American Civil-Military Fusion: Proposed Billionaire City as a Military Platform for National Defense
American Civil-Military Fusion: Proposed Billionaire City as a Military Platform for National Defense
An exhaustive break-down of my research into the Silicon Valley-backed sustainable city proposal 'California Forever' and its curious alignment with national defense initiatives - a Military City
A quick word:
This post is extremely long, and while it’s well organized, there are parts that could probably be moved around for clarity if I’m being frank. My focus has been on making videos for so long that my writing game has declined over the years, so that naturally plays a part in how easily I am able to articulate these very complicated ideas to you.
That said, this write-up is made up entirely of my own independent research and the findings I came up with over the course of a year. I initially started writing this in the winter of last year, but the scope was just so massive that I had difficulties framing it in a way that I wanted it to be framed for the reader.
However, in that year, it was revealed that the personal theory I came to develop after my research into California Forever was verified, at least in part. By the end of this write-up though, you’ll see exactly why I came up with the theory that I did, and why I dead-on accurate.
The first part:
[INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW]
In my last video and article, I covered the close connections between Vice President Kamala Harris and the billionaire Silicon Valley investors who are backing California Forever (CF), a controversial and highly secretive initiative aimed at developing a sustainable city on a vast expanse of barren, un-zoned land—twice the size of San Francisco—located just outside Travis Air Force Base.
I've been deeply immersed in this story since the investors behind California Forever (CF) first went public in August 2023. If you had told me a year ago that I’d still be investigating it over a year later, though, I would have been skeptical. Initially, it seemed like a straightforward case: a group of Silicon Valley billionaires coming together to build a city from the ground up—a concept that's entirely in line with their typical goals, albeit a lot more ambitious and unique than what we’re accustomed to seeing with them.
Beyond the usual speculation about a potential Smart City (SC) and how the project aligns with the broader vision that many elites have for the future, though, I didn’t think there was much more to uncover, aside from the disruption it would cause to the quiet farming community of Solano County, and perhaps how its yet another example of Elites steamrolling local communities for their own benefit.
As I delved deeper into the story, my perspective began to shift; I realized there was much more to this proposal than I initially thought. At first, my interest was primarily piqued by the secrecy surrounding the operation—why these tech giants felt the need to conceal their identities and intentions while acquiring land from 2018 to 2023. After all, it’s the very public they were hiding from that would ultimately need to vote in favor of the city for the project to move forward. I was puzzled by the confidence Jan Sramek, the mastermind behind the proposal, seemed to exude; he acted as if the success of his city was assured, regardless of how inappropriate or distasteful the group's actions might be or appear.
In pursuit of the answer, I began looking into the backgrounds of the investors to see where their interests lie in recent years. I got to thinking about the city plan itself, and began wondering whether there might be some other significance to the sustainable city they want to build that lies outside the realm of their publicly stated goals, which is to fix California’s housing crisis and turn the area into an economic engine by constructing a city that is sustainable, based on renewable energy, and has minimal usage of vehicles (thus, low emissions).
For those of you that may have missed my first article and video on this story, I want to provide a brief list of the oddities that stood out to me, and prompted my months-long obsession with this story.
ORIGIN OF THE STORY AND MY INTEREST IN IT
The California Forever Investors
To start, let’s touch on the very basics - here is a list of the investors from the CF website itself:
The strange and curious details that piqued my initial curiosity:
Here are the things that really got me interested in diving into this story to begin with:
Scope of the operation: the CF investors, through a Delaware-registered LLC called Flannery Associates, bought more than 53,000 acres of land, making them the largest landholders in Solano County nearly overnight (to put the size of that acreage in perspective, San Francisco is 2x smaller at around 30,000 acres)
Encirclement of Travis AFB: the parcels of land the investors were rapidly buying up actually surrounded Travis Air Force Base, one of the most important military bases on the West coast, known as the “Gateway to the Pacific”. Travis is the primary power projection platform for the Indo-Pacific region, which includes China - our main competitor militarily (this will become significant later on)
Purchasing of parcels with critical infrastructure: some of the parcels bought by Flannery Associates were parcels that housed critical infrastructure related to Travis base operations, such as buried fiber optic cables, water and fuel pipelines, and also an off-base communications facility
Flannery stated that they ended up selling those parcels to somebody else, but wouldn’t, couldn’t, or simply didn’t say who
National security concerns: the massive land-grab and encirclement of Travis sparked national security concerns among sitting California Congressmen, and prompted authorities in the Air Force, FBI, CFIUS, and other agencies to launch official investigations into the group to uncover their identities and motives in order to ensure the land wasn’t being bought by adversary nations such as China
We were told every single investigation was unable to uncover the identities or motives of the group after more than a year of investigating them. We only found out who was behind it all after five full years, and only after they themselves came forward publicly after a barrage of intense press coverage
Uniformity of ignorance: every single person in a position of power and influence across all sectors of society and industry - from local mayors to the FBI all the way up to Governor Newsom - claimed to have no idea who the investors were or what they had planned for the land, despite the group surrounding a military base and sparking national security concerns….all while nobody knew who they were, and despite the multiple high profile investigations looking into the group
The encirclement happened during a period of increased tensions around America’s homeland security and defense stemming from multiple incidents that occurred within the same timeframe (Chinese spy balloon, the high altitude shoot down events, drone swarm incidents around military bases and Naval vessels, adversary nations buying up agricultural land for purposes of surveillance and/or subterfuge, etc), making the secrecy around a land-grab of this magnitude even more unbelievable
Investor’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein: at least two of the CF investors had been associated with Jeffrey Epstein and/or Ghislaine Maxwell - the significance here is self explanatory
Seeking to resolve the above hang-ups I had about this story (whether warranted or not), I got down to digging. And digging I did.
THE GOALS OF THE CALIFORNIA FOREVER BILLIONAIRE CITY AND ITS CURIOUS ALIGNMENT WITH 15-MINUTE CITIES & MILITARY DEFENSE INITIATIVES
Stated Goals of California Forever:
Jan Sramek has listed the following goals for his city vision:
Creating an economic engine for Solano County while addressing the region's growing housing crisis in a scalable, financially self-supporting way.
Building a new, eco-friendly city designed to improve upon the weaknesses of existing California cities. Specifically, the project aims to:
Encourage dense housing development
Promote public transit use
Create mixed-use developments
Design walkable streets
Providing a range of transportation alternatives to cars, including walking, biking, and frequent transit service.
Developing neighborhoods centered around local shopping streets and schools, designed so that families can live within a short walk of most daily needs.
Creating 15,000 new jobs and providing $400 million in down payment assistance for housing.
