Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Kremlin Cash Behind Yuri Milner’s Twitter and Facebook Investments

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 204 posts

Re: Kremlin Cash Behind Yuri Milner’s Twitter and Facebook Investments

#181

Post by gandhium »

jgome wrote: post #108
EGreg wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you consider the Iraq war a while? Guantanamo? Norriega? Contras? How long is a while? Or is only annexation considered the red line here? If you want to blame Russians, you should blame the USSR for deporting the Crimean Tatars after WW2 as collective punishment. Being outraged at an annexation of a territory that was unilaterally given away 50 years earlier where not a single gunshot was fired while giving a…

The US doesn't need to annex any country, they just pay their "partners" overseas, or, if they go "rogue", a few US navy ships show up and that's it. BTW, you are forgetting more recent events in which the US govt. has been involved, directly or indirectly: Iraq (war) Afghanistan (war) Syria (war) Libya (war) Honduras (coup d'etat) Brazil (soft coup d'etat) Paraguay (soft coup d'etat) Venezuela (economic blockade) Ma…

Russia since the creation (26 years ago) was involved in: Transnistria (war)

Nagorny Karabakh (war)

Chechnya (2x 'official' wars and still going)

Georgia (war)

Ukraine (war)

Montenegro (coup d'etat)

And as for economical blockades, they've did that to almost all their neighbours:

Belarus

Estonia

Georgia

Lituania

Latvia

Poland

Ukraine

Re: Kremlin Cash Behind Yuri Milner’s Twitter and Facebook Investments

#182

Post by 086421357909764 »

pheldagryph wrote: post #89
pdog wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is RT at all comparable to the CIA? Even if you accept the premise that RT is a Russian propaganda channel, it's not a foreign intelligence service.

How does one determine that two things are different, or similar, without comparing them? > RT is a Russian propaganda channel, it's not a foreign intelligence service I wonder if there are National Security Letters and FISA courts (or something comparable) in Russia.

Given the pervasiveness of SORM deployment across ISPs and tech companies within russia, it maybe that a letter like system is not even required.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SORM

Re: Kremlin Cash Behind Yuri Milner’s Twitter and Facebook Investments

#183

Post by notyourday »

pdog wrote: post #86
argonaut wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems obvious now, but you only have to look at an HN thread 6 years ago discussing Yuri Milner to see that many people in tech (or at least on HN), including pg, did not believe Yuri was an extension of the Russian state: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3143604 . (Of course, many also recognized this as obvious at the time).

Paul Graham on Yuri Milner at the time: "If there's one mistake this story makes, it's in trying to come up with complicated theories about why Yuri does well. He's simply smart." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3143894

YC, the VCs with ethics only when it is at the expense of others.

Re: Kremlin Cash Behind Yuri Milner’s Twitter and Facebook Investments

#184

Post by virgilp »

pdog wrote: post #107
cycrutchfield wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your argument is that a foreign propaganda entity is preferable to a domestic intelligence agency?

Yes? I hope it's not controversial to say that doing business with a television network is fundamentally different from cooperating with an intelligence agency.

Referring to RT as "a television network" is as accurate as saying that Mar-a-Lago is "a privately-owned club". Technically accurate, but knowingly misleading (attempts to present as "irrelevant" what is actually the most relevant bit of information about said TV network/ private club)

Re: Kremlin Cash Behind Yuri Milner’s Twitter and Facebook Investments

#185

Post by throw-away-8 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #64
EGreg wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you consider the Iraq war a while? Guantanamo? Norriega? Contras? How long is a while? Or is only annexation considered the red line here? If you want to blame Russians, you should blame the USSR for deporting the Crimean Tatars after WW2 as collective punishment. Being outraged at an annexation of a territory that was unilaterally given away 50 years earlier where not a single gunshot was fired while giving a…

I think this is an interesting discussion, but it's getting down voted because it's off topic. If Russia learned one of their major domestic investors was actually connected to the CIA, I'd expect them to reasonably flip out as well. Who is and isn't a good boy is irrelevant to this discussion, which is more about strategic implications than morality.

