I marvel that the media -- especially the trendy lefty and liberal media -- can keep treating this spy story as if it is a joke and merely bumbling by the Russians. Of course it's not mere bumbling -- Putin, a seasoned KGB man, doesn't bumble -- and I continue to see it as some kind of decoy, something not what it seems.
The New York Times complains in a headline -- in perfect political correctness -- Spying Suspects Seemed Short on Secrets and says these seemingly low-level spies didn't seem to have any hot classified goods such as to be really properly charged with "espionage".
Yeah, I thought that too, until I studied Anna Chapman's Facebook, and I saw that the Duma's high-tech committee chair, a leading Russian venture capitalist of the top social media sites, and scores of high-tech start-up and "innovation" people from Russia and America and Asia were in her friends list. And that these people all friends with the top start-ups and venture people in Silicon Valley, and an official in the National Security Council -- and much more. I don't have all day to drill in this list of 161 (which was 174 yesterday) -- I hope someone is bothering, however.
Remember kids, "all knowledge resides on the network". You don't have to take pictures of secret documents and put them in microscopic dots nowadays when you can construct a light, portable, easily accessed network through free social media tools like Facebook and Twitter and Linkedin that helps you gather and disseminate information, often without a trace, that helps you keep in touch with people and watch what they say -- which is often what we call in this field "oversharing" about many intimate personal and business details.
No, it doesn't take much Internet sleuthing to see that the story of Anna Chapman isn't merely that she's a red-haired femme fatale who liked to put sexy photos of herself up on her Facebook page and was greedy for spy cash to party or travel with.
I noted at first I was one Facebook friend removed from Anna; I then explored some more and saw I had at least three FB friends in common with her, and now even shared one. Of course, her list of friends is dwindling, as some people get the idea that it really doesn't look so good on their resume to be shown as her friend, or decide they'd rather not show up in an FBI probe -- now I wonder if Facebook executives cooperate with the FBI on a case like this and turn over information about what content and connections were on accounts?
When I noted these "six degrees of separation," it wasn't to "fret," as Sean the Blogger About Russia with a Blog Named Sean's Blog said about me on Twitter. It's not about paranoia.
No, it's not about fear of being spied on, but about researching a topic. Trying to understand why this story isn't adding up. When I first heard all these names, workplaces, and cities, I said to myself: "But these people have nothing to do with the Russian community, I've never seen them anywhere at any event or function, they don't seem to be related to the foreign policy community either. What's up?"
And that's because they are related not so much to the old media, or the old foreign policy networks, but related to the new media, and the new influence networks of the Russian and American Silicon Valleys.
So I began to study the Facebook friends (which is a lot like studying the balloons in the old The Sims Online -- Will Wright was an early pioneer in social media perhaps without quite realizing it with his balloon friends system!).
And now it's looking a lot different to me -- not just like low-level spies who couldn't spy straight, bumblers, or greedy careerists. It's looking more organized and shrewd and very smart -- as in "smart-phone". And looking to be all about Russia's Silicon Valley, high tech and social media and everything else that the California meetings with Medvedev were all about. And maybe that's what Obama -- or the people who run the CIA and national security who didn't come in new with Obama but were from past administrations -- meant to say with all these sudden arrests:
Yes, you will get a billion dollar deal from Intel, and Cisco's former executive will co-chair the Russian Silicon Valley, and yes, there will be all this, er, interaction and...interoperability, shall we say, between our two Silicon Valleys. But you can't threaten our national security while doing so. Here are the markers.
Anna Chapman had quite a few high tech friends, for a gal who only worked in real estate and took a lot of hot photos of herself. Let's take a look.
First, Anna shows her birthday as February 23. That's part of her legend. February 23 is Soviet Army Day. That interesting tidbit could signal that she is in the GRU (Russian military intelligence, that becomes involved in high-tech, relations with foreign states, as well as strictly military issues) although this entire caper has been described as "SVR", the old KGB, which broke up into the FSB and SVR, although not always without changing the names on the doors.