Using renewable power and avoiding urban problems like car-centric design and gas utilities.
Eventually housing up to 400,000 people in the new city.
Addressing the Bay Area's housing crisis by offering an alternative to the high rents and home prices in existing cities
This all sounds great on the surface, but given who is invested in the project, their ties to Epstein, and the machinations of the technocratic elite we’re currently up against (the investors being prime examples of exactly that), I had my doubts about this city plan solely being for the good of California and its residents. Perhaps a better way to put it: I had a sneaking suspicion that the city plan was a bit more than they were letting on.
I thought back to their parcel purchases, and how they were paying 3x the market value for parcels that have very little to offer; the land is un-zoned, has no water access, nor roads. On top of that, they already spent close to $1bil on buying the land alone, not to mention the ungodly amount of money they’d have to spend to even begin developing it. This tells me that, for one reason or another, they wanted that particular swath of land bad - bad enough to deal with the multitude of red tape, zoning issues, and drama he’d have to put up with for years before he even finds out if it can be built or not.
To be clear, Sramek has publicly and clearly outlined his reasons for selecting Solano County for his envisioned new city, as well as what he hopes to achieve. They sound noble, of course, and they very well could be. That said, all of his stated goals lay firmly within the realm of the civilian domain, even if the city itself is incredibly ambitious and unique in several different ways that sets it apart from every other city. It’s all focused on bettering the region, creating an economic engine to reinvigorate Solano County while preserving the agricultural space there. Sounds good, sounds…normal.
But having spent 2022-2023 immersed in reports on emerging technologies and analyzing future threat scenarios out to 2050, by the time I first heard of the California Forever city project in August 2023, I recognized the political and military significance of the city’s geographical location almost immediately.
More importantly, I recognized the unique array of strategic advantages that a city in that specific geographical location would produce, and how it aligns perfectly with current DoD/military defense initiatives that began around the same time CF began buying the land next to Travis, and around the same time Travis began its own modernization initiative, which included establishing partnerships with Silicon Valley (SV) tech start-ups and creating fusion centers that blends SV tech employees with the U.S. military, all for the purpose of quickening the pace of our tech innovation pipeline, which is key to maintaining Homeland defense.
I cannot even begin to articulate the significance of what I am saying above. I’m hoping all of this will become clear to you by the end of this paper.
Anyway, this is where I began to wonder whether or not Sramek’s choice of location truly was just a coincidence, or if it might be, in actuality, the product of defense-related tech-elite machinations that fuses SV innovation more closely to the DoD for the purpose of rapid integration of tech in the name of defense (including the defense of Travis AFB).
A New Template for Future Smart Cities Built by Big Tech Elites?
From there, I began playing around with the Smart City idea, as that was the first concept that came to mind when I put all of the above together. It’s a pretty obvious leap to make given the recipe: tech giants with endless money, the goal of building a city, their previous discussions and statements about smart cities…it’s a no brainer.
In the reports I had been reading before all this, particularly the ones about homeland defense, emerging technologies, and potential future threat landscapes, the overarching theme dominating most of them was the looming threat of China, and how they have recently emerged as a “near-peer adversary” and a formidable competitor to the United States militarily and technologically. As a result, there’s been an increasing emphasis to “keep pace” with their rapid technological developments.
Recognizing that Smart Cities are integral to China’s global strategy, particularly within the context of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), I realized that studying their progress in this area would be essential if I wanted to understand the different trajectories that America may feel the need to adopt in order to maintain competitive parity, and perhaps even defend the Homeland itself. You can see how Sramek’s plan to build a brand new city from scratch with the backing of Silicon Valley’s (SV) most notable figures piqued my interest when it was first revealed.
I began exploring the possibility that this project could be a pilot project for a full-fledged Smart City, but one with strategic military motivations/objectives underneath their publicly stated goals. Perhaps they were aiming to create a template for future Smart Cities, even. That isn’t all that outlandish given who is backing CF, and the fact that Sramek has already stated that he hopes his city, if built, would pave the way for a new age of urban planning, with their approach to eco-friendly, sustainable city-design adopted everywhere. He says so on his website.
Bolstering that idea, Sramek even responded to two of my own questions on X. Unfortunately, my account was banned after the response came in, so I do not have the original link. I’m not even sure I can find the screenshot of the interaction. However, I know that a major part of Smart City construction with eco-friendly/resilient “green” urban city planning in mind is not only the technology the city uses to function, but the way the infrastructure is physically laid out itself. Because urban sprawl is something that city planners are increasingly concerned about, they follow concepts such as “Smart Growth” to avoid such a thing.
“Urban sprawl” refers to the uncontrolled expansion of urban areas into previously rural or natural lands, often characterized by low-density, car-dependent development."
“Smart Growth” is an urban planning and transportation theory that focuses on sustainable and environmentally friendly development practices. It aims to manage urban growth in a way that minimizes the negative impacts of sprawl. Some of its key principles are:
Efficient Land Use: Promotes high-density, mixed-use development with housing, jobs, and services close together to reduce infrastructure needs and commutes.
Walkability: Encourages pedestrian-friendly environments, minimizing reliance on cars.
Diverse Transportation: Supports public transit, biking, and walking to reduce traffic congestion.
Environmental Stewardship: Prioritizes conserving green spaces and natural resources.
Sustainability: Focuses on energy-efficient, eco-friendly development.
Community Engagement: Involves local communities in planning to align with their needs.
Equity: Aims for inclusive neighborhoods with affordable housing and accessible resources.
All of this should sound very familiar to you.
Smart Growth counters environmentally-damaging urban sprawl by:
Promoting higher-density, mixed-use development within existing urban areas.
Encouraging redevelopment and infill projects that make better use of already developed land.
Implementing policies that limit or direct outward expansion to protect natural landscapes and resources.
According to a report published on ScienceDirect entitled “Smart growth, smart city and density: in search of the appropriate indicator for residential density in Indonesia” (published as part of the CITIES 2015 International Conference, Intelligent Planning Towards Smart Cities, CITIES 2015, Surabaya, Indonesia), the relationship between Smart Growth and Smart Cities is laid out:
There is a difference between smart growth and smart city. If smart growth plays a role as " pot" of physical nature of urban areas, the smart city play a part as "content" of urban areas. The idea of the smart city has arisen because of two dynamisms circumstance.
The wording is a bit weird, but a better way to phrase it would be like this:
Smart Growth focuses on the physical design and structure of urban areas, like how land is used and developed, while Smart Cities enhance how those areas function through technology and data. Think of Smart Growth as the "pot" that shapes the city, and Smart Cities as the "content" that fills and powers it.
