Alexander Rubinstein & Max Blumenthal
MintPress News
"To [Omidyar] it's about... integrating things together to give technocrats, business executives and government officials a God's-eye view of the world - to manage and control society more efficiently."
-- Yasha Levine, author of Surveillance Valley: The Military History of the Internet
As we have seen in part one of this investigation, billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar has partnered closely with many of the U.S.-funded outfits that fulfill the role the CIA used to play during the Cold War in backing opposition media and civil society in countries targeted for regime change. However, Omidyar has also sought state-of-the-art design solutions from a shady U.S. government national security consulting firm with a myriad of ties to the hawkish D.C. foreign policy establishment.
In February of last year, USAID's Global Development Lab published a series of reports furnished for it by a small, Arlington, Virginia-based company focused on design solutions for national security problems, with a mere 10 employees listed on its website and eight on its LinkedIn page. Those reports caught the attention of journalist Michael Igoe at Devex on Tuesday.
The company, Frontier Design Group, analyzed the feasibility of essentially militarizing USAID. The report proposals like "Rapid Expeditionary Development" (RED) teams. Those teams would be embedded with U.S. Special Forces, the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration outside of typical USAID areas of operation.
They would be "trained and authorized to conduct themselves as a force-multiplier able to contribute a full suite of security skills as needed," the documents suggested. RED team officers would also be trained for "survival, evasion, resistance, and escape," negotiations, civil reconnaissance, "and weapons qualification courses."
The report also analyzed the possibility of creating a "Civilian Response Groups" - an organization that sounds like the White Helmets if they were directly controlled by Washington.
Frontier interviewed 36 experts for its report, including a 15-year USAID veteran who told them, "we have to be involved in national security or USAID will not be relevant." The issue identified by many in the report was that USAID was losing its cutting edge and was hamstrung because it was not allowed to operate in conflict zones.
USAID told Devex that it is "still working on the details in formulating the Rapid Expeditionary Development Teams initiative."
Another Frontier Design Group client is the Omidyar Group, further demonstrating the eBay founder's proximity to shady government contractors.
Read more
MintPress News
"To [Omidyar] it's about... integrating things together to give technocrats, business executives and government officials a God's-eye view of the world - to manage and control society more efficiently."
-- Yasha Levine, author of Surveillance Valley: The Military History of the Internet
As we have seen in part one of this investigation, billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar has partnered closely with many of the U.S.-funded outfits that fulfill the role the CIA used to play during the Cold War in backing opposition media and civil society in countries targeted for regime change. However, Omidyar has also sought state-of-the-art design solutions from a shady U.S. government national security consulting firm with a myriad of ties to the hawkish D.C. foreign policy establishment.
In February of last year, USAID's Global Development Lab published a series of reports furnished for it by a small, Arlington, Virginia-based company focused on design solutions for national security problems, with a mere 10 employees listed on its website and eight on its LinkedIn page. Those reports caught the attention of journalist Michael Igoe at Devex on Tuesday.
The company, Frontier Design Group, analyzed the feasibility of essentially militarizing USAID. The report proposals like "Rapid Expeditionary Development" (RED) teams. Those teams would be embedded with U.S. Special Forces, the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration outside of typical USAID areas of operation.
They would be "trained and authorized to conduct themselves as a force-multiplier able to contribute a full suite of security skills as needed," the documents suggested. RED team officers would also be trained for "survival, evasion, resistance, and escape," negotiations, civil reconnaissance, "and weapons qualification courses."
The report also analyzed the possibility of creating a "Civilian Response Groups" - an organization that sounds like the White Helmets if they were directly controlled by Washington.
Frontier interviewed 36 experts for its report, including a 15-year USAID veteran who told them, "we have to be involved in national security or USAID will not be relevant." The issue identified by many in the report was that USAID was losing its cutting edge and was hamstrung because it was not allowed to operate in conflict zones.
USAID told Devex that it is "still working on the details in formulating the Rapid Expeditionary Development Teams initiative."
Another Frontier Design Group client is the Omidyar Group, further demonstrating the eBay founder's proximity to shady government contractors.
Read more
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