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Thiel and Bannon: “Yellow Peril” in Silicon Valley

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COMMENT: There has been much com­men­tary about anti-Asian racism in the U.S. fol­low­ing numer­ous, some­times lethal attacks on Asian-Amer­i­cans in the wake of the pan­dem­ic.

Aside from the full-court press against Chi­na that we have cov­ered extensively–including and espe­cial­ly the dis­turb­ing evi­dence that the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic was delib­er­ate­ly engi­neered by the U.S.–this should come as no sur­prise.

Peter Thiel–lynchpin of pow­er in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, the top dog in Palan­tir (the alpha preda­tor of the elec­tron­ic sur­veil­lance milieu), a key play­er in Facebook–has dis­sem­i­nat­ed anti-Chi­nese vit­ri­ol about the “yel­low per­il” in Sil­i­con Val­ley.

He has been joined in that effort by Steve Ban­non, a coor­di­na­tor of anti-Chi­na activ­i­ty in Wash­ing­ton D.C.

” . . . . The bil­lion­aire investor Peter Thiel has accused Google of “trea­son” and called for a law enforce­ment inves­ti­ga­tion of the search engine’s par­ent com­pa­ny. He spec­u­lat­ed that the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment has invad­ed its employ­ee ranks. A Ger­man immi­grant via South Africa, Thiel is not alone; his remarks echo the repeat­ed asser­tions of the rab­ble rouser Steve Ban­non that there are too many Asian CEOs in Sil­i­con Val­ley. These claims, com­bined with sim­i­lar charges of wrong­do­ing against stu­dents and pro­fes­sors of Chi­nese ori­gin on cam­pus­es across the coun­try, are as omi­nous as they are lurid. While Thiel presents no evi­dence, Ban­non dis­plays ample prej­u­dice. They are inspir­ing para­noia about every­one of Chi­nese her­itage. . . .”

Ban­non’s state­ments and actions are par­tic­u­lar­ly iron­ic in light of his cyn­i­cal use of rem­nants of “the old Chi­na” in his “Gold Farm­ing” busi­ness the first decade of this cen­tu­ry.

“. . . . From 2007 to 2012, he had been the CEO of a mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar video-game gold-farm­ing scheme. “Gold farm­ing” was a term for let­ting third-world labor­ers to do; the same repet­i­tive tasks in mas­sive­ly mul­ti­play­er online role-play­ing games (MORPGs) to acquire in-game cur­ren­cy. . . . . The self-pro­claimed anti-glob­al­ist Ban­non ran the scheme by sub­con­tract­ing Chi­nese labor. Accord­ing to Wired writer Julian Dibbel, who vis­it­ed one of the Chi­nese busi­ness part­ners who employed min­ers for Bannon’s com­pa­ny in 2009, the dig­i­tal labor­ers “slept upstairs on ply­wood bunks, day-shift work­ers sat in the hot, dim­ly-lit work­shop.” They earned about four dol­lars a day with eighty-four-hour work­weeks. . . .”

1.    “Peter Thiel and Steve Ban­non fuel a new Yel­low Per­il over Google and Chi­na” by Frank H Wu; The Guardian; 07/17/2019

The bil­lion­aire investor Peter Thiel has accused Google of “trea­son” and called for a law enforce­ment inves­ti­ga­tion of the search engine’s par­ent com­pa­ny. He spec­u­lat­ed that the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment has invad­ed its employ­ee ranks. A Ger­man immi­grant via South Africa, Thiel is not alone; his remarks echo the repeat­ed asser­tions of the rab­ble rouser Steve Ban­non that there are too many Asian CEOs in Sil­i­con Val­ley.

These claims, com­bined with sim­i­lar charges of wrong­do­ing against stu­dents and pro­fes­sors of Chi­nese ori­gin on cam­pus­es across the coun­try, are as omi­nous as they are lurid. While Thiel presents no evi­dence, Ban­non dis­plays ample prej­u­dice. They are inspir­ing para­noia about every­one of Chi­nese her­itage.

At a Sun­day appear­ance which opened the Nation­al Con­ser­vatism Con­fer­ence in Wash­ing­ton DC fol­lowed by an appear­ance with the Fox TV host Tuck­er Carl­son, Thiel, the founder of the Pay­Pal finan­cial ser­vice, relied on rhetor­i­cal ques­tions. He asked Google who was work­ing on arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, whether “senior man­age­ment con­sid­ers itself to have been thor­ough­ly infil­trat­ed” and if the Chi­nese would steal the infor­ma­tion any­way.

Google answered by reit­er­at­ing that “we do not work with the Chi­nese mil­i­tary”.

Thiel left Sil­i­con Val­ley last year in protest over its lib­er­al­ism. He is also behind Palan­tir, the secre­tive sur­veil­lance firm, and has been a sup­port­er of tar­iffs. Google had been report­ed to be devel­op­ing a Chi­na-com­pat­i­ble search engine code­named Drag­on­fly. They stopped due to employ­ee objec­tions.

The open hos­til­i­ty to Chi­nese peo­ple, as dis­tinct from the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment, vio­lates norms inte­gral to Amer­i­ca itself. On the face of these utter­ances is the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of a com­mu­ni­ty, named by ances­try, as a prob­lem. Last year, the FBI direc­tor, Christo­pher Wray, char­ac­ter­ized it as a “whole of soci­ety” threat to Amer­i­can val­ues.