So, what I noticed here was that Sramek’s vision of a sustainable city seems to share the same principles put forth by Smart Growth when it comes to city planning. That isn’t all that surprising, of course, but it’s worth noting because it checks the same box that every other fanatical techno-Elite checks off.
Smart Growth isn’t inherently a bad thing. It’s just that it is looped into the broader climate control system we are approaching rapidly. There is a way to restore and care for the environment without the privacy-obliterating measures put forth by the Elites who speak of thriving in cities with zero privacy, owning nothing, and borrowing everything.
Anyway, I knew that if I could get Sramek to overtly state that he was or was not abiding by Smart Growth concepts, that would be an indicator as to whether my deeper theory about CF being a potential smart city with defense motives is on the right track.
So I ended up posing the question to Sramek on X awhile ago, and believe it or not, I found the original screenshots I took before I got banned. The American Farmland Trust’s (AFT) Better Built Cities model is a concept laid out in this report here, and many others as well.
Here is a screenshot of my question, which I posed to him in the comments section of an ongoing Q&A Sramek was doing under the CF account:
In response, this is what CF said:
Simple enough, right? And, again, this isn’t some major finding. But the fact that they admit to following the Smart Growth concepts laid out in contemporary urban Smart City planning and plan to build a city that embodies these principles showed me at the time that I was on the right track.
Given the current trends even outside the concepts like Smart Growth and Urban Sprawl laid out above, CF’s city plan fits the bill perfectly for being a Smart City, or utilizing many elements of such concepts. I also knew from the reports that constructing a Smart City from the ground up would be far easier than retrofitting existing urban areas to meet the demands of this new paradigm.
We’ve discussed the Great Reset/Fourth Industrial Revolution concepts on my channel many times over the years, and how Smart Cities play a crucial role in that agenda. However, when I listen to Sramek speak about his vision for the city and view the illustrations they released depicting what it might look like, it doesn’t really strike me as a Smart City design, despite its stated goals and the description of its layout matching up perfectly with the typical SC momdel. At the same time though, there’s no denying that the project’s vision overlaps perfectly with the overarching technocratic agenda, whether the proposed city could be considered a Smart City or not.
This is especially evident when you compare and contrast CF’s goals with the goals of the World Economic Forum, for example, who is key to facilitating the furtherment of this broader agenda:
Urbanism trends come and go but the "15-minute city" framing of walkable, mixed-use urban development is a lot more than a fad.
The historical roots of the 15-minute city are connected deeply with the current moment—one we will be living with for a long time to come.
As climate change and global conflict cause shocks and stresses at faster intervals and increasing severity, the 15-minute city will become even more critical.
Urbanism trends come and go: Broadacre City, Radiant City, EcoCity
The overlap between California Forever’s city and the walkable 15-minute city concept being promoted by the WEF is apparent, even if Jan Sramek - the mastermind behind the CF city project - never uses the term “15 minute city” to describe his own city vision (although, he does come close to saying that in his interview with
; timestamp 24:30), it’s pretty obvious that that is a format he’s basing his city’s layout off of. That whole interview is fantastic though, so if you’re interested in learning more about this subject and Sramek’s vision, I highly suggest going over there to check it out.Nonetheless, the project's focus on dense housing development, promoting public transit, and designing walkable streets fits neatly within the framework of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, New World Order, Great Reset, whatever buzzword you want to call it. The future where digital and physical realms converge to optimize urban living, mitigate threats, and increase our quality of life—perhaps at the expense of individual freedoms.
We also see a very heavy focus on climate resilience underpinning the foundation of the city plan, which also aligns perfectly with the broader “progress” being made in terms of the installation of climate resilient infrastructure across both civilian and military domains. The emphasis on renewable power and the avoidance of traditional urban problems like car-centric design is presented as a forward-thinking and eco-friendly approach to urban planning, yet it also reflects a push towards tighter control over how residents live, move, and interact with their environment, whether that is the intent or not.
Remember, I’m viewing all of this not from the perspective of somebody who thinks all of this is some malicious evil plot, but someone who calls for caution around implementing pervasive technologies for good at the expense of privacy, individual autonomy, freedom, etc. I am primarily concerned with Sramek and CF’s alignment with defense initiatives, and his not-so-obvious, partially unstated motives behind it all. I also am focused on making sure the residents of Solano County have a chance to democratically vote on this project, and not be stripped of that right.
The overarching theme of the CF project—providing transportation alternatives, developing mixed-use neighborhoods, and addressing high rents—suggests a deliberate effort to create a self-contained, highly regulated urban area, which some might argue is a modern-day manifestation of the WEF’s vision for the future.
So, it’s clear to me that at the very least, this city project is one that fits right in with the broader agenda we’ve been grappling with for many years now, and has since accelerated in the wake of Covid-19. That much is obvious.
Defense Initiatives: Civil-Military Fusion, American Style
After some time, it finally hit me: the city that California Forever wants to build next to Travis AFB may not be solely designed to fix the housing crisis in California at all, although I’m sure that is absolutely part of it. I think there’s something bigger going on beneath this story, and it has something to do with the rapidly changing national security landscape, Homeland defense, and trying to keep up with China.
Their insistence on building in that specific location next to Travis despite everything I’ve laid out above tells me that the significance of their plans doesn’t lie within the type of city they want to build, but rather the location they want to build it. If that is indeed the case, then the proposed city’s close proximity to Travis Air Force Base takes on a much different tone. The significance of its close proximity to Silicon Valley, the tech hub of the United States and the world, is not lost on me either.
By winter of 2023, I had pretty much solidified my own theory as to what was really going on with California Forever’s ambitious city vision. The light bulb moment came for me after I read an interview Sramek did with ABC7’s Stephanie Sierra. In it, there was one statement that stood out to me:
Talking to the defense community about making Travis stronger? That’s an interesting objective for a totally normal, albeit sustainable, civilian city. Perhaps I’m naive, but isn’t it usually the other way around? In what ways could a sustainable city make an Air Force Base stronger than they already are? I mean, I know that civilian populations in the immediate vicinity of military bases enjoy a unique degree of security given its proximity to the base and how a symbiotic relationship between the two emerges as a result of the close proximity, but in the above quote, Sramek is talking about his civilian city bolstering the defenses of Travis AFB.
But how could that be? I mean, he’s not planning on building a city of civilian militia-members. He’s not handing out armaments to each citizen in the case of an invasion or an attack on Travis AFB. So what could a sustainable eco-friendly civilian city do to protect Travis more than any other city nearby?
