Tuesday, February 11, 2020

DARPA’S UFO RESEARCH?

https://gizadeathstar.com/2020/02/darpas-ufo-research/

G.B. spotted this very intriguing article and analysis by John Greenewald, Jr., at Blackvault.com.  If you don't know who Mr. Greenewald is, he is one of the newer generation of UFO researchers who prefers to focus on the nuts and bolts of hard data and documents, and not the latest stories and fantasias of Blue Chickens and similar cults. So when Mr. Greenewald finds something, I tend to sit up and take notice.
In this case, there's a couple of paragraphs in this article that quickly caught my attention; see if you spotted them too:
By John Greenewald, Jr. – The Black Vault – Originally Published on February 8, 2020 There is nothing more mind numbing than sifting through hundreds of pages of defense related budgets. Line item after line item of program element numbers, dollar amounts and vague descriptions are only part of the headache. When searching for something specific, in a sea of nondescript references, it’s like seeking out one unique needle in a stack of needles.  If you set out to find what may be defense funding for Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) research? You’ll go cross-eyed within hours.  However, that was what The Black Vault set out to do; and the search may just have paid off. For those readers who follow news about the Pentagon’s UFO research program, you’ll know that Uncle Sam has recently flip flopped on the issue. First stating they investigated unidentified flying objects with a secret program touted by many media outlets; they later recanted that by updating their previous statement and denying they ever did such a thing. Confusion has reigned about what the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) really was. Those involved in the effort, like Mr. Luis Elizondo, former Pentagon senior ranking person within the program, states unequivocally it was a UFO research program. The Pentagon, however, denies that fact, and told The Black Vault in December of 2019 that they were taking back their admission to researching UFOs, and said AATIP had nothing to do with them. Let’s assume for a moment the Pentagon has continued their long-standing tradition of some mis-truths on the topic, and AATIP did deal with UFOs. What we do know, is that according to the NY Times, $22 million dollars that funded the program went to a subsidiary of Bigelow Aerospace known as Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies or BAASS, and would last from 2007-2012. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) would reveal that thirty-eight reports known as Defense Intelligence Reference Documents (DIRDs) were produced under AATIP. In January of 2018, Senator John McCain’s office received a list of those report titles, after the Senator expressed interest in knowing what the program had produced. To add to the concoction of confusion already surrounding AATIP, none of the DIRDs really seemed to reference anything UFO related. In addition, the DIRD reports that did leak out in full, did not mention AATIP, but rather, something called the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications (AAWSA) Program. In the letter to Senator McCain, from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) that oversaw the program, “’The purpose of AATIP was to investigate foreign advanced aerospace weapon threats from the present out to the next 40 years.” Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough reiterated this in a statement to The Black Vault in 2019. “The purpose of AATIP was to investigate foreign advanced aerospace weapons system applications with future technology projections over the next 40 years, and to create a center of expertise on advanced aerospace technologies.” Despite the contradiction, Elizondo told The Black Vault the Pentagon’s stance and their statements are wrong. “I believe enough people in our Government have been made aware over the last 2 years that a program existed and continues to exist…” With these assertions, The Black Vault set out to find exactly where that money may be coming from that allows the program and the effort to continue. In order to do that, we must first go after what was publicly posted for the AAWSA Program. That can be found archived from a 2008 “Federal Business Opportunities” posting which was saved in the “Wayback Machine.” This was the original posting that was seen by BAASS in 2008, which they submitted a bid for. No other corporations offered a bid. This solicitation notice stated the objective of the AAWSA program: “One aspect of the future threat environment involves advanced aerospace weapon system applications.  The objective of this program is to understand the physics and engineering of these applications as they apply to the foreign threat out to the far term, i.e., from now through the year 2050. Primary focus is on breakthrough technologies and applications that create discontinuities in currently evolving technology trends. The focus is not on extrapolations of current aerospace technology. The proposal shall describe a technical approach which discusses how the breakthrough technologies and applications listed below would be studied and include proposed key personnel that have experience in those areas. 3. REQUIREMENTS: a) The contractor shall complete advanced aerospace weapon system technical studies in the following areas:   1. lift; 2. propulsion ; 3. control; 4. power generation; 5. spatial/temporal translation; 6. materials; 7. configuration, structure; 8. signature reduction (optical, infrared, radiofrequency, acoustic); 9. human interface; 10. human effects; 11. armament (RF and DEW); 12. other peripheral areas in support of (1-11); b) It is expected that numerous experts with extensive experience (minimum of 10 years) in breakthrough aerospace research and development will be required to meet the demands of the above program.” With this as a starting point, The Black Vault began sifting through budgets and proposals to seek out what may be continuing this alleged UAP/UFO research. Regardless on if the AAWSA Program language was coded and covertly meant to be a “secret UFO study;” or if possibly it was not meant to be a UFO program at all but research bore out there was a phenomena that was determined a threat – this was a good place to start to seek out similar programs. Match the language – quite possibly match the objective. After a long hunt, the discovery of Program Element (PE) 0603286E was made, and one of the projects within, could be exactly the unique needle in that proverbial stack of needles that was being sought after. A PE is ultimately a portfolio of programs or in some instances a single program that receives funding within a budget.  PE 0603286E was first discovered in the 2008 DARPA Fact File published in June of 2008 (coincidentally, the same year the DIA solicited the private … Continue reading Could This Be DARPA’s Project for UFO/UAP Research?
This first paragraph that caught my eye was this:
With these assertions, The Black Vault set out to find exactly where that money may be coming from that allows the program and the effort to continue. In order to do that, we must first go after what was publicly posted for the AAWSA Program. That can be found archived from a 2008 “Federal Business Opportunities” posting which was saved in the “Wayback Machine.” This was the original posting that was seen by BAASS in 2008, which they submitted a bid for. No other corporations offered a bid.
This solicitation notice stated the objective of the AAWSA program:
“One aspect of the future threat environment involves advanced aerospace weapon system applications.  The objective of this program is to understand the physics and engineering of these applications as they apply to the foreign threat out to the far term, i.e., from now through the year 2050. Primary focus is on breakthrough technologies and applications that create discontinuities in currently evolving technology trends. The focus is not on extrapolations of current aerospace technology. The proposal shall describe a technical approach which discusses how the breakthrough technologies and applications listed below would be studied and include proposed key personnel that have experience in those areas. 3. REQUIREMENTS: a) The contractor shall complete advanced aerospace weapon system technical studies in the following areas:   1. lift; 2. propulsion ; 3. control; 4. power generation; 5. spatial/temporal translation; 6. materials; 7. configuration, structure; 8. signature reduction (optical, infrared, radiofrequency, acoustic); 9. human interface; 10. human effects; 11. armament (RF and DEW); 12. other peripheral areas in support of (1-11); b) It is expected that numerous experts with extensive experience (minimum of 10 years) in breakthrough aerospace research and development will be required to meet the demands of the above program.” (Boldface emphasis added)
Before pressing on, stop and consider that very strange list; the requirement to consider "foreign" threats "out to the far term" of thirty years, or that these extrapolations are not to be based on extrapolations of "current aerospace technology," in other words, the contractor is being required to think outside the box of the conventional, Kammlerstab style. Then follows a rather conventional list, which, by the context, we're being asked to do extrapolations that do not lie in "current aerospace technology" in the areas of "1. lift; 2. propulsion; 3. control; 4. power generation; ... 6. materials; 7. configuration, structure' signature reduction (optical, infrared, radiofrequency, acoustic" and so on, and squatting in the middle of this, "spatial/temporal translation." Obviously, within the context of the mundane, any system of propulsion, from horses to rockets, are capable of spatial-temporal translation, but in the context of non-conventional extrapolation, other much more exotic possibilities are implicated. For example, in the past few years I've blogged occasionally about this or that newest application of entanglement, and the sizes of what are being entangled seem to be gradually increasing from the quantum level to more macro-scaled entanglements. Or alternatively, I've also blogged ocasionally about experiments that actually remove micro-events from the timeline. Throw into this mix all the careful research being done in the alternative research field about exotic technologies - from Nazi Bells to extraordinarily odd alleged statements of Thomas Townsend Brown or Ben Rich, and there is a clear context in the public literature for "exotic" interpretations of this list.
Then there's the term "foreign"; what does this mean? A synonym of "foreign" is, of course, the word "alien" which is commonly associated in this context with non-terrestrial intelligent life. But foreign could also mean something "unknown" to us. Viewed this way, "us" becomes "who"? Unknown to American technology and science, but still terrestrial? Or unknown to us, meaning humans? In other words, the language here is carefully chosen, and is capable of a very wide interpretation.
But there's another gem that Mr. Greenewald discovered:
After a long hunt, the discovery of Program Element (PE) 0603286E was made, and one of the projects within, could be exactly the unique needle in that proverbial stack of needles that was being sought after.
A PE is ultimately a portfolio of programs or in some instances a single program that receives funding within a budget.  PE 0603286E was first discovered in the 2008 DARPA Fact File published in June of 2008 (coincidentally, the same year the DIA solicited the private sector for bids for the AAWSA Program).
PE 0603286E contained numerous sub-projects that receive funding out of their more than $100 – $180 million dollar yearly budget. Tactically Exploited Reconnaissance Node; Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept; Tactical Boost Glide; Aerial Reconfigurable Embedded System; are just some of the programs that receive money through this specific PE.
However, one sub-program within PE 0603286E is the Advanced Aerospace System Concepts line item, also reference as part of a “Project AIR-01.” The 2008 fact file says that:
“Studies conducted under the Advanced Aerospace System Concepts program will examine and evaluate emerging aerospace technologies and system concepts for applicability to military use, as well as the degree and scope of potential impact/improvements to military operations, mission utility, and warfighter capability. The program also analyzes emerging aerospace threats and possible methods and technologies to counter them.”  (Bold-italics emphasis added)
What's intriguing to contemplate here is how neatly this program dovetails with the Trump Administration's creation of a "Space Force," which suggests that the actualities behind these paragraphs may be further along than meets the eye. And again, there's something highly suggestive in the middle of this, something called "Aerial reconfigurable Embedded Systems." Again, if we adopt the "exotic" context of extrapolation outside of current systems, this odd item suggests that one might be looking at a platform that is able to physically reconfigure itself while in operation. Again, these already exist and have for a few decades, with aircraft able to fold their wings for hypersonic flight. But by the same token, this phrase would adequately describe the reported behavior of some UFOs which appear to change their physical configuration in operation.
And there's a final context in which to view Mr. Greenewald's discoveries.  Recall that a few years ago DARPA set the objective that the USA become "warp capable" in a century, and that NASA has established a proof of concept program under the direction of Dr. Harold "Sonny" White, who reworked Alcubierre's equations for warp.
Put it all together and one gets an intriguing picture, one that a mere twenty years ago would never have achieved this degree of public disclosure or discussion. And that should give one pause, for it may mean that the secret space program is beginning to go public, and that for a very important reason: the technologies and concepts on which they are based simply can no longer be hidden