Guilt by asso­ci­a­tion is not what the Amer­i­can dream has promised to those who have sac­ri­ficed every­thing for that prover­bial oppor­tu­ni­ty. What­ev­er the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment may be up to, their poli­cies should not com­pro­mise the sta­tus of Chi­nese peo­ple, almost all of whom are ordi­nary folks, not spies, “sleep­ers”, agents of influ­ence or oth­er­wise con­spir­a­tors.

Although in this new Yel­low Per­il, a spe­cif­ic eth­nic­i­ty is tar­get­ed as a group, no line is drawn between cit­i­zens and for­eign­ers. The orig­i­nal Yel­low Per­il was the notion, pro­mot­ed by Germany’s Kaiser Wil­helm II in the late 19th cen­tu­ry and by the Amer­i­can author Jack Lon­don, that Asians might con­tend against Euro­peans and white Amer­i­cans in a con­test of racial supe­ri­or­i­ty. Pro­pa­gan­dists such as Lothrop Stod­dard wrote titles that would sum­ma­rize the the­sis: The Ris­ing Tide of Col­or Against White World Suprema­cy was a 1920 best­seller.

Nowa­days as ear­li­er, the peo­ple who fear an Asian takeover of Sil­i­con Val­ley do not both­er to add that Asians who become Amer­i­cans are accept­able. They can­not dis­tin­guish by look­ing at a line­up of ran­dom Asians, whether the one is a vis­it­ing schol­ar “fresh off the boat” in that pejo­ra­tive phrase being reap­pro­pri­at­ed, the oth­er a sixth-gen­er­a­tion Cal­i­forn­ian “banana” (yel­low on the out­side, white on the inside, in anoth­er deroga­to­ry term). If they did clar­i­fy that they meant no dis­par­age­ment of those whose fam­i­lies came before their own, at least they would be pure nativists rather than also racists.

The con­fu­sion of Asians over­seas and “Asian Amer­i­cans” (a con­cept coined dur­ing the social jus­tice move­ments cir­ca 1968) has been a recur­ring theme through­out his­to­ry. Dem­a­gogues suc­ceed­ed in per­suad­ing Con­gress to pass the Chi­nese Exclu­sion Act of 1882. They argued the “Ori­en­tals” would out­com­pete Occi­den­tal rivals but remain loy­al to a for­eign empire. The pro­hi­bi­tion was then expand­ed to an Asi­at­ic Barred Zone intend­ed to main­tain eth­nic pro­por­tions favor­ing white Anglo-Sax­on Protes­tants in the Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion (even Catholics, Jews and Euro­peans too south­ern and east­ern were to be lim­it­ed albeit not as strict­ly). Japan­ese Amer­i­cans were locked up dur­ing the sec­ond world war no mat­ter that they were bona fide Unit­ed States cit­i­zens two gen­er­a­tions removed from Tokyo and base­ball-play­ing Chris­tians.

Civ­il rights and nation­al inter­est are com­pat­i­ble. For those who fear Chi­nese will help Chi­na in achiev­ing glob­al dom­i­nance, there is a rem­e­dy: turn those Chi­nese into Chi­nese Amer­i­cans who will con­tribute to the Unit­ed States, or who will embrace a con­cep­tion of belong­ing that is cos­mopoli­tan instead of nation­al­is­tic. There could be no greater gift for Shen­zhen and Shang­hai, the per­ceived usurpers of west­ern cen­ters of tech­nol­o­gy and finance, respec­tive­ly, than to dri­ve out Chi­nese who oth­er­wise would be stake­hold­ers on this side of the Pacif­ic Ocean.

Google relies on Chi­nese, Chi­nese immi­grants and Chi­nese Amer­i­can engi­neers, along­side numer­ous Indi­ans and oth­er Asians, as do oth­er tech­nol­o­gy firms. Only a few of those experts are pro­mot­ed to exec­u­tives.

So it is true that there are many Chi­nese, Indi­ans, oth­er Asians and entre­pre­neurs from the world over who are attract­ed to these shores. That is to be cel­e­brat­ed. If they were to leave, how­ev­er vol­un­tary their depar­ture, that would ruin the econ­o­my. Thiel and Ban­non expose the real con­flict: between those who val­ue democ­ra­cy and diver­si­ty and those who do not.

2.  It Came From Some­thing Awful: How a Tox­ic Troll Army Acci­den­tal­ly Memed Don­ald Trump into Office by Dale Beran; All Points Books [HC]; Copy­right 2019 by Dale Beran; ISBN 978–1‑250–18974‑5; p. 161.

. . . . From 2007 to 2012, he had been the CEO of a mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar video-game gold-farm­ing scheme. “Gold farm­ing” was a term for let­ting third-world labor­ers to do; the same repet­i­tive tasks in mas­sive­ly mul­ti­play­er online role-play­ing games (MORPGs) to acquire in-game cur­ren­cy. Even­tu­al­ly, the vir­tu­al gold, min­er­als, armor, real estate, or what­ev­er it may be can be sold for real Amer­i­can dol­lars to gamers who don’t want to work to earn in-game items. The self-pro­claimed anti-glob­al­ist Ban­non ran the scheme by sub­con­tract­ing Chi­nese labor. Accord­ing to Wired writer Julian Dibbel, who vis­it­ed one of the Chi­nese busi­ness part­ners who employed min­ers for Bannon’s com­pa­ny in 2009, the dig­i­tal labor­ers “slept upstairs on ply­wood bunks, day-shift work­ers sat in the hot, dim­ly-lit work­shop.” They earned about four dol­lars a day with eighty-four-hour work­weeks. . . .