I thought back to the particular location for the proposed city. I thought about the wide open expanse of land that surrounds Travis, and how from above, Travis looks like a little island in a sea of open space. I saw that and thought and simultaneously saw an excellent location for military drills and exercises of all sorts, but I also saw the wide-open geography as a potential threat vector, something that left Travis open and vulnerable from a distance. Could filling in that open land with a sustainable city possibly provide some sort of “buffer” for Travis, where the city itself inherently adds to base defense through natural geography?
I then began digging into the national security and defense angle behind all of this, and pulled my notes from the various reports that explore ideas and concepts that overlap heavily with the urban planning concept. According to the United Nations, 2 out of every 3 people will live in cities and urban centers by 2050. That is about 68% or more of the global population that will live in major population centers. To military strategists and those in charge of our nation’s security and defense, this is a major vulnerability. If everybody is now less spread out and living all together in massive urban population centers like cities, that means more and more of our critical infrastructure must be housed there to support everybody.
However, this results in a major vulnerability: with all our critical infrastructure (and people!) all focused in one condensed urban area, any attack that disrupts the interconnected system of critical infrastructure in charge of the smooth functioning of vital societal operations is far more catastrophic than if that infrastructure is more evenly spread out. The fact that a civilian population center is not a battlefield but a civilian domain filled with “non-combatants” adds to the complexity of the matter. How does one secure such civilian spaces without militarizing civil society in its entirety?
The picture was coming together for me at that point. I started to become more and more confident that California Forever isn’t just trying to build a sustainable city: they’re trying to build a defensive military platform that doubles as a sustainable city as part of the U.S. military’s ongoing modernization initiative. It’s a plan to not only solve the problems facing civilian life (urban sprawl, population growth, housing crisis, emissions), but to do that while doubling as a defensive platform that inherently bolsters the security of the base directly next to it.
The reason it all began to come into view for me here is because that statement by Sramek above makes zero sense, unless you are familiar with the nature of the threats they anticipate having to face on the domestic front between now and 2050.
I began to find references to national security and defense all over the place after I opened my eyes to recognize the significance of such mentions. Here’s a blurb from CF's website that brings it up again:
In an article from ABC7, the security of Travis is mentioned by Sramek again, but as a primary goal of their city:
But Sramek says he's committed to making the base stronger. The CEO told voters last month the company's first goal is to be a great neighbor to Travis.
"We knew we had to protect the base," said Sramek, adding he also wants to provide affordable homes to young military families.
When I first saw Sramek making these statements about protecting Travis AFB, I initially thought they were mostly baseless platitudes; things he had to say to assuage the fears of Travis AFB and Solano County residents were feeling around Sramek’s radical proposal. It didn’t take very long for me to realize that those statements were more than simple platitudes though, and that he meant it when he says that he wants to build a city that defends Travis Air Force Base. The confluence of all the variables above, especially at the larger geopolitical and strategic levels, was too perfect to be coincidental in my opinion.
The Militarization of It All
I’m not sure about you, but when I first saw that, the first word that came to my mind was “militarization”. I thought about the innumerable times I’ve heard that term uttered in relation to the police force being given weapons of war, the tightening grip of Five-Eyes surveillance, the calls for security in the world of post 9/11 terrorism, and how it inevitably results in kitted out soldiers in subway stations, or the national guard being called in to guard the fences they just put up around the White House in the days leading up to Presidential Elections. Before you know it, a man is choked to death by a police officer in a live stream, riots break out, curfew instilled, and roving squads of police in heavy armor are marching down your suburban streets and firing paintballs and pellets at the curious onlookers standing on their porches watching it all unfold from a distance.
From the projections I’ve read, the complete destruction of any barrier between the military and civilian domains is imminent. The private sector leads the way in technological innovation, not the military. The fact is that the military has recognized this fact, and appears to now be jumping fully into the hands of SV as a result. This isn’t me saying this, this is straight up established in multiple RAND-like reports and monographs.
Militarization of civilian society will not appear as obvious as one would initially expect. Today, the threat is about asymmetrical warfare, attacks on the homeland not through kinetic means, but through infrastructure attacks, disruptive maneuvers that negatively impact our ability to feed ourselves, protect ourselves, mobilize, deploy…
It looks like trains derailing, cyber attacks bringing the power grid offline, and non-state actors unrelated to any sovereign state - adversary or otherwise - exploiting the now comprehensively and totally hyper-connected networks that permeates our physical infrastructure both in the civilian and the military domain, resulting in chain-reaction failures across multiple sectors of society relying on this digital infrastructure. It looks like non-state actors with access to affordable, mobile chemical weapons, or as mundane as a Chinese-backed company buying land near a domestic military base to build a corn milling plant.
And what will be used to orchestrate or conduct these unconventional/asymmetrical attacks? Mostly, they will be done through the same civilian-domain technology created by Silicon Valley that is ubiquitous across society, from iPhones to Windows laptops. On those devices, I can either watch Netflix, or I can conduct a complicated cyber attack that tangibly effects vital aspects of America’s daily functions. They have dual-use capabilities. They are civilian devices and also weapons simultaneously.
How can a military threat using private sector dual-use technology be stopped if the threat comes from within the civilian domain, without creating a blatant surveillance state? Without creating an eternal atmosphere of war? Without complete control over the movements of citizens?
These are the questions I begin to think of when I reflect on the ongoing modernization race we are currently in with China. How do we ensure we modernize at pace (or faster, ideally) with China when they have the advantage of being a top-down system, autocratic system that can do whatever it wants without worrying about Democratic processes like voting?
Basically, what these reports are saying is that the same governmental mechanisms that preserve our freedom are the same ones that are slowing down the innovation pipeline, thus enabling China to get ahead of us on the most important fronts.
The theory I have formed around the CF story this year is that the city proposed by California Forever is the proposed resolution to both civilian crises, and military national security threats, all bundled into a single package in the form of a high-tech sustainable city built by Tech elites.
There’s a high chance that most of you find this to be a bit outlandish at the moment. If that’s the case, I do hope you keep reading, as it will become very, very clear to you by the end. Besides, as I mentioned: I have already been proven correct. You’ll see how.
With that groundwork laid down for you, let’s get started. I’ll start with the Epstein connections the CF investors have, get into how Kamala Harris is directly tied to some of those same investors, and most importantly, use that to segue into the much broader geopolitical/national security paradigm that this story not only fits into, but is a product of. All of this will loop back around to the bigger national defense picture at the end.
[PART I - THE (EPSTEIN) INVESTORS, & KAMALA HARRIS’ CONNECTIONS TO THEM]
California Forever’s Epstein-Connected Investors
In my previous article and video, I delved into the unsettling connections some of California Forever's investors have to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. While many are familiar with the Epstein case primarily for its horrific implications involving sex trafficking and abuse, the deeper layers of this scandal reveal a much broader narrative. At its core, the Epstein saga intertwines with technology, science, and a probable network of blackmail, making the presence of these connections among CF investors less surprising.
