Isn't Travis AFB for transport planes and tankers?
This isn't like someone is buying land beside Groom Lake or Skunkworks...
'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns
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Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns
#32Towards the end of the article is this depressing nugget: " Nearly one in five homes were purchased by investors in early 2023, including LLCs and other corporate entities, according to data compiled by real-estate firm Redfin of more than 40 of the largest U.S. metro areas. "
The implication is that the land is for housing? Notably, Irvine California successfully transitioned from being an Army Base town (very large military blimps, etc) to a thriving city. A jewel of southern california.
Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns
#33Setting aside the national security question, more broadly it's pretty insane that the USA lets companies hide who owns/controls them. When you decide to hang out your shingle and profit at the expense of the general public, I would say the general public has a genuine right to know who you are. Reminds me of how Disney used aliases and codenames and shell companies and secretive ownership structures to buy up all th…
Same in the Uk. Anyone can set up a company for pennies. So many expensive homes in London owned by shell companies. The government tried to introduce a law to make the ownership more transparent. Didn’t really work.
Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns
#34Setting aside the national security question, more broadly it's pretty insane that the USA lets companies hide who owns/controls them. When you decide to hang out your shingle and profit at the expense of the general public, I would say the general public has a genuine right to know who you are. Reminds me of how Disney used aliases and codenames and shell companies and secretive ownership structures to buy up all th…
I am also an advocate for transparency of ownership of companies, but that Disney example seems like more of a case against transparency than for it? Why should Disney be price gouged in that circumstance?
Price gouged? Don't you mean, fair market value? Price is always contingent based on the information shared between the buyer and seller.
No one would call selling a rare misprint 1978 US Quarter to a collector for $45,000 instead of 25 cents price gouging. (Maybe you would, I don't know what the going rate is. But this is literally an eBay auction price from a google search just now, so let's just say that it's not an exorbitant price.)
Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns
#35This is an incredibly silly story. Everything about this ownership is in public records. Flannery Assoc. has been openly buying land in this are for over 5 years and have spent over a billion dollars and sued dozens of parties. Everyone knows what they are doing. They want to lease the land for energy infrastructure.
First page of google results:
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/california-landowne...
“various energy and power entities had contracts or proposals to operate on Flannery-owned land”
Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns
#36Towards the end of the article is this depressing nugget: " Nearly one in five homes were purchased by investors in early 2023, including LLCs and other corporate entities, according to data compiled by real-estate firm Redfin of more than 40 of the largest U.S. metro areas. "
Nearly every time single old houses in in-demand areas are bought for renovation or redevelopment into denser duplexes, they're "bought by investors, including LLCs and other corporate entities." This doesn't mean 20% of housing stock is being bought and left fallow or anything – this is exactly how densification and redevelopment in response to demand happens. Many of those LLCs are even individuals.
Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns
#37Could this be a stealth real estate investment? It seems to be one of the regions of farmland closest-ish to the urban Bay Area. That would parsimoniously explain why the LLC is paying multiples over market value, on what's currently zoned as mere agricultural land. Three things the Bay Area has in plenty right right now: (0) people with too much money; (1) people looking to escape the Bay Area; (2) people spooked ab…
It would be a wild long play, but this is how rail companies purchased land as well. I say it in past tense, but Bright Rail is currently using that playbook right now elsewhere.
Buy the land, build the train connections, develop the land, sell or rent the now hopefully prime real eatate.
Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns
#38WSJ has a map (and more details) https://archive.is/PcfBc - "“Nobody can figure out who they are,” said Ronald Kott, mayor of Rio Vista, Calif., which is now largely surrounded by Flannery-owned land."
This map makes it seems hysterical to me that people think it's being done as espionage and is a national security issue. The land is wide open and easily observed. In any actual conflict anyone operating in that area could easily be shut down. And just look at the map, it's an awful lot of land to just "spy" on a military base, a lot of the land is as far as 20-30 km away.
This land is all filling out a very good area for wind power generation, so I'm guessing they have plans for a lot of wind farms.
EDIT: If you go to https://globalwindatlas.info/en you'll have no trouble finding the area on a view of CA. It's one of the bright red areas between SAC and OAK and this land conveniently fills most of it.
Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns
#39Maybe a bit off topic, but my first thought was wondering whether the OSINT community would get any further with figuring out who it was, but I then realised, the OSINT community often look successful because they publish, but we don't know if "closed source" intelligence knows the same things or is even more successful, but just doesn't publish. Does anyone have any evidence one way or another? Are OSINT thinking ou…
Judging by OSINT Twitter, the OSINT community is 100% confident in whatever the next day turns out to be the opposite of reality.
There's a lot of posers on OSINT twitter. You need to be a much more discerning on who you follow. As the meme goes, "I am tired of being an infectious disease expert. Today, I'm a military intelligence expert!"
Re: 'Mystery company' buys land worth $800M near Travis AFB, raising concerns
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Judging by OSINT Twitter, the OSINT community is 100% confident in whatever the next day turns out to be the opposite of reality.
There's a lot of posers on OSINT twitter. You need to be a much more discerning on who you follow. As the meme goes, "I am tired of being an infectious disease expert. Today, I'm a military intelligence expert!"
Who are some "usually right" accounts to follow? Ideally ones that aren't plainly designed to spread propaganda of one sort or another.