Discussion

One comment for “Thiel and Bannon: “Yellow Peril” in Silicon Valley”

  1. Ignor­ing Charles C. John­son is gen­er­al­ly a sound pol­i­cy. And yet even trolls can some­times have some­thing impor­tant to say. Even if they’re only ulti­mate­ly telling us for very troll­ish rea­sons. And here we are, faced with hav­ing to inter­pret Charles John­son’s lat­est troll­ish behav­ior:

    There’s a new Busi­ness Insid­er report about a rather bizarre sto­ry involv­ing John­son, long-time ally Peter Thiel, and the FBI. Accord­ing to John­son, Thiel became a con­fi­den­tial human source (CHS) for the FBI back in the sum­mer of 2021. John­son goes on to claim that it John­son him­self who put Thiel in con­tact with Johnathan Buma, an LA-based FBI agent who spe­cial­izes in inves­ti­gat­ing polit­i­cal cor­rup­tion and for­eign-influ­ence cam­paigns. John­son him­self was already a CHS for Buma at the time. This is good time to recall how John­son report­ed­ly worked with Thiel dur­ing the Trump tran­si­tion peri­od in putting togeth­er lists of poten­tial White House recruits.

    So what was Thiel help­ing the FBI with? Well, we’re told that it was explic­it­ly NOT about Thiel’s ties to MAGA world. Instead, it was focused on for­eign gov­ern­ment influ­ence oper­a­tions in Sil­i­con Val­ley. While it’s unclear which gov­ern­ments Thiel may have been inform­ing the FBI about, this is good time to recall how Thiel and Steve Ban­non have been foment­ing fears in recent years around Chi­na’s influ­ence in Sil­i­con Val­ley.

    Intrigu­ing­ly, John­son goes on to sug­gest that he was encour­ag­ing Thiel to start this CHS rela­tion­ship with the FBI — and offer the FBI a win­dow into his con­tacts with for­eign gov­ern­ments — as part of an effort to prove his loy­al­ty to the US. John­son also described Thiel’s moti­va­tion as a kind of hedge in an envi­ron­ment where extrav­a­gant wealth no longer affords the safe­ty it use to. John­son went on to cite the ProP­ub­li­ca report­ing on how Thiel unscrupu­lous­ly used a Roth IRA to avoid bil­lions in tax­es...a sto­ry that hit the news in June of 2021. John­son also cit­ed the death of Jef­frey Epstein. So Epstein’s jail­house ‘sui­cide’ appar­ent­ly freaked Thiel out so much they he felt the need to prove his loy­al­ty to the US gov­ern­ment. At least that’s nar­ra­tive John­son is putting out there.

    So why is John­son com­ing for­ward with all this? Well, we get mul­ti­ple expla­na­tions from John­son. First, he claims that it was ret­ri­bu­tion for what John­son per­ceives to be bad deci­sion-mak­ing by Thiel’s Founders Fund. John­son goes on to describe how he felt betrayed that Thiel did­n’t sup­port John­son’s own star­tups. John­son claims he felt like Thiel owed him sup­port in John­son’s star­tups in return for John­son hav­ing intro­duced Thiel to Buma. Yes, becom­ing an FBI infor­mant is por­trayed by John­son as some­thing so ben­e­fi­cial to Thiel that Thiel owed John­son a favor in return. What was Thiel so ter­ri­fied of at this time? How trea­so­nous was his behav­ior lead­ing up to that point?

    But then we get to the oth­er part of John­son’s expla­na­tions for why he’s going pub­lic with all this: John­son claims he want to help agent Buma with his whistle­blow­ing efforts. Yes, it turns out Agent Buma is now an FBI whistle­blow­er and is no longer active­ly man­ag­ing his con­fi­den­tial human sources. Accord­ing to Buma, the FBI shut down his inves­ti­ga­tion into whether or not Rudy Giu­liani was com­pro­mised by the Moscow. He even tes­ti­fied about it before the Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee that he was ordered to cease con­tact with all his sources in late 2022. It’s not clear if Thiel has been put in con­tact with a new FBI agent at this point or what his cur­rent CHS sta­tus is at all.

    But Buma’s inves­ti­ga­tion into Giu­liani isn’t the only Trump-relat­ed inves­ti­ga­tion Buma was work­ing on. He was also using a human source code­named “genius” who was pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion on far-right fig­ures involved with plan­ning the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion. Yes, “genius” was Charles John­son. So John­son has been help­ing the FBI with the Jan­u­ary 6 insur­rec­tion. But the FBI head­quar­ters “closed his most valu­able sources”, includ­ing “genius”, accord­ing to Buma.

    So that’s the very bizarre sto­ry we’re now get­ting about Peter Thiel becom­ing an FBI asset in the sum­mery of 2021. We only know about it because Charles John­son decid­ed to share it with the world for still con­fus­ing rea­sons. But it’s impor­tant to note that this sto­ry is entire­ly based on the claims of a known troll like John­son. Two anony­mous sources are con­firm­ing John­son’s account, with one source sug­gest­ing that any assis­tance Thiel might have pro­vid­ed to the FBI should be under­stood as part of Thiel’s grad­ual dis­tanc­ing of him­self from Trump and the broad­er MAGA move­ment. In oth­er words, it’s all part of a rebrand­ing effort. A rebrand­ing effort seem­ing­ly intend­ed to allow Peter Thiel to prove to the US gov­ern­ment that he’s not a trai­tor, brought to us by his pro­fes­sion­al troll bud­dy who is also now a val­ued FBI asset:

    Busi­ness Insid­er

    Exclu­sive: Tech bil­lion­aire Peter Thiel was an FBI infor­mant

    Mat­tathias Schwartz
    Oct 19, 2023, 6:30 AM CDT

    Peter Thiel has worn many hats over the years: Sil­i­con Val­ley founder, Trump megadonor, cryp­tocur­ren­cy boost­er, democ­ra­cy skep­tic.