For those of you that are very familiar with the Epstein case, you would know that it isn’t all about the horrific sex trafficking and abuse. At its core, its about technology, science, and, more than likely, blackmail. Therefore, it is not surprising to find the following Epstein connections amongst the CF investors.
Just last year, Reid Hoffman was revealed by the Wall Street Journal as having visited Epstein’s island with Joi Ito, the former Director of the MIT Media Lab. Apparently they had also planned to visit Epstein’s New York City townhouse together as well. Later on, it was also revealed that the Media Lab had received donations from Epstein-controlled foundations.
A quick rundown on the MIT Media Lab in the case you aren’t aware:
The Media Lab is part of MIT's School of Architecture and Planning, but is known for its highly interdisciplinary approach to research and innovation. The institution sits at the cutting edge of technological innovation, focusing on the intersection of technology, multimedia, and design. Its objectives include developing new technologies that can transform society and supposedly improve the human experience.
Quick screencaps from the WSJ article about Hoffman:
You also may recall the Lab’s founder, Nicholas Negroponte, and the controversy he embroiled himself in around the same time following questionable statements he made about Epstein’s generous donations. According to Technology Review, Negroponte had admitted to recommending Ito to take the money Epstein was offering him, even doubling down and saying “If you wind back the clock…I would still say, ‘Take it, take it.’”.
Another CF investor, Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple’s Steve Jobs and founder of the Emerson Collective, also appears to have had a relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell, indicated by the image below which shows the two of them together in a (very) informal setting:
Jobs also is a majority stakeholder of The Atlantic.
Kamala’s Ties to the Epstein Investors of CF
And then there’s the ties back to Kamala Harris. Reid Hoffman is an incredibly vocal supporter of Harris, and has already donated a whopping $7 million to her campaign, according to CNN. Last month, Hoffman came out publicly to support Harris, and his efforts have yet to cease. It is also being reported that a supposedly independent news website connected to a company Hoffman partially owns, Courier Newsroom, has begun showing Harris ads.
Just last week, Harris held a fundraising event over Zoom focused on raising money from the tech industry/Silicon Valley. The Zoom call had over 600 Silicon Valley tech professionals pass through during the event, and of course, included Reid Hoffman. By the end of it, Harris raised about $150,000.
Here’s a July 21st, 2024 post made by Hoffman on X announcing his endorsement of Kamala Harris:
Some additional headlines:
And another article:
All of this is happening in the midst of a very turbulent time for Silicon Valley, a former Democrat monolith that now, in the lead up to the 2024 election, finds itself splitting into two separate contingents: the tech titans that support Trump, and those that support Harris.
On one side of the spectrum, you have influential figures like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Marc Andreessen, who have shown varying degrees of support for Donald Trump and the broader populist, right-leaning movement. Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, has been a vocal supporter of Trump for awhile, advocating for a more nationalist approach to technology and governance. Just the other night, Elon Musk and Trump had a very long discussion on X, with Musk throwing his support behind him. Marc Andreesen, a prominent venture capitalist and co-founder of Andreessen-Horowitz, has also expressed his support for Trump as well.
However, that’s just the thing about the California Forever story: the list of investors backing the plan include figures from both contingents.
To most of you, that isn’t going to be surprising at all. I’d hope not. However, to the many millions of everyday Americans who have been watching the news these past few weeks and have been seeing these billionaire tech behemoths hurling shit at each other over politics, they’d be very surprised to find out that behind the scenes, they’re actually willing to work together despite their political differences.
As usual, while the show plays out in front of us, an entirely different show is happening behind the scenes. The false left v. right binary is highlighted perfectly here. Engineered discord between false binaries, a false dialectic, can be seen clearly.
While I’m on the topic of the investor’s ties to Epstein, I should take the opportunity to briefly touch on another one of CF’s investors, Michael Moritz.
Moritz is a partner at Sequoia Capital, which is one of Silicon Valley's oldest venture capital firms and its own can of worms, especially when it comes to its involvement in the Israeli tech ecosystem; which, once again, brings us right back to the Epstein/Maxwell operation, because at its roots it was about high technology, science, and blackmail (of course), and a lot of Epstein’s people were intimately intertwined with Israel and the tech landscape there.
To be completely fair, Moritz has donated to both political parties over the years, but more recently he has been leaning more to the left in those donations. However, earlier this year, he donated over $4 million to American Bridge 21st Century, a prominent Democratic super PAC founded by David Brock, the ex-boyfriend of Comet Ping Pong’s James Alefantis of the Pizzagate “conspiracy theory”. I will cover Moritz more extensively later in this paper.
The Strange Secrecy around CF, & Governor Newsom’s Documented Lies about it
In my opinion, the most glaring piece of evidence supporting my theory that the city is some sort of military defensive platform is the strange, universal secrecy around all of it, despite the increased scrutiny on Homeland security. If you stop to think about it for just a moment, does it really sound plausible that such a massive undertaking such as this would be possible to conceal from so many important people?
Let me put it into perspective for you.
If you are to believe the official narrative around CF and how it came about, you’d have to believe that every single person in a position of authority, from local officials and city mayors, such as Fairfield Mayor Catherine Moy, to Congressmen like John Garamendi and Mike Thompson, along with Travis Air Force Base, the Air Force, Department of Defense officials, and extending all the way to the FBI, State Department, and CFIUS—was somehow unable to identify the investors or their intentions, despite the fact that these investors posed a clear national security concern to many, including government officials, at the time.
Oh yeah, you’d also have to believe that California Governor Gavin Newsom was also left totally in the dark for five years about this massive project, too. He claims that he had never heard about it either; not until the investors and the plans were revealed in August 2023.
Is it really that easy for people to anonymously buy up swaths of land twice the size of major cities without somebody in his position ever knowing? Around a critical Air Force base, no less? I highly, highly doubt it. Again, that strange uniformity of ignorance across the board on full display.
Nonetheless, Newsom expects us to believe that. Upon CF’s reveal in August 2023, Newsom was asked about the purchases at a Politico event, and whether he knew about the city plans. His response here will be straight up comical to you after you read the next section.
Here’s the clip:
Kamala Harris & Governor Newsom are Connected to California Forever
As it turns out, both Governor Newsom and Kamala Harris are associated with the California Forever city project through a single person: consultant and strategist Brian Brokaw.
That’s right. Governor Newsom was using the same advisor and strategist that served as the spokesperson for Flannery Associates LLC, the company that the California Forever investors used to shield their identities from the public.