PAPER UPDATE, added 1/18/20, Lift on a Wing. In a new addendum, we see that Scientific American has just admitted the mainstream doesn't know why planes fly. That is the subtitle of their article this month, “The Enigma of Flight”. Wow. Read that article and then (re)read my 2012 paper.

Clarence "Frogman" Henry - I Don't Know Why I Love You But I Do

                                       

Saturday, February 8, 2020

Cybereason Lockheed Feature photo
Operation Blackout

How an Israeli Spy-Linked Tech Firm Gained Access to the US Gov’t’s Most Classified Networks

Through its main investors, SoftBank and Lockheed Martin, Cybereason not only has ties to the Trump administration but has its software running on some of the U.S. government’s most classified and secretive networks.

If the networks of the U.S. military, the U.S. intelligence community and a slew of other U.S. federal agencies were running the software of a company with deep ties, not only to foreign companies with a history of espionage against the U.S. but also foreign military intelligence, it would — at the very least — garner substantial media attention. Yet, no media reports to date have noted that such a scenario exists on a massive scale and that the company making such software recently simulated the cancellation of the 2020 election and the declaration of martial law in the United States.
Earlier this month, MintPress News reported on the simulations for the U.S. 2020 election organized by the company Cybereason, a firm led by former members of Israel’s military intelligence Unit 8200 and advised by former top and current officials in both Israeli military intelligence and the CIA. Those simulations, attended by federal officials from the FBI, DHS and the U.S. Secret Service, ended in disaster, with the elections ultimately canceled and martial law declared due to the chaos created by a group of hackers led by Cybereason employees.
The first installment of this three part series delved deeply into Cybereason’s ties to the intelligence community of Israel and also other agencies, including the CIA, as well as the fact that Cybereason stood to gain little financially from the simulations given that their software could not have prevented the attacks waged against the U.S.’ electoral infrastructure in the exercise. 
Also noted was the fact that Cybereason software could be potentially used as a backdoor by unauthorized actors, a possibility strengthened by the fact that the company’s co-founders all previously worked for firms that have a history of placing backdoors into U.S. telecommunications and electronic infrastructure as well as aggressive espionage targeting U.S. federal agencies.
The latter issue is crucial in the context of this installment of this exclusive MintPress series, as Cybereason’s main investors turned partners have integrated Cybereason’s software into their product offerings. This means that the clients of these Cybereason partner companies, the U.S. intelligence community and military among them, are now part of Cybereason’s network of more than 6 million endpoints that this private company constantly monitors using a combination of staff comprised largely of former intelligence operatives and an AI algorithm first developed by Israeli military intelligence.
Cybereason, thus far, has disclosed the following groups as lead investors in the company: Charles River Ventures (CRV), Spark Capital, Lockheed Martin and SoftBank. Charles River Ventures (CRV) was among the first to invest in Cybereason and has been frequently investing in other Israeli tech start-ups that were founded by former members of the elite Israeli military intelligence Unit 8200 over the last few years. Spark Capital, based in California, appears to have followed CRV’s interest in Cybereason since the venture capitalist who co-founded Spark and led its investment in Cybereason is a former CRV partner who still has close ties to the firm.
While CRV and Spark Capital seem like just the type of investors a company like Cybereason would attract given their clear interest in similar tech start-ups coming out of Israel’s cyber sector, Cybereason’s other lead investors — Lockheed Martin and SoftBank — deserve much more attention and scrutiny.

