use security and defence technology innovation program by hosting DIANA. Coordinated through our Institute for Security Science and Technology and Business School we’re committed to working on disruptive research and innovation to reduce insecurity and to deal with global threats and challenges.
DIANA will support all seven of the key emerging and disruptive technologies that NATO has identified as priorities: artificial intelligence, big-data processing, quantum-enabled technologies, autonomy, biotechnology, hypersonics and space.
🇪🇪 and 🇬🇧 are set to create the European HQ of #DIANA, @NATO's defence innovation accelerator. #Estonia will also host a NATO startup accelerator.
This will: ➡️support deep tech defence companies; ➡️link up innovation sites; ➡️strengthen the transatlantic innovation community. https://t.co/bCXKPfHssQ
Estonia chosen as one of the initiators of the NATO DIANA future technologies programme
5. April 2022 – 19:13
At the NATO summit last June in Brussels, NATO leaders decided to create an innovation accelerator – the DIANA (Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic) programme will allow Allies to join their strengths in developing and adopting new and breakthrough technologies in the area of security and defence.
In cooperation between the Estonian ministries of defence, foreign affairs, and economic affairs and communication, Estonia and the United Kingdom submitted a bid for the programme, which was approved in full at the proposal of the NATO Secretary General. Together with the UK, Estonia is set to create the DIANA European headquarters, a NATO start-up accelerator will be founded in Estonia, and several existing testing sites for new technologies will be added to the DIANA accelerator network.
“The goal of DIANA is to support deep technologies companies that contribute to defence. It will bring together talented innovators with new technologies end-users in the area of defence. We are very glad to see that the good cooperation we have with the UK will expand even further and also encompass our universities and private sector more,” commented Minister of Defence Kalle Laanet. “Cooperation between the UK and Estonia is working well on every level because we have a common understanding of defence policy. Good relations with Allies is a cornerstone of Estonian defence policy, and a successful start to this programme for us is a sign that this cornerstone is strong.”
“Estonia and the UK are two of the most innovative nations in the Alliance, hosting respectively the most unicorn firms per capita, and the most unicorns in total. With Estonia’s impressive leadership in cyber, autonomy and AI, and the close partnership forged through our enhanced Forward Presence (eFP), they were a natural partner for the UK on this important initiative,” said UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace.
“Trust in this Estonian initiative is a sign of our good reputation in creating favourable ecosystems for start-up innovation and developing new technologies. The fact that DIANA will be launched both in Estonia and the UK is an example of cooperation at work – both domestically between ministries, universities and the private sector, as well as across borders,” added Minister of Foreign Affairs Eva-Maria Liimets.
DIANA is a highly ambitious cooperation format that will bring together civil and military experts to develop and implement dual-use technologies in member states as well as across the transatlantic Alliance.
In addition, Estonia will participate at the negotiations for the founding of a NATO innovation fund. The objective of the fund is to support dual-use deep technology start-ups with investments, by offering trusted capital and creating additional opportunities for growth. States that have decided to join the fund will formalise the agreement at the NATO summit set to take place at the end of June.
Going forward, Estonia will continue preparations for the launch of the DIANA programme in 2023.
NATO, the intergovernmental defence alliance between 30 European and North American countries, launches a €1B fund and an accelerator targeting deeptech startups in the defence sector. The goal is to leverage the innovation capabilities of startups to develop the next generation of war machines. Part of NATO 2030, the move follows a period of concern for Alliance leaders regarding China’s increased reliance on tech for its military strategy.
At the end of two virtual meetings in early June, Foreign and Defence ministers agreed on the need to reinforce the transatlantic defence partnership between Europe and North America amid intensifying global competition. “We need to sharpen our technological edge (…) We see that new and disruptive technologies, such as autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, and big data are really changing the way our militaries are going to operate in the future,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said.
Planning to stay ahead of the curve is particularly important, as China has been investing heavily in new technologies to strengthen its military power and fuel its ambition to become a leader in the use of AI. The defence accelerator is also a recognition from European and North American leaders of the prevalence of disruptive technologies – and a decision to harness their unique potential to strengthen common defence strategies.
How startups benefit from NATO’s initiative
For startups, this will be an opportunity to work together with the government sector and academia towards accelerating the achievement of national security and transatlantic collaboration goals. “Sometimes a technology company may not realize that their product could be viable for the defence community,” David van Weel said. Startups will also benefit from entering a network of stakeholders that can help them develop and get funded.
DIANA will be supporting startups working on either of the seven key emerging and disruptive technologies (EDTs) that NATO deems critical for the future: AI, big-data processing, quantum-enabled tech, autonomy, biotechnology, hypersonics, and space.
The accelerator includes a trusted capital marketplace that will enable funding opportunities for companies by connecting them to pre-qualified investors. Additionally, startups will receive support through a venture capital fund. The NATO Innovation Fund has been set up to support companies developing dual-use and key tech that could serve the Alliance. The fund will be an opt-in for member countries and would be underwritten by about €70M per year. Van Weel added that NATO would be looking for a partner from the private sector to help run the daily business operations of the fund.
DIANA is unique to NATO’s innovation efforts in that it has been built with the needs of the startup community in mind. It specifically targets early-stage startups rather than larger companies and traditional defence firms, in order to harness their unique ability for innovation.
IF YOU’RE NAIVE ENOUGH TO THINK THIS IS ABOUT DEFENSE, AND NOT THE INSANE DAVOS TRANSHUMANIST AGENDA…
… I will bring to your attention the fact that NATO has already adopted its own “Agenda 2030”, titled “NATO 2030”, and both of these are just “The Great Reset for Different Niches of Dummies” in their specific lingo. That’s all they are. Proportionally, “NATO 2030” talks about climate change about as much as “The Great Reset”.
Also note how NATO presents itself more and more as a business accelerator. Transhumanist businesses with a multinational army funded by half a billion unsuspecting dupes and NPCs in NATO countries and beyond. What could go wrong, right?
NATO hopes to launch new defense tech accelerator by 2023
Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg gives press conference at the NATO summit in Brussels on June 14, 2021. (Photo by FREDERIC SIERAKOWSKI/BELGA MAG/AFP via Getty Images)
STUTTGART, Germany — In less than two years, NATO hopes to have its own, modified version of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) up and running.
Alliance members agreed at the 31st annual summit, held June 14 in Brussels, to launch a new initiative dubbed the Defence Innovation Accelerator of the North Atlantic, or DIANA, meant to speed up trans-Atlantic cooperation on critical technologies, and help NATO work more closely with private-sector entities, academia and other non-governmental entities.
The goal is to have DIANA reach initial operating capability (IOC) by 2023, David van Weel, assistant secretary-general for emerging security challenges, said at a Tuesday virtual roundtable with reporters. By next year, the hope is to have “the initial parts … starting to come up into fruition,” he added.
In the long term, DIANA will have headquarters both in North America and in Europe, and link to existing test centers throughout NATO member countries that will be used for “validating, testing, and co-designing applications in the field of emerging and disruptive technologies,” van Weel said. DIANA will also be responsible for building and managing a network meant to help relevant startups grow and support NATO’s technology needs via grant programs.
The focus will be on national security and defense purposes, and DIANA will not ask for or solicit companies’ intellectual property, van Weel noted.
While he singled out artificial intelligence, big-data processing, and quantum-enabled technologies, DIANA is meant to support all seven of the key emerging and disruptive technologies — or EDTs — that NATO has identified as critical for the future. The other four include: autonomy, biotechnology, hypersonics and space.
Sometimes a technology company may not realize that their product could be viable for the defense community, he added.
One key component of DIANA will be a trusted capital marketplace, where smaller companies can connect with pre-qualified investors who are interested in supporting NATO’s technology efforts. Ensuring that investors are vetted ahead of time will allow NATO to ensure “that the technology will be protected from illicit transfers,” van Weel said.
Members also agreed for the first time to build up a venture capital fund to support companies developing dual-use and key technologies that could be useful to NATO, and which will be optional for member-nations to participate in. The NATO Innovation Fund, as it’s called, would have a running time of about 15 years to start, and would be underwritten by about 70 million euro (about $83 million) per year, per van Weel.
The goal is not for NATO headquarters or for its member-nations to run the innovation fund, he noted. “The actual running of a venture capital fund, we believe, should be done by companies that have a broad range of experience in the field.” He cited the U.S.-based capital venture firm In-Q-Tel as an example of the type of partner NATO would seek to run the “day-to-day” business of the fund.
“I read somewhere that NATO is not a bank—we’re not,” van Weel said. “But it will be the nations providing the funds, and giving the general direction.”
These two initiatives of a technology accelerator and innovation fund are “hopefully going to … bring the alliance forward into the 21st century,” van Weel said.
NATO has previously invested in information technology (IT) and software through the NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA), but the difference with the innovation fund, and DIANA, is that the alliance wants to better connect with early-stage startups, rather than larger software companies or traditional defense firms, van Weel said.
“DIANA is not about taking over innovation for the NATO enterprise,” he said. “It’s a different community, and requires different funding mechanisms and different types of engagement.”
But it is still early days. While the IOC goal is 2023, “step one is we want to know from allies what they want to offer to DIANA,” van Weel said. Once the NATO Innovation Fund has its participating members, for example, a charter will be set up that will lay out the funding models, rapid contracting processes, and leadership guidelines.
“We are trying to do this as fast as we can,” van Weel assured, but then noted, “we do want to get it right, because … with the startup community, you only get one chance.”
If you want to deepen your understanding of the situation and the context here, also read:
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! Articles can always be subject of later editing as a way of perfecting them
Right off the bat, as this stuff is self-explanatory:
Bogdan Boutkevitch: “We don’t need to understand the Donbas, we need to understand Ukrainian national interests. Donbas must be exploited as a resource, which it is.” “At least 1.5 million people are superfluous”. “No matter how cruel it may sound, there is a certain category of people who must be exterminated.” From WIKIPEDIA: “According to the interim financial report Hromadske TV was funded in 2013 by the Netherlands Embassy (793,089 Ukrainian hryvnias, -₴-), the US Embassy (399,650 ₴) and by George Soros’ International Renaissance Foundation (247,860).[16] By June 2014 Hromadske TV had received another 558,842₴ from the Government of Canada, 394,181₴ from the Fritt Ord Foundation, 287,898₴ from the Embassy of the United States, Kyiv, 207,402₴ from an auction organized by ‘Dukat’ (the Auction House) and 1,875,180₴ from individual contributors.”
Exactly one year before the Ukraine “invasion”, Grayzone obtained hard evidence that Reuters, BBC, Bellingcat and Zinc acted as intelligence operatives for UK against Russia. I don’t know how such activities are regarded by laws, national or international, but in my books, by common sense criteria, the hostility of their plan is nothing short of war. Same UK intelligence is most likely behind the Bucha false flag one year later.
The Military BioTech Complex and its media extensions deployed everything they could to suppress this story, but their efforts backfired, to an extent. However, it deserves a new life now, I hope my readers will share it. Here’s a video detailing the aftermath of the leak:
The Rothschilds may have sold Reuters, but BBC is still under the Crown veto (yeah, the Queen can veto and censor any of their content, with or without explanations) and the Crown is still under the Rothschilds.
… and when you say “IMF”, you say “The Rothschilds & Proxies”. Most countries have gone through this IMF / World Bank ransacking process that turned them into Rothschild dominions. That’s also why it was so easy for the IMF / WB to align so many countries behind the Scamdemic / Great Reset con job.
Left’s pet Nazis, Jewish-funded Azov Battalion allied Russian Nazis against White Replacement SHARE IT
Below you have the full webinar. These guys are German Jewish Ukraine-fanboy WEF types and they always try to spin the facts they present, but they give out some good stuff in the process and an intelligent and informed listener can weed out the BS and extract more value than I did in my little video edit.
The Ukrainian oligarch whom the Biden administration banned from the United States this month previously had overlapping financial interests with President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, according to government documents and earlier news reports.
Igor Kolomoisky, a Ukrainian billionaire known for hardball actions against competing companies, is a former government official in Ukraine and also used to be an owner of one of that nation’s largest financial institutions, PrivatBank.
Last year, under the Trump administration, as the Justice Department investigated Kolomoisky’s U.S. assets, the FBI raided Optima Management Group, a U.S. real estate company that Kolomoisky has a stake in.
The Biden administration has cranked matters up, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken announcing March 6 that the U.S. would freeze Kolomoisky’s U.S. assets and ban him from reentering the country.
Moving against Kolomoisky could indicate the Biden administration won’t take the political risk of interfering in legal matters that could lead back to the younger Biden, said Peter Flaherty, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative government watchdog group.
“The investigation into Kolomoisky proves that the administration isn’t just going to make this [investigation] go away, and that is a good thing,” Flaherty told The Daily Signal in a statement.
Flaherty said it is “almost impossible” to operate in Ukraine’s business environment without the oligarch. Still, Flaherty said, he has not seen evidence that Hunter Biden and Kolomoisky directly met.
“Clearly, their interests overlapped,” Flaherty said. “Even if there was not conspiracy or coordination between the two, Hunter was clearly in Kolomoisky’s web.”
Government records also refer to Kolomoisky as Kolomoyskyy. These records spell his first name as Ihor, but many media reports refer to him as Igor.
