
Kremlin Cash Behind Yuri Milner’s Twitter and Facebook Investments - killjoywashere
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/05/world/yuri-milner-facebook-twitter-russia.html
======
killjoywashere
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 making all the oligarchs his bitches.

Milner is investing oligarch money. These people will kill you (see: Sergei
Magnitsky). How bad do you want Milner' money now?

[https://www.amazon.com/Red-Notice-Finance-Murder-
Justice/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Red-Notice-Finance-Murder-
Justice/dp/1476755744)

~~~
conistonwater
To add to this, if you want something shorter to read, there is this prepared
statement by Browder to the Senate Judiciary Committee:
[https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/bill-
br...](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/bill-browders-
testimony-to-the-senate-judiciary-committee/534864/) Also, being a prepared
statement to a senate committee, it has more meat to it than the average news
interview.

~~~
creaghpatr
To be fair, Browder has his own patrons and political interests to represent,
particularly in this situation.

~~~
wmeredith
Could you expand on this or provide sources that do?

------
JumpCrisscross
Holy crap.

DST Global and its affiliates have (or had in formative years) significant
stakes in Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, ZocDoc, Planet Lab, Xiaomi, Stripe,
Alibaba, WhatsApp and Airbnb [1]. Milner has close ties to Y Combinator [2].
It's been a deal-terms setting, behind-the-kimono peeking major investor for a
decade.

This is immensely scary. We've utterly failed, as an industry, to self
regulate.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Milner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Milner)

[2] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venture-milner-
ycombinato...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venture-milner-
ycombinator/facebook-backer-yuri-milner-exits-automatic-y-combinator-
investments-idUSBRE9BF1GA20131216)

~~~
pinewurst
Why is this surprising? When Milner came virtually out of the blue (or red, as
the case may be) a few years ago, it seemed obvious that he was a
conduit/laundry for oligarch cash at least. I even remember telling someone at
the time that if we were chosen for YC, we didn't want Milner's dirty money.

The additional Kremlin state ties seem only an additional technicality. (I
mean the formalized acknowledgement of what I presumed existent.)

~~~
dawhizkid
He "purposely" overpaid by $50m for a house in Los Altos ->
[http://www.businessinsider.com/yuri-milners-100-million-
sili...](http://www.businessinsider.com/yuri-milners-100-million-silicon-
valley-mansion-is-only-worth-half-what-he-paid-for-it-2012-7)

~~~
SamReidHughes
Los Altos Hills, actually.

------
YuriNiyazov
I don't really get the hysteria.

I work for an American company in San Francisco that has Tencent (practically
an arm of the Chinese government) as a major investor. The number of times our
CEO came in and told me that we need to implement features that benefit our
geopolitical competitor is exactly zero.

What precisely do all the commenters that are panicking here think happens at
companies where the investors are people who became rich with the help of the
governments of Russia and China?

~~~
JumpCrisscross
Point is, you (and your CEO) know Tencent is an arm of the Chinese government.
Passive state-backed investors are fine. If a random Board member told your
CEO "let's get an NDA with so and so and then give them such and such
sensitive data; it may help us break into a new market," your CEO may be
inclined to take the advice. If Tencent made that request, most CEOs (and
Boards) would do more digging.

There are Boards, today, realizing that suggestions that were made over the
years may have been compromised. They sounded like they were for furthering
the company's financial interests. In truth, they may have been about
compromising the company, and through it, American geopolitical goals.

~~~
YuriNiyazov
To anyone that has kept track of geopolitical news across the last 20 years,
it is obvious that no one in Russia gets rich without the approval of Kremlin.
The fact that Yuri Milner is walking the earth is sufficient evidence that
he's friendly with the Kremlin. No one who managed to rise to the rank of CEO
would misunderstand the unstated implication that a request from an associate
of Yuri Milner is a request that is at least done with the approval of the
Russian government, so in that case, just the same amount of digging would be
done as with Tencent.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _The fact that Yuri Milner is walking the earth is sufficient evidence that
> he 's friendly with the Kremlin_

You're moving goalposts. Nobody is worried about someone being friendly with
the Kremlin. Acting at their behest, however, is new and troubling.

