Where does private equity cross the line compromising national security? The world of private equity is basically unregulated, so capital flows are often unknown and hard to track. Greycroft is one such private equity firm with $1 billion under management. Greycroft is invested in SignalFrame as a minority investor in the software firm discussed in the New Dark Age article below.
Patricof & Co. Ventures, Inc. is the US-based branch of Apax Partners. Apax Partners LLP is a British private equity firm, headquartered in London, England. The company also operates out of five other offices including an office in Tel Aviv, Israel and in Shanghai, China. One of the Apax Partners's co-founders is Alan Patricof who grew up in a Jewish family in New York. Patricof has been active in Democratic Party fundraising and contributed to both Bill and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaigns. Patricof was right there from the very beginning in tech investments providing investment capital to Apple, American Online, Cadence Systems, Cellular Communications, Inc., Office Depot, Audible, NTL, and IntraLinks among others. Patricof's Greycroft is positioned to take advantage of the opportunities for providing investment capital to the startup nation Israel's rapidly growing tech sector.
Patricof was the national finance chairman for Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. Significantly, Patricof is also a longtime affiliate of Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of Donald Trump. Jared Kushner ("collector of people") considers Patricof a long time confidant. Patricof is also the founder and chairman of New York magazine. Considering Patricof's close association with Jared Kushner inside the White House, it is important to remember Patricof "went on the offensive" against President Trump starting in 2018.
One thing needs to be made clear. Enterprise and espionage go hand-in-hand and it is no different with private equity firms. Alan Patricof, a veteran venture capital investor and partner in the New York based Greycroft Partners, back in 2010 said "Israeli companies have to come to New York to access advertisers and content." This was said by Patricof on a visit to Israel in 2010 to participate in what were known as BootCamp Ventures Innovation Marathon seminars. What interests us most is Patricof's past alleged connections to Russian spies. This is because there are many Russians working in Israel in software development, engineering, metallurgy and in the tech industry. Related or not, it is possible the Russians wanted to learn of Obama and Clinton's outlook towards Israel.
It is almost certain Israeli military intelligence and Unit 8200 people are in attendance at such tech related events, investment seminars and meetings on private equity investments in Israeli tech startup companies. Unit 8200 is a "conveyor belt" of high tech startups. GreyCroft is involved in investing in Israel technology startup firms where total investments from all private equity firms went from $400 million in 2012 to a record $8.3 billion just in 2019. It's private equity so the investment flow and in what amounts are hard information to come across. A total of $39 billion over the past decade. This trend is only going to continue.
An Israeli company Patricof's Greycroft is invested in is an online learning company called Strigo that closed an $8 million Series A financing round. The company tripled its customer base because of the COVID-19 virus. Another Israeli company benefitting from COVID-19. For Israel, New York was the place for startup firms; that is no longer the case. Israel is the place for startup firms in the "startup nation." Even Germany's Volkswagen recognizes this as we will see. Did Israel's military and Mossad intelligence apparatus through Unit 8200 know Covid-19 global operation was on the way before anyone else? If Israel dominates cybersecurity why wouldn't they have?
Internet of Things (IoT) at some point if it isn't already will be dominated by Israel with this anticipated massive trend in "connectivity." This "connectivity" includes SignalFrame's software acting as a "window onto usage of hundreds of millions of computers, routers, fitness trackers, modern automobiles and other networked devices, known collectively as the Internet of Things" as discussed in the article below.
Google's past CEO and now a technical advisor to Google's parent company Alphabet, Eric Schmidt, described Israel as "tech miracle." Schmidt refers to the engineers in Israel as being of a "very high level." Many of those engineers are from Ukraine and Russia. Something Schmidt doesn't make reference to. Schmidt is also chairman of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence. Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) goes hand-in-hand with 5G in a symbiotic relationship with this technology including the Internet of Things (IoT). Schmidt's assessment of US technology is basically that the US is going to get clobbered by China. Schmidt is correct. China expects to build over one million 5G stations over the next year. Schmidt also thinks Israel will dominate IoT growth.
Not only will Israel dominate cybersecurity and IoT, it will also dominate the development of autonomous automobiles. Volkswagen is the world's leading automobile manufacturer by sales and is working closely with Israel to develop autonomous driving automobiles expected to be on the road by the end of this decade.