Connections at a Glance
Among the indirect connections between Kolomoisky and the younger Biden:
Kolomoisky had a “controlling interest” in Burisma Holdings, the New York Post reported. Burisma employed Hunter Biden as a board member for a widely reported salary of $50,000 per month. Russian media, quoted in State Department emails, referred to Burisma as “part of Kolomoisky’s financial empire.”
Kolomoisky publicly said in 2019 that he refused to cooperate with efforts by President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to get his help in investigating Hunter Biden and Burisma—and potentially Joe Biden, multiplenews outlets reported. House Democrats’ impeachment report on Trump also cited the incident in late 2019.
Emails from 2015, published last year by the New York Post, show a Kolomoisky protegecommunicated with Hunter Biden about a meeting between the protege and Joe Biden, then vice president under President Barack Obama.
Court filings from 2019 by a private investigatory firm allege that legally obtained bank records of Hunter Biden show payments to him from the Kolomoisky-owned PrivatBank.
Kolomoisky’s U.S.-based lawyer, Michael Sullivan of the Ashcroft Law Firm, did not respond to phone and email inquiries from The Daily Signal about this report.
Ukrainian billionaire Igor Kolomoisky speaks March 2015 during a Ukrainian Football Federation session in Kyiv. (Photo: Vladyslav Musienko/UNIAN/AFP/Getty Images)
Kolomoisky used to run PrivatBank, a major Ukrainian financial institution, which reportedly had a controlling interest in Burisma Holdings, which employed the younger Biden.
Other media outlets have questioned whether PrivatBank had a stake in Burisma.
In 2016, Ukraine nationalized PrivatBank from Kolomoisky and his business partner, Gennadiy Boholiubov.
A U.S. Justice Department civil forfeiture complaint from December said the two men “embezzled and defrauded the bank of billions of dollars.” The complaint, the third filed that year against Kolomoisky’s U.S. associates, alleges that money used by the associates to buy commercial real estate in Cleveland was acquired using funds misappropriated from PrivatBank.
Emails of Interest
Kolomoisky’s financial interests in the United States had a detrimental impact on several American communities, according to a detailed report from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published in September.
After Ukraine took over PrivatBank, Kolomoisky self-exiled in Switzerland and later moved to Israel before returning to Ukraine, according to The New York Times.
State Department emails from 2015 between State Department officials and officials in the office of then-Vice President Biden refer to a Russian media outlet that called Hunter Biden an employee of “Burisma Holdings, part of Kolomoisky’s financial empire.”
The emails were obtained last year by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, which investigated Burisma.
Separate emails published in the New York Post in October indicate that Hunter Biden introduced—or wanted to introduce—his father to Burisma’s No. 3 official, Vadym Pozharskyi, whom the newspaper identified as a “fixer” for Kolomoisky.
An email from Pozharskyi to the younger Biden in April 2015 reportedly said: “Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure.”
The talk of a meeting between Joe Biden and Pozharskyi occurred before Biden, as vice president, pressured Ukrainian officials with the loss of a $1 billion U.S. loan if they didn’t fire a chief prosecutor who said he was investigating Burisma for corruption.
Kolomoisky’s former bank, PrivatBank, also came up in court filings in a 2019 lawsuit involving Hunter Biden in Arkansas.
D&A Investigations, a private firm, said it legally obtained Hunter Biden’s bank records showing payments from Kolomoisky’s PrivatBank, among others, Fox News reported.
The firm’s court filing says bank records “provide the source and destination bank account numbers of Burisma Holdings Limited, PrivatBank, Bank of China, [Hunter Biden’s] business partners, Rosemont Seneca Bohai,” and others.
Hunter Biden’s legal team denied the unverified claim and decried a “scheme by a nonparty simply to make scandalous allegations in the pending suit to gain media attention without any material or pertinent material.”
Kolomoisky is a citizen of Israel and Cyprus as well as Ukraine. With a net worth of $1.2 billion, he deploys a private army for business interests and also has used the thousands of fighters to go after Russian separatists at war in Ukraine.
In June 2014, someone set a large fire at a Lisichansk refinery owned by Rosneft, a company owned by Russia. Some Russians reportedly suspected that Kolomoisky’s army started the fire to increase his share of the energy market, according to Russian media. No formal charges were brought.
‘Corrupt Acts’
Blinken said the U.S. sanctions reflect Kolomoisky’s tenure in public office in Ukraine.
“In his official capacity as a governor of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk Oblast from 2014 to 2015, Kolomoyskyy was involved in corrupt acts that undermined rule of law and the Ukrainian public’s faith in their government’s democratic institutions and public processes, including using his political influence and official power for his personal benefit,” the secretary of state said in his March 6 public statement, adding:
While this designation is based on acts during his time in office, I also want to express concern about Kolomoyskyy’s current and ongoing efforts to undermine Ukraine’s democratic processes and institutions, which pose a serious threat to its future.
This designation is made under Section 7031(c) of the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2020.
In addition to Ihor Kolomoyskyy, I am publicly designating the following members of Ihor Kolomoyskyy’s immediate family: his wife, Iryna Kolomoyska, his daughter, Angelika Kolomoyska, and his son, Israel Zvi Kolomoyskyy. This action renders Ihor Kolomoyskyy and each of these members of his immediate family ineligible for entry into the United States.
In May 2019, Kolomoisky had his own bombshell for Ukrainian media, months before a U.S. scandal broke that led to Trump’s first impeachment over a phone call with Zelenskyy.
Kolomoisky told Ukrainian media that Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman visited him to “demand” that he set up a meeting between Zelenskyy and Giuliani, Trump’s onetime lawyer and a former New York mayor. At the time, the two men worked for Giuliani.
“A big scandal may break out, and not only in Ukraine, but in the United States,” Kolomoisky reportedly said. “That is, it may turn out to be a clear conspiracy against [Joe] Biden.”
Presidential Distance
In a tweet that perhaps didn’t age well, Giuliani went after Kolomoisky and defended Parnas and Fruman, who later were charged with breaking campaign finance laws in the United States.
The incident in which Kolomoisky declined to help Giuliani’s associates also was detailed in the “Trump-Ukraine Impeachment Inquiry Report” issued in December 2019 by Democrats on the House Select Committee on Intelligence.
A law enforcement agency in Latvia launched an investigation into Burisma and $16.6 million allegedly routed to the energy producer through PrivatBank from companies in Belize and the United Kingdom between 2012 and 2015, Just The News reported in September. The Latvian agency is called the Office for the Prevention of Laundering of Proceeds Derived from Criminal Activity.
Since becoming president Jan. 20, Biden has kept his distance from Ukraine and reportedly has not made a call to Zelenskyy.
In the July 25, 2019, phone call between Trump and Zelenskyy, the two leaders talked about the fired Ukrainian prosecutor who had been investigating Burisma, and the possible role Joe Biden played in that firing.
They also discussed U.S. security aid to Ukraine. That phone call became the predicate for the Democrat-controlled House to impeach Trump in late 2019 on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The Republican-controlled Senate acquitted Trump of the charges in early 2020.
“Less well known, but potentially more sinister, are Pozharskyi’s reported ties — by way of his position with Burisma — to Ukraine’s most thuggish billionaire, the larger-than-life Kolomoisky.
In 2015, veteran Russian writer and investigator John Helmer, author of “The Man Who Knows Too Much About Russia,” suggested that Zlochevsky and Pozharskyi were front men for Kolomoisky at Burisma.
He is not the type of “businessman” the Bidens would want to be associated with, said one Ukraine expert. In August, the U.S. Justice Department accused Kolomoisky of robbing billions from the PrivatGroup bank he owned and using the many companies he has all over the world, including the U.S., to launder it.
The Bond villain-like Kolomoisky, 57, reportedly kept a live shark in a huge tank in his office to intimidate visitors, and once called the 5-foot-7 Russian President Vladimir Putin a “schizophrenic dwarf.”
But his bloodthirstiness reportedly matched his bravado. He crushed Russian separatists with his own private armies, according to numerous Ukrainian and international media reports, and he allegedly ordered contract killings, including a hit on a Ukrainian lawyer as well as the murders of gang members involved in the hit, the Daily Beast reported.
Some of the allegations surfaced in UK court proceedings in a case ultimately settled out of court, the Telegraph reported.
Kolomoisky has never been charged with murder. He has refuted such allegations and also denied involvement with Burisma. Mike Sullivan, a U.S.-based attorney for Kolomoisky, did not return phone calls or emails from The Post.
He has three nationalities — Ukrainian, Cypriot and Israeli — and is reportedly worth about $1.2 billion. He backed the election last year of Ukraine’s current president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a TV comedian known for, among other things, playing the piano with his penis.
“Kolomoisky was a known thug in his business practices and his organizing of armed militias,” Russ Bellant, an expert on Ukraine and the author of “Old Nazis, the New Right and the Republican Party,” told The Post.
Bellant, Helmer and writer Richard Smith have said that Kolomoisky’s shady Privat Group may have owned some or part of Burisma, though no one has proven it.
Earlier this year Bellant went so far as to refer to Kolomoisky as the head of Burisma in an essay.
He said he was writing about the Bidens and Ukraine as a way to “unburden myself and tell this to those who care about the election.” – NY Post
Also, keep in mind this quote from the Daily Beast, it will tie into later revelations about media manipulations and psyops:
Last fall, something funny happened in Washington: A pair of American lobbyists put on a fake congressional hearing in the basement of the Capitol, accusing a former Ukrainian central banker of odious corruption. A Ukrainian TV station broadcast the event there, claiming it was evidence that the United States Congress was investigating the accusations (they weren’t). The apparent sponsor of the hearing was a Ukrainian oligarch named Ihor Kolomoisky, whose bank was nationalized by the banker. Kolomoisky, who sicced his own private army on the Russians after they invaded eastern Ukraine, has been accused of sponsoring contract killings.
Zelensky’s offshores, shell companies and connections exposed by Politico UK
A note added to this article years after publication re-frames it as partly satirical. You know, sugar-coating truth-bombs to make them look like kids stuff. But follow the links included, do some research and find out how much of this is factual. READ HERE
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says Ukraine can have Nazis, even though its president is Jewish, since, he claims, Adolf Hitler had Jewish ancestry.
“The fact that Zelensky is Jewish does not negate the Nazi elements in Ukraine. I believe that Hitler also had Jewish blood,” Lavrov said in an interview with Italian news channel Zona Bianca.
Russia has claimed it aims to “denazify” Ukraine. Russian forces have slaughtered civilians and destroyed cities during their invasion, in what Ukrainian leaders, including Zelensky, have called a genocide and compared to the Holocaust.
In his message, Barabash explains that the injuries he sustained from Russian attacks make it difficult for him to speak, so he asked his comrade to speak on behalf of the Ukrainian Jews holding out at the Azovstal steel mill.
“We have always been united by the history of two horrific tragedies, but now we must continue our struggle, defending our land and our country,” said Barabash.
“As Ukraine never turned its back on the Jewish people, so Israel must now stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Ukrainians, against Russian invaders, who have brought forth a new tragedy.”
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! Articles can always be subject of later editing as a way of perfecting them
Sometimes my memes are 3D. And you can own them. Or send them to someone. You can even eat some of them. CLICK HERE
“I have pondered for years, how they [Carlyle Group] achieved this unbelievable performance during their private equity years. Part of the answer had to be in Carlyle’s connections. Over the years, they hired former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, George HW Bush, James Baker, John Major (former British Prime Minister) and numerous others. “
The biggest private investor in the world, deeply entrenched in the weapons’ sector, is a discreet group that cultivates dealings with influential men, including Bush father and son.
One year ago, May 1, 2003, George Bush, strapped up in a fighter pilot’s suit, landed on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham-Lincoln along the coast of California. The image became famous. Under a banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished”, the president prematurely announced the end of military operations in Iraq and his victory. Back on dry land the next day, he made another martial speech, not far from San Diego, in a United Defense Industries’ weapons factory.
This company is one of the Pentagon’s main suppliers. It manufactures, among other things, missiles, transport vehicles, and the light Bradley armored vehicle. Its main shareholder is the biggest private investor in the world, a discreet group, called Carlyle.
It’s not listed on the stock market and doesn’t have to show its accounts to any but its 550 investors- billionaires or pension funds. Carlyle manages eighteen billion dollars today, invested in defense and high tech (notably biotech), space, security-linked information technology, nanotechnologies, and telecommunications. The companies it controls share the characteristic that their main customers are governments and administrations. As the company wrote in its brochure: “We invest in the opportunities created in industries strongly affected by changes in government policy.”
Carlyle is a unique model, assembled at the planetary level on the capitalism of relationships or “capitalism of access” to use the 1993 expression of the American magazine New Republic. Today, in spite of its denials, the group incarnates the “military-industrial complex” against which Republican President Dwight Eisenhower warned the American people when he left office in 1961.
That didn’t prevent George Bush senior from occupying a position as consultant to Carlyle for the ten years ending October 2003. It was the first time in United States’ history that a former president worked for a Pentagon supplier. His son, George W. Bush, also knows Carlyle well. The group found him a job in February 1990, while his father occupied the White House: administrator for Caterair, a Texas company specialized in aerial catering. The episode does not figure in the president’s official biography. When George W. Bush left Caterair in 1994, before becoming Governor of Texas, the company was in bad shape.
“It’s not possible to get closer to the administration than Carlyle is,” asserts Charles Lewis, Director of the Center for Public Integrity, a non-partisan organization in Washington. “George Bush senior earned money from private interests that worked for the government of which his son was president. You could even say that the president could one day profit financially, through his father’s investments, from the political decisions he himself took,” he adds.
