POLITICS

It was Thiel who, in 2017, hired Vance to work at his Mithril Capital firm (Mithril is a metal featured in “The Hobbit”) and later invested heavily in Vance’s fund Narya Capital (Narya is a ring in “The Lord of the Rings”). Thiel then donated more than $15 million to Vance’s Senate campaign and personally escorted Vance to Mar-a-Lago to patch over his former “Never Trump” stance.



Before Thiel announced that he was taking a break from democracy, he introduced Vance to David Sacks, his old PayPal Mafia colleague. Sacks promptly donated $1 million to a pro-Vance Super PAC and hosted a fundraiser for him. Sacks and Vance later worked together to organize Trump’s only San Francisco campaign fundraising event, aimed at nudging the candidate to further embrace and deregulate cryptocurrency. Thiel has reportedly made more than $1.8 billion from Bitcoin and other currencies.

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Fast-forward to 2024 and Thiel is not going to make the same mistake twice. Whereas last time he simply donated money to Trump’s White House bid, this time he has donated an entire candidate.



And that candidate will have a broad mandate to give his former boss whatever he wants. Trump has made clear he intends to spend much of a second term chasing petty grievances, locking up his opponents and destroying NATO. So, just as Bush was happy to let former Halliburton executive Dick Cheney plan America’s wars, so Vance will be able to set the White House’s tech policy to suit his Silicon Valley paymasters – a tech policy that coincidentally might involve a lot of new military spending.



Thiel casts himself as a pacifist: When he endorsed Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention, the big applause line was “It’s time to end the era of stupid wars and rebuild our country.” But he is perhaps best known today as co-founder of surveillance tech company Palantir (named after a crystal ball in—what else?—“The Lord of the Rings”). The company makes intelligence-gathering tools for the CIA and the NSA. Even more fun, it builds software that directs drones and artillery strikes to shorten the “kill chain” in war zones around the world.



Thiel is also a major investor in Anduril, founded by his protégé Palmer Luckey. Anduril (a sword in “The Lord of the Rings,” because the Dirtbag Valley has apparently read only one book) makes drones that can kill people without needing a human controller. It also builds and operates sentry towers for the U.S. Border Patrol.

sfstandard.com/opinion/2024/07/15/with-jd-vance-as-vp-peter-thiel-would-finally-have-trump-right-where-he-wants-him/

REVEALED: Trump campaign secret data on gunman’s family

The family of Trump’s would-be assassin Thomas Crooks was among millions of voters profiled by Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

The owner of the rifle used to shoot at Donald Trump had been identified by the former president’s campaign as a strong republican, likely gun owner and “hunter”, as revealed today by Channel 4 News.

In 2016 the Trump campaign built a database profiling millions of voters in key battleground states – including the family of Trump’s would-be assassin Thomas Crooks.

It found that both the parents of Thomas Crooks were very likely to be gun owners and shared other gun-related lifestyle indicators.

This database was first obtained and revealed by Channel 4 News in 2016.

The programme can now reveal the information was compiled as part of a secretive project aiming to identify millions of gun owners in America who could be targeted with pro-gun rights messages in the lead-up to the 2016 election campaign.

On Saturday Thomas Crooks, 20, attempted to murder former president Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

It has emerged that the AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle he used was legally purchased months earlier by his father Matthew, 53. The family is cooperating with the investigating authorities.

The FBI said it had also recovered explosive devices in the car used by Thomas Crooks which was parked near the scene and a second “suspicious device” in the family home.

There is no suggestion that any member of the Crooks family had knowledge of the assassination attempt by recent high school graduate Thomas Crooks or that they permitted the illegal use of weapons.

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Matthew Crooks scored highly across a range of gun-related models including: 0.99 for the likelihood of returning a warranty card for a firearms purchase; 0.95 for the likelihood of pursuing hunting sports; and 0.94 for the likelihood of shopping at the hunting retailer

Overall, averaged across all three of these measures, out of more than 19,000 people in Bethel Park, Matthew Crooks was among the top 20 highest scoring individuals.

In total, the data technique was deployed in ten swing states – scoring a total of around 50 million individuals – to find voters who could be susceptible to political messages about gun-rights, a bedrock issue in all of Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns.
www.channel4.com/news/revealed-trump-campaign-secret-data-on-gunmans-family

NATO allies are discussing reclaiming some Chinese-owned infrastructure in Europe

NATO officials are discussing taking action to reclaim some Chinese-owned infrastructure projects in Europe should a wider conflict with Russia break out in the east of the continent, three officials involved in the discussions told CNN.



A decade ago, when Europe was still crawling out of the economic crater caused by the global financial crisis, the promise of infrastructure funding from Chinese-owned investment firms seemed like a major windfall.



Now, with the largest land war being waged in Europe since World War II – and the West warning of Beijing’s support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – NATO countries now see those investments as a liability, with allies beginning to discuss ways to reclaim some of those projects, the officials said.



The fear, according to one US official, is that Beijing could use the infrastructure it owns in Europe to provide material assistance to Russia if the conflict were to expand. The goal, officials said, is to figure out a path forward well in advance of any potential conflict.



The discussions reflect an increasing focus on China by the NATO alliance. The joint declaration released Wednesday by the 32 leaders, at the Washington 75th anniversary summit, strongly called out Beijing’s support for Moscow, in a move seen as a sign of progress by members eager to take a tougher stance against Beijing after such a reference was omitted in 2023.



“The deepening strategic partnership between Russia and the PRC and their mutually reinforcing attempts to undercut and reshape the rules-based international order,” the declaration states, “are a cause for profound concern.”

edition.cnn.com/2024/07/11/politics/nato-chinese-owned-infrastructure-europe/index.html

Trump Gunman Flew Drone Over Rally Site Hours Before Attempted Assassination (WSJ)

Thomas Matthew Crooks’ final cellphone search was for porn before shooting Trump, report says

Father of Trump gunman called police about son before attack