The complexities of the FTX scandal with Sam Bankman-Fried at the helm boggles the mind. Unlike the Madoff scandal, which was incredibly simple, the funding, influence, and political networks sounding the $32 billion collapse of FTX is byzantine by design.
Just have a look at the org chart of the company to get a sense. It’s all the better for avoiding oversight.
What we really need in the months or even years in which it will take to sort all of this out is some kind of key to the major players. What follows is a list which we’ve put together in order of network importance for easy reference. This small effort is made necessary because there seems to be very little attention being given to the entire SBF empire, both in terms of the players with whom he worked and where the money ended up.
It’s nowhere near being a guide to the fullness of the networks of funding and influence, and can only begin to hint at the real story of what was really behind this magic bean factory in the Bahamas. Their operations and networks are deliberately obscure and fan out over many countries, institutions, and individuals. There is a strange silence in the air about the details other than the general observation that Sam Bankman-Fried was up to no good.
And yet there were obviously many people involved. It’s probable that the main point was to fund political causes in a way that gets around federal election law, as the indictment suggests in count eight. However, a close examination of the networks keeps coming back to the strange theme of pandemic planning and support for various methods of controlling the population in the name of controlling infectious disease. Aside from political donations, this was a central concern. What that has to do with a crypto exchange is another matter.
All of which should raise a question given the time of the life of FTX (2019-2022): to what extent was the network surrounding this institution useful in providing back-channel funding support for (and lack of opposition to) the most unprecedented attack on human liberty in our lifetimes? This question applies to both the direct political contributions and the various other donations to institutions and individuals.
Sam Bankman-Fried: Went to MIT, worked for Centre for Effective Altruism (fundraising 2017) and started Alameda Research in November 2017, and then the crypto trading company FTX two years later, which he ran until 2022 when it all collapsed after becoming the second-largest donor to Democrats ($38M).
Barbara Helen Fried: mother of Sam, Harvard Law graduate, professor at Stanford University, booster of Effective Altruism, and founder of Mind the Gap, a secretive political action committee in Silicon Valley.
Alan Joseph Bankman: father of Sam, Yale Law graduate and later clinical psychologist, law professor at Stanford, and author and expert on tax law.
Linda Fried: Sam’s aunt on his mother’s side and Dean of School of Public Health at Columbia University and on the board of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Aging.
Gabriel Bankman-Fried: Sam’s brother who ran Guarding Against Pandemics, a lobbying organization supporting “pandemic planning” also known as lockdowns and vaccine mandates. It has a Capitol Hill headquarters that cost $3.3 million. He previously served on a Congressional staff.
Associates
Caroline Ellison: Schooled at Stanford, she is daughter of Glenn Ellison and Sara Fisher Ellison, both professors at MIT. She became CEO of Sam’s Alameda Research and reported girlfriend of Sam’s.
Sara Fisher Ellison and Glenn Ellison: Caroline’s mother is professor of economics at MIT with a research specialization in the pharmaceutical industry while her father has written at least four papers on epidemiological modeling.
Nishad Singh: former MIT roommate of Sam’s who is said to have built the FTX platform. He seems to have left the Bahamas for India.
Zixiao “Gary” Wang: Co-founder with Sam of FTX and Alameda. He graduated from MIT and worked for Google. Beyond that hardly anything is known about him. He seems to have left the Bahamas and is reported to be in Hong Kong.
Ryan Salame: Graduate of UMass-Amherst and head of FTX Digital Markets, plus proprietor of R Salame Digital Asset Fund through the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, allegedly for charitable purposes.
William David MacAskill: real name Crouch, William is an author and philosopher and founder of the Centre for Effective Altruism and a close colleague of Sam’s. He served on the board of FTX Future Fund until it collapsed. He is a media personality who gives TED talks and is a leader purveyor of the view that one should get very rich and give it away.
Funded Institutions and Individuals (some taken from here)
Together Trial: This elaborate trial of therapeutics ended up inveighing against Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine and was generously funded by FTX. But that has been scrubbed from the public website. This is a continuing problem.