Cybereason widely used by US Government, thanks to Lockheed

“A match made in heaven,” trumpeted Forbes at the news of the Lockheed Martin-Cybereason partnership, first forged in 2015. The partnership involved not only Lockheed Martin becoming a major investor in the cybersecurity company but also in Lockheed Martin becoming the largest conduit providing Cybereason’s software to U.S. federal and military agencies. 
Indeed, as Forbes noted at the time, not only did Lockheed invest in the company, it decided to integrate Cybereason’s software completely into its product portfolio, resulting in a “model of both using Cybereason internally, and selling it to both public and private customers.” 
Cybereason CEO and former offensive hacker for Israeli military intelligence — Lior Div — said the following of the partnership:
Lockheed Martin invested in Cybereason’s protection system after they compared our solution against a dozen others from the top industry players. The US firm was so impressed with the results they got from Cybereason that they began offering it to their own customers – among them most of the top Fortune 100 companies, and the US federal government. Cybereason is now the security system recommended by LM to its customers for protection from a wide (sic) malware and hack attacks.”
Rich Mahler, then-director of Commercial Cyber Services at Lockheed Martin, told Defense Daily that the company’s decision to invest in Cybereason, internally use its software, and include the technology as part of Lockheed Martin’s cyber solutions portfolio were all “independent business decisions but were all coordinated and timed with the transaction.” 
How independent each of those decisions actually was is unclear, especially given the timing of Lockheed Martin’s investment in Cybereason, whose close and troubling ties to Israeli intelligence as well as the CIA were noted in the previous installment of this investigative series. Indeed, about a year prior to their investment in the Israeli military intelligence-linked Cybereason, Lockheed Martin opened an office in Beersheba, Israel, where the IDF has its “cyberhub”. The office is focused not on the sales of armaments, but instead on technology. 
Marilyn Hewson, Lockheed Martin’s CEO, said the following during her speech that inaugurated the company’s Beersheba office: 
The consolidation of IDF Technical Units to new bases in the Negev Desert region is an important transformation of Israel’s information technology capability…We understand the challenges of this move. Which is why we are investing in the facilities and people that will ensure we are prepared to support for these critical projects. By locating our new office in the capital of the Negev we are well positioned to work closely with our Israeli partners and stand ready to: accelerate project execution, reduce program risk and share our technical expertise by training and developing in-country talent.”
Beersheba not only houses the IDF’s technology campus, but also the Israel National Cyber Directorate, which reports directly to Israel’s Prime Minister, as well as a high-tech corporate park that mostly houses tech companies with ties to Israel’s military intelligence apparatus. The area has been cited in several media reports as a visible indicator of the public-private merger between Israeli technology companies, many of them started by Unit 8200 alumni, and the Israeli government and its intelligence services. Lockheed Martin quickly became a key fixture in the Beersheba-based cyberhub. 
Not long before Lockheed began exploring the possibility of opening an office in Beersheba, the company was hacked by individuals who used tokens tied to the company, RSA Security, whose founders have ties to Israel’s defense establishment and which is now owned by Dell, a company also deeply tied to the Israeli government and tech sector. The hack, perpetrated by still unknown actors, may have sparked Lockheed’s subsequent interest in Israel’s cybersecurity sector.
Soon after opening its Beersheba office, Lockheed Martin created its Israel subsidiary, Lockheed Martin Israel. Unlike many of the company’s other subsidiaries, this one is focused exclusively on “cybersecurity, enterprise information technology, data centers, mobile, analytics and cloud” as opposed to the manufacture and design of armaments. 
Lockheed Martin Israel
Marillyn Hewson, center, poses with Israeli gov. officials at the opening of Lockheed Martin’s facility in Beersheba. Photo | Diego Mittleberg
Haden Land, then-vice president of research and technology for Lockheed Martin, told the Wall Street Journal that the creation of the subsidiary was largely aimed at securing contracts with the IDF and that the company’s Israel subsidiary would soon be seeking partnership and investments in pursuit of that end. Land oversaw the local roll-out of the company’s Israel subsidiary while concurrently meeting with Israeli government officials. According to the Journal, Land “oversees all of Lockheed Martin’s information-systems businesses, including defense and civilian commercial units” for the United States and elsewhere.
Just a few months later, Lockheed Martin partnered and invested in Cybereason, suggesting that Lockheed’s decision to do so was aimed at securing closer ties with the IDF. This further suggests that Cybereason still maintains close ties to Israeli military intelligence, a point expounded upon in great detail in the previous installment of this series.
Thus, it appears that not only does Lockheed Martin use Cybereason’s software on its own devices and on those it manages for its private and public sector clients, but it also decided to use the company’s software in this way out of a desire to more closely collaborate with the Israeli military in matters related to technology and cybersecurity. 
The cozy ties between Lockheed Martin, one of the U.S. government’s largest private contractors, and the IDF set off alarm bells, then and now, for those concerned with U.S. national security. Such concern makes it important to look at the extent of Cybereason’s use by federal and military agencies in the United States through their contracting of Lockheed Martin’s Information Technology (IT) division. This is especially important considering Israeli military intelligence’s history of using espionage, blackmail and private tech companies against the U.S. government, as detailed here.
While the exact number of U.S. federal and military agencies using Cybereason’s software is unknown, it is widespread, with Lockheed Martin’s IT division as the conduit. Indeed, Lockheed Martin was the number one IT solutions provider to the U.S. federal government up until its IT division was spun off and merged with Leidos Holdings. As a consequence, Leidos is now the largest IT provider to the U.S. government and is also directly partnered with Cybereason in the same way Lockheed Martin was. Even after its IT division was spun off, Lockheed Martin continues to use Cybereason’s software in its cybersecurity work for the Pentagon and still maintains a stake in the company.
The Leidos-Lockheed Martin IT hybrid provides a litany of services to the U.S. military and U.S. intelligence. As investigative journalist Tim Shorrock noted for The Nation, the company does “everything from analyzing signals for the NSA to tracking down suspected enemy fighters for US Special Forces in the Middle East and Africa” and, following its merger with Lockheed and consequential partnership with Cybereason, became “the largest of five corporations that together employ nearly 80 percent of the private-sector employees contracted to work for US spy and surveillance agencies.” Shorrock also notes that these private-sector contractors now dominate the mammoth U.S. surveillance apparatus, many of them working for Leidos and — by extension — using Cybereason’s software.
Leidos’ exclusive use of Cybereason software for cybersecurity is also relevant for the U.S. military since Leidos runs a number of sensitive systems for the Pentagon, including its recently inked contract to manage the entire military telecommunications infrastructure for Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). In addition to maintaining the military telecom network, Cybereason is also directly partnered with World Wide Technologies (WWT) as of this past October. WWT manages cybersecurity for the U.S. Army, maintains DISA’s firewalls and data storage as well as the U.S. Air Force’s biometric identification system. WWT also manages contracts for NASA, itself a frequent target of Israeli government espionage, and the U.S. Navy. WWT’s partnership is similar to the Lockheed/Leidos partnership in that Cybereason’s software is now completely integrated into its portfolio, giving the company full access to the devices on all of these highly classified networks.
Many of these new partnerships with Cybereason, including its partnership with WWT, followed claims made by members of Israel’s Unit 8200 in 2017 that the popular antivirus software of Kaspersky Labs contained a backdoor for Russian intelligence, thereby compromising U.S. systems. The Wall Street Journal was the first to report on the alleged backdoor but did not mention the involvement of Unit 8200 in identifying it, a fact revealed by the New York Times a week later.
Notably, none of the evidence Unit 8200 used to blame Kaspersky has been made public and Kaspersky noted that it was actually Israeli hackers that had been discovered planting backdoors into its platform prior to the accusation levied against Kaspersky by Unit 8200. As the New York Times noted:
Investigators later discovered that the Israeli hackers had implanted multiple back doors into Kaspersky’s systems, employing sophisticated tools to steal passwords, take screenshots, and vacuum up emails and documents.”
Unit 8200’s claims ultimately led the U.S. government to abandon Kaspersky’s products entirely in 2018, allowing companies like Cybereason (with its own close ties to Unit 8200) to fill the void. Indeed, the very agencies that banned Kaspersky now use cybersecurity software that employs Cybereason’s EDR system. No flags have been raised about Cybereason’s own collaboration with the very foreign intelligence service that first pointed the finger at Kaspersky and that previously sold software with backdoors to sensitive U.S. facilities.