    But there is yet anoth­er facet to Thiel, one that has remained secret until now: FBI infor­mant.

    In the sum­mer of 2021, Insid­er has learned, Thiel began pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion as a “con­fi­den­tial human source,” or CHS, to Johnathan Buma, a Los Ange­les-based FBI agent who spe­cial­izes in inves­ti­gat­ing polit­i­cal cor­rup­tion and for­eign-influ­ence cam­paigns.

    Charles John­son, a long­time asso­ciate of Thiel’s and a noto­ri­ous fig­ure in the far-right move­ment that Thiel has sub­si­dized for a decade, told Insid­er in a state­ment that he helped recruit the bil­lion­aire as an infor­mant by intro­duc­ing him to Buma.

    A source with knowl­edge of Thiel’s rela­tion­ship to the FBI, whose iden­ti­ty is known to Insid­er but who insist­ed on anonymi­ty, cor­rob­o­rat­ed John­son’s account, telling Insid­er that John­son bro­kered a rela­tion­ship between Thiel and Buma. Insid­er was able to con­firm through an addi­tion­al source that the FBI added Thiel to its for­mal ros­ter of reg­is­tered infor­mants.

    Anoth­er source close to Thiel told Insid­er that while they could not con­firm that Thiel was a CHS, Thiel did speak to Buma occa­sion­al­ly. The source said that any assis­tance Thiel might have pro­vid­ed to the FBI should be under­stood as part of Thiel’s grad­ual dis­tanc­ing of him­self from Trump and the broad­er MAGA move­ment, which has vig­or­ous­ly crit­i­cized the FBI and oth­er fed­er­al law-enforce­ment agen­cies.

    Valu­able infor­ma­tion on a recur­ring basis

    The FBI main­tains a vast net­work of infor­mants to keep tabs on orga­nized crime, ter­ror­ist threats, extrem­ist groups, and oth­er crim­i­nal and intel­li­gence tar­gets. These sources, accord­ing to the bureau’s Con­fi­den­tial Human Source Pol­i­cy Guide, are more than casu­al tip­sters.

    Con­fi­den­tial human sources enter “into a rela­tion­ship with the FBI, and that rela­tion­ship will for­ev­er affect the life of that indi­vid­ual,” the guide says. “[They] will be either an ‘FBI source’ or a ‘for­mer FBI source’ and, in turn, his or her con­duct or mis­con­duct will reflect upon the FBI.” As such, the process for recruit­ing and main­tain­ing such sources is high­ly reg­u­lat­ed, requir­ing mul­ti­ple lay­ers of approval. Only peo­ple who are able to pro­vide “valu­able infor­ma­tion … on a recur­ring basis” are grant­ed CHS sta­tus, accord­ing to the pol­i­cy.

    As a CHS, Thiel was assigned a code name and an inter­nal ser­i­al num­ber to track his report­ing. The infor­ma­tion he passed on about for­eign con­tacts and Sil­i­con Val­ley intrigue was reviewed and “val­i­dat­ed,” or cross-checked against oth­er sources, by his case agents and their col­leagues.

    ...

    No report­ing on polit­i­cal ties

    Thiel is a cit­i­zen of Ger­many, the Unit­ed States, and New Zealand; as of last year, he was report­ed­ly in the process of acquir­ing yet anoth­er pass­port, from Mal­ta. In 2016, he donat­ed $1.25 mil­lion to Trump’s cam­paign and endorsed him from the stage at the Repub­li­can Nation­al Con­ven­tion. After Trump won, Thiel served on his tran­si­tion team.

    John­son, who said that he was also an infor­mant for Buma, told Insid­er that he believes that Thiel’s report­ing to the FBI was large­ly lim­it­ed to for­eign con­tacts and attempts by for­eign gov­ern­ments to pen­e­trate Sil­i­con Val­ley. Thiel has pub­licly called on the FBI to inves­ti­gate Google’s ties to the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment.

    Thiel, John­son said, was direct­ed by the FBI not to report on his inter­ac­tions with Don­ald Trump or oth­er US polit­i­cal fig­ures.

    Many of the politi­cians that Thiel has bankrolled — includ­ing Trump, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, and Blake Mas­ters, a for­mer Ari­zona sen­a­to­r­i­al can­di­date — have repeat­ed­ly attacked the bureau and its lead­er­ship in pub­lic. In 2022, Vance, whose cam­paign and affil­i­at­ed PACs received a total of $15 mil­lion from Thiel, false­ly claimed that the FBI had ille­gal­ly wire­tapped Trump’s phone. Vance accused the bureau of “harass­ing faith­ful Chris­tians” and pledged to block all of Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s Depart­ment of Jus­tice nom­i­nees in retal­i­a­tion for the Trump pros­e­cu­tions. (Most but not all of Thiel’s dona­tions occurred in ear­ly 2021, before the launch of Vance’s cam­paign and the many false claims he made over the course of the race.)

