How Joe Lonsdale Works For The Russians
What do you do when a front doesn't know he's a front?
This predatory behavior of Joe Lonsdale — to launch the University of Austin, full tuition $58,000 and no accreditation — makes me think I should have done something sooner to expose this fraudster. Is this the new Trump U?
When I was younger I looked up to Joe Lonsdale in that way you foolishly do when you’re young and you find a career on which you want to pattern your own life. How had he built his seemingly amazing empire? I made excuses for his rather unforgivable behavior — who sleeps with one of their undergrad students anyway? — and I rationalized his persecution as a “#MeToo” excess rather than telling of larger character defects. We developed if not a friendship than certainly a mutual respect. I have certainly that view now.
To learn more I tracked down some of his investors. One of his earlier investors took me aside and told me what was going on. The hustle was explained to me. “When firms get to his size returns are irrelevant,” my interlocutor said. It’s “only about management fees and storytelling.”
In other words, it’s all a con. But whose? Who is he fronting for?
We got a sense of that when news broke in Forbes that sanctioned Russian oligarch Petr Aven’s son Denis works for Joe Lonsdale.
The younger Aven’s status, I think, covers a more interesting reality: that Lonsdale works for the Russians and Russian Jews who, having stolen money from Russia, deposited it first in the United Arab Emirates and now face increased global pressure.
As with Pavel Durov and increasingly Elon Musk, it seems likely that there will be an agreement between the various deep states — French, Russian, Emirati, and American — to rein in this sort of money laundering masquerading as technology. Already there have been inquiries into Lonsdale.
You watch Lonsdale be interviewed by Reason magazine.
At every turn Lonsdale champions Milton Friedman — who he cites as a major influence and who wound up being an advisor to Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
Of course this kind of free marketer, open borders liberalism leads ultimately to human trafficking. After all, isn’t that just the end point of open borders?
And no small wonder that Lonsdale was introduced to this pool of capital first by Matt Michelsen, the Lady Gaga business associate turned Rebekah Mercer consigliere turned coronavirus test fraudster turned human trafficker—and Greg Abbott donor.
If we know the Russians are weaponizing human trafficking in Africa why not in the United States?
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Who is Petr Aven? The Guardian did a write up in 2000 about how “Putin urged to apply the Pinochet stick.”
Vladimir Putin should resort to totalitarian methods to push through radical economic reform and redeem his promise to make Russia great again, one of Russia's most successful bankers suggests.
Petr Aven, president of Alfa, Russia's biggest and most successful private bank, and a key business supporter of the newly elected president, said that Mr Putin should model his regime on that of Augusto Pinochet of Chile, combining Reaganomics with dictatorial controls.
"The only way ahead is for fast liberal reforms, building public support for that path but also using totalitarian force to achieve that. Russia has no other choice," he said in a Guardian interview.
"I'm a supporter of Pinochet, not as a person but as a politician who produced results for his country. He was not corrupt. He supported his team of economists for 10 years. You need strength for that. I see that parallel here. There are similarities in the situation."
Mr Aven's advocacy of radical Thatcherism comes at the end of a decade of mass privatisation of Russian industry, a process which has been notoriously corrupt and has discredited the very notion of reform.
…’
Mr Aven is convinced that Mr Putin is the strong leader Russia needs, but is worried that his innate caution and his willingness to do deals with the communists will make him fudge and temporise.
"Nobody follows the law in this country," he said. "Pinochet tried to enforce obedience to the law and sometimes that's difficult for a country. Sometimes you need to use force. The only role of the state is to use force when needed."
Mr Aven, both of whose whose grandfathers died in Stalin's gulag, denied that he was urging a return to the repression of the Soviet era. But he said rampant criminality and corruption could not be tackled by applying the law.
"You can't always fight criminals by staying within the law. You can't always do it peacefully."
That’s right. Aven ran Putin’s campaign in 2000 with the slogan Make Russia Great Again.
Aven was totally wrong about how Pinochet operated, by the way. Pinochet had plenty of secret accounts around the world.
Lonsdale is currently backing Elon Musk’s Super PAC for Donald Trump.
Some months ago a Russian-compromised friend of mine asked me about Joe Lonsdale. That was when I knew about Joe Lonsdale.
I had come to like this kind avuncular man from Northern Virginia. I relied upon him for advice and I even gave him some money but before long our relationship took on the character of that of teacher-student in The Good Shepherd (2006). Rough stuff.
Some times your teachers screw up and there’s nothing you can do. Sometimes they are a lesson in what not to do. I did all I could to help him and gave him many opportunities to clean himself up. He chose against those options. Many such cases. “You were my teacher, you betrayed me.”
To the extent I do the work I do it’s because I want to save people. I want to rescue them from the traps that we’re laid for me—and for them.
Of course there are quite a number of things that the Russian, American, and Chinese deep states can work together on. There are shared interests among the great powers. There always will be. I am for the comity between nations.
****
By now it should become clear that Joe Lonsdale is fucked. In this he isn’t alone.
Indeed all of the people and all of the funds who backed Musk’s 2022 takeover of Twitter are going to have no choice but to turn Fed. I’m here to help them do that but it has to happen soon and it’s probably too late for a lot of them.
I have tried, in vain, to recruit Lonsdale over the years but I’ve come to believe that part of the reason he was selected was because he was particularly dumb.
***
I’m not a joiner. This you know. I do my own thing. For better and for worse.
It’s sometimes useful to break apart what the fundamental hustle is.
Leonard Leo is building a secret society of conservatives. Aron D’Souza, who helped on the Thiel-Hulk Hogan Gawker op, wants to cartelize the world’s chiefs of staff.
Joe Lonsdale seeks to control the sons of powerful men. This isn’t investing but politicking.
He’s done it often — in America, in Russia, in China and Saudi Arabia and it’s a very effective shield. It likely stopped his brother from being further investigated by the FBI.
To be a super effective front you’d need the front not to know they were a front in the first place. When they got pressure, they’d fight effectively and aggressively and maybe even argue that they are the true Americans after all.
When you criticize Joe Lonsdale he wraps himself tightly in the flag. He’s act indignant and he tried to get a head of the story.
I have a lot of text messages and email which show him in another light. Do we still have a journalistic elite in this country that will hold power to account?
Or do we have to rely on other countries — France, Denmark, Sweden — sending their journalists to do the jobs that Americans just won’t do?
****
Now here are the instructions for the Russian deep state. It is too dangerous to work with you. Wish that it were another way.
Still you will search in vain for Russophobia or Sinophobia in my writings. There are a great many problems America and these countries could work on were they inclined but I am frankly too terrified to get too close.
Nevertheless a great country doesn’t tolerate the looting of Russia in its name.
A magnificent country doesn’t fund the drugging of other countries.
Once upon a time Russia created some of the best technology in the world.
“Never forget the sacrifice of the Russians to win the War,” my CIA (and Russian studying) grandfather once told me. “Always show them respect.”
I have kept to that.
We could do great things together — we could map the world, we could plumb the genome, and we could conquer the stars.
But none of that will happen if the looting and polluting continues.
Let’s clean up these ops together.
Get your house in order first.
Are you ready for the wars here in the States? Hopefully most foreigners will stay so we can send them on their way.
You sure hate Russia.