The collection of influential characters who now work, have worked, or have invested in the group would make the most convinced conspiracy theorists incredulous. They include among others, John Major, former British Prime Minister; Fidel Ramos, former Philippines President; Park Tae Joon, former South Korean Prime Minister; Saudi Prince Al-Walid; Colin Powell, the present Secretary of State; James Baker III, former Secretary of State; Caspar Weinberger, former Defense Secretary; Richard Darman, former White House Budget Director; the billionaire George Soros, and even some bin Laden family members. You can add Alice Albright, daughter of Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State; Arthur Lewitt, former SEC head; William Kennard, former head of the FCC, to this list. Finally, add in the Europeans: Karl Otto Poehl, former Bundesbank president; the now-deceased Henri Martre, who was president of Aerospatiale; and Etienne Davignon, former president of the Belgian Generale Holding Company.
Le Monde – April 29, 2004
Carlyle isn’t only a collection of power people. It maintains holdings in close to 200 companies and, above all, provides returns on its investments that have exceeded 30 % for a decade. “Compared to the five hundred people we employ in the world, the number of former statesmen is quite small, a dozen at most,” explains Christopher Ullmann, Carlyle Vice-President for communication. “We’re accused of every wrong, but no one has ever brought proof of any kind of misappropriation. No legal proceeding has ever been brought against us. We’re a handy target for whoever wants to take shots at the American government and the president.”
Carlyle was created in 1987 in the salons of the New York eponymous palace, with five million dollars. Its founders, four lawyers, including David Rubenstein (a former Jimmy Carter advisor), had the -limited- ambition at the time of profiting from a flaw in fiscal legislation that authorized companies owned by Eskimos in Alaska to give their losses to profitable companies that would thus pay reduced taxes. The group vegetated until January 1989 and the arrival at its helm of the man who would invent the Carlyle system, Frank Carlucci. Former Assistant Director of the CIA, National Security Advisor, then Ronald Reagan’s Defense Secretary, Mr. Carlucci counted in Washington. He is one of current Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s closest friends. They were roommates as students at Princeton together. Later, their paths crossed in several administrations and they even worked for a time at the same company, Sears Roebuck.
Six days after officially quitting the Pentagon, January 6, 1989, Frank Carlucci became Carlyle’s Director General. He brought trusted lieutenants from the CIA, the State Department, and the Defense Department with him. Nicknamed “Mr. Clean”, Frank Carlucci has a sulfurous reputation.
This diplomat was posted during the 1970s to countries such as South Africa, the Congo, Tanzania, and Portugal, where the United States and the CIA had played a questionable political role. He was the number two at the American embassy in the Belgian Congo in 1961 and was suspected of being implicated in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. He has always firmly denied it. The American press has also accused him of being implicated in several cases of arms trafficking in the 1980s, but he has never been prosecuted. For a while, he directed Wackenhut, a security company with a hateful reputation, implicated in one of the biggest espionage scandals ever, the hijacking of Promise software. Frank Carlucci had the mission of cleaning up after the Iran-Contra affair in the Reagan administration and he succeeded John Pointdexter as National Security Advisor. As he took over his new position, he chose a young general to be his assistant… Colin Powell.
Frank Carlucci’s name attracted capital to Carlyle. In October 1990, the group took over BDM International, which participated in the “Star Wars” Program and constituted a bridgehead to it. In 1992, Frank Carlucci allied himself with the French group Thomson-CSF to take over LTV’s aerospace division. The operation failed, Congress opposing the sale to a foreign group. Carlyle found other associates, Loral and Northrop, and got hold of LTV Aerospace, quickly renamed Vought Aircraft, which contributed to the manufacture of the B1 and B2 bombers.
At the same time, the fund was multiplying its strategic acquisitions, such as Magnavox Electronic Systems, a pioneer in radar imagery, and DGE, which owns the technology for cruise missile electronic relief maps.
Three companies specializing in nuclear, chemical, and biological decontamination (Magnetek, IT Group and EG & G Technical Services) followed. Then, through BDM International, a firm linked to the CIA, Carlyle acquired Vinnell, which was among the first companies to supply the American army and its allies with private contractors, i.e. mercenaries. Vinnell’s mercenaries train the Saudi armed forces and protect King Fahd. During the first Gulf War, they fought alongside Saudi troops. In 1997, Carlyle sold BDM and Vinnell, which had become too dangerous. The group didn’t need it any more. It had become the Pentagon’s eleventh biggest supplier by gaining control of United Defense Industries that same year.
Carlyle emerged from the shadows in spite of itself on September 11, 2001. That day, the group had organized a meeting at Washington’s Ritz Carlton Hotel with five hundred of its largest investors. Frank Carlucci and James Baker III played masters of ceremony. George Bush senior made a lightning appearance at the beginning of the day. The presentation was quickly interrupted, but one detail escaped no one. One of the guests wore the name bin Laden on his badge. It was Shafiq bin Laden, one of Osama’s many brothers. The American media discovered Carlyle. One journalist, Dan Briody, wrote a book about the group’s hidden side, “The Iron Triangle”, and takes an interest in the close relations between the Bush clan and the Saudi leadership.
Some ask about George Bush senior’s influence on American foreign policy.
In January 2001, while George Bush junior was breaking off negotiations over missiles with North Korea, the dismayed South Koreans intervened with his father. Carlyle has important interests in Seoul. In June 2001, Washington resumed discussions with Pyongyang.
Another example: in July 2001, according to the New York Times, George Bush senior telephoned Saudi Prince Abdullah who was unhappy with the positions the president took on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. George Bush senior reassured the prince that his son “is doing good things” and “has his heart in the right place.”
Larry Klayman, Director of Judicial Watch, a resolutely conservative organization, demands that “the president’s father resign from Carlyle. The group has conflicts of interest that can create problems for American foreign policy.” Finally, in October 2003, George Bush senior leaves Carlyle, officially because he’s nearing eighty years old.
It doesn’t matter that Carlyle put an end to all relations with the bin Laden family in October 2001; the evil was already done. The group, along with Halliburton, has become the target of Bush administration opponents.
“Carlyle has replaced the Trilateral Commission in conspiracy theories,” David Rubenstein acknowledged in a 2003 Washington Post interview. For the first time, the group put someone in charge of communications and changed its boss. Frank Carlucci became honorary president and Lou Gerstner, a respected executive who saved IBM, officially took the reins.
That operation seems mostly cosmetic. Mr. Gerstner doesn’t spend much time in his office; but Carlyle wants to become respectable.
The Group has created an Internet site. It has opened certain funds to investors bringing “only” 250,000 dollars (210,000 euros). It will have reduced its holdings in United Defense Industries, and asserts that defense and aeronautics represent no more than 15 % of its investments.
However, Carlyle continues to make intensive use of fiscal havens and it’s difficult to know the names of the companies it controls or its perimeter.
Carlyle is also increasing its efforts in Europe. In September 2001, it took control of the Swedish weapons manufacturer Bofors through United Defense. Subsequently, it tried, unsuccessfully, to take over Thales Information Systems and, in the beginning of 2003, to acquire those parts of France Telecom that are in Eutelsat, which plays an important role in the European Positioning System by Galileo satellite – a competitor of the American GPS. From 1999 to 2002, it managed a holding in Le Figaro. In Italy, it made a breakthrough, by taking up Fiat’s aeronautics subsidiary, Fiat Avio. This company is a supplier to Arianespace and allows Carlyle to be part of the European Rocket Council. In another coup in December 2002, Carlyle bought a third of Qinetic, the private subsidiary of the British military’s Research and Development Center. Qinetic occupies a unique advisory role with the British government.
“To anticipate the technologies of the future and the enterprises which will develop them is our first role as an investor. Pension funds bring us their money for that. You can’t blame us for trying to take strategic positions,” Mr. Ullmann stresses.
Translation: t r u t h o u t French language correspondent Leslie Thatcher.
Sale of a Stake in QinetiQ PLC to The Carlyle Group
2002-014
London – The Ministry of Defence has agreed the terms under which The Carlyle Group will become its strategic partner to assist in the future development of QinetiQ, Defence Minister Lewis Moonie announced today.
Dr Moonie said: “The strategic partnership with The Carlyle Group keeps QinetiQ on course to become a leading science and technology company that aspires to be the envy of the world. The Carlyle Group shares our vision for the future of QinetiQ and is well placed to support the management team in building a company, which we expect to flourish commercially, based on its commitment to excellence.”
“QinetiQ will remain a British company based in the UK. MOD will retain a Special Share in the business to ensure that the nation’s defence and security interests continue to be protected. There will also be robust safeguards to prevent conflicts of interest and to ensure that the integrity of the Government’s procurement process is not compromised”.
“This is good news for taxpayers, who will benefit from the immediate sale proceeds as well as from QinetiQ’s potential increase in value over time. And it is good news for QinetiQ’s employees who will have the opportunity to invest in the future of the business through a staff equity scheme and will each receive a small free allocation of share options. Today’s announcement marks a new future for science and technology in Britain.”
The sale follows MOD’s decision in March this year to seek a strategic partner to invest in QinetiQ, and the selection of The Carlyle Group as preferred bidder in September. The transaction values QinetiQ at around £500m. Following adjustments to reflect current assets and liabilities, MOD will receive between £140 and £150m from the transaction (the final amount will depend on the company’s exact financial position at completion), in addition to £50m already received from QinetiQ as part of the purchase price for its assets. Subject to the satisfactory fulfilment of a number of final conditions, formal completion of the sale process is expected early in the New Year,
Carlyle will acquire a 33.8% economic interest in QinetiQ with a further 3.7% of the shares to be made available for the employees. MOD’s retention of a 62.5% current stake in the business will ensure that the taxpayer shares in the benefits of the growth in QinetiQ, which we anticipate will follow the introduction of a strategic partner. The MOD plans to sell its entire stake in QinetiQ within 3-5 years, probably through a flotation on the stock market.
Management control and responsibility for setting future commercial strategy will now lie with QinetiQ and The Carlyle Group, allowing them to make appropriate decisions to grow the value of the business. MOD will retain those rights which are conventional for a major shareholder.
QinetiQ’s Board of Directors, chaired by Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, will be augmented by the appointment of two Carlyle nominees – Glenn Youngkin, a Managing Director of The Carlyle Group, and Sir Denys Henderson. MOD also has the right to appoint two non-executive directors.
Sir John Chisholm, QinetiQ’s Chief Executive commented: “Working together, QinetiQ and The Carlyle Group will be a strong team with complementary experience. We can now be even more confident of achieving our ultimate goal of moving from a European leader to a global technological solutions provider for our diverse range of customers. Carlyle’s investment secures a bright, long-term future for our business, our employees and our customers.”
Glenn Youngkin, The Carlyle Group’s Managing Director in London, commented: “We are impressed with the quality of the business and are looking forward to supporting such a capable and ambitious management team. We can see enormous opportunities to grow the value of the business, harnessing innovation to create profitable commercial applications.”
The Queen’s military-industrial QinetiQ Group Plc (adjacent to The Pirbright Institute) was founded in Nov. 11, 2002 by:
62% UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) — UK
34% The Carlyle Group — US
4% QinetiQ employees
Note: On Nov. 08, 2002—3 days earlier, SERCO Plc bought SI International, Inc. and changed SI International’s name to SERCO, Inc. which had already been being awards massive contracts with the U.S. Patent Office, FEMA, OMB, Navy SPAWAR, OPM, State Department, DoD, Army, Navy, FAA, FEC, etc.
On Dec. 09, 2002—one month later, Leader Technologies’ patent attorney James P. Chandler, III, secretly merged CRYPTO.com with Markland Technologies. Markland was represented by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ wife Jane Sullivan Roberts as director of Major, Lindsey & Africa.
formation of QinetiQ and the sale of a controlling interest to The Carlyle Group. Controversially, his £106,000 investment in the company was later worth £20m at flotation. Approximately £6m worth were sold in January 2007.
Fed chairman Ben Bernanke doesn’t make it into the book, neither does Treasury Secretary during the GW years, Hank Paulson. But what’s a White House memoir without a memory of David Rubenstein, the co-founder of the private equity firm Carlyle Group, who made George H. W. hundreds of millions after he left the White House ?
Laura tells us that not only did Rubenstein show up at the White House for a 60th wedding anniversary party for George H.W. and Barbara Bush, but he gave the toast!
Rubenstein informed the onlookers during his toast that George and Barbara are the only couple who have lived in the White House and have celebrated a 60th wedding anniversary. Nice touch by David.
Laura describes David as a “long time friend.” Translation: Anybody that can figure out how to exploit George’s connections for more money than any of them had ever seen before can certainly be a life long friend.
Look, Rubenstein on a personal level is a nice guy. Whenever I have spoken to him, he has always been polite to me. When I have asked him a question out of left field to throw him off, he tends to really spend time to think about the question and give me a thoughtful answer, but of all the people George and Barbara have met over the years, and some probably truly long-term friends, it is remarkable that Rubenstein, who is roughly 30 years younger than George H. W., is giving a toast at at the Bush’s 60th wedding anniversary.
So it’s Klaus Schwab, The UK Royal Crown and The Rothschilds who won the gubernatorial elections in Virginia, as per normal. With technical and logistic support from The Military BioTech Complex, of course.