    Mas­ters, whose cam­paign received $20 mil­lion of sup­port from Thiel, has endorsed the false con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry that under­cov­er FBI agents foment­ed the Jan­u­ary 6, 2021, insur­rec­tion and accused the FBI agents who exe­cut­ed a search war­rant on Mar-a-Lago of “going after Pres­i­dent Trump because they hate him.” (As with Vance, most but not all of Thiel’s dona­tions to Mas­ters occurred before Mas­ters made his most inflam­ma­to­ry and base­less state­ments dur­ing the lat­er stages of his cam­paign.)

    Thiel is report­ed­ly plan­ning to sit on the side­lines of the 2024 elec­tion.

    ...

    Doing busi­ness with the FBI

    Some of Thiel’s busi­ness inter­ests rely on the FBI and oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies as poten­tial rev­enue sources. He retains a 10% stake in Palan­tir, a data com­pa­ny that has sold more than a bil­lion dol­lars of soft­ware and relat­ed ser­vices to the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, includ­ing the Pen­ta­gon, the CIA, the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency, and the FBI. A $250 mil­lion con­tract with the US Army in Sep­tem­ber adds to the evi­dence that Palan­tir is essen­tial­ly “a gov­ern­ment ser­vice provider,” a finan­cial ana­lyst said.

    Thiel also backed Bold­end, a spy­ware com­pa­ny mar­ket­ing itself as an Amer­i­can com­peti­tor to the Israeli NSO Group, Forbes report­ed last year. NSO’s prod­ucts have been bought and test­ed by the FBI.

    (Mithril Cap­i­tal, anoth­er enti­ty Thiel cofound­ed, was report­ed­ly a sub­ject of FBI inter­est in 2019, although noth­ing appears to have come of the inquiry. Mithril’s co-founder did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to a request for com­ment. The FBI did not respond to a ques­tion regard­ing the Mithril mat­ter.)

    John­son, who revealed Thiel’s FBI ties, is a tech investor and far-right agi­ta­tor with long-stand­ing ties to both Thiel and to the net­work of MAGA polit­i­cal oper­a­tors sur­round­ing Trump. He claims to have had a hand in found­ing Clearview, a facial-recog­ni­tion start­up, and Traitwell, a genomics com­pa­ny. Accord­ing to Forbes, he worked with Thiel to help vet and select senior staffers for the Trump tran­si­tion in 2017.

    John­son claimed to be an FBI infor­mant in a law­suit he filed against Clearview’s founders. He told Insid­er he recruit­ed Thiel to serve as a CHS and intro­duced him to Buma, the FBI spe­cial agent who was John­son’s han­dler.

    It’s unclear whether Thiel remains a CHS for the FBI. John­son told Insid­er that he believes that the rela­tion­ship has been sev­ered but declined to offer details; Buma wrote in his state­ment to the Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee that he was ordered to cease con­tact with all his sources in late 2022.

    John­son’s ties to Trump and Thiel are well-doc­u­ment­ed. But he is also a self-iden­ti­fied “troll” with a his­to­ry of spread­ing false infor­ma­tion and smear­ing his rivals. In this instance, his claims are cor­rob­o­rat­ed by two addi­tion­al sources, as well as sup­port­ed in part by a third who says Thiel and Buma spoke occa­sion­al­ly.

    ‘Join up or get crushed’

    Buma came for­ward in August as a whistle­blow­er, alleg­ing that the FBI under Trump and Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bill Barr shut down his efforts to deter­mine whether Rudy Giu­liani had been com­pro­mised by a Russ­ian asset. Insid­er was the first news orga­ni­za­tion to report on his claims.

    In a state­ment pre­pared for the Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee, Buma said that FBI head­quar­ters had closed his most valu­able human sources, includ­ing one code-named “Genius,” who had report­ed on far-right fig­ures involved with plan­ning the attack on the Capi­tol on Jan­u­ary 6, 2021. John­son told Insid­er that “Genius” was his CHS code name. Insid­er was able to con­firm John­son’s iden­ti­ty as “Genius” with two addi­tion­al sources. The state­ment does not men­tion Thiel.

    In a writ­ten state­ment to Insid­er, John­son said he was step­ping for­ward as a CHS to sup­port Buma’s effort as a whistle­blow­er to bring about what Buma believes to be nec­es­sary reforms in how the FBI han­dles infor­mants. John­son said that he was expos­ing Thiel’s work as a CHS as ret­ri­bu­tion for what John­son per­ceives to be bad deci­sion-mak­ing by the Founders Fund, Thiel’s ven­ture-cap­i­tal firm.

    John­son also told Insid­er he felt betrayed that Thiel did not invest in John­son’s own star­tups, which he had expect­ed Thiel to do in exchange for intro­duc­ing him to Buma. John­son said that he told Thiel that by offer­ing the FBI a win­dow into his con­tacts with for­eign gov­ern­ments, he could demon­strate his loy­al­ty to the Unit­ed States.

    He described Thiel’s moti­va­tion for work­ing with Buma as a kind of hedge in an envi­ron­ment where extrav­a­gant wealth no longer affords the safe­ty it used to. He point­ed toProP­ub­li­ca’s report­ing on Thiel’s income-tax avoid­ance and the death of Jef­frey Epstein, who had report­ed­ly sched­uled sev­er­al meet­ings with Thiel.

    “I told him to join up or get crushed,” John­son said.