(I agree that this should have been obvious. Unfortunately, when dollars start
dancing people tend to rationalize.)

~~~
YuriNiyazov
Ok. I'll bite. Where, in the linked NYT article, is evidence that Kremlin gave
orders to do X and not Y (rather than just cash) to Milner?

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _evidence that Kremlin gave orders to do X and not Y_

Again, you're moving the goalposts.

Others [1][2][3] have directly responded to you on this point. Arguing that
there is no need for alarm until some undefined threshold of red-handed
evidence is attained is silly.

If a state-backed investor invests in your company, and you don't know about
it, that's cause for alarm in itself. It means you need to review, very
carefully, what you told whom, when, and what actions you took at their
behest. From a corporate level, it's similar to what _e.g._ SpaceX would be
expected to do if it discovered Lockheed Martin invested in it through a
front. At a national level, state involvement adds extra dimensions.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15631661](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15631661)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15631645](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15631645)

[3]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15631654](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15631654)

~~~
YuriNiyazov
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 nefariousness) with the
Kremlin gave Milner cash to invest? If that's the concern, then, once again -
anyone who believed yesterday that Milner was not $funded (once again, insert
preferred terminology) at least partially by the Kremlin is an idiot. All they
had to do was ask someone who is an immigrant from the Soviet Union.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _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](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3143894)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3144475](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3144475)

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

~~~
postramus
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 one to infer certain things about Yandex (analogous to the situation with
Kaspersky).

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?

~~~
YuriNiyazov
The first point I am trying to make is that it should've been obvious, and
that aside from giving an actual name to the entity through which cash went
from Kremlin to Milner, the NYTimes is not news. If you were concerned then,
good. If you were not concerned then, there's no reason to be concerned now,
as no new facts came to light through this NYT article.

On the second point: the source of the money should not be cause of concern if
it's "just money."

If it's money and a very strong suggestion that you partner with a (obvious,
even if explicitly unstated) foreign, state-controlled entity, then it's a
cause for concern. If it's just money, and then when you want to partner with
a foreign, state-controlled entity, that same money gives you an introduction
to the foreign, state-controlled entity, then it's not a cause for concern,
because that's the point of business relationships and investments.

The question of Russian influence is really a separate question, in my mind,
and I think that's what bugs me about this entire thing the most. The
implication somewhere here is that the leaders of Facebook and Twitter, and
other startups that take Milner money were somehow duped, and allowed Russia
to walk free in their systems and influence the election. I will be very
surprised if that's true; Zuckerberg and Dorsey are too smart for that.

What seems obvious to me is that the systems they created are giant, targeted
megaphones, by design. They were successfully used by the Obama campaign, and
everyone was very happy for democracy then. Then a foreign state decided that
they were going to give Trump help on these megaphones, and now everyone is
very unhappy for democracy. Would we have this much hand-wringing if we
discovered that Saudi Arabia was helping Hilary?

~~~
postramus
I generally agree but I would have appreciated a more-direct response vis-a-
vis Yandex.

In re: your broader point I don’t think they are “that smart” per se; or
perhaps better put, I think they are smart enough to be aware their platforms
are used by all kinds of agents for all sorts of purposes 24/7/365...but up
until now also deemed it prudent to turn a rather universal blind eye towards
those activities unless they were, say, so obviously fake that ordinary users
could identify them as such.

Whether that universal blind eye was smart is tbd, but nothing in their
response since then has seemed very clever.

~~~
YuriNiyazov
I had to research a bit about Yandex in order to understand the implications
there.

The story seems to be something like this:

[1] Yandex builds an app to crawl Facebook without Facebook's permission [2]
Facebook blocks Yandex [3] Yandex gets licensed access to Facebook's firehose

[1] [https://techcrunch.com/2013/01/11/yandex-
wonder/](https://techcrunch.com/2013/01/11/yandex-wonder/) [2]
[http://www.reuters.com/article/net-us-yandex-
facebook/yandex...](http://www.reuters.com/article/net-us-yandex-
facebook/yandex-puts-mobile-app-blocked-by-facebook-on-hold-
idUSBRE90O0RK20130130) [3] [https://techcrunch.com/2014/01/13/yandex-
facebook/](https://techcrunch.com/2014/01/13/yandex-facebook/)

There's certainly a plausible Kremlin long con here - fund Milner to invest in
Facebook, ask Yandex to build a crawler for Facebook, expect that Facebook
would shut it shut down, then suggest via Milner that there should be a
partnership between Yandex and Facebook, thus gaining official access to
Facebook's firehose, to be sent directly to Kremlin for analysis of message
proliferation, and further influence of the American public.