Moncef Slaoui: The head of Operation Warp Speed, he received $150,000 from FTX to write SBF’s autobiography, according to a Washington Postinvestigation.
HelixNano: A vaccine company that claims to be developing mutation-resistant vaccines, which received $10M in funding from FTX Future Fund, according to a Washington Postinvestigation.
Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security: This institution ran the Event 201 lockdown tabletop exercise in 2019, and received at least $175,000 for a single employee, from FTX coffers. We don’t know the full extent but it was enough for the head of the Center to defend Sam and FTX in public. Nor do we know Alameda Research’s funding reach of this institution.
Guarding Against Pandemics: Run by Sam’s brother Gabriel, this 501c4 gave at least $1M to campaigns in 2022. We do not know how much money Alameda/FTX funneled to this institution. Sam fequently recommend it as a target for charitable giving.
Protect Our Future: run by the two brothers, this PAC gave $28M to candidates in the 2022 cycle. We do not know how much Alameda/FTX gave.
Center for Innovation in Global Health, Stanford University: FTX and its network gave $1.5M to the institution.
ProPublica: A grant of $5M from FTX Future Fund. Other reports say $27 million.
Centre for Effective Altruism: FTX Future fund gift of $14M
Effective Ideas Blog: It promised to pay $1K to good blogs, and its Twitter frequently links to other institutions and individuals in the FTX network. Funded by Future Fund: $900K
Piezo Therapeutics: “Work on technology for delivering mRNA vaccines without lipid nanoparticles with the aim of making vaccines more safe, affordable, and scalable.” FTX gave $1M
Council on Strategic Risks: “a project which will develop and advance ideas for strengthening regional and multilateral cooperation for addressing biological risks.” $400K from FTX
AVECRIS Pte. Ltd: “support the development of a next-generation genetic vaccine platform that aims to allow for highly distributed vaccine production using AVECRIS’s advanced DNA vector delivery technology.” $3.6M from FTX
University of Ottawa: “a project to develop new plastic surfaces incorporating molecules that can be activated with low-energy visible light to eradicate bacteria and kill viruses continuously.” FTX gave $250K
1Day Sooner: “work on pandemic preparedness, including advocacy for advance market purchase commitments, collaboration with the UK Pandemic Ethics Accelerator.” FTX gave $300K.
SAGE: “creation of a pilot version of a forecasting platform, and a paid forecasting team, to make predictions about questions relevant to high-impact research.” FTX gave $700K
Longview: “global priorities research, nuclear weapons policy, and other longtermist issues.” Advisor: William MacAskill. FTX gave $15M
Confirm Solutions: “support development of statistical models and software tools that can automate parts of the regulatory process for complex clinical trials.” FTX gave $1M
Lightcone Infrastructure: “ongoing projects including running the LessWrong forum, hosting conferences and events, and maintaining an office space for Effective Altruist organizations.” FTX gave $2M
Rational Animations: “the creation of animated videos on topics related to rationality and effective altruism to explain these topics for a broader audience.” FTX gift: $400K
Giving What We Can: “to create a world in which giving effectively and significantly is a cultural norm.” FTX gift: $700,000
The Atlas Fellowship: scholarships for talented and promising high school students to use towards educational opportunities and enrolling in a summer program. FTX gift: $5M
Constellation: “support 18 months of operations for a longtermist coworking space in Berkeley.” FIX coughed up $3.9M
Longview Philanthropy: “creating a longtermist coworking office in London.” FTX committed $2.9M
Long Term Future Fund: “longtermist grantmaking.” FTX committed $3.9M
OurWorldinData: graphs and charts portal. FTX committed $7.5M
Institute for Progress: “research and policy engagement work on high-skilled immigration, biosecurity, and pandemic prevention.” FTX was in for $480K. Additional support came from Emergent Ventures, which was modeled on Fast Grants that funded Neil Ferguson’s pandemic modeling at Imperial College London, which seems to have an entangled relationship with the SFB empire, one yet to be fully disclosed.