SoftBank, Cybereason and the Vision Fund

While its entry into the U.S. market and U.S. government networks is substantial, Cybereason’s software is also run throughout the world on a massive scale through partnerships that have seen it enter into Latin American and European markets in major ways in just the last few months. It has also seen its software become prominent in Asia following a partnership with the company Trustwave. Much of this rapid expansion followed a major injection of cash courtesy of one of the company’s biggest clients and now its largest investor, Japan’s SoftBank. 
SoftBank first invested in Cybereason in 2015, the same year Lockheed Martin initially invested and partnered with the firm. It was also the year that SoftBank announced its intention to invest in Israeli tech start-ups. SoftBank first injected $50 million into Cybereason, followed by an additional $100 million in 2017 and $200 million last August. SoftBank’s investments account for most of the money raised by the company since it was founded in 2012 ($350 million out of $400 million total). 
SoftBank Cybereason
Cybereason CEO Lior Div speaks at a SoftBank event in Japan, July 21, 2017. Photo | Cybereason
Prior to investing, Softbank was a client of Cybereason, which Ken Miyauchi, president of SoftBank, noted when making the following statement after Softbank’s initial investment in Cybereason:
SoftBank works to obtain cutting edge technology and outstanding business models to lead the Information Revolution. Our deployment of the Cybereason platform internally gave us firsthand knowledge of the value it provides, and led to our decision to invest. I’m confident Cybereason and SoftBank’s new product offering will bring a new level of security to Japanese organizations.”
SoftBank — one of Japan’s largest telecommunications companies — not only began to deploy Cybereason internally but directly partnered with it after investing, much like Lockheed Martin had done around the same time. This partnership resulted in SoftBank and Cybereason creating a joint venture in Japan and Cybereason creating partnerships with other tech companies acquired by SoftBank, including the U.K.’s Arm, which specializes in making chips and management platforms for Internet of Things (IoT) devices.
SoftBank’s interest in Cybereason is significant, particularly in light of Cybereason’s interest in the 2020 U.S. election, given that SoftBank has significant ties to key allies of President Trump and even the president himself.
Indeed, SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son was among the first wave of international business leaders who sought to woo then-president-elect Trump soon after the 2016 election. Son first visited Trump Tower in December 2016 and announced, with Trump by his side in the building’s lobby, that SoftBank would invest $50 billion in the U.S. and create 50,000 jobs. Trump subsequently claimed on Twitter that Son had only decided to make this investment because Trump had won the election.
Son told reporters at the time that the investment would come from a $100 billion fund that would be created in partnership with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund as well as other investors. “I just came to celebrate his new job. I said, ‘This is great. The US will become great again,'” Son said, according to reports. 
Then, in March of 2017, Son sent top SoftBank executives to meet with senior members of Trump’s economic team and, according to the New York Times, “the SoftBank executives said that because of a lack of advanced digital investments, the competitiveness of the United States economy was at risk. And the executives made the case, quite strongly, that Mr. Son was committed to playing a major role in addressing this issue through a spate of job-creating investments.” Many of SoftBank’s investments and acquisitions in the U.S. since then have focused mainly on artificial intelligence and technology with military applications, such as “killer robot” firm Boston Dynamics, suggesting Son’s interest lies more in dominating futuristic military-industrial technologies than creating jobs for the average American.
After their initial meeting, Trump and Son met again a year later in June 2018, with Trump stating that “His [Son’s] $50 billion turned out to be $72 billion so far, he’s not finished yet.” Several media reports have claimed that Son’s moves since Trump’s election have sought to “curry favor” with the President.
Through the creation of this fund alongside the Saudis, SoftBank has since become increasingly intertwined with Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (MBS), a key ally of President Trump in the Middle East known for his authoritarian crackdowns on Saudi elites and dissidents alike. The ties between Saudi Arabia and SoftBank became ever tighter when MBS took the reins in the oil kingdom and after SoftBank announced the launch of the Vision Fund in 2016. SoftBank’s Vision Fund is a vehicle for investing in hi-tech companies and start-ups and its largest shareholder is the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. Notably, Son decided to launch the Vision Fund in Riyadh during President Trump’s first official visit to the Gulf Kingdom.
Masayoshi Son Bin Salman
Masayoshi Son, left, signs a deal related to the Vision Fund with Bin Salman in March 2018. Photo | SPA
In addition, the Mubadala Investment Company, a government fund of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), gave $15 billion to the Vision Fund. UAE leadership also share close ties to the Trump administration and MBS in Saudi Arabia.
As a consequence, SoftBank’s Vision Fund is majority funded by two Middle Eastern authoritarian governments with close ties to the U.S. government, specifically the Trump administration. In addition, both countries have enjoyed the rapid growth and normalization of ties with the state of Israel in recent years, particularly following the rise of current Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman and Jared Kushner’s rise to prominence in his father-in-law’s administration. Other investments in the Vision Fund have come from Apple, Qualcomm and Oracle’s Larry Ellison, all tech companies with strong ties to Israel’s government.
The Saudi and Emirati governments’ links to the Vision Fund are so obvious that even mainstream outlets like the New York Times have described them as a “front for Saudi Arabia and perhaps other countries in the Middle East.”
SoftBank also enjoys close ties to Jared Kushner, with Fortress Investment Group lending $57 million to Kushner Companies in October 2017 while it was under contract to be acquired by SoftBank. As Barron’s noted at the time:
When SoftBank Group bought Fortress Investment Group last year, the Japanese company was buying access to a corps of seasoned investors. What SoftBank also got is a financial tie to the family of President Donald Trump’s senior advisor and son-in-law, Jared Kushner.”
According to The Real Deal, Kushner Companies obtained the financing from Fortress only after its attempts to obtain funding through the EB-5 visa program for a specific real estate venture were abandoned after the U.S. Attorney and the Securities and Exchange Commission began to investigate how Kushner Companies used the EB-5 investor visa program. A key factor in the opening of that investigation was Kushner Companies’ representatives touting Jared Kushner’s position at the White House when talking to prospective investors and lenders.
SoftBank also recently came to the aid of a friend of Jared Kushner, former CEO of WeWork Adam Neumann. Neumann made shocking claims about his ties to both Kushner and Saudi Arabia’s MBS, even asserting that he had worked with both in creating Kushner’s long-awaited and controversial Middle East “peace plan” and claimed that he, Kushner and MBS would together “save the world.” Neumann previously called Kushner his “mentor.” MBS has also discussed on several occasions his close ties with Kushner and U.S. media reports have noted the frequent correspondence between the two “princelings.”
Notably, SoftBank invested in Neumann’s WeWork using money from the Saudi-dominated Vision Fund and later went on to essentially bail the company out after its IPO collapse and Neumann was pushed out. SoftBank’s founder, Masayoshi Son, had an odd yet very close relationship with Neumann, perhaps explaining why Neumann was allowed to walk with $1.7 billion after bringing WeWork to the brink of collapse. Notably, nearly half of SoftBank’s approximately $47 billion investments in the U.S. economy since Trump’s election, went to acquiring and then bailing out WeWork. It is unlikely that such a disastrous investment resulted in the level of job creation that Son had promised Trump in 2016.
Given that it is Cybereason’s top investor and shareholder by a large margin, SoftBank’s ties to the Trump administration and key allies of that administration are significant in light of Cybereason’s odd interest in 2020 U.S. election scenarios that end with the cancellation of this year’s upcoming presidential election. It goes without saying that the cancellation of the election would mean a continuation of the Trump administration until new elections would take place. 
Furthermore, with Cybereason’s close and enduring ties to Israeli military intelligence now well-documented, it is worth asking if Israeli military intelligence would consider intervening in 2020 if the still-to-be-decided Democratic contender was strongly opposed to Israeli government policy, particularly Israel’s military occupation of Palestine. This is especially worth considering given revelations that sexual blackmailer and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who targeted prominent U.S. politicians, mostly Democrats, was in the employ of Israeli military intelligence.
Notably, Cybereason’s doomsday election scenarios involved the weaponization of deep fakes, self-driving cars and the hacking Internet of Things devices, with all of those technologies being pioneered and perfected — not by Russia, China or Iran — but by companies directly tied to Israeli intelligence, much like Cybereason itself. These companies, their technology and Cybereason’s own work creating the narrative that U.S. rival states seek to undermine the U.S. election in this way, will all be discussed in the conclusion of MintPress’ series on Cybereason and its outsized interest in the U.S. democratic process.
Feature photo | Graphic by Claudio Cabrera
Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism.