The fundamental mistake there (the final move that allows you to be
checkmated) is the firehose deal, not the investment.

In any case, thanks for making me think through the possible attack vector
here. Your comment is the first one that was specific enough that made me
think through why this could be a cause for concern.

~~~
smsm42
> There's certainly a plausible Kremlin long con here

Not very plausible if compared to other things Kremlin does. Too long, too
complicated, too hollywood. The modus operandi is much simpler - you do not
need complex cons if you control everything. If you can come to Yandex and
demand any data you want, anytime. You just have to keep Yandex alive, they'll
find a way to get data (because it's their lifeblood, they are a data
organization company, like Google) and when they do, you get the data too.
Simple.

------
throwawaysml
Is the difference to Chinese and Saudi money floating in the valley that we
expect violent repercussions for anyone that opposes some aspect of the
financiers' wishes? Or is it just that Russia is the most outspoken big nation
that takes a different stance on critical issues where, say, Saudi and DC are
in agreement. And that this is a danger to post-WW2 US influence? Genuinely
curious.

Back when Milner invested in Facebook I viewed it as potential money
laundering and didn't think about it too much.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
When Saudis, Chinese or Russian individuals invest, they do so openly. When
Uber took Saudi state money, they knew why the Saudis were buying. I think
this sort of state-backed investing is fine.

The issue here is companies didn't treat Milner _et al_ as an extension of the
Russian state. They treated them as private individuals who made money in
Russia. The difference is night and day. The latter want to make money like
other investors. The former may want things other than money. Transparency
allows one to be wary about suspicious requests, requests which may not seem
suspicious without context.

 _Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. Speak to a lawyer
before accepting, or making, investments._

~~~
throwawaysml
Sure, but aren't we forgetting that Russia is like China in that over a
certain size of business you are in no way able to operate unless you are in
agreement or cozy (more business) with the Kremlin? This is in stark contrast
to the US where it's no problem for a company to operate HQ in Oklahoma and
loudly oppose the current DC government. I mean, if we assume Milner wasn't
backed and planted by the Kremlin for a moment, then one could consider it
impossible for Milner to be untied to Kremlin if based primarily in Moscow,
no?

~~~
JumpCrisscross
Tied to, and acting at the behest of, are night and day. One allows you to
presume they're acting in their own financial interests, by and large, just
like every other investor. The other merits caution.

Your larger point, that we should have been more cautious, stands. We should
have figured this out. But dollars danced, and even the best of us started
rationalizing [1].

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3143894](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3143894)

~~~
throwawaysml
True, and a fine line which is hard to judge from the seats we sit in. But I
agree that a US company cannot be associated with the Kremlin or Beijing or
Riad in 2017 without consequences. Maybe in 2023.

I just don't want to see a McCarthy witch hunt when a lot of the money
floating in Wallstreet and the Valley is of dubious origin.

I would equally oppose taking money from one of the CIA VC firms, even that
one where Dan Geer works. And I kinda have this idea that by now enough money
is floating around valley from the money made in the valley that it should be
possible to use that "pre-laundered" (if we may call it that) capital.