    The FBI’s recruit­ment of Thiel as a CHS puts him among the bureau’s most promi­nent assets, but he is not alone among right-wing fig­ures who have col­lab­o­rat­ed with the bureau. Trump him­self offered to help the FBI fight orga­nized crime in Atlantic City in the ear­ly 1980s. Truth Social, the Trump-owned social-media com­pa­ny, has qui­et­ly tipped the FBI off to users who threat­en vio­lence, even as it seeks to cash in on their anger. At least two of the riot­ers who showed up to storm the Capi­tol on Jan­u­ary 6 were also FBI infor­mants, as was Enrique Tar­rio, the Proud Boys leader who was sen­tenced to 22 years in prison for sedi­tious con­spir­a­cy and oth­er felonies stem­ming from the Capi­tol breach. Tar­rio report­ed­ly served as a source for fed­er­al and local law enforce­ment, assist­ing with the pros­e­cu­tion of more than a dozen peo­ple.

    ———-

    “Exclu­sive: Tech bil­lion­aire Peter Thiel was an FBI infor­mant” by Mat­tathias Schwartz; Busi­ness Insid­er; 10/19/2023

    “Anoth­er source close to Thiel told Insid­er that while they could not con­firm that Thiel was a CHS, Thiel did speak to Buma occa­sion­al­ly. The source said that any assis­tance Thiel might have pro­vid­ed to the FBI should be under­stood as part of Thiel’s grad­ual dis­tanc­ing of him­self from Trump and the broad­er MAGA move­ment, which has vig­or­ous­ly crit­i­cized the FBI and oth­er fed­er­al law-enforce­ment agen­cies.”

    Did Peter Thiel real­ly turn him­self into an FBI human source as part of some sort of grad­ual dis­tanc­ing from Trump and the broad­er MAGA move­ment? That’s the claim of one of the two anony­mous sources cor­rob­o­rat­ing this sto­ry. It’s inter­est­ing spin, espe­cial­ly giv­en the cir­cum­stances of the FBI agent who ulti­mate­ly served as Thiel’s point of con­tact: Johnathan Buma, an LA-based agent who spe­cial­izes in inves­ti­gat­ing polit­i­cal cor­rup­tion and for­eign-influ­ence cam­paigns. Thiel has appar­ent­ly been tasked with feed­ing the FBI intel on for­eign gov­ern­ments try­ing to wield influ­ence in Sil­i­con Val­ley. And it was none oth­er than pro­fes­sion­al troll Charles John­son who put Thiel in con­tact with Buma. It’s a bizarre sto­ry on many lev­els. Sure, Thiel has obvi­ous­ly been try­ing to build up a pub­lic rep­u­ta­tion as a stal­wart against Chi­nese influ­ence in the US, but that does­n’t explain why he would some­how be in a posi­tion to inform the FBI about what are pre­sum­ably covert Chi­nese Sil­i­con Val­ley influ­ence oper­a­tions. What’s real­ly going on here?

    ...
    In the sum­mer of 2021, Insid­er has learned, Thiel began pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion as a “con­fi­den­tial human source,” or CHS, to Johnathan Buma, a Los Ange­les-based FBI agent who spe­cial­izes in inves­ti­gat­ing polit­i­cal cor­rup­tion and for­eign-influ­ence cam­paigns.

    Charles John­son, a long­time asso­ciate of Thiel’s and a noto­ri­ous fig­ure in the far-right move­ment that Thiel has sub­si­dized for a decade, told Insid­er in a state­ment that he helped recruit the bil­lion­aire as an infor­mant by intro­duc­ing him to Buma.

    A source with knowl­edge of Thiel’s rela­tion­ship to the FBI, whose iden­ti­ty is known to Insid­er but who insist­ed on anonymi­ty, cor­rob­o­rat­ed John­son’s account, telling Insid­er that John­son bro­kered a rela­tion­ship between Thiel and Buma. Insid­er was able to con­firm through an addi­tion­al source that the FBI added Thiel to its for­mal ros­ter of reg­is­tered infor­mants.

    ...

    John­son, who said that he was also an infor­mant for Buma, told Insid­er that he believes that Thiel’s report­ing to the FBI was large­ly lim­it­ed to for­eign con­tacts and attempts by for­eign gov­ern­ments to pen­e­trate Sil­i­con Val­ley. Thiel has pub­licly called on the FBI to inves­ti­gate Google’s ties to the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment.

    Thiel, John­son said, was direct­ed by the FBI not to report on his inter­ac­tions with Don­ald Trump or oth­er US polit­i­cal fig­ures.
    ...

    But when it comes to poten­tial­ly valu­able infor­ma­tion that Thiel could pass along to the FBI, we don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have to ask about Thiel’s per­son­al con­tacts. The guy still owns 10% of Palan­tir, after all. Which pre­sum­ably means he still has access to Palan­tir’s tor­rent of infor­ma­tion. Could it be that Thiel is pass­ing along to the FBI intel acquired through Palan­tir? Or maybe one of Thiel’s oth­er tech firms like hack­ing firm Bold­end? It’s part of what’s so puz­zling about this sto­ry: Thiel’s val­ue as an intel­li­gence asset is obvi­ous when you con­sid­er the com­pa­nies he owns. It’s less obvi­ous why he would be recruit­ed as a human asset based on his inter­per­son­al inter­ac­tions, espe­cial­ly if this role was explic­it­ly not at all relat­ed to MAGA world:

    ...
    Doing busi­ness with the FBI

    Some of Thiel’s busi­ness inter­ests rely on the FBI and oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies as poten­tial rev­enue sources. He retains a 10% stake in Palan­tir, a data com­pa­ny that has sold more than a bil­lion dol­lars of soft­ware and relat­ed ser­vices to the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, includ­ing the Pen­ta­gon, the CIA, the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency, and the FBI. A $250 mil­lion con­tract with the US Army in Sep­tem­ber adds to the evi­dence that Palan­tir is essen­tial­ly “a gov­ern­ment ser­vice provider,” a finan­cial ana­lyst said.