Tuesday, February 4, 2020

Actuality of Invisible Alien Beings


Many of you have seen the 'Predator' movies and are familiar with the cloaking technology used by the extraterrestrial in the film. Basically, the alien being is hidden or invisible even though a matrix outline of the alien being can still be detected. The description in this account is akin to the fictional entity in the films.

Several years ago, a colleague who is psychically gifted described an incident she experienced in her backyard the evening before. She had let her dogs out and was standing at the back door while waiting for them to finish their business.

As she continued to wait for her dogs, she noticed 'something' approach her on the walkway from the lower yard. Her description was that of a tall and wide shouldered being but without mass... a pixilated transparent form that continued to move towards her. As this form came near her it abruptly stopped as if it was surprised that she was staring at it. Then this form dissipated completely. This was not the first time something of this nature had materialized near her. A similar incident transpired the previous year while she was standing adjacent to her garden. On that occasion the being was somewhat smaller in form but similarly pixilated and transparent.

Her sense of these beings was that it was not a haunting or manifestation by a human spirit. In fact she had never recognized similar phenomena previously. Her assessment was that these were entities from beyond our dimension and most likely of alien origin. After I listened to the evidence, already having knowledge of her surroundings, I concurred that her experience was more than a manifesting human energy.

In June 1947, aviator Kenneth Arnold inadvertently launched the modern UFO era with his report of witnessing nine crescent-shaped objects speeding over Mt. Rainier. In 1948, the USAF set up Project Sign to evaluate the many flying disc reports that followed in the wake of Arnold's highly publicized sighting.

A few years later, UFO researcher Coral Lorenzen wrote, "Clearly the discs had been involved in a general military reconnaissance of the United States." She added that the UFO entities were obviously engaged in "gathering botanical and geological specimens." Early proponents of similar theories, assuming that UFOs came from within our solar system, suspected that they wished to colonize our planet, or to strip it of its minerals, metals or uranium. These theories are no longer valid. There is a wealth of minerals and metals in asteroids and uninhabited planets which is readily available to any astral civilization. As well, there are a high number of non-inhabited planets that could be adapted to support life should the aliens wish colonize.

Some alien abduction theory proponents have suggested that these non-terrestrials want to gather human DNA in order to develop hybrids. It seems unlikely to expect that highly advanced aliens would need to repeatedly abduct thousands of humans in order to keep their DNA supplies available. Surely they would have the know-how that we possess to synthesize or replicate DNA in their own laboratories?

Is it possible that extraterrestrials are only interested in our culture and relationship to other living things on our planet?
Could we become a part of an united interplanetary trading consortium... or simply become a diplomatic and scientific partner in a league of alien civilizations? Cue up the Star Trek music.

An interesting comment was made by Lord Martin Rees, a leading cosmologist and astrophysicist who is the President of Britain's Royal Society and astronomer to the Queen of England. Rees, who hosted the National Science Academy's first conference on the possibility of alien life in February 2010, said he believes the existence of extraterrestrial life may be beyond human understanding.

"They could be staring us in the face and we just don't recognize them. The problem is that we're looking for something very much like us, assuming that they at least have something like the same mathematics and technology. I suspect there could be life and intelligence out there in forms we can't conceive. Just as a chimpanzee can't understand quantum theory, it could be there as aspects of reality that are beyond the capacity of our brains."

Is it possible that these extraterrestrial entities are all around us and, for the most part, undetectable? Computational biologists and bioengineers are attempting in finding the cure for chronic diseases like cancer, diabetes and others. What has perplexed some bioengineers and medical experts is the presence of strange molecular entities within the intracellular structures within an organism. The biological entities are not bacteria, viruses, or any visible entities. They are invisible. They are impossible to detect without the help of computational modeling and computer assisted search and locate algorithms.

The premise is that invisible extraterrestrial biological entities all around us are penetrating our bodies and reside within intracellular spaces. They can then attack as they wish to colonize human or animal bodies. That is the reason why targeted drug delivery mechanisms are failing no matter what the biophysicists are doing. It was found that through computational modeling the source of cancer is not the cancer cell only but also invisible entities within intracellular spaces.

Do these invisible extraterrestrial entities exist in higher dimensions and manifest under certain conditions? Are these beings entering our world by flying craft or through portals... or have they been here with us all along?