That said, I have no idea how a startup would vet the VC's capital backers, or
what they should do when they find out some of it came from beijing, moscow,
tel aviv, and you want to give it back to disassociate your startup.

~~~
paganel
> I would equally oppose taking money from one of the CIA VC firms, even that
> one where Dan Geer works.

Facebook's advisor on its $19B acquisition of Whatsapp was a "privately held
boutique investment bank" called Allen & Company, which at the time was led
(maybe it still is, it doesn't show up at all on his personal wiki page) by
former CIA director George Tenet. Not 6-months had passed since this
acquisition and Putin started talking in the media about how the Internet is
controlled by the US 3-letter agencies. Shortly after that his cronies fully
took control of VKontakte.

------
EGreg
Quick, investigate pg for Russia collusion LOL.

But seriously, let's put these reactions in perspective. Supposs the same was
revealed the other way, about a US company having ties to the US government
investing in Russian technology. We wouldn't bat an eye. This hysteria about
Russian collusion makes us waste our energy and attention which is necessary
to pay attention to the real issues (which I list below.)

I am not surprised that a Russian billionaire has ties to Putin, or invested
in US companies. His company has since sold his stake and moved on, and
nothing scary happened.

Compared to what the USA does on a regular basis, Russia is a pretty good
actor when it comes to external dealings.

What's much more worrying is internal Russia policies. I personally know some
people who started VKontakte (the Russian facebooj). They all sold their stake
or were later pressured to do so by the Russian government after refusing to
cooperate with the equivalent of the FBI's NSL + gag orders. and of course the
Mail.ru conglomerate wanted to take it over. Not easy to maitain a business in
Russia.

(Note: the US has just as much spying and NSL+gag orders but far, far greater
freedom of speech and property protections so we don't feel it as much.)

But outside? Look US firms regularly make investments in companies around the
world. The actual influence comes not from investment but from things like:

The CIA approaching VK founder and developers hoping to install backdoors in
Telegram

Microsoft Windows new versions phoning home or cooperating with the CIA. There
is a reason many nations including Russia have built and are now promoting
ther own operating systems instead of Windows.

It's just so sloppy to talk about "ties" to something. The hysteria cheapens
the impact ahen something real happens. Like backdoors and hacking.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Compared to what the USA does on a regular basis, Russia is a pretty good
> actor when it comes to external dealings_

It has been a while since the United States forcibly annexed another country's
territory [1].

In any case, this argument is irrelevant. Irrespective of whether Russia is a
"good actor" or not, they are a geopolitical competitor who surreptitiously
exercised control over, or at least non-public purview into, sensitive
American companies.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_territorial_acqu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_territorial_acquisitions)

~~~
EGreg
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 free pass to an invasion
of sovereign countries resulting a million deaths is not an argument everyone
can agree with.

~~~
makomk
Technically, the US didn't annex any of those countries, which makes what it
did more above-board in terms of international law than Russia's actions.
Sure, a lot of those interventions ended a lot more badly than annexation, but
that apparently doesn't matter.

~~~
Synaesthesia
Pfft international law. The US is in Syria against the wishes of that country.
It invaded and destroyed Iraq, bombed Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, and countless
other crimes all in contempt of international law.

The US occupation of Guantanamo bay for example, is contested by Cuba, who
protests continuously. However the Russian annexation of Crimea was at least
supported by the inhabitants. They’re both crimes of imperialism but the
former is far worse.

~~~
smsm42
> against the wishes of that country

You mean wishes of Asad? Given that Syria hasn't been a democracy since...
well, I don't know, bronze age? "wishes of that country" is kinda nebulous
term, especially right in the middle of a civil war.

~~~
Synaesthesia
Assad is not a great guy, I'm not denying that. He's a tyrant. Compared to
ISIS and the extremist terrorist forces he's up against, which Russia is
helping him defeat, he's not so bad. One cannot discount the government of a
country just so easily. There is such a thing as international law and the US
is violating it by being in Syria, which is still a sovereign state, while
Russia is not.

Incidentally the US has supported far worse dictatorships, it has a terrible
record in that regard.

~~~
smsm42
A guy who didn't pick after his dog on your lawn is "not a great guy". Asad is
a brutal dictator who already caused death of thousands of people and will
cause many more. He's way beyond "not a great guy". He's yes "so bad".

> One cannot discount the government of a country just so easily.

It's not "so" easily. It's a brutal strongman that uses WMD against people
he's supposedly representing. It's not just some disagreement on taxes or
policies. It's routinely using the military against people. And if you think
ISIS is the only organization that opposes Asad, you are woefully misinformed
- opposition to Asad is much wider and ISIS just used the chaos to get a
stronghold, they did not initiate the civil war. And of course Asad has
absolutely no problem with "extremist terrorist forces" \- as long as they
threaten not him but say US or Israel.

> Incidentally the US has supported far worse dictatorships

Not "far" worse, as it's not very easy to go far worse than Asad (maybe Idi
Amin who was rumored to literally eat people? Or Papa Doc Duvalier, who at one
time ordered to have all black dogs in a country killed because he thought his
fugitive opponent turned himself into one?). But yes, it did. But doing a bad
thing once is not a reason to do it ten times more.

------
Asparagirl
I'd be interested in hearing from Silicon Valley and YC companies' teams about
how they feel knowing that they've been taking dirty money from the Kremlin,
having representatives even sit on their boards.

Was it worth it? C'mon guys, don't hold back now. What's a few murdered
dissidents between friends?