What I want you to do now is scroll back up a bit and re-watch that clip of Newsom claiming that he had no idea about Flannery’s land acquisition, despite his longtime advisor/strategist, Brian Brokaw, being a spokesperson for Flannery.
It gets better.
Brokaw is also the same advisor and strategist that Kamala Harris has been using for over a decade, and was instrumental in her winning her role as California Attorney General.
So, while Governor Newsom sat up there on stage for that Politico event claiming to have had no idea about the mysterious Flannery Associates that Congressmen of his own state were calling a national security threat, and the same company that the FBI, CFIUS, and the Air Force had launched investigations into.
See, I find that very interesting.
Meanwhile, there’s Kamala - she hasn’t mentioned anything about this story at all, either. She’s been said as much about California Forever as she has about the Epstein ties her very vocal Silicon Valley supporters had, like Reid Hoffman and Laurene Powell Jobs….I guess she knows that people just don’t care. The brats don’t care if Kamala raises money from a pedophile child trafficker’s business associate, the same one that is still facing calls to be ejected from Microsoft’s board. Nor do they care about Jobs, who appeared to be close enough with Ghislaine Maxwell to hang around with her in bathing suits (unless that’s just standard for high profile tech meetings?).
You see what I’m saying? There’s a strange silence around this story, when it clearly has serious implications on a number of different fronts, especially for us. This plan is the embodiment of the militarization of private civilian society physically manifested. This is the creation of a civilian domain for the sole purpose of military application. This is America’s version of China’s military-civil fusion, done the “democratic” way. I know this because they say this.
Take a look at Brokaw’s bio page on his website. He’s got quite the resume. Keep your eye out for the various details about Brokaw’s professional history that may be relevant to this story:
Here’s some highlights:
Since opening his firm in 2010, Brokaw has served as a political and communications advisor to prominent elected officials, technology investors and global tech firms, social justice advocates, labor and business coalitions, professional sports franchises, renewable energy companies and public utilities, Indian tribes, healthcare sector clients and non-profit organizations. Recognized on Capitol Weekly’s Top 100 list , the U.K. Guardian has called him “a top Democratic strategist in the state.” And in 2019 he was named to the American Association of Political Consultants’ “40 Under 40” list.
It appears Brokaw is no small fish, and has made quite a name for himself over the years.
As for confirmation on his association with Newsom and Kamala, there’s the below:
Brokaw presently serves as political advisor to California Governor Gavin Newsom. He previously managed the campaign for California’s Proposition 64, which legalized the adult use of marijuana in the state. Prop 64, spearheaded by Newsom and philanthropist Sean Parker, passed with 57% of the statewide vote in November 2016…
Sean Parker is the guy that created Napster, the peer to peer file sharing application that people my age used to use to download their music.
Now for the Kamala associations:
Brokaw served as campaign manager for Vice President Kamala Harris’s successful candidacy for California Attorney General in 2010, one of the closest campaigns in state history in which Harris became the first female and first minority ever elected to the office, and managed her re-election campaign in 2014. He also served as a senior advisor in Harris’s successful campaign for United States Senate in 2015-16 and ran a Super PAC supporting her candidacy for President in 2020.
On Brokaw’s involvement in the tech world:
Working with prominent Silicon Valley investors, Brokaw managed the independent expenditure campaign that helped elect San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee in 2011. The campaign produced a music video — “2 Legit 2 Quit” — that was recognized as the best political video of the year by Time, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, and was cited as a “case study” by YouTube. The campaign subsequently morphed into a tech-sector political advocacy organization that Brokaw helped to create, sf.citi.
In case you haven’t gotten your daily dose of cringe yet, here it is:
In a lot of ways, Brokaw was ahead of the curve here with this video. At the time this was released in 2011, the population was still very naive to the threat that social media poses to authentic consensus formation, and terms like “psyop” (short for “psychological operation”) were nowhere near anybody’s daily vernacular. Just over a decade later, though, the overlap between politics and technology - social media and the Internet specifically - is clearly visible, and we’re far more aware of the various entities using the medium to manipulate our beliefs, ideas, opinions, and feelings.
Back in 2011, though, campaigns like this one were innovative, new, cutting edge. Believe it or not, there actually was a time where supposed “grassroots” movements like Kony 2012 were not looked at as potential psyops or fabricated narratives at all. Come to think of it, how often was the word “narrative” used in this context back then to begin with? Times really have changed….
On top of the high caliber connections laid out above, Brokaw has also been involved in many high profile ballot measure campaigns:
With more than a decade of experience in California politics, Brokaw has been involved in some of the highest profile statewide candidate and ballot measure campaigns in recent memory. In 2014, he worked to help pass Proposition 1 (Governor Jerry Brown’s water bond) and Proposition 42 (public records). During the 2012 election cycle, Brokaw directed communications in the contentious campaign to defeat Proposition 32 (union dues) and helped to defeat Proposition 20 (criminal justice reform rollback) in 2020.
Worth mentioning as well is the fact that he also served as California communications director for the Obama-Biden Coordinated Campaign in 2008. During that same campaign, Comet Ping Pong (the pizza restaurant in D.C. that became the focus of Pizzagate back in 2016) served as a phone bank for the DNC. This would have been when Alefantis, Comet’s owner, was still with his ex-boyfriend David Brock, the founder of American Bridge 21st Century, mentioned earlier.
Now, if you’re asking yourself how we can be certain that this Brian Brokaw is the same Brian Brokaw that served as a spokesperson for Flannery Associates, you’d be asking the right questions. I’ve got the answer for you.
You can find Brokaw mentioned in a ton of articles published before the CF investors revealed themselves in August 2023, but none of them go into great detail about who exactly Brokaw is, aside from being a spokesperson for Flannery. However, I found this article entitled “California Forever Shells out $2M in Campaign to Build City from Scratch” which basically confirms that we’re dealing with the same guy.
See below:
The company is relying on several high profile political strategists to get initiative to the November election, including Angie Wei, a former legislative aide to Newsom; Matt Rodriguez, who worked with the governor in 2022 to oppose Proposition 30; and Brian Brokaw and Dan Newman, two longtime campaign advisors to Newsom. Brokaw also served as Vice President Kamala Harris’s former campaign manager when she ran for Attorney General in 2010.
We’ve narrowed the scope quite a bit here, to the point where I’m doubtful that there would be any other Brian Brokaw out there that’s being referred to here. To be super thorough though, let’s keep digging so we can be absolutely certain that we’re dealing with the same guy. I’d hate to call Governor Newsom a liar without evidence.
