[cylinder]

What? Whatsapp is not secure by any means, I don't think it's even encrypted. NSA could easily monitor it using existing infrastructure. And how exactly do you propose NSA "funnel" money to FB to make this acquisition -- never mind that most of it was in newly issued stock (how does NSA compensate FB shareholders for this? how does it appear on balance sheet / income statement / cash flow?). Have you thought this through at all?

[ChuckFrank]

NSA regularly makes data requests to the major telecoms and to the major internet service providers. If they didn't need to, they wouldn't make the request. Obviously they still do because they need to.

Not only does FB have seed funding for the gov't, they have shown themselves to be much more inclined to provide access to their data, when compared with Google and others. FB would therefore be an excellent partner to circumvent the international telecoms through a single msg service.

Just because you can't think of how the money flows, doesn't mean it doesn't or that it hasn't. The CIA supported the Guggenheim foundation, and the Iowa Writers Workshop. They could easily provide institutional support for FB stock, thereby essentially saying to FB - get this company, and we'll have your back on the markets.

So the question is, not whether I've thought this through, since this is what I'm doing to justify the insane valuation, but whether you are willing to think it through, or instead dismiss it outright, until the time come when the evidence shows you to be wrong. As we learned with Snowden et al.