~~~
MsMowz
Do you think the American money is nicer and cleaner than Russian money? It's
all the same.

------
pheldagryph
Senate Intelligence Committee has expressed concerns that Jack Dorsey is
favoring the Russian government over the United States government.

Senator Tom Cotton, CIA Director John Brennan, transcript from Senate
Intelligence Committee hearings on June 2016:

[https://www.cotton.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=414](https://www.cotton.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=414)

SENATOR COTTON: I want to discuss cooperation with our Intelligence Community
from Silicon Valley, specifically Twitter and a company called Dataminr.
According to the Wall Street Journal from May 8th, as well as some other media
reports, Dataminr which is owned in part by Twitter and is the only company
authorized to access the full real-time stream of public tweets that Twitter
has, recently cooperated with the CIA. But just a few weeks ago ended that
cooperation. So our Intelligence Community no longer has access to Dataminr's
information, could you comment on these reports?

DIRECTOR BRENNAN: It appears as though Dataminr was directed to not provide
its service to the CIA Intelligence Community and so therefore, we need to be
able to leverage other capabilities in order to make sure that we have the
insight we need to protect this country.

COTTON: So those reports are correct?

BRENNAN: I am not going to dispute them.

COTTON: The Wall Street Journal also reported that the CEO of Twitter, Jack
Dorsey, directed Dataminr to stop the contract because he was worried about
the "optics" of helping intelligence agencies. Do you believe that to be
accurate?

BRENNAN: I do not know his motivation for any corporate decision he may have
made, but I have no basis to dispute that.

COTTON: The Wall Street Journal also reports that among customers of Dataminr
remains RT, Russia Today, a propaganda outlet of Vladimir Putin's government,
which Putin has said is "trying to break the Anglo-Saxon monopoly on global
information streams." To your knowledge, is Russia Today a client of Dataminr?

BRENNAN: I believe so, I'm not certain of that. But I don't have any
information that they have been excluded from their services.

~~~
pdog
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.

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

~~~
pdog
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.

~~~
virgilp
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)

------
seizethecheese
Concerns about Milner And his ties to YC are not new.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3143604](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3143604)

~~~
pen2l
> I meant that even if Yuri's money was tainted in some way, it was being used
> as a counterweight to another bad thing.

Dammit, this is disappointing. I really thought pg was above saying things
like that.

Between this, thiel, and some other things, I am quite bummed out.

~~~
postramus
Always a mistake to expect communicative rather than instrumental use of
language!

------
patkai
And there goes integrity. It applies to many other situations, where taking
investment, accepting help, or committing to excessive mortgage makes you lose
your integrity - you simply won't be able to afford it. One of the many down
sides of aiming to build Facebooks instead of Basecamps.

~~~
oxide
Well said.

------
dmitri1981
We had this discussion on HN in 2010
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3144351](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3144351)
where PG noted that "I have never heard of a case where a startup refused
investment from a venture fund because of who their LPs were."

------
mankash666
Worthy noting that Yuri Milner automatically invented ~$150K in YC companies
till 2013 [1]. Russian money might be making this very site possible.

[1]: [http://bit.ly/2y4cIU6](http://bit.ly/2y4cIU6)

~~~
Asparagirl
What YC companies tell everyone else: Milner wants to invest in us because he
recognizes that we're we're awesome!

What YC companies tell themselves: Milner wants to invest in us because he
wants to make money, and if he has enough fingers in enough pies, one or more
of his investments will pay out nicely.

What the rest of the world is telling YC companies: Milner wanted to invest in
you because Russian oligarchs and the successors of the mf'in KGB wanted to
get root at your tools, your data, your users, your insights, your ability to
spread their crooked point of view...

