The Gen X Files: The Adam Neumann Show: Is A16Z A Foreign Op Masquerading As A Venture Capital Firm?
We need significant reform and LP transparency for the largest venture funds, especially if they use tax preferred endowments.
“I served in the Israeli Navy, and it's not an easy thing. I learned a lot in the naval officers' course. It gave me a lot.” — Adam Neumann
Author’s note: OK, fine then! You demanded it and I listened. I really hesitated with the whole Adam Neumann-Andreessen Horowitz story. I looked it up and down, and said to myself, “Wow, you’re just too easy.” I had hoped that it would go away but it has not gone away, so here we are writing about it. Sometimes the first responsibility of a man is to take out the trash and hope the raccoons don’t get in the way.
Frankly it’s somewhat shocking that there have been books and movies and miniseries about Adam Neumann and yet no one seems to ask the obvious questions: Is Adam Neumann a spy? Is his wife? Is WeWork an op? And if it is how many other of these things are out there?
Yes, we’re supposed to go off on how it’s so unfair that this “white male” is given another chance. Of course this is anti-white racism but that’s kind of beside the point. Don’t you dare bring up Adam Neumann’s Jewishness even though he brings it up all the time. No, that would be gauche. Don’t do it. Don’t fall for the obvious. What are you some sort of anti-Semite?
I write these things because the rest of y’all are cowards or cashing in on the con. Enough is enough. They won’t make me repeat the lies anymore. I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s something downright irresponsible about failing to write about these tech people as if they are people. Many of them are expert marketers and so every claim ought to be taken seriously. We must vet the elite—or we might as well give up on the idea of self government altogether. Do cows in the abattoirs have a politics? Does it matter even if they did?
Consider the following: Adam Neumann is an Israeli. Do we even know if that was his real name? Adam Neumann. Adam — meaning man. Neumann meaning “new man.” Seriously? Man Newman. OK, that’s just lazy writing! You will search in vain to find a photo of those two very Israeli things that Neumann supposedly worked on — Israeli Navy or being in a kibbutz. (For what it’s worth my dear mother worked on a kibbutz in Israel and I recently came back from a trip to Israel and Turkey. Thanks for the enhanced scrutiny in Israel, you guys!)
We don’t know much about Neumann’s parents. Or about his upbringing. Or about much of anything about him other than what he supposedly tells us. And weirder still no one seems to want to write up who Neumann really is and from whence he comes. We do know that Neumann supposedly arrived in America — in New York — right after 9/11, which I have noted before was a very strange time to show up in America as an Israeli. (After September 11th, Uncle Sam had identified and deported a number of Israelis and there needed to be new operatives.) Neumann himself said in 2017 that his plan was to “get a great job, have tons of fun and make a lot of money.” And how was he planning to do that exactly when he wasn’t a citizen? Insert the mob daughter wife. (Dad went to jail for running a tax scam with direct mail and got scandalously little time.) Neumann fell in love and his wife — as he tells it — says he was “full of shit.” (Poet Robert Frost once said that he was never more serious than when he was joking.) In any event the couple has six kids and counting so you know they listened to J.D. Vance on fertility.
But if Neumann’s story is eerily familiar it’s because it is. Here’s how Haaretz’s describes a similar story told about Moishe Mana, the real estate developer with ties to Israeli intelligence. Note the parallels to Neumann’s New York story. (Did I mention he’s a connoisseur of Hunter Biden’s artwork? (And really, who isn’t?) And that Moishe loves Mayor Francis Suarez’s corruption je ne sais quoi?)
The story of his move to America is almost suspiciously cliche-ridden. In 1983, at the age of 23, he bought a one-way ticket, arrived in New York penniless (“except for $800 my father gave me”) and at first lived a nomadic existence, occasionally spending the night on a bench in Washington Square Park. He eked out a living in a booth on the sidewalks of Manhattan, selling scarves, gloves and sneakers. Finally, he settled in a rickety building in Brooklyn, which was then still a poor, neglected satellite of Manhattan and not a sexy hub of art and style.
If Adam Neumann is an intelligence officer he’d be following in a long proud line of other Israeli intelligence officers who nevertheless managed to take over the American economy. In addition to Moishe Mana, there’s Ike Perlmutter, Vivi Nevo, Haim Saban, Adam Milstein (handler of Senator Lindsey Graham), and of course the late Sheldon Adelson. Now sometimes these guys get in trouble. Milstein, who once told me that he owned Lindsey Graham, went to jail for tax evasion. Perlmutter is reportedly under investigation for trying to steal Veterans health data. Naturally.
Think of Adam then as the changing of the guard. Among my spook friends we laugh and laugh about how obvious some of these guys are and yet how its still verboten to mention it to the wider public. Why?
The public isn’t buying a lot of the story either with one person claiming that it is favorite “conspiracy theory.”
CIA & Mossad found insane dirt on Masa Son, made him raise hundreds of billions through Vision Fund from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, sunk the money into US-based economy, real estate, and startups via WeWork where agent Adam Neumann oversaw the operation as CEO.
If I had to guess, the truth is that Masa Son is likely Yakuza — his dad did run pachinko parlors — who is working with the naughty Saudis — MBS chiefly — to launder millions of dollars into the U.S. property market to keep it out of the hands of the increasingly vigilant Chinese state which has wanted to call all the money back to China as they go through a banking crisis.