    Thiel also backed Bold­end, a spy­ware com­pa­ny mar­ket­ing itself as an Amer­i­can com­peti­tor to the Israeli NSO Group, Forbes report­ed last year. NSO’s prod­ucts have been bought and test­ed by the FBI.

    (Mithril Cap­i­tal, anoth­er enti­ty Thiel cofound­ed, was report­ed­ly a sub­ject of FBI inter­est in 2019, although noth­ing appears to have come of the inquiry. Mithril’s co-founder did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to a request for com­ment. The FBI did not respond to a ques­tion regard­ing the Mithril mat­ter.)
    ...

    And then there’s the fact that it’s Charles John­son who appears to be the ini­tial source of this sto­ry. As we’ve seen, John­son’s ties to Thiel goes back years and include their work on the Trump tran­si­tion team. Recall how John­son even claimed at one point that Thiel used him as a con­duit to leak emails between Thiel and Reed Hast­ings, who crit­i­cized Thiel for back­ing Trump. John­son already out­ed him­self as an FBI infor­mant in a law­suit he filed in rela­tion to Clearview. And yet we’re told that John­son is out­ing Thiel as a FBI source both as a means of sup­port­ing Buma’s whistle­blow­ing but ALSO as ret­ri­bu­tion for what John­son per­ceives to be bad deci­sion-mak­ing by the Founders Fund and a sense of betray­al over Thiel not sup­port­ing him enough in his own star­tups. But beyond that, John­son claims that he expect­ed Thiel’s start­up sup­port as some sort of pay back for intro­duc­ing Thiel to Buma, at which point Thiel could offer the FBI a win­dow into Thiel’s con­tacts with for­eign gov­ern­ments and could demon­strate his loy­al­ty to the US. John­son went on to explain Thiel’s moti­va­tion as see­ing work­ing with Buma as a kind of ‘hedge’ in an envi­ron­ment where extrav­a­gant wealth no longer affords the safe­ty it used to. That was appar­ent­ly the moti­va­tion Thiel had for becom­ing an FBI asset in the sum­mer of 2021. Cozy­ing up to the US gov­ern­ment to avoid some sort of pros­e­cu­tion. It’s the kind of expla­na­tion that rais­es a rather chill­ing ques­tion: was Thiel pre­vi­ous­ly under sus­pi­cion of act­ing as some kind of trea­so­nous schem­ing? Why the need to prove his loy­al­ty? A major undis­closed Jan 6 role, per­haps? Is Thiel’s loy­al­ty sole­ly to him­self so pal­pa­ble that it endan­gers how com­pa­nies’ pre­cious gov­ern­ment con­tracts? It’s not like Thiel’s fas­cist pol­i­tics were a secret all these years and yet he still got these high­ly sen­si­tive gov­ern­ment con­tracts. Why the sud­den need to prove his loy­al­ty?

    ...
    John­son, who revealed Thiel’s FBI ties, is a tech investor and far-right agi­ta­tor with long-stand­ing ties to both Thiel and to the net­work of MAGA polit­i­cal oper­a­tors sur­round­ing Trump. He claims to have had a hand in found­ing Clearview, a facial-recog­ni­tion start­up, and Traitwell, a genomics com­pa­ny. Accord­ing to Forbes, he worked with Thiel to help vet and select senior staffers for the Trump tran­si­tion in 2017.

    John­son claimed to be an FBI infor­mant in a law­suit he filed against Clearview’s founders. He told Insid­er he recruit­ed Thiel to serve as a CHS and intro­duced him to Buma, the FBI spe­cial agent who was John­son’s han­dler.

    ...

    In a writ­ten state­ment to Insid­er, John­son said he was step­ping for­ward as a CHS to sup­port Buma’s effort as a whistle­blow­er to bring about what Buma believes to be nec­es­sary reforms in how the FBI han­dles infor­mants. John­son said that he was expos­ing Thiel’s work as a CHS as ret­ri­bu­tion for what John­son per­ceives to be bad deci­sion-mak­ing by the Founders Fund, Thiel’s ven­ture-cap­i­tal firm.

    John­son also told Insid­er he felt betrayed that Thiel did not invest in John­son’s own star­tups, which he had expect­ed Thiel to do in exchange for intro­duc­ing him to Buma. John­son said that he told Thiel that by offer­ing the FBI a win­dow into his con­tacts with for­eign gov­ern­ments, he could demon­strate his loy­al­ty to the Unit­ed States.

    He described Thiel’s moti­va­tion for work­ing with Buma as a kind of hedge in an envi­ron­ment where extrav­a­gant wealth no longer affords the safe­ty it used to. He point­ed toProP­ub­li­ca’s report­ing on Thiel’s income-tax avoid­ance and the death of Jef­frey Epstein, who had report­ed­ly sched­uled sev­er­al meet­ings with Thiel.