Also, the lack of tangible evidence to prove the existence of several cryptid's may also be due to a theory that has been gaining popularity over recent years, namely, that these beings are ultraterrestrial and multidimensional. This is a paradox that may become clearer in the near future.                   https://www.phantomsandmonsters.com/p/many-of-you-have-seen-predator-movies.html

WUHAN AND HARVARD… AND JEFFREY

  

https://gizadeathstar.com/2020/02/wuhan-and-harvard-and-jeffrey/

I'm constantly amazed at the information that people email to me, but this one is a whopper doozie spotted by V.S. I've already blogged about the arrest of Dr. Charles Lieber of Harvard, and about this strange tie to the Wuhan University of Technology. But there's more lurking in the background of that Harvard connection than meets the eye, and I just have to share this one:
Wuhan Coronavirus, Jeffrey Epstein, and Harvard University
tldr: Epstein gave exorbitant amounts of money, at least $9 million (pledged $30 million) to researchers funded by DoD, DARPA, IARPA, and NIH at Harvard University with the expertise and technology to genetically engineer and improve bacteria and viruses. One of Harvard's most prominent scientists who received $18 million from DoD and NIH was arrested and charged for operating a secret lab in Wuhan China just hours ago - This researcher was given over $1.5 million dollars to do so, in secret, by Chinese institutions. Meanwhile, the area where the new coronavirus emerged (Wuhan) recently opened a biosafety level 4 lab (the only one in China, a country with 1.4 billion people) where researchers were actually studying and experimenting with the genetics of coronaviruses over the past few years before the emergence of this new strain. Whether these things are linked or not remains to be see, but each of these independent statements are in fact true.
In a way this post contains two distinct conspiracy theories, that I suspect may be linked together, hence my post.
A few years ago, I attended a private government research conference where Dr. George Church, Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard and MIT, was describing how his lab systematically altered the genome of a bacterial cell using synthetic biology and genetic engineering to make cells resistant to viruses. There was some brief discussion of how these techniques could be used for the opposite purpose (to engineer viruses to improve them or make them less recognizable by the host, thus delaying the immune response). Immediately following Dr. Church’s presentation, other researchers and myself had a discussion about how frightening these technological capabilities were. Over the years, this concern has always remained in the back of my mind and I’ve discussed it with others that didn’t attend the talk on various occasions. It is worth noting that a lot of George Church’s recent research also involves the study and engineering of viruses. Most recently in his career, Dr. Church has been funded by DARPA and IARPA, with the most recently funded grant titled, ‘Functional Genomic and Computational Assessment of Threats’ (by IARPA).
http://arep.med.harvard.edu/gmc/gc_grants.html
The description of this grant solicitation, if you search for it, starts with:
“The biological sciences have experienced extraordinary growth over the past decade. Technological advances in DNA synthesis, sequencing, large gene construction, and data analysis are expanding biological research and the bioeconomy, and are likely to enable revolutionary advances in medicine, agriculture, and materials. At the same time, these advances have intensified security concerns around the accidental or deliberate misuse of biotechnologies. One special concern regards DNA synthesis technologies that can be used to create novel organisms.”
Hence, Dr. Church is obviously involved in the area of applying advanced techniques (lab based and computational) to engineer organisms to make them resistant to viruses (and potentially vice-versa, to engineer viruses), and is involved in the efforts to combat the risks involved.
Interestingly enough, Dr. Church was one of the scientists most involved with Jeffrey Epstein. He received funding from Epstein for the purposes of ‘cutting edge science & education’ from 2005 to 2007 (the funding was apparently unrestricted). Epstein was convicted of soliciting an underage prostitute in 2008. Following his conviction, Dr. Church and Epstein continued to meet. According to an NBC report, "he had six phone calls and meetings with Epstein in 2014, as shown in Church’s online calendar (he has posted one every year since 1999). Sample entry: “Jun 21, 2014 Lunch w/ Jeffrey Epstein, 12-1:30, Martin Nowak’s Institute.” (Nowak, a Harvard biologist/mathematician, is also a Brockman client and Edge participant.) He also met with Epstein “several times” each year since, Church said."
These meetings were often between Church, Epstein, and Church’s colleague Dr. Martin Nowak, Harvard Professor of Biology and Mathematics and Director of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics. At the get-togethers with Nowak, Church said, “Epstein seemed interested in the science of life’s origins and mathematically modeling the evolution of viruses”. Epstein had also previously given a whopping $6.5 million dollars in research money to Dr. Nowak’s lab at Harvard in 2003. Apparently, Epstein had actually pledged a total of $30 million dollars (which is an incredible amount of money for a university professor to receive for research; large government funded grants usually top out at $2-3 million over several years) to Dr. Nowak’s program. I was not able to find additional information on what these talks in 2014 and beyond ultimately led to, or if more money was pledged to or received by these prominent scientific figures. Another thing to add is that Nowak also has a record of studying and writing about viruses, such as his first book publication in 2000 titled, Virus Dynamics: Mathematical Principles of Immunology and Virology.
Jumping to a slightly different topic of discussion. There are other two other posts that stood out to me in this sub.
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/ev7az3/wuhan_coronovirus_bioweapon_conspiracy_indepth/
This post describes a few things. First, Wuhan, China, the 7th most populated city in a country with 1.4 billion has a biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory that was recently established in 2015. It is apparently one out of 70 or so in the entire world (number was given by OP of the post linked above; my own search only turned up 52), and it is the only BLS-4 lab in the ENTIRE country of China. For those unfamiliar with what BLS-4 refers to, they are labs involving the study of the greatest biological threats and have the highest level of biosafety precautions. It is the sort of lab where researchers would attempt to study and perhaps modify something like a coronavirus. As the other redditor pointed out (and is also outlined in other r/conspiracy posts), there are lead scientists, such as Xing-Ye Ge, that study coronaviruses based out of Wuhan. These studies are often carried out by a team of 5-20 researchers, usually across institutions.
https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/Xing-Yi-Ge/5583604?sort=influence
If you look up the Wuhan scientists research profile, you’ll be able to find that this individual and his fellow researchers also publish studies on adenoviruses in bats (similar to Dr. Church’s own virus-focused work on adeno-associated viruses, which are similar to adenoviruses and have similar applications; there is considerable overlap here). Further searching indicates that adenoviruses and adeno-associated viruses hold potential to serve as a vaccine for coronaviruses, and there are several studies on this. Dr. Church’s own work is related to this, as he studies adeno-associated viruses mostly in the context of delivering it as a sort of gene therapy for diseases. To be fair, however, these topics are outside my own area of expertise.
Now on to another recent reddit post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/ev9adz/harvard_biologist_charles_lieber_taken_into/
In the last 24 hours, a colleague of Dr. Church and Dr. Nowak, Dr. Charles Lieber, Professor and Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University, was arrested and criminally charged over a contract he made with a foreign university. Where? In Wuhan, China. As a side note, it’s worth pointing out to those unaware that all three of these people are some of the highest-ranking academic officials at Harvard and are revolutionary scientists in their respective fields. They would not at all be considered just minor or just moderately important figures at Harvard.
According to the Justice Department: "Lieber, 60, lied about his contact with the Chinese program known as the Thousand Talents Plan, which the U.S. has previously flagged as a serious intelligence concern. He also is accused of lying about about a lucrative contract he signed with China's Wuhan University of Technology."
Apparently, amongst other things, Lieber established a secret research lab at the Wuhan university and was given $1.5 million dollars by the Chinese (in addition to salary and living expenses) to do so. Meanwhile “Lieber was also the principal investigator on at least six U.S. Defense Department research grants, with a cumulative value of more than $8 million, according to the affidavit. It also says he was the principal investigator on more than $10 million in grants funded by the National Institutes of Health.” So, Dept. of Defense… NIH…
For those that are unfamiliar with academia, you may be wondering “how often does a leading, well-funded academic scientist from the most prestigious university in the country set up a secret lab with a foreign government?” This probably never happens, and it is extraordinarily – and I mean extraordinarily – odd and suspicious. Researchers are sometimes solicited by foreign governments and will leak or share info, but set up another lab somewhere else under the radar? Maybe a minor scientist would, but a major one? I’ve never heard of such a thing. Some other redditor mentioned that Lieber’s research seems to be mostly focused on nanotechnology rather than bioweapons research, and this is true. However, he has been involved in previous research to use nanotechnology to detect small viral particles in humans. Most oddly though, if you try to search Charles Lieber’s Google Scholar page (basically a page where you can find all scientific articles and books authored by a researcher), his page just went dark. It shows up in the Google search results, but says ‘No information available for this page’. I kid you not, his Google Scholar page went down as I was writing this post. When you try to click on it, it strangely links you to the Google Scholar page of some completely different person.
In my mind, these are a series of very strange coincidences that seem to be interconnected. As the redditor of the first link I posted put it, what are the odds that the new coronavirus that is now making world news just so happened to come out of the same place that the Chinese just set up their first BLS-4 lab a few years ago that also just so happens to be a place where researchers are studying coronaviruses? What are the odds that, again, just in the last several hours, one of the most prominent scientists at Harvard was arrested for setting up a secret lab in Wuhan, China? Also, why was Jeffrey Epstein giving heaps and heaps of money to researchers at Harvard studying synthetic biology and genetic engineering, who had the means to systematically alter cells or viruses – people receiving money from secret defense agencies such as DARPA and IARPA – and stated himself he was interested in modeling the evolution of viruses.
We need to look into these things further. Even if the Epstein-Church-Nowak part of the conspiracy doesn’t link to the Lieber-Wuhan Coronavirus portion, these two segments stand well on their own and I feel that despite having more of a background in nanotech instead of bioweapons, Liebers arrest for secret lab in Wuhan while the coronavirus problem continues to explode is just too much of a coincidence. Why would someone getting $10 million plus from U.S. funding agencies go through the hassle of setting up a secret lab in another country and risk his entire life’s work for less money. What was he doing there exactly? I eagerly wait for more details to come out.
edit: One more thing, it keeps getting better. Another Redditor made this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/evikbw/wuhan_institute_of_virology_an_ad_posted_2_months/ It's unclear who all is involved (such as Lieber or others), but this seems to be shaping up to be one of the better conspiracies I've seen on this board in a while.

