April 7, 2024 (EIRNS)—Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, educated at Cambridge University, and a sewer outlet for Anglo-American intelligence, wrote an op-ed on April 5, “How Ukraine’s Tech Army Is Taking the Fight to Russia.” It is a puff piece for Ukraine’s drone operations, but also gives a map of who is running the operation for Ukraine. Ignatius elaborates how a simulated Ukrainian drone attack from “Launch Site Alpha” goes to “Target Site Oscar” in Crimea, evades Russian electronic jammers, and “finally hit the target.” Ignatius ejaculates, “The front line has become a digital shooting gallery.”
But while Ignatius claims that dozens of Ukrainian start-up firms are producing drones—and some are—he gives away the following: “I travelled here [Kyiv] with a team from Palantir that’s advising the Ukrainian government on software tools for this constantly evolving battlespace.” Palantir was founded by Paypal founder Peter Thiel, whom EIR has exposed (see Renée Sigerson’s “A Truly Evil Golem: Billionaire Peter Thiel and his Palantir,” in EIR Jan. 21, 2022), and who is thought still to be Palantir’s largest stockholder. Aside from Thiel himself, the only early investments in Palantir were $2 million from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s venture capital arm In-Q-Tel. Indeed, according to a Sept. 4, 2009 article in the Wall Street Journal, “How a Team of Geeks Cracked the Spy Trade,” Palantir developed its technology by computer scientists and analysts from intelligence agencies over three years, through pilot programs facilitated by the CIA’s In-Q-Tel. There is more to the company’s history, but it is a cut-out for U.S. intelligence agencies.
Ignatius brags that he spoke with Francisco Serra-Martens, the CEO of Terminal Autonomy drone-maker, who states that his company is making a drone “AQ 400 Scythe” that can fly nearly 500 miles, meaning it could enter Russia from Kyiv. But Terminal Autonomy, previously named One Way Aerospace, was founded in mid-2022 by two veterans of the British and Australian militaries. A Ukrainian engineer partnered with them.
Ignatius discloses that, “In addition to some big companies like Palantir and Microsoft, Ukraine’s tech supporters include several prominent American billionaires, an array of U.S. start-ups and entrepreneurs from across Europe to North America and Australia. It’s a weird fusion of Silicon Valley and trench warfare.”