Let's look at the last thing she posted on her wall, in Russian, and therefore not read or covered by the tabloids:
Anna Chapman Ребята, всем кому интересно узнать про венчурное инвестирование, в Москве будет отличное мероприятие - Московский венчурный форум, участие бесплатное, информация на http://arip.ru/
Translation:
"Guys, to everyone who is interested to learn about venture investment, there will be a great event in Moscow, the Moscow Venture Forum, admission is free, information at http://arip.ru"
Then it has a picture and links and key words from that page that says: innovation, innovation projects, subsidities, investments, support, airp.ru
As you go through Anna's friends, you see many, many of the young people associated with all the "innovation" events and talks and trips recently, and I bet with some diligence you will find more related to #rustechdel on both the U.S. and Russian sides.
This is all public information because Anna Chapman's friends are publicly visible, and even those whose Facebook profiles are locked to outsiders who aren't their friends, still have the fact of their friendship with her visible.
A number of her friends stand out for me, because I know some of them or know who they are.
Max Skibinski, business development director for Playdom, an online game payment system, is FB friends with three people I know from the California virtual worlds start-up scene all involved in venture capital start-ups, some open, some under NDA (non-disclosure agreements). Playdom is an especially hot property because it is the key to making a virtual currency system out of Facebook, and therefore monetarizing the 450 million people on Facebook into something that might make that free boat float.
One very influential friend of Anna Chapman's is Ilya Ponomaryov, Member, Russian Parliament - State Duma, Chairman, Hi-Tech Development
Subcommittee. You don't get to become the chairman of the Hi-Tech Development Subcommtitee of the Russian Duma (parliament) without support from President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin. In his capacity, Ponomaryov would be expected to be highly involved in the Russian Silicon Valley; he is on the Skolkovo Foundation.
As often happens with high Russian officials, parliament and the Kremlin are interchangeable in their resume. Ponomaryov was at the Ministry of IT and Telecom from 2006-2007 and chief of Hi-Tech Parks Task Force in the government. Ilya was also at the ill-fated Yukos from 1998-2001, but fared better in his career than Khodorkovsky, who was jailed.
If you were looking for the connection between this arrested spy and some high-ranking U.S. official, it comes from their "one-degree-of-Facebook-separation" status -- Ilya Ponomaryov is friends with Michael McFaul, who is the director of the Russian and Eurasia department of the National Security Council and special advisor to President Obama on Russia -- and co-chair of the McFaul-Surkov Commission which has been the chief engine of the "reset," bringing together both officials and civil society -- a vehicle I've been very critical of because I feel it has gone soft on human rights and democracy issues in favour of other feel-goods and tech gadgets that distract from Russia's grave problems.
Of course, in his current job capacity, and his past capacity as a professor at Stanford, McFaul is expected to be friends with lots of different kinds of people from Russia or related to Russia (I'm even on the list). And being a savvy guy, he uses the new media tools like Facebook to exchange links and information and views. So his being one Facebook friend away from a Russian spy doesn't mean anything any more than *my* being a Facebook friend away from this spy means anything (or, as we're supposed to say if we are lefty media, "alleged spy who isn't even charged with espionage, but charged with not registering themselves as an agent of a foreign government"). No, it's not about McArthyism; it's about explaining how Spy 2.0 does its work.
Ilya, 34, tells us on his Facebook that he's a member of the Communist Party, and an agnostic. Nowadays, unlike the Soviet era, you don't have to be a member of the CP to get ahead in your career, but in the Duma, it likely doesn't hurt (although he supposedly left in a scandal last year).
So how do these sorts of connections work? I'd be willing to bet dollars to plyushki that Anna went around sending her friending requests to these highly influential people, rather than the other way around -- although perhaps some of them thought she might be useful if she had real estate connections -- what Russian in the high-tech community doesn't think he might need a real-estate connection?
Anna went to various events here and in Moscow and "networked" and came up with connections and business cards and twitter and Facebook friends. (She was listed in a Russian tweeter's twitter list, but her named account seems to be gone or disabled now; the account NYC Rentals still exists).