Cyber is the real domain of power...
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Source: The New Dark Age
A SHORT COMMENT ON A BIG DANGER
November 28, 2020 | By Jack Rasmus
If you're worried about the capability of government to conduct surveillance of citizens engaged in political assembly and protest, or even just personal activity, then you should be aware the technological capability of government surveillance is about to expand exponentially.
The US Air Force's Research Lab (yes, it has its own lab) has recently signed a contract to test new software of a company called SignalFrame, a Washington DC wireless tech company. The company's new software is able to access smartphones, and from your phone jump off to access any other wireless or bluetooth device in the near vicinity. To quote from the article today in the Wall St. Journal, the smartphone is used "as a window onto usage of hundreds of millions of computers, routers, fitness trackers, modern automobiles and other networked devices, known collectively as the 'Internet of Things'."
Your smartphone in effect becomes a government listening device that detects and accesses all nearby wireless or bluetooth devices, or anything that has a MAC address for that matter. How 'near' is nearby is not revealed by the company, or the Air Force, both of which refused to comment on the Wall St. Journal story. But with the expansion of 5G wireless, it should be assumed it's more than just a couple steps from your smartphone.
One can imagine some scary scenarios with this capability in the hands of government snoops:
Not only would the government know your geographical location via the GPS signal to your cellphone. They'd know what you are doing. And with whom.
A political gathering would allow them to see all the owners of other cellphones in the vicinity of a protest or demonstration. How many are gathering at a particular street or location. The direction they might be heading. Or whether there's an organization meeting in a hall or room and who (with a cellphone as well) might be attending.
If you're driving on a winding coastal or mountain road, it would know, and could possibly access, your car’s various electronic systems to turn them off. It might access your car's circuit board that governs your power steering when you're driving in an area of winding roads. Or it might be able to just shut down your car's electrical system and remotely lock all your doors. The police no longer have to engage in highway chases until capture.
The new tech would allow the government to access the data on your fitbit device while you're jogging. Or worse, maybe even interfere with the signal on your heart pacemaker device.
The technology might be used to access your smartphone, and from there to turn on your home Alexa device to listen in and record conversations without you ever knowing. Or to listen in on your zoom conferencing on your laptop. Or maybe even worse, to shut down or bypass the safety features on your home furnace equipment. Or turn off your home security system.
And with 5G wireless broadband, the tracking might be extended well beyond the range of a bluetooth device. Add 5G broadband wireless to SignalFrame's technology, and then wed that to the capability of machine learning and artificial intelligence, and you get instant processing of a massive amount of data on any targeted person or gathering!
This problem of government [private corporations] surveillance on free citizen activity is not new. It took a giant leap after 9-11 with the Patriot Act and acquisition of phone data by Homeland Security and other government agencies. It was supposed to have stopped. But it hasn't. The snoops have continued to ignore Congressional resolutions and court decisions on privacy invasion of citizens. The latest Air Force lab testing is likely just a recent 'tip of the iceberg' revelation. And if the Air Force is doing it, be assured so are the Army, Navy, the NSA, CIA, FBI and all the other government snoops.
Certainly this kind of technology would be used not only by the US government. If the USA has it, you can bet other governments do too–especially China, Russia, Israel, and probably some of the Europeans as well.
Unlike in 2001, in 2020 SignalFrame's technology takes government surveillance to a new level–given the ubiquity of smartphones, Internet of Things (IOT) devices, digital circuit board dependent autos, and all the many household devices now with MAC wireless access addresses. And now, unlike circa 2001 and the passage of the Patriot Act (and its continuation in annual NDAA legislation), we have AI, machine learning, neural nets everywhere, and massive government data processing power.
In short, Technology is becoming a growing tool and power in the hands of governments, to use to thwart democratic and constitutional rights–as well as to detect, apprehend, and 'deal with' those who protest and oppose those governments.
The coming decade in the USA will be increasingly difficult economically, increasingly unstable politically, but will be a decade in which technology is increasingly threatening basic civil and constitutional rights.
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A company known as Radius Networks is connected to SignalFrame:
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