~~~
Asparagirl
...and possibly pick up some _kompromat_ on you, your co-workers, and your
users along the way, which could come in useful for them down the road...

Yeah, your company is an investment for them. But not the way you think.

------
jorblumesea
Any money coming out of Russia is somehow related to Putin and his oligarchs.
If you want to stop the Russian government from laundering money you'd need to
stop trading with Russian companies in general. There's little separation
between state and private interests. Money just doesn't come out of Russia at
that level without the state being involved.

Regardless, it's likely this move was more financially motivated than
politically. Diversification is the key to any portfolio and with Russia's
economy tanking it was probably to ensure their billions stayed billions and
wasn't held in worthless rubles or corrupt state companies.

------
fascinated
Maybe rename topic, but also lets think of happier days in 2011:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2154706](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2154706)
:P

~~~
killjoywashere
How would you rename it? YCombinator money is from Putin (via oligarchs)?

Also, why are you wanting to remember happier times?

~~~
Apocryphon
When Russian adventurism was a blip on the American radar, the '08 Russo-
Georgian War aside.

------
c-smile
Yeah, it's really time to build another wall then.

You've opened Internet to share your point of view and so to influence their
choice? Expect others to share their views and influence you too. Don't like
that? See #1

You've opened your market and asking for investments? You've got them. Don't
like color of their money? See #1

Do we have other options realistically speaking?

------
yablak
Given Milner's background, I would think this is has been an "open secret" in
Silicon Valley investment circles. Is that the case?

~~~
jacquesm
Yes.

------
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.

------
jacquesm
This was totally obvious and led to an interesting exchange between PG and
Fred Wilson:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3143604](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3143604)

~~~
paganel
Sad to see a guy like jedberg so naive (I like to think that he was naive) as
to ask for evidence as to why "Milner was linked to the looting of state
resources".

And if we're talking about reddit, as a long-time user I remember that I first
encountered political shill accounts and paid posters on reddit, in the summer
of 2006, during the Hezbollah vs Israel conflict (the accounts were "rooting"
for Israel, of course). Next time I encountered them was 2 years later, in
2008, during the Russia vs Georgia conflict (the shills being on Russia's
side). It'd be interesting to hear what a guy like jedberg remembers about all
this (not sure if he was working for reddit back in 2006, but I'm pretty sure
he was there in 2008).

I also remember reading a one-page story about influencing opinions on geo-
political facts on the web in the Financial Times, around November 2011, where
a Israeli army colonel or something like that was acknowledging the issue at
hand (that opinion on the web should be in part controlled by State actors)
and that Israel was already implementing something to meet that goal (I have a
screenshot of that article, but it's on my older laptop, too lazy to transfer
the photo now). Come 2017 and the US is taken by surprise that one of those
State actors has influenced its Presidential election.

------
TaylorGood
Timely? Milner takes $50m mortgage on a house he had originally paid for in
cash..

[http://www.yolandaslittleblackbook.com/blog-1/2017/11/02/yur...](http://www.yolandaslittleblackbook.com/blog-1/2017/11/02/yuri-
milner-house-los-angeles-holmby-hills/)

------
davesque
In a business culture that values growth above all else, is it really any
surprise that this happened? American corporations have an ethics problem and
we're going to learn our lesson one way or another -- whether it's the easy
way or the hard way.

------
rajup
Funny how this story dropped off the front page...

------
0xbear
And to think that none of this would even come up had the “right” candidate
won.

------
progman
What if - theoretically - this is just "fake news"? I mean, how can you
discern that the stuff the media reports is actually true, no matter in what
direction?

I think the most reliable source of information in this time of spreading
"fake news" is personal witness by known people.

~~~
sgustard
Of course you should make your own judgment of the validity of the source. In
this case, it would seem to be a difficult task to invent all of this.

"The Paradise Papers is a global investigation into the offshore activities of
some of the world’s most powerful people and companies.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and 95 media
partners explored 13.4 million leaked files from a combination of offshore
service providers and the company registries of some of the world’s most
secretive countries.

The Paradise Papers documents include nearly 7 million loan agreements,
financial statements, emails, trust deeds and other paperwork from nearly 50
years at Appleby, a leading offshore law firm with offices in Bermuda and
beyond."

[https://www.icij.org/investigations/paradise-
papers/](https://www.icij.org/investigations/paradise-papers/)

~~~
progman
What's the difference of trusting the media, or the data which backs the
media?