See: Brouder.

Re: Kremlin Cash Behind Yuri Milner’s Twitter and Facebook Investments

#187

Post by dosgonlogs »

killjoywashere wrote: post #5

If you haven't read Bill Browder's Red Notice, read it now. Wow. Wow. Just wow. YCombinator is in the Kremlin's pocket. Wow. I fully expect this to be downvoted to oblivion. But wow. In essence, Putin used Browder's investigations of Gazprom and other oligarch-controlled Russian businesses (huge national orgs that were privatized after the collapse of the Soviet Union) to jail the richest man in Russia, effectively m…

Putin bathes in milk and honey and wears track pants that cost thousands of dollars. He has been making Oligarchs his bitches for longer and on a much larger scale than Bill Browder was ever able to uncover, and as you see, "uncovering" it backfired spectacularly. Anyone who cares that could potentially do something about all this, won't.

Re: Kremlin Cash Behind Yuri Milner’s Twitter and Facebook Investments

#188

Post by smsm42 »

I can't imagine how it can be a surprise that (large) money from Russia are connected to Putin and his fellows. That's literally what Putin has been working on for the last decade at least - so that all money worth speaking of in Russia will be controlled by him. That's the unifying theme of all major things happening in Russia's business world. If you see somebody with money headquartering in Russia, yes, it is because Putin wants it to be so. The official term is "The Power Vertical" and the idea is that nothing worth of note happens without the will and the control of Putin and his fellows. It doesn't mean everybody is literally mind-controlled by Putin, but if there's big money, you'll get from it to Putin very quickly. It can't be any other way.

Re: Kremlin Cash Behind Yuri Milner’s Twitter and Facebook Investments

#189

Post by smsm42 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #74
YuriNiyazov wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case, I am really confused about what the point that's being made here is. > If a state-backed investor invests in your company, and you don't know about it, that's cause for alarm in itself. Is the only difference between today and yesterday is that yesterday there was no direct evidence that rich people associated ("backed by", "working in" - I am not sure what terminology you prefer to suggest nefariousnes…

> anyone who believed yesterday that Milner was not $funded (once again, insert preferred terminology) by the Kremlin is an idiot Then more of us are idiots than you give credit for :). At the very least, I was an idiot and pg was an idiot [1][2]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3143894 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3144475

I have very hard time smart man as pg doesn't know how Russian money works. However, he may also be smart enough to not discuss his investor's affairs in public under his own name.

Re: Kremlin Cash Behind Yuri Milner’s Twitter and Facebook Investments

#190

Post by smsm42 »

postramus wrote: post #137
YuriNiyazov wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@postramus - Yes I am. Because it's not.

Can you clarify something? You seem to be arguing two points without differentiating them clearly. One point is that it should be obvious where the money came from (etc); the other point is that that origin should not be cause for concern. Is that accurate? If so I would agree with you on the first point but not the second: the same logic that eg allows one to make the inferences in the first point would also lead on…

> One point is that it should be obvious where the money came from

Depending on how you qualify "where". The specific way the money got there can be very complicated. The answer to the question "is that connected to Putin's interests somehow" is not - it is always "yes" given the source is in Russia and the sum is large enough.

> the other point is that that origin should not be cause for concern.

That is very subjective question. Some are ok with foreigners with questionable records (Chinese, petro-monarchies, Russians, etc.) investing in US economy. Some are worried about it. It is a personal choice. But there's no law preventing such people from buying any stock offered to public or entering into any investment deal they'd like, so this is a normal thing to happen. And it happens literally all the time.

> Do you honestly think that the funding under discussion—and the personal relationships that subsequently developed—had no impact on either Twitter or Facebook deciding to establish their respective partnerships with Yandex?

I don't see how we could have any idea about whether it did. Certainly, common investors can influence decisions, but Twitter and Facebook have various investors, with varied interests, so why would you think this particular deal is only influenced by one of them?

Post reply on HN