Another very influential person in the Anna Chapman Facebook network is Alyona Popova. Alyona Popova
who describes herself on Facebook as the "Future prime minister of Russia, internet consultant, IT start-upper. Research, invest, product venture investor, founder of a number of mobile projects BrainStormav.ru, VideoSnack.ru StarLook.ru consultant on media, director of the Duma 2.0 project
Duma 2.0? Eeks, I pity the Russians having inflicted on them something like our Gov 2.0 -- which still didn't grasp its wired hands on the concept of Congress 2.0 -- thank God (the Duma is easier to overthrow, being a Kremlin rubber-stamper to start with.)
Anna was with StarLook.ru, the first social shopping network
You can read more on her website alenapopova.ru
I see at least one other mutual friend of Anna Chapman and Michael McFaul -- Anna Dvornikova -- she doesn't look to be a public figure yet she took part in the meeting with President Medvedev in Silicon Valley last week.
Did Alyona know that she was friends with a Russian spy?
Are all these people in on it together?
No, of course not. It doesn't work that way -- so please, stop banging on me with charges of "Russophobia" and "paranoia". That's not what Spy 2.0 is about. It's about seeing *how it works*. *How they do it*.
It is exactly why I'm calling it Spy 2.0 -- more outsourced, crowdsourced -- more The Wave and The Cloud. It doesn't have to work in such a crude fashion like "what did you know and when did you know it" or "are you now or have you ever been".
Can you imagine a Congressional oversight committee of this Russian reset and tech biz asking somebody, "Are you now, or have you ever been a Facebook friend or Twitter follower of Anna Chapman?" or "OK, but are you friends of any of her friends on Facebook?" Can't you just see the lefty cartoons showing pictures of people's cat and a government warning that Farmville reports have to be suppressed due to a national espionage emergency? This is the endless fodder of jokes -- that is, if you don't get what it's about.
Spying that doesn't have to be directed exactly and scripted perfectly by the handlers and the moles and the illegals -- could it get any better than that?! Spying which, like a kind of purse seine net catching bluefin tuna, gathers an enormous amount of fish in their nets by being cast very widely and broadly -- and then they get what they get. This connection, that connection, this bit of information, that bit of information, with somebody willing to sit and put all the tweets and IMs together into a puzzle. Sounds like an awful lot of work -- but it isn't, when social media not only does the netting, it also has powerful applications that can datamine and drill through the data and put together patterns for you.
A Russian oligarch owns a good chunk of Facebook. What does that ownership give him? Does it enable him to suggest programmers for the staff who have access to the data of customers to data mine? Or is that even unnecessarily crude, as he can ask for the entire datamine for his own advertising, or whatever, purposes, likely easier than we think. Customer data on Facebook isn't something that Facebook promises never to sell and never to drill. That's been a constant recurring theme of this platform, with people constantly complaining about it, but still showing up in Google. You can hide your account, but your friends will show up unless you tinker with the sliders further, and not everyone knows how to do that.
To be continued...
AMBAR, the American Business Association of Russian-Speaking Professionals is telling its members, which included a few of the spies, to unfriend them so they won't be researched as illegals.
I saw your comment on the New York Times, indeed the old gray lady shows its irrelevance by the day.
Posted by: Sean | June 30, 2010 at 08:40 PM
"Spying that doesn't have to be directed exactly and scripted perfectly by the handlers and the moles and the illegals -- could it get any better than that?! Spying which, like a kind of purse seine net catching bluefin tuna, gathers an enormous amount of fish in their nets by being cast very widely and broadly -- and then they get what they get." You mean like George Soros and his cutout service all over Eurasia for the last twenty five years???
Posted by: Daddy Warbucks Soros | August 15, 2010 at 01:34 PM
"A Russian oligarch owns a good chunk of Facebook. What does that ownership give him? Does it enable him to suggest programmers for the staff who have access to the data of customers to data mine?"
Google and No Such Agency (cough, cough)
Posted by: Daddy Warbucks Soros | August 15, 2010 at 01:35 PM