Conclusion
What is listed above only scratches the surface of the admitted $160 million given out, but the promise had been for fully $1 billion to go to various nonprofits in this network that seems to be supported or even founded in order to receive money from FTX-connected institutions.
We could only list some of the names and a fraction of the dollar amounts. There are many other institutions and names that could be part of this list but we lacked enough documentation to verify for this article. There is still the task of listing all political campaigns that were in receipt of the money as well as the public-relations boosters of the whole effort.
Building off the success of Bill Gates, Sam Bankman-Fried, and his many associates, clearly saw philanthropy as the path to influence, power, and protection. At the same time, many nonprofit organizations saw an opportunity too; to build their own empires through promised millions and billions from a crypto genius in the Bahamas who had an unusual passion for pandemic planning.
For three years, many of us have wondered how it came to be that the critics of lockdowns and mandates were so few and far between. There are surely many explanations but, as usual, it helps fill in the dots to follow the money.
Jeffrey A. Tucker, Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute, is an economist and author. He has written 10 books, including Liberty or Lockdown, and thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press. He writes a daily column on economics at The Epoch Times, and speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.
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President Trump said Sunday he won’t make a tariff deal with China unless its $1 trillion trade surplus with the U.S. is balanced. Speaking aboard Air Force One, he called the deficit “not sustainable” and said tariffs are already driving a wave of investment back to America.
Key Details:
Trump told reporters the U.S. has “a $1 trillion trade deficit with China,” adding, “hundreds of billions of dollars a year we lose to China, and unless we solve that problem, I’m not going to make a deal.” He insisted any agreement must begin with fixing that imbalance.
The president said tariffs are generating “levels that we’ve never seen before” of private investment, claiming $7 trillion has already been committed in areas like auto manufacturing and chip production, with companies returning to places like North Carolina, Detroit, and Illinois.
On Truth Social Sunday night, Trump wrote: “The only way this problem can be cured is with TARIFFS… a beautiful thing to behold.” He accused President Biden of allowing trade surpluses to grow and pledged, “We are going to reverse it, and reverse it QUICKLY.”
Diving Deeper:
President Donald Trump reaffirmed his tough trade stance on Sunday, telling reporters that he won’t negotiate any new deal with China unless the massive trade deficit is addressed. “We have a $1 trillion trade deficit with China. Hundreds of billions of dollars a year we lose to China, and unless we solve that problem, I’m not going to make a deal,” Trump said while aboard Air Force One.
He emphasized that while some countries have deficits in the billions, China’s trade advantage over the U.S. exceeds a trillion dollars and remains the most severe. “We have a tremendous deficit problem with China… I want that solved,” he said. “A deficit is a loss. We’re going to have surpluses, or we’re, at worst, going to be breaking even.”
Trump touted the impact of tariffs already in place, pointing to an estimated $7 trillion in committed investments flowing into the U.S. economy. He highlighted growth in the automotive and semiconductor sectors in particular, and said companies are now bringing operations back to American soil—citing North Carolina, Detroit, and Illinois as examples.
He also claimed world leaders in Europe and Asia are eager to strike deals with the U.S., but he’s holding firm. “They’re dying to make a deal,” he said, “but as long as there are deficits, I’m not going to do that.”
Trump projected that tariffs would add another $1 trillion to federal revenues by next year and help re-establish the U.S. as the world’s top economic power. “Our country has gotten a lot stronger,” Trump said. “Eventually it’ll be a country like no other… the most dominant country, economically, in the world, which is what it should be.”
Later Sunday night, Trump doubled down in a Truth Social post, writing, “We have massive Financial Deficits with China, the European Union, and many others. The only way this problem can be cured is with TARIFFS, which are now bringing Tens of Billions of Dollars into the U.S.A.” He added that trade surpluses have grown under Joe Biden and vowed to reverse them “QUICKLY.”
