There are quite a few articles on this substack, where you either uncover secrets (at least from my point of you) or validate suspicions that I've had for a long time. Yet, there are instances, where I am forced to ask myself the quintessential question that anyone investing in edgy ideas has to ask at some point – is this guy crazy smart or just crazy? You mention in one of your articles that you used to be naive, because you were totally unaware of an extra dimension in the world of politics – or something to that effect. I take that extra dimension to be geopolitics/the intelligence community. My question to you is, aren't you afraid that you're going to become a victim of your own paranoia? Are you familiar with Foucoult's Pendulum by Umberto Eco? Because there are times, when I'm reading your stuff, and I cannot help but picture that scene from A Beautiful Mind, where Nash is drawing spiderwebs on newspaper clippings.
I think most reasonable people would agree that both Israel and China, and their respective intelligence communities, have a tremendous effect on world events. As did the Soviet Union and the KGB back in the day. But the Red Scare was also real. So I'm wondering, whether you are overestimating the capabilities of Chinese intelligence? Thiel said about Gawker that the source of its power was that nobody knew how it worked. To an outsider, it was a black box hate machine. The Russian and the Chinese societies are both inward-looking and foreign in almost every manner possible and thus mysterious, so I would assume that the tendency to think them to be more powerful than they really are is that much greater. It might just be that the Chinese are just as dysfunctional as the Soviets were, and our fear of them is a combination of a lack of information and insecurity on our end combined with some sort of blowfish strategy on theirs.
I'm just thinking out loud here, but I was really surprised at the way that you dismissed Rene Girard as a mere French-Chinese asset. The way I see it, the guy is a prophet, and will be a saint some day. Obviously, I'm totally biased here. Still, I think you can't just shrug off his life's work as a mere intelligence ploy. Girard was totally obsessed with the idea of violence his whole life. You make it sound as though he did all that just to find disciples for some sort of intelligence operation. Yes, there's a cultish aspect to both the intelligence and the academic world, but that doesn't mean that every eminent scholar is trying to cultivate his very own Cambridge Five. In short, I think you're wrong about him.
Where I think you're really right is, when you talk about the true don of the the PayPal mafia. Thiel is considered a Machiavellian, but I say he's too much of a true Christian to be a true Machiavellian. I'd say Moritz got it right, when he said that Thiel is a hedge fund guy at heart. I look at him as a kind of a hedge fund in the marketplace of ideas. Controversial, sure. But, ultimately, I think he's a good person. I think the real darkness of the PayPal mafia emanates from someplace else. Take the Diversity Myth, for example. I don't know for sure, but I suspect the nastiest lines in that book were not written by Peter Thiel.
Anyhow, keep up the good work, but don't get carried away with that spy stuff. Your Chisraeli is becoming the new Knights Templar. You can fry your brain, if you're not careful. Don't get me wrong, I know the world is more messed up than I can imagine and conspiracies are real, but you've got quite a few crazy smart ideas here. Don't go crazy.
There are quite a few articles on this substack, where you either uncover secrets (at least from my point of you) or validate suspicions that I've had for a long time. Yet, there are instances, where I am forced to ask myself the quintessential question that anyone investing in edgy ideas has to ask at some point – is this guy crazy smart or just crazy? You mention in one of your articles that you used to be naive, because you were totally unaware of an extra dimension in the world of politics – or something to that effect. I take that extra dimension to be geopolitics/the intelligence community. My question to you is, aren't you afraid that you're going to become a victim of your own paranoia? Are you familiar with Foucoult's Pendulum by Umberto Eco? Because there are times, when I'm reading your stuff, and I cannot help but picture that scene from A Beautiful Mind, where Nash is drawing spiderwebs on newspaper clippings.
I think most reasonable people would agree that both Israel and China, and their respective intelligence communities, have a tremendous effect on world events. As did the Soviet Union and the KGB back in the day. But the Red Scare was also real. So I'm wondering, whether you are overestimating the capabilities of Chinese intelligence? Thiel said about Gawker that the source of its power was that nobody knew how it worked. To an outsider, it was a black box hate machine. The Russian and the Chinese societies are both inward-looking and foreign in almost every manner possible and thus mysterious, so I would assume that the tendency to think them to be more powerful than they really are is that much greater. It might just be that the Chinese are just as dysfunctional as the Soviets were, and our fear of them is a combination of a lack of information and insecurity on our end combined with some sort of blowfish strategy on theirs.
I'm just thinking out loud here, but I was really surprised at the way that you dismissed Rene Girard as a mere French-Chinese asset. The way I see it, the guy is a prophet, and will be a saint some day. Obviously, I'm totally biased here. Still, I think you can't just shrug off his life's work as a mere intelligence ploy. Girard was totally obsessed with the idea of violence his whole life. You make it sound as though he did all that just to find disciples for some sort of intelligence operation. Yes, there's a cultish aspect to both the intelligence and the academic world, but that doesn't mean that every eminent scholar is trying to cultivate his very own Cambridge Five. In short, I think you're wrong about him.
Where I think you're really right is, when you talk about the true don of the the PayPal mafia. Thiel is considered a Machiavellian, but I say he's too much of a true Christian to be a true Machiavellian. I'd say Moritz got it right, when he said that Thiel is a hedge fund guy at heart. I look at him as a kind of a hedge fund in the marketplace of ideas. Controversial, sure. But, ultimately, I think he's a good person. I think the real darkness of the PayPal mafia emanates from someplace else. Take the Diversity Myth, for example. I don't know for sure, but I suspect the nastiest lines in that book were not written by Peter Thiel.
Anyhow, keep up the good work, but don't get carried away with that spy stuff. Your Chisraeli is becoming the new Knights Templar. You can fry your brain, if you're not careful. Don't get me wrong, I know the world is more messed up than I can imagine and conspiracies are real, but you've got quite a few crazy smart ideas here. Don't go crazy.
Steve Baer is a goofball.