Read on Twitter
1/ Hey guys, remember that time Steve Bannon ran an army of game virtual currency miners in Asia, for sale to westerners at discount prices, arbitraging attention for profit?
That was awesome... https://www.wired.com/2016/09/trumps-campaign-ceos-little-known-world-warcraft-career/
That was awesome... https://www.wired.com/2016/09/trumps-campaign-ceos-little-known-world-warcraft-career/
2/ “The company was founded by former child star Brock Pierce, and Bannon was an investor. Bannon managed to convince Goldman Sachs to plow $60 million into a company that sold imaginary goods in an imaginary world.”
In 2020, Brock Pierce ran for President. Guess who...
In 2020, Brock Pierce ran for President. Guess who...
3/ was Pierce’s campaign manager?
Brittany Kaiser, the fake whistleblower who left Cambridge Analytica in late March 2018 — right *after* it blew up. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/whistleblower-and-data-rights-activist-brittany-kaiser-joins-brock-pierce-for-president-as-campaign-manager-301095331.html
Brittany Kaiser, the fake whistleblower who left Cambridge Analytica in late March 2018 — right *after* it blew up. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/whistleblower-and-data-rights-activist-brittany-kaiser-joins-brock-pierce-for-president-as-campaign-manager-301095331.html
4/ Guess who was all excited about today’s $GME activity? Steve Bannon and Russia shill, Jack Posobiec. They called it a “populist uprising against Wall Street.” That’s cool... just leftists, Steve Bannon, and Russia shills cheerleading for the same stuff. It happens...
5/ Zerohedge, another outlet known to be aligned with Russia said yesterday, “Everything is breaking.” Martin Geddes, a QAnon influencer who has sadly become very disconnected from reality, was also very excited about the GME activity.
6/ Brock Pierce was also part of the 2014 film “An Open Secret,” helped to lay the foundation for the child sexual abuse and trafficking narrative that undergirded Pizzagate and QAnon. https://www.indiewire.com/2017/10/hollywoods-underage-sexual-abuse-problem-5-shocking-injustices-from-an-open-secret-1201891024/
7/ For the fanbois, the activity in WSB is real and undeniable. We also don’t really know who is involved in it or how much market making capacity there is there, ultimately. We also don’t know the distribution of whales and peons. A narrative has taken hold...
8/ that it’s all small timers banding to take on evil Wall Street hedge fund managers. Certainly that’s partly true. But it can also include basically anyone else who wants to play. Scrutiny of transaction volume by individual buyers/sellers is needed.
9/ Who cares, some might say? Let the RH kids have some fun, they’ve earned it! The shoe is on the other foot this time. And that’s true. But this now has the attention (even if it didn’t, which is increasingly implausible, before) of Bannon and Russia.
10/ Blowing up short positions is fair game, but if that becomes weaponized by state actors that may lead to a good deal more chaos than anyone realizes now. This activity should be watched for signs of large scale manipulation, and merging with existing...
11/ influence campaigns such as QAnon or similar efforts. This will evolve in real time, and Steve Bannon isn’t done trying to make his stupid “Fourth Turning” happen. This is all on his radar now. Expect chaos. Disinfo beat folks, take note. We were warned.
12/ Here’s the 2008 @WIRED piece about Bannon, Pierce, and their imaginary goods arbitrage business — funded by Goldman Sachs. https://www.wired.com/2008/11/ff-ige/
13/ Also worth noting that Gabe Hoffman, who produced the film “An Open Secret” and is suing people linked to QAnon, is a huge short seller and a mortal enemy of Elon Musk. Musk has been trying to bankrupt Hoffman for a long time. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/10/tesla-bear-says-elon-musk-makes-donald-trump-look-like-an-angel.html
14/ And Musk has been a key figure in the WSB activity, and in driving animus towards specific holders of short positions. Many analysts have wondered if BTC and TSLA are not also being manipulated by similar kinds of campaigns, and some unspecified whales.
15/ There is also increasing pressure for influence campaigns to be self-supporting, and several analysts pointed out today that the GME activity is a blueprint for how to do this. It’s not pump-and-dump if it’s against short-holders, seems to be the current consensus.
16/ If you’re not familiar with Bannon’s obsession with “The Fourth Turning,” he (still) believes that we are overdue for global collapse and that the right events can trigger it. He failed to do so in government and is likely to try economic angles next. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/08/us/politics/bannon-fourth-turning.html
17/ Posobiec pumped the GME situation constantly the last 24 hours in his foreign influence campaign, taking every opportunity to make fun of the Biden admin, and suggest the market would crash. But this is just bros makin’ dough, yeah?
18/ QAnon and the Jan 6 crew seem to have two poles, organizationally: the Steve Bannon wing and the Roger Stone wing. It certainly looks like the swarm of Jan 6 is something that Bannon is interested in repeating, manipulating finance/business/media and gov’t in the process.
19/ And look, I get it, this is a fun story with little guys and real villains, and it’s fun to throw in $100 and see what happens. It’s also important to know how this tactic may be incorporated into influence campaigns, now and in the future, with unexpected consequences.
20/ Financial Times notes that many of the “Reddit Bros” are supporters of the “alt-right.” That’s a generalization; but there is overlap between alt-right, gamergate, and other online swarms also leveraged by Bannon previously. https://www.ft.com/content/ac7389f1-41d8-46b6-bc42-32ac603b7f91
21/ And as @1D_Nasty points out it looks like some very established Wall Street players (i.e. BlackRock) are going to make out very nicely here. Wonder who will get out first? The whale or the minnows? 
https://twitter.com/1d_nasty/status/1354794931882225667
https://twitter.com/1d_nasty/status/1354794931882225667
22/ Everyone’s favorite scion weighed in with this endorsement of the campaign, too. Just an old fashioned David vs. Goliath tale... DJT Jr. standing up for the little guy once again! https://twitter.com/donaldjtrumpjr/status/1354793103090212865?s=21
23/ And now AOC and Don Jr. are on the same side. This is bizarro world, perfectly balanced Active Measures fodder. Everybody’s mad! Now what!?! Only populism can save us. https://twitter.com/aoc/status/1354830697459032066
24/ And now, squee, we even have Ted Cruz on board!?! Golly, can we all go to go to Cheesecake Factory after this? They are sure to have something for everyone! Good thing this isn’t behaving like some kind of info op, or this would be an extraordinary set of developments!
25/ And... probably worth noting that two of Robinhood’s major investors are Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, and Jared Kushner’s brother Josh. From 2017... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-robinhood-investment-idUSKBN17S1WV