“Did fossil fuels actually cause this impact?” Kochan said. “Then how much of these particular defendants’ fossil fuels caused this impact? These are the things that should be in a typical trial, because due process means you can’t be responsible for someone else’s actions. Then you have to decide, and can you trace the particular pollution that affected this community to the defendant’s actions?”
A $744 million jury verdict in Louisiana is at the center of a coordinated legal effort to force oil companies to pay billions of dollars to ameliorate the erosion of land in Louisiana, offset climate change and more.
Proponents say the payments are overdue, but critics say the lawsuits will hike energy costs for all Americans and are wrongly supplanting the state and federal regulatory framework already in place.
In the Louisiana case in question, Plaquemines Parish sued Chevron alleging that oil exploration off the coast decades ago led to the erosion of Louisiana’s coastline.
A jury ruled Friday that Chevron must pay $744 million in damages.
The Louisiana case is just one of dozens of environmental cases around the country that could have a dramatic – and costly – impact on American energy consumers.
While each environmental case has its own legal nuances and differing arguments, the lawsuits are usually backed by one of a handful of the same law firms that have partnered with local and state governments. In Louisiana, attorney John Carmouche has led the charge.
“If somebody causes harm, fix it,” Carmouche said to open his arguments.
Environmental arguments of this nature have struggled to succeed in federal courts, but they hope for better luck in state courts, as the Louisiana case was.
Those damages for exploration come as President Donald Trump is urging greater domestic oil production in the U.S. to help lower energy costs for Americans.
Daniel Erspamer, CEO of the Pelican Institute, told The Center Square that the Louisiana case could go to the U.S. Supreme Court, as Chevron is expected to appeal.
“So the issue at play here is a question about coastal erosion, about legal liability and about the proper role of the courts versus state government or federal government in enforcing regulation and statute,” Erspamer said.
Another question in the case is whether companies can be held accountable for actions they carried out before regulations were passed restricting them.
“There are now well more than 40 different lawsuits targeting over 200 different companies,” Erspamer said.
The funds would purportedly be used for coastal restoration and a kind of environmental credit system, though critics say safeguards are not in place to make sure the money would actually be used as stated.
While coastal erosion cases appear restricted to Louisiana, similar cases have popped up around the U.S. in the last 10 to 15 years.
Following a similar pattern, local and state governments have partnered with law firms to sue oil producers for large sums to help offset what they say are the effects of climate change, as The Center Square previously reported.
For instance, in Pennsylvania, Bucks County sued a handful of energy companies, calling for large abatement payments to offset the effects of climate change.
“There are all kinds of problems with traceability, causation and allocability,” George Mason University Professor Donald Kochan told The Center Square, pointing out the difficulty of proving specific companies are to blame when emissions occur all over the globe, with China emitting far more than the U.S.
“Did fossil fuels actually cause this impact?” Kochan said. “Then how much of these particular defendants’ fossil fuels caused this impact? These are the things that should be in a typical trial, because due process means you can’t be responsible for someone else’s actions. Then you have to decide, and can you trace the particular pollution that affected this community to the defendant’s actions?”
Those cases are in earlier stages and face more significant legal hurdles because of questions about whether plaintiffs can justify the cases on federal common law because it is difficult to prove than any one individual has been substantively and directly harmed by climate change.
On top of that, plaintiffs must also prove that emissions released by the particular oil companies are responsible for the damage done, which is complicated by the fact that emissions all over the world affect the environment, the majority of which originate outside the U.S.
“It’s not that far afield from the same kinds of lawsuits we’ve seen in California and New York and other places that more are on the emissions and global warming side rather than the sort of dredging and exploration side,” Erspamer said.
But environmental companies argue that oil companies must fork out huge settlements to pay for environmental repairs.
For now, the Louisiana ruling is a shot across the bow in the legal war against energy companies in the U.S.
Whether the appeal is successful or other lawsuits have the same impact remains to be seen.