<<Pop singer Taylor Swift took another swing at billionaire investor George Soros on Thursday, condemning the “shameless greed” of the financier for partnering with her ex-manager Scooter Braun to release a new album of her songs.
Swift, who has emerged as an outspoken supporter of the Democratic Party, railed against Soros, a liberal megadonor, and Braun, who helped organize the March for Our Lives gun-control protest, after learning her former label Big Machine was releasing an album of a live radio concert she performed in 2008.
“It looks to me like Scooter Braun and his financial backers, 23 Capital, Alex Soros, and the Soros family and The Carlyle Group, have seen the latest balance sheets and realized that paying $330 million for my music wasn’t exactly a wise choice and they need money,” Swift wrote on Instagram. “In my opinion, just another case of shameless greed in the time of Coronavirus. So tasteless, but very transparent.”
Swift also attacked the Soros family in December as being the financial enablers of Braun’s takeover of her former label and her old music.
“After I was denied the chance to purchase my music outright, my entire catalog was sold to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings in a deal that I’m told was funded by the Soros family, 23 Capital, and the Carlyle Group,” Swift said at Billboard’s “Women in Music” event. “Yet to this day, none of these investors have bothered to contact me or my team directly to perform their due diligence on their investment, on their investment in me.” >> – The Washington Free Beacon
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Remember the outrage at the recent news that China uses popular pregnancy tests to harvest DNA from around the world? Hardly. You probably remember even less about this story. It has been first revealed by The Intercept in 2016, at the peaks of the Trump hysteria (first edition), so no one paid it any real attention, even though a good chunk of mainstream media picked up on it, I even found it on CBS News. Now we’re in the middle of the Afghanistan ‘debacle’, but I hope some of us learned a few things in the meantime and will receive this as it deserves, because first fires shot landed in no-man’s land and you can bet a finger this business model has since been improved and diversified.
SKINCENTIAL SCIENCES, a company with an innovative line of cosmetic products marketed as a way to erase blemishes and soften skin, has caught the attention of beautybloggers on YouTube, Oprah’s lifestyle magazine, and celebrity skin care professionals. Documents obtained by The Intercept reveal that the firm has also attracted interest and funding from In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the Central Intelligence Agency.
The previously undisclosed relationship with the CIA might come as some surprise to a visitor to the website of Clearista, the main product line of Skincential Sciences, which boasts of a “formula so you can feel confident and beautiful in your skin’s most natural state.”
Though the public-facing side of the company touts a range of skin care products, Skincential Sciences developed a patented technology that removes a thin outer layer of the skin, revealing unique biomarkers that can be used for a variety of diagnostic tests, including DNA collection.
Skincential Science’s noninvasive procedure, described on the Clearista website as “painless,” is said to require only water, a special detergent, and a few brushes against the skin, making it a convenient option for restoring the glow of a youthful complexion — and a novel technique for gathering information about a person’s biochemistry.
A screen grab from the Clearista website.
In-Q-Tel, founded in 1999 by then-CIA Director George Tenet, identifies cutting-edge technology to support the mission of the CIA and other intelligence agencies, and provides venture funding to help grow tech firms to develop those solutions.
“Our company is an outlier for In-Q-Tel,” Russ Lebovitz, the chief executive of Skincential Sciences, said during an interview with The Intercept. He conceded that the relationship might make for “an unusual and interesting story,” but said, “If there’s something beneath the surface, that’s not part of our relationship and I’m not directly aware. They’re interested here in something that can get easy access to biomarkers.”
Still, Lebovitz claimed he has limited knowledge of why In-Q-Tel selected his firm.
“I can’t tell you how everyone works with In-Q-Tel, but they are very interested in doing things that are pure science,” Lebovitz said. The CIA fund approached his company, telling him the fund shares an interest in looking at DNA extraction using the method pioneered by Skincential Sciences, according to Lebovitz.The CIA fund has described human skin as a “unique, underutilized source for sample collection.”
Beyond that, Lebovitz said he was unsure of the intent of the CIA’s use of the technology, but the fund was “specifically interested in the diagnostics, detecting DNA from normal skin.” He added, “There’s no better identifier than DNA, and we know we can pull out DNA.”
Perhaps law enforcement could use the biomarker extraction technique for crime scene identification or could conduct drug tests, Lebovitz suggested.
Carrie A. Sessine, the vice president for external affairs at In-Q-Tel, declined a media interview because “IQT does not participate in media interviews or opportunities.”
(Officials at the venture capital firm have, in fact, given interviews in the past.)
Though In-Q-Tel operates in the open, it has often kept key details of its activities out of public view, beyond required annual reports. After a SecureDrop source told The Intercept about a gathering in San Jose for In-Q-Tel executives and start-up companies backed by the fund, The Intercept attempted to attend, but was denied access.
Skincential Sciences was among several presenting companies.
The shroud of secrecy around In-Q-Tel belies a 17-year effort to build ties between the CIA and the biggest names in Silicon Valley. Gilman Louie, a video game executive known for publishing best-sellers such as Tetris, Falcon, and Civilization II, was brought on as the first chief executive of In-Q-Tel. The popular mapping tool Google Earth was created around technology developed by Keyhole Corp., an In-Q-Tel-backed company that was later acquired by Google.
A graphic from the “IQT Quarterly” summer 2010 issue on the new modalities in sampling and sensing collection.
Graphic: IQT Quarterly
Still, little is publicly revealed about the use of In-Q-Tel-backed ventures and their relevance to the goals of intelligence agencies. Many of the fund’s investments are not publicly revealed. The fund is reviewed by the CIA’s inspector general and reports directly to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which frequently conducts business through classified briefings.
David Petraeus, while serving as the director of the CIA in 2012, remarked, “Our partnership with In-Q-Tel is essential to helping identify and deliver groundbreaking technologies with mission-critical applications to the CIA and to our partner agencies.”
Despite the association with computer and satellite technology, In-Q-Tel also maintains a long-running interest in developing advanced genetic analysis, biological technologies for detection and diagnostics, as well as research into what is known as physiological intelligence, which, in a 2010 article, the fund described as “actionable information about human identity and experience that have always been of interest to the Intelligence Community.”
The article, which is no longer available on the fund’s website but is preserved by a cache hosted by the Internet Archive, argues that advances in medical research into biomarkers can be leveraged by intelligence agencies for a variety of uses, from airport security to next-generation identification tools.
A diagram in the article calls human skin the body’s largest organ and a “unique, underutilized source for sample collection.” The author, Dr. Kevin O’Connell, then a “senior solutions architect” with In-Q-Tel, notes, “The DNA contained in microorganisms in a person’s gut or on a person’s skin may contain sequences that indicate a particular geographical origin.”
A screen grab from the Clearista website describing the resurfacing process of its product.
Image: Clearista.com
In-Q-Tel has invested in several companies working in this realm, in addition to Skincential Sciences. In 2013, In-Q-Tel publicly announced a strategic partnership with Bio-NEMS, a firm that developed a semiconductor device used to analyze DNA for a variety of diagnostic and human identification applications. Claremont BioSolutions, a diagnostics firm, and Biomatrica, a firm that specializes in preparing biological samples for DNA testing, are also backed by In-Q-Tel.
Skincential Sciences did not start out as a beauty company. The firm was founded in 2010 as DX Biosciences, which was developed around a patent by a team of scientists including Dr. Samir Mitragotri of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Mitragotri has published research into the use of biomarkers as a “window to body’s health.”
The company gained early backing from Frontier, a venture capital company, among other investors.
While the technology has potential for a variety of medical diagnostics, including early melanoma detection, Lebovitz said the company quickly realized it had immediate value as a cosmetic. The application of the detergent developed by the firm could be used easily to diminish blemishes and dark patches on the skin. And unlike similar treatments at aesthetic spas, the technology developed by Dr. Mitragotri and his colleagues did not require acid or any discomfort.
In 2013, the firm relaunched and recapitalized as Skincential Sciences, with Clearista as its primary brand of beauty products.
Lebovitz says he intends to continue developing the technology so that it may be medically relevant, but he is also focusing on breaking into the multibillion-dollar skin care market. While Skincential has won measured success for its Clearista brand products by landing coverage on television and through social media, the company has not yet been able to compete with mainstream skin care companies.
Jamie Walsh, a blogger who runs Glam Latte, a beauty website, endorsed a Clearista product on her YouTube channel, noting that with only one application of the cream, her skin improved and was “glowing.” Walsh said Skincential Sciences sent her the product for a testimonial, and noted that like many independent brands, she did not know about the company’s funding.
Skincential hopes to license its product with a major distributor, or even one day become acquired by a larger beauty company. “We’ll take any of those,” said Lebovitz.
The chief executive noted that he is proud of the In-Q-Tel support, calling the fund “great partners.”
At the gathering in February for In-Q-Tel portfolio companies, Lebovitz joined a crowd that included a number of In-Q-Tel executives, along with senior members of the intelligence community. Presenting speakers included Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work, and John Maeda, design partner of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a leading Silicon Valley investment firm.
“Not only was I the odd man out,” Lebovitz said, “but almost every woman at the conference wanted to come up to me to talk about skin care. – The Intercept
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! Articles can always be subject of later editing as a way of perfecting them
For years, the Pentagon tried to convince the public that they work on your dream secretary. Can you believe that? Funny how much those plans looked just like today’s Google and Facebook. But it’s not just the looks, it’s also the money, the timeline and the personal connections. Funnier how the funding scheme was often similar to the one used for Wuhan, with proxy organizations used as middlemen.
IT’S A MEMORY aid! A robotic assistant! An epidemic detector! An all-seeing, ultra-intrusive spying program!
The Pentagon is about to embark on a stunningly ambitious research project designed to gather every conceivable bit of information about a person’s life, index all the information and make it searchable.
What national security experts and civil libertarians want to know is, why would the Defense Department want to do such a thing?
The embryonic LifeLog program would dump everything an individual does into a giant database: every e-mail sent or received, every picture taken, every Web page surfed, every phone call made, every TV show watched, every magazine read.
All of this — and more — would combine with information gleaned from a variety of sources: a GPS transmitter to keep tabs on where that person went, audio-visual sensors to capture what he or she sees or says, and biomedical monitors to keep track of the individual’s health.
This gigantic amalgamation of personal information could then be used to “trace the ‘threads’ of an individual’s life,” to see exactly how a relationship or events developed, according to a briefing from the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency, LifeLog’s sponsor.
Someone with access to the database could “retrieve a specific thread of past transactions, or recall an experience from a few seconds ago or from many years earlier … by using a search-engine interface.”
On the surface, the project seems like the latest in a long line of DARPA’s “blue sky” research efforts, most of which never make it out of the lab. But DARPA is currently asking businesses and universities for research proposals to begin moving LifeLog forward. And some people, such as Steven Aftergood, a defense analyst with the Federation of American Scientists, are worried.News of the future, now.
With its controversial Total Information Awareness database project, DARPA already is planning to track all of an individual’s “transactional data” — like what we buy and who gets our e-mail.
While the parameters of the project have not yet been determined, Aftergood said he believes LifeLog could go far beyond TIA’s scope, adding physical information (like how we feel) and media data (like what we read) to this transactional data.
“LifeLog has the potential to become something like ‘TIA cubed,'” he said.
In the private sector, a number of LifeLog-like efforts already are underway to digitally archive one’s life — to create a “surrogate memory,” as minicomputer pioneer Gordon Bell calls it.
Bell, now with Microsoft, scans all his letters and memos, records his conversations, saves all the Web pages he’s visited and e-mails he’s received and puts them into an electronic storehouse dubbed MyLifeBits.
DARPA’s LifeLog would take this concept several steps further by tracking where people go and what they see.
That makes the project similar to the work of University of Toronto professor Steve Mann. Since his teen years in the 1970s, Mann, a self-styled “cyborg,” has worn a camera and an array of sensors to record his existence. He claims he’s convinced 20 to 30 of his current and former students to do the same. It’s all part of an experiment into “existential technology” and “the metaphysics of free will.”
DARPA isn’t quite so philosophical about LifeLog. But the agency does see some potential battlefield uses for the program.
“The technology could allow the military to develop computerized assistants for war fighters and commanders that can be more effective because they can easily access the user’s past experiences,” DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker speculated in an e-mail.
It also could allow the military to develop more efficient computerized training systems, she said: Computers could remember how each student learns and interacts with the training system, then tailor the lessons accordingly.
John Pike, director of defense think tank GlobalSecurity.org, said he finds the explanations “hard to believe.”
“It looks like an outgrowth of Total Information Awareness and other DARPA homeland security surveillance programs,” he added in an e-mail.
Sure, LifeLog could be used to train robotic assistants. But it also could become a way to profile suspected terrorists, said Cory Doctorow, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In other words, Osama bin Laden’s agent takes a walk around the block at 10 each morning, buys a bagel and a newspaper at the corner store and then calls his mother. You do the same things — so maybe you’re an al Qaeda member, too!
“The more that an individual’s characteristic behavior patterns — ‘routines, relationships and habits’ — can be represented in digital form, the easier it would become to distinguish among different individuals, or to monitor one,” Aftergood, the Federation of American Scientists analyst, wrote in an e-mail.
In its LifeLog report, DARPA makes some nods to privacy protection, like when it suggests that “properly anonymized access to LifeLog data might support medical research and the early detection of an emerging epidemic.”
But before these grand plans get underway, LifeLog will start small. Right now, DARPA is asking industry and academics to submit proposals for 18-month research efforts, with a possible 24-month extension. (DARPA is not sure yet how much money it will sink into the program.)