------
malvosenior
I’m having a very hard time understanding why anyone would be upset by the
Russian government making technology positive investments. Especially
technologists!

I wish more money was deployed into software development. Russia seems to be a
positive influence here.

~~~
jryan49
So if blood money is used to invest in tech to clean it, and make them profit
it's okay?

~~~
jgome
As opposed to the "blood money" invested by the US govt. in technology
companies? Do you also have problems with Twitter, Google and Facebook getting
money from the US govt.?

Let's not forget, the US govt., both Republicans and Democrats, have directly
or indirectly killed millions of people in the last decade...

I don't see you complaining about that "blood money" here or anywhere, though.

~~~
oxide
Nice false equivalence argument, but I'm afraid it's going to fall on deaf
ears.

Funny how many Russian apologists are here all of a sudden.

~~~
dang
> _Funny how many Russian apologists_

This breaks the HN guidelines in two major ways: it's a personal attack and
it's an insinuation of astroturfing or shillage without evidence. Those are
poison to substantive discussion and we ban accounts that do them, so please
follow
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
and don't comment like this again.

The rest of the internet may be insane right now but that doesn't mean we have
to imitate it here.

------
jackcosgrove
I will not dispute anything in this article, and it is discouraging if the
allegations are true. However I will point out that an outlet like the NY
Times is threatened by Twitter and Facebook financially. I would keep that in
mind as to one reason the legacy media have been choosing to report on topics
(and they don't always choose to report just what is newsworthy) concerning
foreign influence and "fake news" emanating from social media.

~~~
davesque
I think you place the Times in an impossible position. If it's not the
responsibility of traditional media organizations to report on the _real_
problem of fake news in social media, then whose responsibility is it? Where
else are people going to spread the word about something like that? Face to
face? Furthermore, you must realize that the people questioning the veracity
traditional media are, by and large, conspiracy theorists with very particular
agendas and motives for doing so. The Times also has something that Facebook
and the like don't and probably won't -- a hard-earned trust built over a
period of decades.

~~~
articleswewrite
Yup. Do me a favor and mention that they've sold their Facebook and Twitter
holdings but mention nothing of the current holdings in Cadre in the headline.

By the way, C Corporations are not prevented from taking foreign investment;
though S Corporations are.

In contrast to Facebook and Twitter, The Times _writes_ articles and headlines
and picks which ones to publish.

------
orsenthil
Everyone knew "Yuri Milner" was a Russian and Russian is not an open system or
democracy or system run by a rule of law. Why is the news any surprise now?

What I think is happening is - Russia by bring up these topics in news (in
outlets like nytimes) so that it can de-emphasize it's partnership with Trump
government and the role it played in bringing that egoist to power.

------
johnrichardson
Another day, another mainstream media publication shilling hysterical articles
about Russia. My pet theory is that it's a big collective act of psychological
sublimation to compensate for the shock of Hillary losing.

I also find it ironic that the Chinese Communist Party, an institution which
is at least on par with Russia in terms of shadiness and social repression,
receives barely an iota of the flak that Russia receives in the American
media.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _another mainstream media publication shilling hysterical articles about
> Russia_

Imagine if Germany found out that Rocket Internet, a large European venture
capital firm, was actually CIA backed. It would be a scandal and a lot of
people would need to, rightly, question whether they had been compromised.

The problem isn't solely the identity of the backer. It's the surreptitious
deployment of state power deep into another country.

 _Disclaimer: Hypotheticals are hypothetical. I am not a lawyer. None of this
is legal advice._

~~~
revelation
Compromised? Compromised the shoe retail business?

You are going to need some more meat other than James Bond language and a lot
of money.

~~~
ellius
You don’t understand that states covertly use money to exercise power? I’m
confused why you’re harping on that word unless you genuinely don’t understand
what he’s getting at.