Further searching reveals that Brokaw is also a partner of The Media Company LLC. If you visit the bio page for Brokaw on their website, you will find that they not only mention Brokaw as having worked with both Kamala Harris and Governor Newsom in the past, but they also include the exact same picture of Brokaw that he himself used on his own website, confirming without a doubt that, indeed, the Brian Brokaw representing the investors of the secretive CF city plan is the same one that has served as longtime advisor and strategist to both Governor Newsom and VP Harris.
Why would he say that he had no idea about the CF city project when his own advisor and strategist, Brian Brokaw, was a spokesperson on their behalf in the years that the plan was shrouded in complete secrecy?
Personally, I believe it’s because something bigger is at play here, and I hope that picture is becoming clearer to you as you read on. If you continue reading, I aim to make the picture crystal clear for you, because the contextual information I will be sharing in the next section makes the justification around CF’s secrecy - and the strange universal ignorance about the project - make a lot more sense.
The long and short of it, though, echoes a basic sentiment we’re all familiar with: anything can be justified if national security is at stake.
[PART II - THE BIGGER PICTURE: NATIONAL SECURITY, HOMELAND DEFENSE, & THE ROLE OF CIVILIAN TECHNOLOGIES & CITIES]
A New National Security Paradigm
In recent years, America's military modernization efforts have gained an unprecedented sense of urgency, primarily spurred by the rise of China as a formidable near-peer competitor. Although the U.S. military has consistently emphasized the need for modernization over the years, it was around 2015 that these efforts began to intensify with renewed focus and determination. This drive for modernization was formalized with the release of the 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS), which explicitly recognized that the United States could no longer take its military superiority for granted. The NDS marked a pivotal shift in military doctrine, acknowledging the complex global security environment and the need for the U.S. to adapt to emerging threats, particularly those posed by technologically advanced adversaries like China.
In the years following the 2018 NDS, the Department of Defense (DoD) has rapidly unleashed a slew of initiatives in pursuit of beating China in the modernization race. Legislation is passed, policies approved, the root genetics of U.S. military force structure is now being adjusted in alignment with this new overhaul and race to modernize. Look up “military modernization” and filter the search results to show articles between 2000 and today, and you will see a huge burst in activity around this exact subject 2015-onward, and even more intensely 2018-onward, following NDS 2018.
A New National Defense Strategy: Homeland Security & “Smart Bases”/The Installation of the Future (IoTF)
The basic Wiki-tier description of the NDS describes it as being produced by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and then signed by the Secretary of Defense as the Department of Defense's (DoD) capstone strategic guidance. The NDS takes the information and suggestions included in the National Security Strategy (NSS) and refines it, turning it into broad military guidance for military planning, strategy, force posturing, force modernization, and more. In short, the NDS outlines the overall strategic direction for the DoD (the military).
In the 2018 NDS, the report emphasized that the homeland is "no longer a sanctuary," marking a significant shift in military strategy away from the Counterterrorism paradigm that dominated the decades following 9/11, and toward a paradigm focused on Homeland defense. This recognition reflects a growing concern that traditional geographic advantages, such as the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, no longer guarantee the security of the U.S. mainland, particularly in an era of advanced missile technology, cyber warfare, and other non-traditional threats posed by state actors like China.
China's rapid technological advancements, particularly in areas such as artificial intelligence, missile systems, and cyber capabilities, have accelerated the U.S. push for modernization. The NDS 2018 outlined a need for the U.S. to rethink its defense strategies, prioritizing the protection of domestic military bases and critical infrastructure. This includes the development of "smart bases" and advanced defense technologies capable of countering emerging threats. No report reflects the push for Smart Bases more than the “Building the Smart Base of the Future” by Laura A. Nolan of the National Strategic Research Institute.
I suggest everybody that is interested in this subject to read that report in full, because it’s very short. Here’s a relevant excerpt from it:
Since military bases are intertwined with local communities in many ways, the new smart city development presents an extraordinary opportunity for military bases to collaborate with the local community to overcome many of the shared challenges related to security, safety, disaster management…
The concept of the homeland no longer being a sanctuary is not just a theoretical concern; it has manifested in tangible actions such as the fortification of military installations, the enhancement of cybersecurity measures, and the bolstering of missile defenses, all of which are essential to maintaining strategic stability in the face of Chinese military expansion. Also keep in mind that while a lot of these new measures have emerged as adaptations to the threat of kinetic attacks (missiles, bombs) and unconventional/asymmetrical attacks (cyber attacks, hacks, infrastructure fuckery, etc), a brand new and highly important factor in all of this is the fact that climate change is now categorized as a direct threat to bases, military personnel, civilians, and the HOMELAND ITSELF, and now treating the climate change threat the same as terror threats and the threats from Chinese or Russian hypersonic missile attacks.
All those wildfires? What about the hurricanes that decimated multiple bases? The images of U.S. fighter jets strewn about the tarmac filled with the debris of destroyed (outdated) base infrastructure, the flooding…that happened at Tyndall Air Force Base
Because the disastrous effects the military is attributing to Climate Change, they now view these natural disasters (floods, wildfires, sea level rise effecting costal bases, etc) as direct threats to national security due to the crippling effects they unleash on the base. What happens if we were hit by hurricanes when we needed to deploy our forces out of that base? Remember, the projections show that they believe this will only become more frequent, which means that this is a threat they must permanently fortify against, in anticipation of it never ceasing or going away.
What is the resolution to all this, on top of the human-centered threats laid out earlier? The answer is the military version of the eco-friendly Smart City. They call it the “Installation of the Future”, and is the literal embodiment - an exact mirror - of the standard Smart City concept that spawned from the private sector/Silicon Valley. I am not the one saying this: the military has straight up stated that they will be transforming domestic U.S. military bases into “Smart Bases” under programs like the “Installation of the Future”, which overtly states that its aim is to upgrade and transform bases into self sustaining smart cities.
Here’s an article from Tyndall’s website itself confirming this. It reads:
With the intent of continuing the mission, building resiliency and staying on the cutting edge of innovation, the U.S. Air Force made the decision to transform Tyndall Air Force Base into the “Installation of the Future” in late 2018. This would mean that while recovering from Hurricane Michael’s devastation, Team Tyndall would be asked to do what no base has done before.
Over it’s almost 75 years of service, the Air Force has stayed at the forefront of technology and efficiency. But with the race for air, cyber and space dominance growing in competition, a large step had to be taken. That step was turning Tyndall into the testing grounds for some of the newest technology the world had to offer.
[What] we are doing here as part of the outcome of Hurricane Michael is likely paving the way for the rest of the Air Force and potentially the Department of Defense,” said Lowell Usrey, Natural Disaster Recovery innovation branch chief.
