Come on. This wasn’t a hidden secret. I can believe not everyone who did business with Epstein after he left prison was aware, but this wasn’t a secret; it was widely reported (the truth is, many people just didn’t care) why he went to jail. The circles he traveled in might have changed, but from my own experiences on the periphery of the wealthy/connected, stuff like this comes up.
You’ll note Ito never claims he wasn’t aware of the allegations or the guilty plea, he simply says he didn’t ever see any evidence of that behavior.
Plenty of people would pause before accepting money from someone like Epstein and plenty of people, as we’ve seen, did not.
Those that did aren’t responsible for any of Epstein’s crimes, but it’s more than fair that they answer questions about why they took money from someone like him — even if the answers are uncomfortable.
This is probably not the best time to point to SV and the influence of Milner and the Kremlin, but it's fascinating to read PG's comments in the 2011 discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3143604 and how he seems to be comfortable with the Kremlin connection even though others seemed to have known at the time.
So? There are many other external investors in the US companies, most importantly from China and Saudi Arabia. This is not illegal. And US-Russia relationships were a lot different in 2011.
> Basically, Milner is a crook, and if there was any justice in the world he and Usmanov would be in jail for what they have done. But there isn't, and there are people in the Valley who are willing to overlook ethics if you have enough money. The fact that Milner is now working with YC is a sad testament to that fact.
PG: VCs are not so high minded that they're offended by who his LPs are, believe me.
> Actually, it would seem to be just as simple as he implies. VCs in the valley care only about money and don't give a hoot about morality. You haven't debated the fact that Milner is linked to the looting of state resources; you've simply said that anyone else would also take his money if they could.
PG: even if Yuri's money was tainted in some way, it was being used as a counterweight to another bad thing.
This is the ultimate problem and it has nothing to do with US-Russia relations but rather with dealing with known seedy characters
It's pretty common. VC funds will run these checks on you, and most companies do as well when they even hire you. It's table stakes for any company committed to data security and safety.
I was commenting based on my experience that 1) VC firms actually do ask you for permission to run background checks on you, look you up online, and know a fair bit about you 2) We run background checks on everyone we hire, and its fairly easy to do, because I believe it would be irresponsible not to.
I don't think there is one real error here as you put it, but it's been made public he was warned about him before and people he worked with would refuse to go to his properties when invited and told him why (citation: https://medium.com/@EthanZ/on-me-and-the-media-lab-715bfc707...).
Thanks, I think this is what I was missing. Failing to google a donor is a pretty bad oversight, but I think attributable to basically negligence. Ignoring the advice of your peers is more egregious, which looks like what happened here.
"Due diligence research" makes it sound complicated. Just Google the guy. I always look up potential business partners. And, in the past, I have discovered evidence of criminal activity that puts me on alert (nothing like Epstein though, just run-of-the-mill fraud.)
Well, that's what's unclear to me — the apology makes it sound like he just had no idea about this guy. From the other comments, it sounds like that's false, and he ignored warnings from his peers, which makes more sense to me.
No need to be hostile, I'm just trying to understand the situation :)
No, only the ones I deal after I visit several of their homes and they invest in the company I work for and also invest in several different of my private financial dealings that I have a stake in. And even then maybe not a deep dive but just may be that I noticed something on the news...
I think it's pretty common place to know a little bit about the background of anyone who is an investor in your interests. When you take or solicit an investment there's often a conscious cost-benefit decision on those dollars. Even people who need money and want to take risks often want to make the best risky decisions and deliberately place their bets.
If someone wants to invest a quarter million in whatever I'm doing with no strings attached (aka donate) the last thing I'm gonna be doing is asking questions. Most academics, charities, and other operations that run off donations don't have enough money to be picky about where it comes from.
Considering that that's basically pocket change to the MIT Media Lab they can afford to do their due diligence and turn people down if need be.
Some small charity you've never heard of that runs a summer camp for inner city kids or some no-name research lab at a state university's non-flagship campus (or whatever) is just gonna take the money because they can't afford to be picky. They're not gonna do background checks because the last thing they want is being in a position of weighing the need for money vs the ethics of who's giving it.
TL;DR: People and groups with less resources are less picky who they're willing to take money from but MIT doesn't have this excuse.
> If someone wants to invest a quarter million in whatever I'm doing with no strings attached (aka donate) the last thing I'm gonna be doing is asking questions
haha why are you proud of this? That's essentially the quintessential spirit of corruption representing everything wrong with this country and world.
The presence of strings attached or implied is necessarily part of how corruption and "not technically corruption but pretty damn close" behavior works.
It's a little different if you're a pro-privacy organization or climate change researcher and google or exxon starts stuffing you with money. There's a material conflict of interest in cases like that. That's the exception, not the rule. Some hypothetical summer camp has no conflict of interest taking the Koch brothers' money even if it disagrees with their politics.
> I'm doing with no strings attached (aka donate) the last thing I'm gonna be doing is asking questions.
Good you can end up like a friend of a friend that realized his investors were part of the Israeli Mafia. That guy was one of the few people who was ecstatic when tech industry cratered in 2001.
Jeffrey Epstein was a well known sexual predator in 2013, nobody who is in charge of fundraising for any institution would need to do a "deep dive" on his criminal activity in order to know about that. It shows a major lapse in judgement, as Joi Ito states in his apology.
A Google search normally doesn't pull up boring criminal records. It will pull up extremely lurid reporting on a life-destroying case that later ends in acquittal.
Epstein is the exception--he was a level 3 offender and could have been pulled for a felony for not checking in with the police. He shouldn't even have been walking around.
Much less walking around while serving his sentence...
"While most convicted sex offenders in Florida are sent to state prison, Epstein was instead housed in a private wing of the Palm Beach County Stockade and, according to the sheriff's office, was after 3 1⁄2 months allowed to leave the jail on "work release" for up to 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. This contravened the sheriff's own policies requiring a maximum remaining sentence of 10 months and making sex offenders ineligible for the privilege. He was allowed to come and go outside of specified release hours.
Epstein's cell door was left unlocked, and he had access to the attorney room where a television was installed for him, before he was moved to the Stockade's previously unstaffed infirmary. He worked at the office of a foundation he had created shortly before reporting to jail; he dissolved it after he had served his time. The Sheriff's Office received $128,000 from Epstein's non-profit to pay for the costs of extra services being provided during his work release. His office was monitored by "permit deputies" whose overtime was paid by Epstein. They were required to wear suits, and checked in "welcomed guests" at the "front desk". Later the Sheriff's Office said these guest logs were destroyed per the department's "records retention" rules (although inexplicably the Stockade visitor logs were not). He was allowed to use his own driver to drive him between jail and his office and other appointments."
It wouldn't have taken a "deep dive" a simple Google search would have uncovered it. This was in the international news media, especially in the US and the UK.
My point is we should not accept Ito's claim that he was unaware of Epstein's background. It is a lie, designed to attenuate our assessment of Ito's responsibility.
The apology letter is clearly meant to have us believe he was not aware! Through omission and indirection.
> I was never involved in, never heard him talk about, and never saw any evidence of the horrific acts that he was accused of.
But fine let's say you're right. "I knew he'd done this, but at his house I never saw evidence of rape or trafficking" isn't much better. He should resign.
You’ll note Ito never claims he wasn’t aware of the allegations or the guilty plea, he simply says he didn’t ever see any evidence of that behavior.
Plenty of people would pause before accepting money from someone like Epstein and plenty of people, as we’ve seen, did not.
Those that did aren’t responsible for any of Epstein’s crimes, but it’s more than fair that they answer questions about why they took money from someone like him — even if the answers are uncomfortable.