The researchers will be the centerpiece of their own study.
Like a game show, winning this DARPA prize eventually will earn the lucky scientists a trip for three to Washington, D.C. Except on this excursion, every participating scientist’s e-mail to the travel agent, every padded bar bill and every mad lunge for a cab will be monitored, categorized and later dissected.
Bending a bit to privacy concerns, the Pentagon changes some of the experiments to be conducted for LifeLog, its effort to record every tidbit of information and encounter in daily life. No video recording of unsuspecting people, for example.
MONDAY IS THE deadline for researchers to submit bids to build the Pentagon’s so-called LifeLog project, an experiment to create an all-encompassing über-diary.
But while teams of academics and entrepreneurs are jostling for the 18- to 24-month grants to work on the program, the Defense Department has changed the parameters of the project to respond to a tide of privacy concerns.
Lifelog is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s effort to gather every conceivable element of a person’s life, dump it all into a database, and spin the information into narrative threads that trace relationships, events and experiences.
It’s an attempt, some say, to make a kind of surrogate, digitized memory.
“My father was a stroke victim, and he lost the ability to record short-term memories,” said Howard Shrobe, an MIT computer scientist who’s leading a team of professors and researchers in a LifeLog bid. “If you ever saw the movie Memento, he had that. So I’m interested in seeing how memory works after seeing a broken one. LifeLog is a chance to do that.”
Researchers who receive LifeLog grants will be required to test the system on themselves. Cameras will record everything they do during a trip to Washington, D.C., and global-positioning satellite locators will track where they go. Biomedical sensors will monitor their health. All the e-mail they send, all the magazines they read, all the credit card payments they make will be indexed and made searchable.
By capturing experiences, Darpa claims that LifeLog could help develop more realistic computerized training programs and robotic assistants for battlefield commanders.
Defense analysts and civil libertarians, on the other hand, worry that the program is another piece in an ongoing Pentagon effort to keep tabs on American citizens. LifeLog could become the ultimate profiling tool, they fear.
A firestorm of criticism ignited after LifeLog first became public in May. Some potential bidders for the LifeLog contract dropped out as a result.
“I’m interested in LifeLog, but I’m going to shy away from it,” said Les Vogel, a computer science researcher in Maui, Hawaii. “Who wants to get in the middle of something that gets that much bad press?”
New York Times columnist William Safire noted that while LifeLog researchers might be comfortable recording their lives, the people that the LifeLoggers are “looking at, listening to, sniffing or conspiring with to blow up the world” might not be so thrilled about turning over some of their private interchanges to the Pentagon.
In response, Darpa changed the LifeLog proposal request. Now: “LifeLog researchers shall not capture imagery or audio of any person without that person’s a priori express permission. In fact, it is desired that capture of imagery or audio of any person other than the user be avoided even if a priori permission is granted.”
Steven Aftergood, with the Federation of American Scientists, sees the alterations as evidence that Darpa proposals must receive a thorough public vetting.
“Darpa doesn’t spontaneously modify their programs in this way,” he said. “It requires public criticism. Give them credit, however, for acknowledging public concerns.”
While the Pentagon’s project to record and catalog a person’s life scares privacy advocates, researchers see it as a step in the process of getting computers to think like humans.
TO PENTAGON RESEARCHERS, capturing and categorizing every aspect of a person’s life is only the beginning.
LifeLog — the controversial Defense Department initiative to track everything about an individual — is just one step in a larger effort, according to a top Pentagon research director. Personalized digital assistants that can guess our desires should come first. And then, just maybe, we’ll see computers that can think for themselves.
Computer scientists have dreamed for decades of building machines with minds of their own. But these hopes have been overwhelmed again and again by the messy, dizzying complexities of the real world.
In recent months, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has launched a series of seemingly disparate programs — all designed, the agency says, to help computers deal with the complexities of life, so they finally can begin to think.
“Our ultimate goal is to build a new generation of computer systems that are substantially more robust, secure, helpful, long-lasting and adaptive to their users and tasks. These systems will need to reason, learn and respond intelligently to things they’ve never encountered before,” said Ron Brachman, the recently installed chief of Darpa’s Information Processing Technology Office, or IPTO. A former senior executive at AT&T Labs, Brachman was elected president of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence last year.
LifeLog is the best-known of these projects. The controversial program intends to record everything about a person — what he sees, where he goes, how he feels — and dump it into a database. Once captured, the information is supposed to be spun into narrative threads that trace relationships, events and experiences.
For years, researchers have been able to get programs to make sense of limited, tightly proscribed situations. Navigating outside of the lab has been much more difficult. Until recently, even getting a robot to walk across the room on its own was a tricky task.
“LifeLog is about forcing computers into the real world,” said leading artificial intelligence researcher Doug Lenat, who’s bidding on the project.
What LifeLog is not, Brachman asserts, is a program to track terrorists. By capturing so much information about an individual, and by combing relationships and traits out of that data, LifeLog appears to some civil libertarians to be an almost limitless tool for profiling potential enemies of the state. Concerns over the Terrorism Information Awareness database effort have only heightened sensitivities.
“These technologies developed by the military have obvious, easy paths to Homeland Security deployments,” said Lee Tien, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Brachman said it is “up to military leaders to decide how to use our technology in support of their mission,” but he repeatedly insisted that IPTO has “absolutely no interest or intention of using any of our technology for profiling.”
What Brachman does want to do is create a computerized assistant that can learn about the habits and wishes of its human boss. And the first step toward this goal is for machines to start seeing, and remembering, life like people do.
Human beings don’t dump their experiences into some formless database or tag them with a couple of keywords. They divide their lives into discreet installments — “college,” “my first date,” “last Thursday.” Researchers call this “episodic memory.”
LifeLog is about trying to install episodic memory into computers, Brachman said. It’s about getting machines to start “remembering experiences in the commonsensical way we do — a vacation in Bermuda, a taxi ride to the airport.”
IPTO recently handed out $29 million in research grants to create a Perceptive Assistant that Learns, or PAL, that can draw on these episodes and improve itself in the process. If people keep missing conferences during rush hour, PAL should learn to schedule meetings when traffic isn’t as thick. If PAL’s boss keeps sending angry notes to spammers, the software secretary eventually should just start flaming on its own.
In the 1980s, artificial intelligence researchers promised to create programs that could do just that. Darpa even promoted a thinking “pilot’s associate — a kind of R2D2,” said Alex Roland, author of The Race for Machine Intelligence: Darpa, DoD, and the Strategic Computing Initiative.
But the field “fell on its face,” according to University of Washington computer scientist Henry Kautz. Instead of trying to teach computers how to reason on their own, “we said, ‘Well, if we just keep adding more rules, we could cover every case imaginable.'”
It’s an impossible task, of course. Every circumstance is different, and there will never be enough to stipulations to cover them all.
A few computer programs, with enough training from their human masters, can make some assumptions about new situations on their own, however. Amazon.com’s system for recommending books and music is one of these.
But these efforts are limited, too. Everyone’s received downright kooky suggestions from that Amazon program.
Overcoming these limitations requires a combination of logical approaches. That’s a goal behind IPTO’s new call for research into computers that can handle real-world reasoning.
It’s one of several problems Brachman said are “absolutely imperative” to solve as quickly as possible.
Although computer systems are getting more complicated every day, this complexity “may be actually reversing the information revolution,” he noted in a recent presentation (PDF). “Systems have grown more rigid, more fragile and increasingly open to attack.”
What’s needed, he asserts, is a computer network that can teach itself new capabilities, without having to be reprogrammed every time. Computers should be able to adapt to how its users like to work, spot when they’re being attacked and develop responses to these assaults. Think of it like the body’s immune system — or like a battlefield general.
But to act more like a person, a computer has to soak up its own experiences, like a human being does. It has to create a catalog of its existence. A LifeLog, if you will.
THE PENTAGON CANCELED its so-called LifeLog project, an ambitious effort to build a database tracking a person’s entire existence.
Run by Darpa, the Defense Department’s research arm, LifeLog aimed to gather in a single place just about everything an individual says, sees or does: the phone calls made, the TV shows watched, the magazines read, the plane tickets bought, the e-mail sent and received. Out of this seemingly endless ocean of information, computer scientists would plot distinctive routes in the data, mapping relationships, memories, events and experiences.
LifeLog’s backers said the all-encompassing diary could have turned into a near-perfect digital memory, giving its users computerized assistants with an almost flawless recall of what they had done in the past. But civil libertarians immediately pounced on the project when it debuted last spring, arguing that LifeLog could become the ultimate tool for profiling potential enemies of the state.
Researchers close to the project say they’re not sure why it was dropped late last month. Darpa hasn’t provided an explanation for LifeLog’s quiet cancellation. “A change in priorities” is the only rationale agency spokeswoman Jan Walker gave to Wired News.
However, related Darpa efforts concerning software secretaries and mechanical brains are still moving ahead as planned.
LifeLog is the latest in a series of controversial programs that have been canceled by Darpa in recent months. The Terrorism Information Awareness, or TIA, data-mining initiative was eliminated by Congress — although many analysts believe its research continues on the classified side of the Pentagon’s ledger. The Policy Analysis Market (or FutureMap), which provided a stock market of sorts for people to bet on terror strikes, was almost immediately withdrawn after its details came to light in July.
“I’ve always thought (LifeLog) would be the third program (after TIA and FutureMap) that could raise eyebrows if they didn’t make it clear how privacy concerns would be met,” said Peter Harsha, director of government affairs for the Computing Research Association.
“Darpa’s pretty gun-shy now,” added Lee Tien, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has been critical of many agency efforts. “After TIA, they discovered they weren’t ready to deal with the firestorm of criticism.”
That’s too bad, artificial-intelligence researchers say. LifeLog would have addressed one of the key issues in developing computers that can think: how to take the unstructured mess of life, and recall it as discreet episodes — a trip to Washington, a sushi dinner, construction of a house.
“Obviously we’re quite disappointed,” said Howard Shrobe, who led a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Artificial Intelligence Laboratory which spent weeks preparing a bid for a LifeLog contract. “We were very interested in the research focus of the program … how to help a person capture and organize his or her experience. This is a theme with great importance to both AI and cognitive science.”
To Tien, the project’s cancellation means “it’s just not tenable for Darpa to say anymore, ‘We’re just doing the technology, we have no responsibility for how it’s used.'”
Private-sector research in this area is proceeding. At Microsoft, for example, minicomputer pioneer Gordon Bell’s program, MyLifeBits, continues to develop ways to sort and store memories.
David Karger, Shrobe’s colleague at MIT, thinks such efforts will still go on at Darpa, too.
“I am sure that such research will continue to be funded under some other title,” wrote Karger in an e-mail. “I can’t imagine Darpa ‘dropping out’ of such a key research area.”
MEANWHILE…
Google: seeded by the Pentagon
By dr. Nafeez Ahmed
In 1994 — the same year the Highlands Forum was founded under the stewardship of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the ONA, and DARPA — two young PhD students at Stanford University, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, made their breakthrough on the first automated web crawling and page ranking application. That application remains the core component of what eventually became Google’s search service. Brin and Page had performed their work with funding from the Digital Library Initiative (DLI), a multi-agency programme of the National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA and DARPA.
Throughout the development of the search engine, Sergey Brin reported regularly and directly to two people who were not Stanford faculty at all: Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham and Dr. Rick Steinheiser. Both were representatives of a sensitive US intelligence community research programme on information security and data-mining.
Thuraisingham is currently the Louis A. Beecherl distinguished professor and executive director of the Cyber Security Research Institute at the University of Texas, Dallas, and a sought-after expert on data-mining, data management and information security issues. But in the 1990s, she worked for the MITRE Corp., a leading US defense contractor, where she managed the Massive Digital Data Systems initiative, a project sponsored by the NSA, CIA, and the Director of Central Intelligence, to foster innovative research in information technology.
“We funded Stanford University through the computer scientist Jeffrey Ullman, who had several promising graduate students working on many exciting areas,” Prof. Thuraisingham told me. “One of them was Sergey Brin, the founder of Google. The intelligence community’s MDDS program essentially provided Brin seed-funding, which was supplemented by many other sources, including the private sector.”
This sort of funding is certainly not unusual, and Sergey Brin’s being able to receive it by being a graduate student at Stanford appears to have been incidental. The Pentagon was all over computer science research at this time. But it illustrates how deeply entrenched the culture of Silicon Valley is in the values of the US intelligence community.
In an extraordinary document hosted by the website of the University of Texas, Thuraisingham recounts that from 1993 to 1999, “the Intelligence Community [IC] started a program called Massive Digital Data Systems (MDDS) that I was managing for the Intelligence Community when I was at the MITRE Corporation.” The program funded 15 research efforts at various universities, including Stanford. Its goal was developing “data management technologies to manage several terabytes to petabytes of data,” including for “query processing, transaction management, metadata management, storage management, and data integration.”
At the time, Thuraisingham was chief scientist for data and information management at MITRE, where she led team research and development efforts for the NSA, CIA, US Air Force Research Laboratory, as well as the US Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) and Communications and Electronic Command (CECOM). She went on to teach courses for US government officials and defense contractors on data-mining in counter-terrorism.