There you have it. So it's important to review what this article is saying: Dr. Lieber worked at the same university as Drs Church and Nowak, both known associates of Jeffrey Epstein and recipients of his largesse. Given the nature of their work, it strains credibility to assume that Lieber was unaware of their work or they of his. They are, after all, all faculty members working in more or less the same broad discipline. As they article makes clear, all were working in aspects of modifying biology and doing genetic engineering, all areas of obvious biowarfare implications. All of this raises some intriguing high octane speculations and questions:

1) Why would professors, who are recipients of government funds for research, also take private funding in the millions from Epstein? Did they need it? And was Epstein in fact laundering money for other interests in sponsoring this research? And does that mean that their are private interests trying to obtain a biowarfare capability? Their taking of Epstein money on an individual basis was quite probably entirely innocent. But it's the overall pattern of a Harvard connection that I find highly odd.
2) Do these questions in their turn indicate that all of China is being turned into a biowarfare, economic warfare, and social engineering experiment?
In respect to these questions, the article itself asks a highly pertinent question regarding Dr. Lieber toward the end of the piece:
Why  would someone (Lieber) getting $10 million plus from the U.S. funding agencies go through the hassle of setting up a secret lab in another country and risk his entire life's work for less money. What was he doing there exactly?
Indeed, and for whom was he really doing it? China? Harvard? Some private international interest?
Like the author of the article, I eagerly await for more details to come out. In the connection to the idea of some private international interest however, I'm reminded of a detail that occurred prior to 9/11, when Russian economist Dr. Tatiana Koryagina mentioned in Pravda, prior to the events of 9/11, that the US would shortly be attacked on its own soil by a private group with assets in the trillions of dollars. Recently, Harvard took its funding entirely black, and I have to wonder, in the light of this article, if it is one of the crucial "fronts" or "nodes" for some sort of private network. Would it be involved in such activities as a massive social engineering experiment?
Well, as I detailed with co-author Gary Lawrence in our book Rotten to the (Common) Core, another Harvard chemist - indeed, a former president of the institution - comes to mind: Dr. James Conant Bryant, and with him, the answer to that question is a resounding yes.