No less a source than Haaretz reported Neumann saying “that three people would save the world: Mohammed bin Salman, Jared Kushner and Neumann himself.” Now typically that’s dismissed as some kind of grandiose sort of thing, but what if it wasn’t? What if Neumann was telling the truth when he said he advised Jared Kushner on the Middle East peace plan? And why not? WeWork was a major tenant of Kushner’s properties. Nothing corrupt there… Don’t you advise your landlord on geopolitical matters? This White House visit doesn’t look like pay to play at all.
Like seriously? Are we not going to be talking about this scam? An Israeli intelligence officer entrepreneur gets transferred billions of dollars to him from a mobbed up Korean-Japanese guy who made all his money from a subsidy from the Chinese state — Alibaba baby — and now has all this Saudi money. Oh, and that Israeli entrepreneur just so happens to be friends with the President of the United States’ son in law and rent from him. Are you kidding me?!
And what should we think of it that both Jared Kushner and now Adam Neumann are part of the Chabad network? Don’t take my word for it. Take Adam’s mother Aviva’s. “[Adam]'s a US member of the Chabad religious movement, which is something nice, with songs at Kabbalat Shabbat on Friday and going to synagogue on Sabbaths and holidays,” she told an interviewer. Don’t forget how close Jared is with Chabad. They ministered to him when his father was in jail for Epsteining New Jersey officials and his own brother-in-law! Oh, and Chabad helped the young princeling decide who gets a pardon and who doesn’t.
Part of the way these myths persist is through the use of PR and the threat of litigation both of which are increasingly the refuge of a scoundrel. (If you think you have a good product, sell it. If you have a case, sue.)
I think it’s worth pointing out that Neumann has retained Clare Locke, the famously litigious law firm that is representing Dominion against Fox News and which successfully bankrupted Rolling Stone. Now I’ve long come to the view that Clare Locke is a limited hangout. And yes, the firm does represent Clearview.AI — or at least it sent some menacing letters on its behalf. I’ve met Libby Locke on a few occasions and found her pleasant enough, at least for a DC-based lady lawyer.
Now in the spirit of further full disclosure I once pitched Andreessen Horowitz my company Clearview.Ai. I thank God that they did not invest given the subsequent research I did about in firm and all that’s happened since. I would not recommend anyone take a check from them. And finally, I have talked to Marc Andreessen and I share some of the critique of the media industry — but I’m also suing BuzzFeed, an Andreessen Horowitz-backed firm, which was gifted Huffington Post. And yes, we are going all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.
I’m done with these foreign ops trying to weaken the US whilst braying about free speech and funded with foreign cash.
Of course it’s very on brand for Gen Xers to gouge millennials. Isn’t that what the “sharing” economy is all about? Don’t blame the Israeli intelligence officer entrepreneur for taking it to its logical conclusion. Time shares and slumlording!
A billionaire friend of mine once told me that real estate is what you do with your money when you run out of ideas. We knew this was true about Marc Andreessen who has been on a tear buying up all the California coastline he can get.
But so it is too with Andreessen Horowitz, which has written a $350 million check to Adam Neumann — its largest ever.
How’s the “real estate tech” deal looking?
Never mind that Adam Neumann is purportedly under federal investigation along with SoftBank. Never mind that WeWork was clearly a Chisraeli spying intelligence operation. Oh, what? You think all those weird cameras at the WeWork were just for your safety? Lol.
Of course there’s a larger question here that we aren’t supposed to ask.
Is the $350 million invested in Neumann’s new properties really a pay off?
Marc “Conehead” Andreessen puts the con in Silicon Valley — and the world’s beginning to notice. He’s being subpoenaed in the Musk-Twitter lawsuit. He’s being sued in a Coinbase lawsuit.
His firm is being sued for allowing rampant fraud on a crypto exchange.
He protected Mark Zuckerberg from a lawsuit against Facebook over the Cambridge Analytica Affair.
By his investments ye shall know him.
Andreessen supported Theranos, which was a lot more interesting than you think it is. Did you know that Holmes co-conspirator came from a spy family?
A16Z invested bigly in Ubiome — which wound up getting raided by the Feds. (The founders are still at large — in Germany of all places.)
I did enjoy that Yale endowment’s Dave Swensen invested in A16Z and now Yale’s bracing for a hurting after investing so heavily in crypto. Swensen died of cancer before the word is out.
Oh, and by the way, Yale’s endowment was outclassed by these institutions which didn’t invest in crypto directly.
It’s time to retire Marc and with him the notion that venture capitalists know best.
Whilst others have gleefully focused on Marc’s silly “It’s time to build” essay right when he gobbles up California coastal real estate — a third Malibu home! — and advocates for NIMBYism, I have my doubts about how pro-American the mega funds are. How could they be when so much of their money comes from China?
(Hey Delian! Psst! Founders Fund’s money comes from KKR which comes from China… Your mentor, Keith Rabois, cofounded OpenDoor which buys up middle class housing.)
Maybe wrapping yourself in the flag is just good branding. A way of warding off a real inquiry.
It’s time for a reckoning. Or, if you prefer, a tech-oning.
Let’s start with Marc and Adam.
And we haven’t even started talking about Ben Horowitz whose father David was intimately familiar with the Chinese-backed Black Panthers and whose think tank’s donors backed the January 6th incident…
You nailed it, as a former WeWork employee myself who somehow survived for 3 years in that insane asylum with about 10,000 stories to go with it, I had suspected the place was a spy operation. However, it was so disorganized & poorly managed I also thought there's no way they're running this the way Masa Son had intended. Adam legitimately believes he's a messianic type of figure too, so maybe Mossad figured out how to MK Ultra a type of Jerusalem Syndrome into its operatives.