In her University of Texas article, she attaches the copy of an abstract of the US intelligence community’s MDDS program that had been presented to the “Annual Intelligence Community Symposium” in 1995. The abstract reveals that the primary sponsors of the MDDS programme were three agencies: the NSA, the CIA’s Office of Research & Development, and the intelligence community’s Community Management Staff (CMS) which operates under the Director of Central Intelligence. Administrators of the program, which provided funding of around 3–4 million dollars per year for 3–4 years, were identified as Hal Curran (NSA), Robert Kluttz (CMS), Dr. Claudia Pierce (NSA), Dr. Rick Steinheiser (ORD — standing for the CIA’s Office of Research and Devepment), and Dr. Thuraisingham herself.
Thuraisingham goes on in her article to reiterate that this joint CIA-NSA program partly funded Sergey Brin to develop the core of Google, through a grant to Stanford managed by Brin’s supervisor Prof. Jeffrey D. Ullman:
“In fact, the Google founder Mr. Sergey Brin was partly funded by this program while he was a PhD student at Stanford. He together with his advisor Prof. Jeffrey Ullman and my colleague at MITRE, Dr. Chris Clifton [Mitre’s chief scientist in IT], developed the Query Flocks System which produced solutions for mining large amounts of data stored in databases. I remember visiting Stanford with Dr. Rick Steinheiser from the Intelligence Community and Mr. Brin would rush in on roller blades, give his presentation and rush out. In fact the last time we met in September 1998, Mr. Brin demonstrated to us his search engine which became Google soon after.”
Brin and Page officially incorporated Google as a company in September 1998, the very month they last reported to Thuraisingham and Steinheiser. ‘Query Flocks’ was also part of Google’s patented ‘PageRank’ search system, which Brin developed at Stanford under the CIA-NSA-MDDS programme, as well as with funding from the NSF, IBM and Hitachi. That year, MITRE’s Dr. Chris Clifton, who worked under Thuraisingham to develop the ‘Query Flocks’ system, co-authored a paper with Brin’s superviser, Prof. Ullman, and the CIA’s Rick Steinheiser. Titled ‘Knowledge Discovery in Text,’ the paper was presented at an academic conference.
“The MDDS funding that supported Brin was significant as far as seed-funding goes, but it was probably outweighed by the other funding streams,” said Thuraisingham. “The duration of Brin’s funding was around two years or so. In that period, I and my colleagues from the MDDS would visit Stanford to see Brin and monitor his progress every three months or so. We didn’t supervise exactly, but we did want to check progress, point out potential problems and suggest ideas. In those briefings, Brin did present to us on the query flocks research, and also demonstrated to us versions of the Google search engine.”
Brin thus reported to Thuraisingham and Steinheiser regularly about his work developing Google.
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UPDATE 2.05PM GMT [2nd Feb 2015]:
Since publication of this article, Prof. Thuraisingham has amended her article referenced above. The amended version includes a new modified statement, followed by a copy of the original version of her account of the MDDS. In this amended version, Thuraisingham rejects the idea that CIA funded Google, and says instead:
“In fact Prof. Jeffrey Ullman (at Stanford) and my colleague at MITRE Dr. Chris Clifton together with some others developed the Query Flocks System, as part of MDDS, which produced solutions for mining large amounts of data stored in databases. Also, Mr. Sergey Brin, the cofounder of Google, was part of Prof. Ullman’s research group at that time. I remember visiting Stanford with Dr. Rick Steinheiser from the Intelligence Community periodically and Mr. Brin would rush in on roller blades, give his presentation and rush out. During our last visit to Stanford in September 1998, Mr. Brin demonstrated to us his search engine which I believe became Google soon after…
There are also several inaccuracies in Dr. Ahmed’s article (dated January 22, 2015). For example, the MDDS program was not a ‘sensitive’ program as stated by Dr. Ahmed; it was an Unclassified program that funded universities in the US. Furthermore, Sergey Brin never reported to me or to Dr. Rick Steinheiser; he only gave presentations to us during our visits to the Department of Computer Science at Stanford during the 1990s. Also, MDDS never funded Google; it funded Stanford University.”
Here, there is no substantive factual difference in Thuraisingham’s accounts, other than to assert that her statement associating Sergey Brin with the development of ‘query flocks’ is mistaken. Notably, this acknowledgement is derived not from her own knowledge, but from this very article quoting a comment from a Google spokesperson.
However, the bizarre attempt to disassociate Google from the MDDS program misses the mark. Firstly, the MDDS never funded Google, because during the development of the core components of the Google search engine, there was no company incorporated with that name. The grant was instead provided to Stanford University through Prof. Ullman, through whom some MDDS funding was used to support Brin who was co-developing Google at the time. Secondly, Thuraisingham then adds that Brin never “reported” to her or the CIA’s Steinheiser, but admits he “gave presentations to us during our visits to the Department of Computer Science at Stanford during the 1990s.” It is unclear, though, what the distinction is here between reporting, and delivering a detailed presentation — either way, Thuraisingham confirms that she and the CIA had taken a keen interest in Brin’s development of Google. Thirdly, Thuraisingham describes the MDDS program as “unclassified,” but this does not contradict its “sensitive” nature. As someone who has worked for decades as an intelligence contractor and advisor, Thuraisingham is surely aware that there are many ways of categorizing intelligence, including ‘sensitive but unclassified.’ A number of former US intelligence officials I spoke to said that the almost total lack of public information on the CIA and NSA’s MDDS initiative suggests that although the progam was not classified, it is likely instead that its contents was considered sensitive, which would explain efforts to minimise transparency about the program and the way it fed back into developing tools for the US intelligence community. Fourthly, and finally, it is important to point out that the MDDS abstract which Thuraisingham includes in her University of Texas document states clearly not only that the Director of Central Intelligence’s CMS, CIA and NSA were the overseers of the MDDS initiative, but that the intended customers of the project were “DoD, IC, and other government organizations”: the Pentagon, the US intelligence community, and other relevant US government agencies.
In other words, the provision of MDDS funding to Brin through Ullman, under the oversight of Thuraisingham and Steinheiser, was fundamentally because they recognized the potential utility of Brin’s work developing Google to the Pentagon, intelligence community, and the federal government at large.
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The MDDS programme is actually referenced in several papers co-authored by Brin and Page while at Stanford, specifically highlighting its role in financially sponsoring Brin in the development of Google. In their 1998 paper published in the Bulletin of the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committeee on Data Engineering, they describe the automation of methods to extract information from the web via “Dual Iterative Pattern Relation Extraction,” the development of “a global ranking of Web pages called PageRank,” and the use of PageRank “to develop a novel search engine called Google.” Through an opening footnote, Sergey Brin confirms he was “Partially supported by the Community Management Staff’s Massive Digital Data Systems Program, NSF grant IRI-96–31952” — confirming that Brin’s work developing Google was indeed partly-funded by the CIA-NSA-MDDS program.
This NSF grant identified alongside the MDDS, whose project report lists Brin among the students supported (without mentioning the MDDS), was different to the NSF grant to Larry Page that included funding from DARPA and NASA. The project report, authored by Brin’s supervisor Prof. Ullman, goes on to say under the section ‘Indications of Success’ that “there are some new stories of startups based on NSF-supported research.” Under ‘Project Impact,’ the report remarks: “Finally, the google project has also gone commercial as Google.com.”
Thuraisingham’s account, including her new amended version, therefore demonstrates that the CIA-NSA-MDDS program was not only partly funding Brin throughout his work with Larry Page developing Google, but that senior US intelligence representatives including a CIA official oversaw the evolution of Google in this pre-launch phase, all the way until the company was ready to be officially founded. Google, then, had been enabled with a “significant” amount of seed-funding and oversight from the Pentagon: namely, the CIA, NSA, and DARPA.
The DoD could not be reached for comment.
When I asked Prof. Ullman to confirm whether or not Brin was partly funded under the intelligence community’s MDDS program, and whether Ullman was aware that Brin was regularly briefing the CIA’s Rick Steinheiser on his progress in developing the Google search engine, Ullman’s responses were evasive: “May I know whom you represent and why you are interested in these issues? Who are your ‘sources’?” He also denied that Brin played a significant role in developing the ‘query flocks’ system, although it is clear from Brin’s papers that he did draw on that work in co-developing the PageRank system with Page.
When I asked Ullman whether he was denying the US intelligence community’s role in supporting Brin during the development of Google, he said: “I am not going to dignify this nonsense with a denial. If you won’t explain what your theory is, and what point you are trying to make, I am not going to help you in the slightest.”
The MDDS abstract published online at the University of Texas confirms that the rationale for the CIA-NSA project was to “provide seed money to develop data management technologies which are of high-risk and high-pay-off,” including techniques for “querying, browsing, and filtering; transaction processing; accesses methods and indexing; metadata management and data modelling; and integrating heterogeneous databases; as well as developing appropriate architectures.” The ultimate vision of the program was to “provide for the seamless access and fusion of massive amounts of data, information and knowledge in a heterogeneous, real-time environment” for use by the Pentagon, intelligence community and potentially across government.
These revelations corroborate the claims of Robert Steele, former senior CIA officer and a founding civilian deputy director of the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity, whom I interviewed for The Guardian last year on open source intelligence. Citing sources at the CIA, Steele had said in 2006 that Steinheiser, an old colleague of his, was the CIA’s main liaison at Google and had arranged early funding for the pioneering IT firm. At the time, Wired founder John Batelle managed to get this official denial from a Google spokesperson in response to Steele’s assertions:
“The statements related to Google are completely untrue.”
This time round, despite multiple requests and conversations, a Google spokesperson declined to comment.
UPDATE: As of 5.41PM GMT [22nd Jan 2015], Google’s director of corporate communication got in touch and asked me to include the following statement:
“Sergey Brin was not part of the Query Flocks Program at Stanford, nor were any of his projects funded by US Intelligence bodies.”
This is what I wrote back:
My response to that statement would be as follows: Brin himself in his own paper acknowledges funding from the Community Management Staff of the Massive Digital Data Systems (MDDS) initiative, which was supplied through the NSF. The MDDS was an intelligence community program set up by the CIA and NSA. I also have it on record, as noted in the piece, from Prof. Thuraisingham of University of Texas that she managed the MDDS program on behalf of the US intelligence community, and that her and the CIA’s Rick Steinheiser met Brin every three months or so for two years to be briefed on his progress developing Google and PageRank. Whether Brin worked on query flocks or not is neither here nor there.
In that context, you might want to consider the following questions:
1) Does Google deny that Brin’s work was part-funded by the MDDS via an NSF grant?
2) Does Google deny that Brin reported regularly to Thuraisingham and Steinheiser from around 1996 to 1998 until September that year when he presented the Google search engine to them?
LESS KNOWN FACT: AROUND THE SAME YEAR 2004, SERGEY BRIN JOINED WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM’S YOUTH ORGANIZATION, THE “YOUNG GLOBAL LEADERS”
Total Information Awareness
A call for papers for the MDDS was sent out via email list on November 3rd 1993 from senior US intelligence official David Charvonia, director of the research and development coordination office of the intelligence community’s CMS. The reaction from Tatu Ylonen (celebrated inventor of the widely used secure shell [SSH] data protection protocol) to his colleagues on the email list is telling: “Crypto relevance? Makes you think whether you should protect your data.” The email also confirms that defense contractor and Highlands Forum partner, SAIC, was managing the MDDS submission process, with abstracts to be sent to Jackie Booth of the CIA’s Office of Research and Development via a SAIC email address.
By 1997, Thuraisingham reveals, shortly before Google became incorporated and while she was still overseeing the development of its search engine software at Stanford, her thoughts turned to the national security applications of the MDDS program. In the acknowledgements to her book, Web Data Mining and Applications in Business Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism (2003), Thuraisingham writes that she and “Dr. Rick Steinheiser of the CIA, began discussions with Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency on applying data-mining for counter-terrorism,” an idea that resulted directly from the MDDS program which partly funded Google. “These discussions eventually developed into the current EELD (Evidence Extraction and Link Detection) program at DARPA.”
So the very same senior CIA official and CIA-NSA contractor involved in providing the seed-funding for Google were simultaneously contemplating the role of data-mining for counter-terrorism purposes, and were developing ideas for tools actually advanced by DARPA.
Today, as illustrated by her recent oped in the New York Times, Thuraisingham remains a staunch advocate of data-mining for counter-terrorism purposes, but also insists that these methods must be developed by government in cooperation with civil liberties lawyers and privacy advocates to ensure that robust procedures are in place to prevent potential abuse. She points out, damningly, that with the quantity of information being collected, there is a high risk of false positives.
In 1993, when the MDDS program was launched and managed by MITRE Corp. on behalf of the US intelligence community, University of Virginia computer scientist Dr. Anita K. Jones — a MITRE trustee — landed the job of DARPA director and head of research and engineering across the Pentagon. She had been on the board of MITRE since 1988. From 1987 to 1993, Jones simultaneously served on SAIC’s board of directors. As the new head of DARPA from 1993 to 1997, she also co-chaired the Pentagon’s Highlands Forum during the period of Google’s pre-launch development at Stanford under the MDSS.
Thus, when Thuraisingham and Steinheiser were talking to DARPA about the counter-terrorism applications of MDDS research, Jones was DARPA director and Highlands Forum co-chair. That year, Jones left DARPA to return to her post at the University of Virgina. The following year, she joined the board of the National Science Foundation, which of course had also just funded Brin and Page, and also returned to the board of SAIC. When she left DoD, Senator Chuck Robb paid Jones the following tribute : “She brought the technology and operational military communities together to design detailed plans to sustain US dominance on the battlefield into the next century.”