    “I told him to join up or get crushed,” John­son said.
    ...

    But then we get to the con­fus­ing mess around what it was that Buma was actu­al­ly inves­ti­gat­ing: Buma came for­ward in August of this year as a whistle­blow­er, alleg­ing the FBI under Trump shut down his inves­ti­ga­tion into Rudy Giu­lian­i’s ties to Rus­sia. And while that was all pre-2021, Buma’s inves­tiga­tive work at the FBI has appar­ent­ly already come to an end, with Buma telling the Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee that he was ordered to cease con­tact with all his human sources in late 2022:

    ...
    It’s unclear whether Thiel remains a CHS for the FBI. John­son told Insid­er that he believes that the rela­tion­ship has been sev­ered but declined to offer details; Buma wrote in his state­ment to the Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee that he was ordered to cease con­tact with all his sources in late 2022.

    ...

    Buma came for­ward in August as a whistle­blow­er, alleg­ing that the FBI under Trump and Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bill Barr shut down his efforts to deter­mine whether Rudy Giu­liani had been com­pro­mised by a Russ­ian asset. Insid­er was the first news orga­ni­za­tion to report on his claims.
    ...

    And then we get this very juicy nugget in rela­tion to Buma’s pre­vi­ous inves­ti­ga­tions: he was appar­ent­ly using John­son as an infor­mant on far-right fig­ures involved with plan­ning the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion. But that inves­ti­ga­tion is had been closed down by the FBI head­quar­ters:

    ...
    In a state­ment pre­pared for the Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee, Buma said that FBI head­quar­ters had closed his most valu­able human sources, includ­ing one code-named “Genius,” who had report­ed on far-right fig­ures involved with plan­ning the attack on the Capi­tol on Jan­u­ary 6, 2021. John­son told Insid­er that “Genius” was his CHS code name. Insid­er was able to con­firm John­son’s iden­ti­ty as “Genius” with two addi­tion­al sources. The state­ment does not men­tion Thiel.
    ...

    And yet, despite Buma get­ting pulled from his work with his human assets, it does­n’t sound like being a con­fi­den­tial human source for the FBI is some­thing you can just casu­al­ly shirk off. Which rais­es the ques­tion as to whether or not Thiel was sim­ply giv­en a new FBI con­tact to con­tin­ue his human source activ­i­ties. At the same time, note one con­se­quence of John­son going pub­lic with this sto­ry: Thiel’s sta­tus as a CHS is more or less ruined at this point. Any for­eign gov­ern­ment assets stu­pid enough to trust Thiel with sen­si­tive info before are pre­sum­ably pulling back at this point:

    ...
    Valu­able infor­ma­tion on a recur­ring basis

    The FBI main­tains a vast net­work of infor­mants to keep tabs on orga­nized crime, ter­ror­ist threats, extrem­ist groups, and oth­er crim­i­nal and intel­li­gence tar­gets. These sources, accord­ing to the bureau’s Con­fi­den­tial Human Source Pol­i­cy Guide, are more than casu­al tip­sters.

    Con­fi­den­tial human sources enter “into a rela­tion­ship with the FBI, and that rela­tion­ship will for­ev­er affect the life of that indi­vid­ual,” the guide says. “[They] will be either an ‘FBI source’ or a ‘for­mer FBI source’ and, in turn, his or her con­duct or mis­con­duct will reflect upon the FBI.” As such, the process for recruit­ing and main­tain­ing such sources is high­ly reg­u­lat­ed, requir­ing mul­ti­ple lay­ers of approval. Only peo­ple who are able to pro­vide “valu­able infor­ma­tion … on a recur­ring basis” are grant­ed CHS sta­tus, accord­ing to the pol­i­cy.

    As a CHS, Thiel was assigned a code name and an inter­nal ser­i­al num­ber to track his report­ing. The infor­ma­tion he passed on about for­eign con­tacts and Sil­i­con Val­ley intrigue was reviewed and “val­i­dat­ed,” or cross-checked against oth­er sources, by his case agents and their col­leagues.
    ...

    So how much ‘dis­tance’ will there be between Thiel and the rest of MAGA world after the pub­li­ca­tion of this arti­cle? That remains unclear. In part because this whole thing seems designed send the sig­nal that Thiel is keen on work­ing with the US gov­ern­ment, and yet the actu­al mes­sage sent by the arti­cle is that Thiel was feel­ing so vul­ner­a­ble over some sort of trea­so­nous activ­i­ties that he was involved in that he felt com­pelled to send the sig­nals that he’s not actu­al­ly a trea­so­nous bas­tard who can’t be trust­ed with sen­si­tive gov­ern­ment con­tracts.

    Either way, it appears that Thiel’s attempts to cozy up a lit­tle clos­er to the US gov­ern­ment did indeed work. He became a CHS and pre­sum­ably fed the FBI all sorts of juicy intel. Or at least enough intel to keep the US gov­ern­ment sat­is­fied with its fas­cist pri­va­tized spy-chief for the time being. Intel like­ly focused on ampli­fy­ing the exist­ing ‘yel­low per­il’ sen­ti­ments in the US gov­ern­ment. Which is also a reminder that the very real ‘fas­cist per­il’ loom­ing over the world relies heav­i­ly on infil­trat­ing gov­ern­ments with fas­cists intent on foment­ing one witch­hunt after another...as long as the witch­es aren’t fas­cist. The fas­cist witch­es get CHS sta­tus.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 23, 2023, 5:30 pm

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