Coronavirus: Thread

[grarpamp]

Sam Bankman-Fried & The Pandemic Industrial Complex

https://brownstone.org/articles/covid-crypto-connection-ftx-and-sbf/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/16/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-pandemic-prevention/
https://michaelpsenger.substack.com/p/sam-bankman-fried-and-the-pandemic
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23462333/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-cryptocurrency-effective-altruism-crypto-bahamas-philanthropy
https://michaelpsenger.substack.com/p/lockdowns-the-great-gaslighting
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xafpj3on76uRDoBja/the-ftx-future-fund-team-has-resigned-1
https://michaelpsenger.substack.com/p/lockdowns-killed-over-170000-americans
https://michaelpsenger.substack.com/p/a-response-to-eugyppius-review-of
https://michaelpsenger.substack.com/p/no-lockdown-instigators-do-not-deserve

The collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried and his fraudulent cryptocurrency
empire at FTX is news at its most entertaining. Who doesn’t love the
story of a bigshot billionaire revealed to be an outright fraud? It’s
black-and-white. FTX owes billions in debt and doesn’t actually own a
dime of the assets it claimed. Game over.

At first blush, the story seems simple. A con man cynically convinced
a bunch of gullible financiers that he was a an eccentric young
visionary and a really great guy, and he ran off with the dough.

But take a closer look at the mainstream coverage, and you’ll realize
there’s far more to this story than a classic financial fraud. In
fact, the puff pieces from mainstream outlets about SBF and the causes
he was funding—most notably, the pandemic planning industry—even after
his empire was revealed to be an outright fraud, are the clearest
instance we’ve seen of the modern political machine in all its
cynicism.

Both the New York Times and the Washington Post ran articles
portraying SBF as a more-or-less honest businessman with a big heart
who got tangled up in a bad situation. This is, of course, wildly
inaccurate. From the very beginning, SBF had no intention of engaging
in honest business. He never owned a dime of the assets he said he
did. And in an incredible interview with Vox, he essentially admitted
that there were never any good intentions behind his “philanthropic”
contributions.

But it’s the Washington Post article titled “Before FTX collapse,
founder poured millions into pandemic prevention” that’s most
astonishing. As Jeffrey Tucker has documented, the Washington Post
gushes over the tens of millions of dollars that SBF had donated to
the pet left-wing cause of “pandemic prevention”:

    FTX-backed projects ranged from $12 million to champion a
California ballot initiative to strengthen public health programs and
detect emerging virus threats (amid lackluster support, the measure
was punted to 2024), to investing more than $11 million on the
unsuccessful congressional primary campaign of an Oregon biosecurity
expert, and even a $150,000 grant to help Moncef Slaoui, scientific
adviser for the Trump administration’s “Operation Warp Speed” vaccine
accelerator, write his memoir.

…Ok.

But all that money was stolen.

    Leaders of the FTX Future Fund, a spinoff foundation that
committed more than $25 million to preventing bio-risks, resigned in
an open letter last Thursday, acknowledging that some donations from
the organization are on hold.

…Ok.

But everything we did over the last three years for purposes of
“preventing bio-risks” was an abject failure, leading—as was entirely
predicted—to countless thousands of deaths due to delayed medical
operations, a mental health crisis, drug overdoses, an economic
recession, global famine, and hundreds of thousands of excess deaths
among young people who were at little to no risk from the virus.

    The FTX Future Fund’s commitments included $10 million to
HelixNano, a biotech start-up seeking to develop a next-generation
coronavirus vaccine; $250,000 to a University of Ottawa scientist
researching how to eradicate viruses from plastic surfaces; and
$175,000 to support a recent law school graduate’s job at the Johns
Hopkins Center for Health Security. “Overall, the Future Fund was a
force for good,” said Tom Inglesby, who leads the Johns Hopkins
center, lamenting the fund’s collapse. “The work they were doing was
really trying to get people to think long-term … to build pandemic
preparedness, to diminish the risks of biological threats.”

SBF even played both sides, contributing millions for coverage of the
Covid “lab leak theory.”

    The Bankman-Frieds’ family foundation in February also committed
$5 million to ProPublica, a nonprofit news organization, to support
reporting focused on pandemic preparedness and biosecurity, including
one-third of the grant delivered upfront. The funding has subsidized
several staff and articles — including a high-profile story with
Vanity Fair about the possibility that covid leaked from a Chinese
laboratory, which frustrated some of the Bankman-Frieds’ pandemic
advisers who pointed to criticism of its translations of Mandarin
Chinese.

This is, of course, in keeping with a years-long pattern of glowing
press on the 30-year-old “crypto king”—whom Forbes had estimated to
have a net worth over $15 billion—from the same business journalism
outlets that were supposed to be holding him accountable.

We’ve been told not to question which policies billionaires choose to
support, because it’s their money.

But none of it was his money. It was all stolen.

We’ve been told it doesn’t matter whether the policies the
billionaires supported actually worked, because their intentions were
good.

But here, SBF’s intentions had never been good. He donated the money
solely for the purpose of glowing press to further his fraud.

We’ve been told the glowing press for billionaires who support these
policies is justified, because the policies help the world.

But these pandemics policies never helped the world. They created a
man-made human and economic catastrophe, set back human rights by
decades and decimated America’s global credibility.

>From the earning of the money, to the donating of the money, to the
positive press coverage, to the policies the process funded, at no
point was there any good intent or positive outcome to any of it. The
entire operation was pure, unadulterated evil.

This is the modern political machine in all its stark, inhuman
nihilism. Once the machine is fed its priority, whether through fear,
fraud, or outright corruption, then all its cogs snap into place—from
the politicians and officials to the billionaires and journalists—and
the only wrong a person can do is to oppose its priorities. The intent
never mattered. The legality never mattered. The truth never mattered.
The data never mattered. The results never mattered.