BACKGROUND CZECHS NEEDED: Why Silicon Valley Doesn't Do Due Diligence on Foreign Spies
One person's "investment" is another person's payoff--or foreign op.
If you feel as if you’ve learned something from this Substack please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Thank you.
A recent Wall Street Journal article about the Xanadu north of San Francisco and its foreign ties makes me wonder: Can we just seize the land already?
One of the Journal’s authors — Kate O’Keefe — tweets:
We found the mystery man who signed the land deals for Silicon Valley titans’ new proposed city. He
*married a descendant of a De Beers founder
*manages money for a South African billionaire’s family
*once started a co with the owner of a Russian gold mine
Here we go again with the weird South Africans apparently.
All we really need is for the Department of Justice is to enforce the law against foreign intervention in our real estate and venture capital markets… and begin the process of seizing assets. It’s called civil asset forfeiture, friends. And yet it’s so hard to do when you have a compromised counterintelligence program.
When you understand that a lot of Silicon Valley investors deliberately don’t do due diligence so as to have access to foreign capital and networks you understand a lot about how fake due diligence actually is. When you couple that understanding with the observation that many technologies, or causes, or political campaigns are really just ways of paying off different networks you get a lot of the way there.
If you’re an American with ties to the early days of the country what they really mean when they talk about due diligence is “Israeli/Chinese/Russian approved.” Pay it no mind.
A way to think about Silicon Valley investing is as follows: China (and various other entities) get U.S. dollars and then redeploy that money into the United States with varying strategic goals. When China and America are aligned this model can work quite well.
In some cases, they treat America like a laboratory where they can field test various ideas. When the technology grows large enough they’ll simply steal the tech and make a cheaper version made in China. In other cases, they use their technology to disrupt us or distract us. In still other cases they’re parking money offshore in our real estate markets so as to keep prices artificially high. As you know the law is quite clear that no boomer can sell a house for less than they paid for it. I kid, but only sort of.
In the past this venture capital process has been intermediated with the help of Israeli-adjacent or Israeli spies like Daniel Gross or Elad Gil or Matthew Ocko but it’s looking increasingly unlikely that that’ll continue now that China has seemingly joined the Palestinian (and Arab) cause. The Chinese know when to get rid of a loser and the Israel topic doesn’t really play internationally anymore.
Which brings me to the mastermind of the operation — a Czech-turned-American going on a billionaire buying spree in Solano, California.
Who, he? Who, the billioniares?
Let’s do the billionaires first:
Michael Moritz of Chinese Sequoia fame.
He argued that American workers should be more like the Chinese. Which is to say exploited.
Moritz has claimed health woes for why he retired. But has he really retired?
Marc Andreessen of Chisrael A16Z fame.
We’ve written about him a lot here and well, it’s seemingly more and more the case that the Midwestern billionaire wants to delve into real estate and avoid punishment for securities fraud.
Reid Hoffman of Chinese-backed venture fund Greylock.
Did I mention he palled around with Jeffrey Epstein? No wonder he’s become a big donor to Joe Biden. That MIT report sure was a whitewash.
But of course he’s a donor to Nikki Haley too. And not Chris Christie!
Lauren Powell Job whose Chisrael Emerson Collective backs Israeli prison guard Jeffrey Goldberg who acts as an “editor” at The Atlantic.
Patrick and John Collison, the Stripe boys.
It’s looking increasingly likely that Stripe is being cleaned up. This is especially important as Wells Fargo — its main backer — gets cleaned up.
Former Bank of England governor Mark Carney joining the company is the tell.
Gone are the days when the Collisons were meeting up with Rebekah Mercer.
At best, these are absentee “investors.” At worst something more dodgy is going on.
You can see how the YIMBYist ideology has spread and created the kind of ideology necessary for a massive new city in the Bay Area. If San Francisco isn’t working just move it some place else.
This is why the criminal known as Delian called for moving it to Miami. That worked for a time — that is, until its mayor Francis Suarez got investigated by the FBI for essentially acting as an Israeli “Saudi” spy.
For what it’s worth I’ve come to see YIMBY as a way of paying off the various construction mobs. And while I support more building I also support more enforcement of immigration, legal and illegal, which helps push prices up. Of course what really needs to happen is that we clean up the money laundering in real estate. A dear friend of mine who is in America on visa said that she and another similarly situated immigrant were approached by “shady people” to “property manage” their AIRBNB properties. How often does this sort of thing happen? You’re not really supposed to ask.
Let’s tuck in now on the man who borought it all together. A Mr. Jan Sramek, the wonder-no longer a kind—Czech-born real estate developer. (It’s unclear if he’s related to the former Czech prime minister.)
Here’s how Sramek’s described. The boy genius turned real estate developer.
I find these stories absurdly implausible and the sort of covers that are given to young spies to give them “credentials.”
I think one of the things we will see is a lot more due diligence.
But who shall do it?
Shall it be us? After all, We the People have successfully repelled other invasions.
If you feel as if you’ve learned something from this Substack please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Thank you.