Dr. Anita Jones, head of DARPA from 1993–1997, and co-chair of the Pentagon Highlands Forum from 1995–1997, during which officials in charge of the CIA-NSA-MDSS program were funding Google, and in communication with DARPA about data-mining for counterterrorism
On the board of the National Science Foundation from 1992 to 1998 (including a stint as chairman from 1996) was Richard N. Zare. This was the period in which the NSF sponsored Sergey Brin and Larry Page in association with DARPA. In June 1994, Prof. Zare, a chemist at Stanford, participated with Prof. Jeffrey Ullman (who supervised Sergey Brin’s research), on a panel sponsored by Stanford and the National Research Council discussing the need for scientists to show how their work “ties to national needs.” The panel brought together scientists and policymakers, including “Washington insiders.”
DARPA’s EELD program, inspired by the work of Thuraisingham and Steinheiser under Jones’ watch, was rapidly adapted and integrated with a suite of tools to conduct comprehensive surveillance under the Bush administration.
According to DARPA official Ted Senator, who led the EELD program for the agency’s short-lived Information Awareness Office, EELD was among a range of “promising techniques” being prepared for integration “into the prototype TIA system.” TIA stood for Total Information Awareness, and was the main global electronic eavesdropping and data-mining program deployed by the Bush administration after 9/11. TIA had been set up by Iran-Contra conspirator Admiral John Poindexter, who was appointed in 2002 by Bush to lead DARPA’s new Information Awareness Office.
The Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) was another contractor among 26 companies (also including SAIC) that received million dollar contracts from DARPA (the specific quantities remained classified) under Poindexter, to push forward the TIA surveillance program in 2002 onwards. The research included “behaviour-based profiling,” “automated detection, identification and tracking” of terrorist activity, among other data-analyzing projects. At this time, PARC’s director and chief scientist was John Seely Brown. Both Brown and Poindexter were Pentagon Highlands Forum participants — Brown on a regular basis until recently.
TIA was purportedly shut down in 2003 due to public opposition after the program was exposed in the media, but the following year Poindexter participated in a Pentagon Highlands Group session in Singapore, alongside defense and security officials from around the world. Meanwhile, Ted Senator continued to manage the EELD program among other data-mining and analysis projects at DARPA until 2006, when he left to become a vice president at SAIC. He is now a SAIC/Leidos technical fellow.
Google, DARPA and the money trail
Long before the appearance of Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Stanford University’s computer science department had a close working relationship with US military intelligence. A letter dated November 5th 1984 from the office of renowned artificial intelligence (AI) expert, Prof Edward Feigenbaum, addressed to Rick Steinheiser, gives the latter directions to Stanford’s Heuristic Programming Project, addressing Steinheiser as a member of the “AI Steering Committee.” A list of attendees at a contractor conference around that time, sponsored by the Pentagon’s Office of Naval Research (ONR), includes Steinheiser as a delegate under the designation “OPNAV Op-115” — which refers to the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations’ program on operational readiness, which played a major role in advancing digital systems for the military.
From the 1970s, Prof. Feigenbaum and his colleagues had been running Stanford’s Heuristic Programming Project under contract with DARPA, continuing through to the 1990s. Feigenbaum alone had received around over $7 million in this period for his work from DARPA, along with other funding from the NSF, NASA, and ONR.
Brin’s supervisor at Stanford, Prof. Jeffrey Ullman, was in 1996 part of a joint funding project of DARPA’s Intelligent Integration of Information program. That year, Ullman co-chaired DARPA-sponsored meetings on data exchange between multiple systems.
In September 1998, the same month that Sergey Brin briefed US intelligence representatives Steinheiser and Thuraisingham, tech entrepreneurs Andreas Bechtolsheim and David Cheriton invested $100,000 each in Google. Both investors were connected to DARPA.
As a Stanford PhD student in electrical engineering in the 1980s, Bechtolsheim’s pioneering SUN workstation project had been funded by DARPA and the Stanford computer science department — this research was the foundation of Bechtolsheim’s establishment of Sun Microsystems, which he co-founded with William Joy.
As for Bechtolsheim’s co-investor in Google, David Cheriton, the latter is a long-time Stanford computer science professor who has an even more entrenched relationship with DARPA. His bio at the University of Alberta, which in November 2014 awarded him an honorary science doctorate, says that Cheriton’s “research has received the support of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for over 20 years.”
In the meantime, Bechtolsheim left Sun Microsystems in 1995, co-founding Granite Systems with his fellow Google investor Cheriton as a partner. They sold Granite to Cisco Systems in 1996, retaining significant ownership of Granite, and becoming senior Cisco executives.
An email obtained from the Enron Corpus (a database of 600,000 emails acquired by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and later released to the public) from Richard O’Neill, inviting Enron executives to participate in the Highlands Forum, shows that Cisco and Granite executives are intimately connected to the Pentagon. The email reveals that in May 2000, Bechtolsheim’s partner and Sun Microsystems co-founder, William Joy — who was then chief scientist and corporate executive officer there — had attended the Forum to discuss nanotechnology and molecular computing.
In 1999, Joy had also co-chaired the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee, overseeing a report acknowledging that DARPA had:
“… revised its priorities in the 90’s so that all information technology funding was judged in terms of its benefit to the warfighter.”
Throughout the 1990s, then, DARPA’s funding to Stanford, including Google, was explicitly about developing technologies that could augment the Pentagon’s military intelligence operations in war theatres.
The Joy report recommended more federal government funding from the Pentagon, NASA, and other agencies to the IT sector. Greg Papadopoulos, another of Bechtolsheim’s colleagues as then Sun Microsystems chief technology officer, also attended a Pentagon Highlands’ Forum meeting in September 2000.
In November, the Pentagon Highlands Forum hosted Sue Bostrom, who was vice president for the internet at Cisco, sitting on the company’s board alongside Google co-investors Bechtolsheim and Cheriton. The Forum also hosted Lawrence Zuriff, then a managing partner of Granite, which Bechtolsheim and Cheriton had sold to Cisco. Zuriff had previously been an SAIC contractor from 1993 to 1994, working with the Pentagon on national security issues, specifically for Marshall’s Office of Net Assessment. In 1994, both the SAIC and the ONA were, of course, involved in co-establishing the Pentagon Highlands Forum. Among Zuriff’s output during his SAIC tenure was a paper titled ‘Understanding Information War’, delivered at a SAIC-sponsored US Army Roundtable on the Revolution in Military Affairs.
After Google’s incorporation, the company received $25 million in equity funding in 1999 led by Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. According to Homeland Security Today, “A number of Sequoia-bankrolled start-ups have contracted with the Department of Defense, especially after 9/11 when Sequoia’s Mark Kvamme met with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to discuss the application of emerging technologies to warfighting and intelligence collection.” Similarly, Kleiner Perkins had developed “a close relationship” with In-Q-Tel, the CIA venture capitalist firm that funds start-ups “to advance ‘priority’ technologies of value” to the intelligence community.
John Doerr, who led the Kleiner Perkins investment in Google obtaining a board position, was a major early investor in Becholshtein’s Sun Microsystems at its launch. He and his wife Anne are the main funders behind Rice University’s Center for Engineering Leadership (RCEL), which in 2009 received $16 million from DARPA for its platform-aware-compilation-environment (PACE) ubiquitous computing R&D program. Doerr also has a close relationship with the Obama administration, which he advised shortly after it took power to ramp up Pentagon funding to the tech industry. In 2013, at the Fortune Brainstorm TECH conference, Doerr applauded “how the DoD’s DARPA funded GPS, CAD, most of the major computer science departments, and of course, the Internet.”
From inception, in other words, Google was incubated, nurtured and financed by interests that were directly affiliated or closely aligned with the US military intelligence community: many of whom were embedded in the Pentagon Highlands Forum.
Google captures the Pentagon
In 2003, Google began customizing its search engine under special contract with the CIA for its Intelink Management Office, “overseeing top-secret, secret and sensitive but unclassified intranets for CIA and other IC agencies,” according to Homeland Security Today. That year, CIA funding was also being “quietly” funneled through the National Science Foundation to projects that might help create “new capabilities to combat terrorism through advanced technology.”
The following year, Google bought the firm Keyhole, which had originally been funded by In-Q-Tel. Using Keyhole, Google began developing the advanced satellite mapping software behind Google Earth. Former DARPA director and Highlands Forum co-chair Anita Jones had been on the board of In-Q-Tel at this time, and remains so today.
Then in November 2005, In-Q-Tel issued notices to sell $2.2 million of Google stocks. Google’s relationship with US intelligence was further brought to light when an IT contractor told a closed Washington DC conference of intelligence professionals on a not-for-attribution basis that at least one US intelligence agency was working to “leverage Google’s [user] data monitoring” capability as part of an effort to acquire data of “national security intelligence interest.”
A photo on Flickr dated March 2007 reveals that Google research director and AI expert Peter Norvig attended a Pentagon Highlands Forum meeting that year in Carmel, California. Norvig’s intimate connection to the Forum as of that year is also corroborated by his role in guest editing the 2007 Forum reading list.
The photo below shows Norvig in conversation with Lewis Shepherd, who at that time was senior technology officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency, responsible for investigating, approving, and architecting “all new hardware/software systems and acquisitions for the Global Defense Intelligence IT Enterprise,” including “big data technologies.” Shepherd now works at Microsoft. Norvig was a computer research scientist at Stanford University in 1991 before joining Bechtolsheim’s Sun Microsystems as senior scientist until 1994, and going on to head up NASA’s computer science division.
Lewis Shepherd (left), then a senior technology officer at the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, talking to Peter Norvig (right), renowned expert in artificial intelligence expert and director of research at Google. This photo is from a Highlands Forum meeting in 2007.
Norvig shows up on O’Neill’s Google Plus profile as one of his close connections. Scoping the rest of O’Neill’s Google Plus connections illustrates that he is directly connected not just to a wide range of Google executives, but also to some of the biggest names in the US tech community.
Those connections include Michele Weslander Quaid, an ex-CIA contractor and former senior Pentagon intelligence official who is now Google’s chief technology officer where she is developing programs to “best fit government agencies’ needs”; Elizabeth Churchill, Google director of user experience; James Kuffner, a humanoid robotics expert who now heads up Google’s robotics division and who introduced the term ‘cloud robotics’; Mark Drapeau, director of innovation engagement for Microsoft’s public sector business; Lili Cheng, general manager of Microsoft’s Future Social Experiences (FUSE) Labs; Jon Udell, Microsoft ‘evangelist’; Cory Ondrejka, vice president of engineering at Facebook; to name just a few.
In 2010, Google signed a multi-billion dollar no-bid contract with the NSA’s sister agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). The contract was to use Google Earth for visualization services for the NGA. Google had developed the software behind Google Earth by purchasing Keyhole from the CIA venture firm In-Q-Tel.
Then a year after, in 2011, another of O’Neill’s Google Plus connections, Michele Quaid — who had served in executive positions at the NGA, National Reconnaissance Office and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — left her government role to become Google ‘innovation evangelist’ and the point-person for seeking government contracts. Quaid’s last role before her move to Google was as a senior representative of the Director of National Intelligence to the Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Task Force, and a senior advisor to the undersecretary of defense for intelligence’s director of Joint and Coalition Warfighter Support (J&CWS). Both roles involved information operations at their core. Before her Google move, in other words, Quaid worked closely with the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, to which the Pentagon’s Highlands Forum is subordinate. Quaid has herself attended the Forum, though precisely when and how often I could not confirm.
In March 2012, then DARPA director Regina Dugan — who in that capacity was also co-chair of the Pentagon Highlands Forum — followed her colleague Quaid into Google to lead the company’s new Advanced Technology and Projects Group. During her Pentagon tenure, Dugan led on strategic cyber security and social media, among other initiatives. She was responsible for focusing “an increasing portion” of DARPA’s work “on the investigation of offensive capabilities to address military-specific needs,” securing $500 million of government funding for DARPA cyber research from 2012 to 2017.
Regina Dugan, former head of DARPA and Highlands Forum co-chair, now a senior Google executive — trying her best to look the part
By November 2014, Google’s chief AI and robotics expert James Kuffner was a delegate alongside O’Neill at the Highlands Island Forum 2014 in Singapore, to explore ‘Advancement in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Society, Security and Conflict.’ The event included 26 delegates from Austria, Israel, Japan, Singapore, Sweden, Britain and the US, from both industry and government. Kuffner’s association with the Pentagon, however, began much earlier. In 1997, Kuffner was a researcher during his Stanford PhD for a Pentagon-funded project on networked autonomous mobile robots, sponsored by DARPA and the US Navy.
Dr Nafeez Ahmed is an investigative journalist, bestselling author and international security scholar. A former Guardian writer, he writes the ‘System Shift’ column for VICE’s Motherboard, and is also a columnist for Middle East Eye. He is the winner of a 2015 Project Censored Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism for his Guardian work.
Nafeez has also written for The Independent, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Scotsman, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Quartz, Prospect, New Statesman, Le Monde diplomatique, New Internationalist, Counterpunch, Truthout, among others. He is the author of A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It (2010), and the scifi thriller novel ZERO POINT, among other books. His work on the root causes and covert operations linked to international terrorism officially contributed to the 9/11 Commission and the 7/7 Coroner’s Inquest.
