Comment by bflesch
2 hours ago
One thing is old money, another is telling everyone you are selfmade when in fact you are a nepo kid.
If you are old money you tend towards intelligence roles because they give you diplomatic passport and make you immune to the law. It is much better than owning 5 passports from some banana republic because in the end only military might of the colonial powers counts (e.g. the british crown).
So many of the silicon valley idols we cherish are in fact old money, parents were in intelligence, the child made a tech company, tech was national security relevant, they got funding and daddy handled their competitors through their government institution. Have a look at founders of YC for example. Or Mr. Thiel who officially came from nothing but miraculously has a university named after him and is super-deep into intelligence. Or Musk where unfortunately a lot of archives from South Africa are unavailable for research, but his wealth definitely does not come from repatriating colonial wealth from South Africa to the US.
In terms of realpolitik all is fine but if you start fabricating terrorist attacks to cover up a potential PR scandal for your shitty family you are way out of line. And at that point only the next large-scale attack helps you cover up the scandal. Several tangential names in the Epstein files fall victims to freak terrorist attacks - those are quite convenient because they get rid of idealist defectors and have a new thing to set the public agenda with.
It is how the world works and we have to accept it.
What does it mean to be ‘in intelligence’ in this context?
Performing privileged work for the government in some shape or form which allows you to skirt the legal rules and makes you immune to certain issues (e.g. travel with diplomatic passport or invent fake identities to hide your real family tree). In force-colonized countries such as South Africa, the local colonial overlords openly looted the country, first in the name of the monarch and later for their own wealthy class which was still deeply connected to the European aristocracy. The colonialist class in South Africa most likely were also involved with the South African intelligence community and secret police, with all the special status this entails.
But simply focusing on five-eyes three-letter agencies is too narrow because there are thousands of "inofficial" entities surrounding them. And at least on paper if you are working in intelligence you're an idealistic government servant. History shows that most whistleblowers we read about are these kind of idealists, because they notice that not all five-eyes governments are equal. Some are monarchies, and the crown did many things which are incompatible with democratic values of US citizens and the narrative of the "American dream" they learned from Hollywood.
People always blame CIA and their black budgets, but what if CIA was actually subverted by the British crown and their colonial aristocracy?
The most famous spy in the world is James Bond, 007, not a "yankee". The British broke the Enigma and had extensive experience managing hundreds of colonies and their local populations, supposedly even introducing foreign pathogens as biological warfare on native populations.
Maxwell family was big in software and networking, especially for identity control. Epstein family was blacklisted from Hollywood due to antisemitism and moved into radio stations & broadway. Jeffrey was arrested by Scotland Yard in London and a bit earlier Jarecki was arrested in East Germany and later stationed for a very long time in Heidelberg, which is 1hr away from Thiel's official origin story, and also close to where the Trump family originated from in a different era.
Fred Trump sent youth abroad from NY area with the American Foreign Service (AFS), which during the cold war was at least relevant for national security, because each of the students could be converted into communists by foreign agencies.
When the King visited the white house, Mr. Trump was seemingly out of character and did not speak a bad word.