A rich history of the government’s science funding
There was already a long history of collaboration between America’s best scientists and the intelligence community, from the creation of the atomic bomb and satellite technology to efforts to put a man on the moon.The internet itself was created because of an intelligence effort.
In fact, the internet itself was created because of an intelligence effort: In the 1970s, the agency responsible for developing emerging technologies for military, intelligence, and national security purposes—the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)—linked four supercomputers to handle massive data transfers. It handed the operations off to the National Science Foundation (NSF) a decade or so later, which proliferated the network across thousands of universities and, eventually, the public, thus creating the architecture and scaffolding of the World Wide Web.
Silicon Valley was no different. By the mid 1990s, the intelligence community was seeding funding to the most promising supercomputing efforts across academia, guiding the creation of efforts to make massive amounts of information useful for both the private sector as well as the intelligence community.
They funded these computer scientists through an unclassified, highly compartmentalized program that was managed for the CIA and the NSA by large military and intelligence contractors. It was called the Massive Digital Data Systems (MDDS) project.
The Massive Digital Data Systems (MDDS) project
MDDS was introduced to several dozen leading computer scientists at Stanford, CalTech, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Harvard, and others in a white paper that described what the CIA, NSA, DARPA, and other agencies hoped to achieve. The research would largely be funded and managed by unclassified science agencies like NSF, which would allow the architecture to be scaled up in the private sector if it managed to achieve what the intelligence community hoped for.
“Not only are activities becoming more complex, but changing demands require that the IC [Intelligence Community] process different types as well as larger volumes of data,” the intelligence community said in its 1993 MDDS white paper. “Consequently, the IC is taking a proactive role in stimulating research in the efficient management of massive databases and ensuring that IC requirements can be incorporated or adapted into commercial products. Because the challenges are not unique to any one agency, the Community Management Staff (CMS) has commissioned a Massive Digital Data Systems [MDDS] Working Group to address the needs and to identify and evaluate possible solutions.”
Over the next few years, the program’s stated aim was to provide more than a dozen grants of several million dollars each to advance this research concept. The grants were to be directed largely through the NSF so that the most promising, successful efforts could be captured as intellectual property and form the basis of companies attracting investments from Silicon Valley. This type of public-to-private innovation system helped launch powerful science and technology companies like Qualcomm, Symantec, Netscape, and others, and funded the pivotal research in areas like Doppler radar and fiber optics, which are central to large companies like AccuWeather, Verizon, and AT&T today. Today, the NSF provides nearly 90% of all federal funding for university-based computer-science research.
MIT is but a Pentagon lab
The CIA and NSA’s end goal
The research arms of the CIA and NSA hoped that the best computer-science minds in academia could identify what they called “birds of a feather:” Just as geese fly together in large V shapes, or flocks of sparrows make sudden movements together in harmony, they predicted that like-minded groups of humans would move together online. The intelligence community named their first unclassified briefing for scientists the “birds of a feather” briefing, and the “Birds of a Feather Session on the Intelligence Community Initiative in Massive Digital Data Systems” took place at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose in the spring of 1995.The intelligence community named their first unclassified briefing for scientists the “birds of a feather” briefing.
Their research aim was to track digital fingerprints inside the rapidly expanding global information network, which was then known as the World Wide Web. Could an entire world of digital information be organized so that the requests humans made inside such a network be tracked and sorted? Could their queries be linked and ranked in order of importance? Could “birds of a feather” be identified inside this sea of information so that communities and groups could be tracked in an organized way?
By working with emerging commercial-data companies, their intent was to track like-minded groups of people across the internet and identify them from the digital fingerprints they left behind, much like forensic scientists use fingerprint smudges to identify criminals. Just as “birds of a feather flock together,” they predicted that potential terrorists would communicate with each other in this new global, connected world—and they could find them by identifying patterns in this massive amount of new information. Once these groups were identified, they could then follow their digital trails everywhere.
Sergey Brin and Larry Page, computer-science boy wonders
In 1995, one of the first and most promising MDDS grants went to a computer-science research team at Stanford University with a decade-long history of working with NSF and DARPA grants. The primary objective of this grant was “query optimization of very complex queries that are described using the ‘query flocks’ approach.” A second grant—the DARPA-NSF grant most closely associated with Google’s origin—was part of a coordinated effort to build a massive digital library using the internet as its backbone. Both grants funded research by two graduate students who were making rapid advances in web-page ranking, as well as tracking (and making sense of) user queries: future Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
The research by Brin and Page under these grants became the heart of Google: people using search functions to find precisely what they wanted inside a very large data set. The intelligence community, however, saw a slightly different benefit in their research: Could the network be organized so efficiently that individual users could be uniquely identified and tracked?
This process is perfectly suited for the purposes of counter-terrorism and homeland security efforts: Human beings and like-minded groups who might pose a threat to national security can be uniquely identified online before they do harm. This explains why the intelligence community found Brin’s and Page’s research efforts so appealing; prior to this time, the CIA largely used human intelligence efforts in the field to identify people and groups that might pose threats. The ability to track them virtually (in conjunction with efforts in the field) would change everything.
It was the beginning of what in just a few years’ time would become Google. The two intelligence-community managers charged with leading the program met regularly with Brin as his research progressed, and he was an author on several other research papers that resulted from this MDDS grant before he and Page left to form Google.
The grants allowed Brin and Page to do their work and contributed to their breakthroughs in web-page ranking and tracking user queries. Brin didn’t work for the intelligence community—or for anyone else. Google had not yet been incorporated. He was just a Stanford researcher taking advantage of the grant provided by the NSA and CIA through the unclassified MDDS program.
Left out of Google’s story
The MDDS research effort has never been part of Google’s origin story, even though the principal investigator for the MDDS grant specifically named Google as directly resulting from their research: “Its core technology, which allows it to find pages far more accurately than other search engines, was partially supported by this grant,” he wrote. In a published research paper that includes some of Brin’s pivotal work, the authors also reference the NSF grant that was created by the MDDS program.
Instead, every Google creation story only mentions just one federal grant: the NSF/DARPA “digital libraries” grant, which was designed to allow Stanford researchers to search the entire World Wide Web stored on the university’s servers at the time. “The development of the Google algorithms was carried on a variety of computers, mainly provided by the NSF-DARPA-NASA-funded Digital Library project at Stanford,” Stanford’s Infolab says of its origin, for example. NSF likewise only references the digital libraries grant, not the MDDS grant as well, in its own history of Google’s origin. In the famous research paper, “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine,” which describes the creation of Google, Brin and Page thanked the NSF and DARPA for its digital library grant to Stanford. But the grant from the intelligence community’s MDDS program—specifically designed for the breakthrough that Google was built upon—has faded into obscurity.
Google has said in the past that it was not funded or created by the CIA. For instance, when stories circulated in 2006 that Google had received funding from the intelligence community for years to assist in counter-terrorism efforts, the company told Wired magazine founder John Battelle, “The statements related to Google are completely untrue.”
Did the CIA directly fund the work of Brin and Page, and therefore create Google? No. But were Brin and Page researching precisely what the NSA, the CIA, and the intelligence community hoped for, assisted by their grants? Absolutely.The CIA and NSA funded an unclassified, compartmentalized program designed from its inception to spur something that looks almost exactly like Google.
To understand this significance, you have to consider what the intelligence community was trying to achieve as it seeded grants to the best computer-science minds in academia: The CIA and NSA funded an unclassified, compartmentalized program designed from its inception to spur the development of something that looks almost exactly like Google. Brin’s breakthrough research on page ranking by tracking user queries and linking them to the many searches conducted—essentially identifying “birds of a feather”—was largely the aim of the intelligence community’s MDDS program. And Google succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
The intelligence community’s enduring legacy within Silicon Valley
Digital privacy concerns over the intersection between the intelligence community and commercial technology giants have grown in recent years. But most people still don’t understand the degree to which the intelligence community relies on the world’s biggest science and tech companies for its counter-terrorism and national-security work.
Civil-liberty advocacy groups have aired their privacy concerns for years, especially as they now relate to the Patriot Act. “Hastily passed 45 days after 9/11 in the name of national security, the Patriot Act was the first of many changes to surveillance laws that made it easier for the government to spy on ordinary Americans by expanding the authority to monitor phone and email communications, collect bank and credit reporting records, and track the activity of innocent Americans on the Internet,” says the ACLU. “While most Americans think it was created to catch terrorists, the Patriot Act actually turns regular citizens into suspects.”
When asked, the biggest technology and communications companies—from Verizon and AT&T to Google, Facebook, and Microsoft—say that they never deliberately and proactively offer up their vast databases on their customers to federal security and law enforcement agencies: They say that they only respond to subpoenas or requests that are filed properly under the terms of the Patriot Act.
But even a cursory glance through recent public records shows that there is a treadmill of constant requests that could undermine the intent behind this privacy promise. According to the data-request records that the companies make available to the public, in the most recent reporting period between 2016 and 2017, local, state and federal government authorities seeking information related to national security, counter-terrorism or criminal concerns issued more than 260,000 subpoenas, court orders, warrants, and other legal requests to Verizon, more than 250,000 such requests to AT&T, and nearly 24,000 subpoenas, search warrants, or court orders to Google. Direct national security or counter-terrorism requests are a small fraction of this overall group of requests, but the Patriot Act legal process has now become so routinized that the companies each have a group of employees who simply take care of the stream of requests.
In this way, the collaboration between the intelligence community and big, commercial science and tech companies has been wildly successful. When national security agencies need to identify and track people and groups, they know where to turn – and do so frequently. That was the goal in the beginning. It has succeeded perhaps more than anyone could have imagined at the time.
Sebastian Thrun was entertaining the idea of self-driving cars for many years. Born and raised in Germany, he was fascinated with the power and performance of German cars. Things changed in 1986, when he was 18, when his best friend died in a car crash because the driver, another friend, was going too fast on his new Audi Quattro.
As a student at the University of Bonn, Thrun developed several autonomous robotic systems that earned him international recognition. At the time, Thrun was convinced that self-driving cars would soon make transportation safer, avoiding crashes like the one that took his friend’s life.
In 1998, he became an assistant professor and co-director of the Robot Learning Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University. In July 2003, Thrun left Carnegie Mellon for Stanford University, soon after the first DARPA Grand Challenge was announced. Before accepting the new position, he asked Red Whittaker, the leader of the CMU robotics department, to join the team developing the vehicle for the DARPA race. Whittaker declined. After moving to California, Thrun joined the Stanford Racing Team.
On Oct. 8, 2005, the Stanford Racing Team won $2 million for being the first team to complete the 132-mile DARPA Grand Challenge course in California’s Mojave Desert. Their robot car, “Stanley,” finished in just under 6 hours and 54 minutes and averaged over 19 mph on the course.
Google’s Page wanted to develop self-driving cars
Two years after the third Grand Challenge, Google co-founder Larry Page called Thrun, wanting to turn the experience of the DARPA races into a product for the masses.
When Page first approached Thrun about building a self-driving car that people could use on the real roads, Thrun told him it couldn’t be done.
But Page had a vision, and he would not abandon his quest for an autonomous vehicle.
Thrun recalled that a short time later, Page came back to him and said, “OK, you say it can’t be done. You’re the expert. I trust you. So I can explain to Sergey [Brin] why it can’t be done, can you give me a technical reason why it can’t be done?”
Finally, Thrun accepted Page’s offer and, in 2009, started Project Chauffeur, which began as the Google self-driving car project.
The Google 101,000-Mile Challenge
To develop the technology for Google’s self-driving car, Thrun called Urmson and offered him the position of chief technical officer of the project.
To encourage the team to build a vehicle, and its systems, to drive on any public road, Page created two challenges, with big cash rewards for the entire team: a 1,000-mile challenge to show that Project Chauffeur’s car could drive in several situations, including highways and the streets of San Francisco, and another 100,000-mile challenge to show that driverless cars could be a reality in a few years.
By the middle of 2011, Project Chauffeur engineers completed the two challenges.
In 2016, the Google self-driving car project became Waymo, a “spinoff under Alphabet as a self-driving technology company with a mission to make it safe and easy for people and things to move around.”
Urmson led Google’s self-driving car project for nearly eight years. Under his leadership, Google vehicles accumulated 1.8 million miles of test driving.
In 2018, Waymo One, the first fully self-driving vehicle taxi service, began in Phoenix, Arizona.
From Waymo to Aurora
In 2016, after finishing development of the production-ready version of Waymo’s self-driving technology, Urmson left Google to start Aurora Innovation, a startup backed by Amazon, aiming to provide the full-stack solution for self-driving vehicles.
Urmson believes that in 20 years, we’ll see much of the transportation infrastructure move over to automation. – Arrow.com
TO BE CONTINUED
Here’s a peek into the next episode:
Facebook Hired a Former DARPA Head To Lead An Ambitious New Research Lab
If you need another sign that Facebook’s world-dominating ambitions are just getting started, here’s one: the Menlo Park, Calif. company has hired a former DARPA chief to lead its new research lab.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced April 14 that Regina Dugan will guide Building 8, a new research group developing hardware projects that advance the company’s efforts in virtual reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence and global connectivity.
Dugan served as the head of the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency from 2009 and 2012. Most recently, she led Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects Lab, a highly experimental arm of the company responsible for developing new hardware and software products on a strict two-year timetable.
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! Articles can always be subject of later editing as a way of perfecting them
A slide from Hunt’s presentation.
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