This modernization effort represents a paradigm shift in the very genetics of current U.S. military strategy, and finally after all those years, it focuses on the homeland, and anticipates the battles that will be fought here. For decades, the focus was on projecting power abroad and maintaining dominance in distant theaters of war. However, the evolving threat landscape, characterized by the potential for direct attacks on the U.S. mainland, has necessitated a reevaluation of priorities. That reevaluation has culminated into the rapid-fire creation of innovative and exotic new approaches to national security, and not only that, has spawned unprecedented partnerships between the military and civilian sectors to achieve this shared vision, in the name of security.
These changes are being made under the guise of recreation, fun, and convenience in the private sector via surveillance devices being widely adopted, and these same changes are being implemented in the military domain as well. They’re even outright saying as much, and modeling their campaigns similarly to the private sectors (e.g “Internet of Things” (IoT) technology, a key part of Smart City functionality, and the military’s “Installation of the Future” (IoTF) initiative).
The increased focus on securing the homeland, particularly domestic military bases, is the backdrop in which the California Forever story is unfolding in front of, and it highlights a new reality for America, where we must defend against sophisticated adversaries capable of bypassing traditional defenses and hitting us at home through asymmetrical and/or unconventional means. To defend against this new era of threats, the powers that be in the military believe that an unprecedented merging of civilian and military technological and scientific expertise must be established, further blurring the lines between war and civilian life.
Invasion, Infiltration, & Swarming: Secrecy and Mystery Amidst Growing Tensions
The California Forever story began in 2018 when the very first parcels were purchased by Flannery Associates, the same year NDS 2018 was published and formalized the new Homeland-centric military/security paradigm, and the same year that Travis AFB intensified its own modernization efforts. This was also happening in the same year that Tyndall AFB announced that it will be one of the Air Force’s first Smart Bases under the modernization campaign “Installation of the Future”, which seeks to turn bases into smart cities to defend against climate change and enemy threats, applying the established Smart City template that came out of the civilian private sector/Silicon Valley.
CF’s covert undertaking was occurring at a time when the U.S. was undergoing a significant transformation in its approach to Homeland security, with a heightened emphasis on safeguarding domestic military bases and critical infrastructure. This period was marked by an intense focus on mitigating vulnerabilities within the nation’s defenses, driven by a series of high-profile incidents that underscored the United States' susceptibility to emerging threats (covered further down).
Given the level of scrutiny on national security during this time, the idea that such a large-scale project could evade the attention of officials responsible for the very areas it impacts is highly improbable.
For one, the CF story was unfolding during an era of increasing hostility between the U.S. and China, tensions that would be amplified after cases like the one involving Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota, which involved a Chinese-backed company trying to build a corn milling plant a few miles away from the base.
This incident is significant for several reasons. Firstly, it closely parallels the California Forever story, with notable differences. In Grand Forks, the group behind the land acquisition was indeed Chinese, and the land they sought to develop was located 12 miles from the Grand Forks Air Force Base. This contrasts with the California Forever situation, where the proposed city is much closer to Travis Air Force Base, with some of the purchased parcels actually encircling the base.
The Grand Forks story is also significant because it shows a clear willingness on part of the Chinese to actively impede upon our domestic U.S. military bases, and ended up sparking legislation changes to agricultural purchases as well.
In another incident, a Chinese student named Fengyun Shi flew his drone over the Virginia shipyards that manufacture the latest generation of Navy carrier ships and nuclear submarines. According to Wired:
On January 5, 2024, Fengyun Shi flew to Virginia while on leave from his graduate studies at the University of Minnesota and rented a Tesla at the airport. His research focused on using AI to detect signs of crop disease in photos. Shi’s subject that week wasn’t plants, however, but allegedly the local shipyards—the only ones manufacturing the latest generation of Navy carrier ships in the country, and nuclear submarines as well.
Regardless of whether the incident with Shi was an act of espionage or not, you can see that his studies overlap heavily with everything I’m discussing in this essay. Emerging technologies like A.I, our ongoing concerns about the security of our food supply systems, China’s active attempts to monitor it, all happening in the midst of, or freshly out of, a global “pandemic”….these themes continue to emerge.
Seven months before the CF investors revealed themselves and their plans publicly, there was the Chinese Spy Balloon incident of January 2023 which saw a surveillance balloon from China drift across multiple sensitive U.S. installations before being shot down off the East coast.
Here is a map showing the general trajectory the balloon took across the U.S., and the sensitive military facilities housing nuclear armaments that it flew over:
Then, there were those mysterious high altitude shoot down events that occurred shortly after the spy balloon incident. In the days following the balloon shoot-down, other objects were tracked on radar and shot out of the sky, marking a significant moment in our history, as it was the first time USNORTHCOM engaged live targets over mainland North America.
Personally, I think one of the most significant details about this strange spat of aerial shenanigans is the following statement made by General Glen D. Vanherck, Commander, United States Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command following the shoot downs:
Make no mistake, the use of the term “UAP” in association with those shootdowns is not a small detail, nor is the fact that he is straight up saying that we can now be hit at home. The UAP mention in particular though is a significant indicator of this broader paradigm shift that’s taking place as we speak, and the same one that serves as the backdrop to the unfolding California Forever sustainable city story. I’ve said it before and I will say it again: the UAP phenomenon is being tee’d up to play a major role in the security landscape in the coming decades. That’s for another write-up, though :x
Just to bolster my above statements on the ongoing transformation of military strategy and homeland security brought about by NDS 2018, you can see those same themes crop up in the NORAD report as well, despite the report solely focusing on the shoot down incidents, and despite the fact that China supposedly had nothing to do with the additional objects that were shut down:
Note that the report specifically mentions China’s military modernization as well. We are in a modernization race with them right now.
By the way, you want to learn more about those incidents and go deep into the strange details around the shoot down events of last year, be sure to check out my video on the story, along with the corresponding shownotes & sources here on Substack!
The video:
The Shownotes:
By citing these various events, I am attempting to highlight the array of threats that the U.S. military is facing, how those threats are born out of this rapidly changing environment, and how it all revolves around our newfound focus on fixing domestic vulnerabilities in an age where the “Homeland is no longer a sanctuary”. All of this will enable you to not only see exactly why it’s so ridiculous to believe that nobody knew about the California Forever project, but also make it very clear how the proposed city could serve as an effective, cutting edge new defensive platform geared towards national defense and security.
Other incidents were also happening along the same timeline as the events laid out above, and these may actually be the most egregious examples of America’s vulnerabilities. What I’m referring to here is the alarming increase of drone incursions over U.S. military bases.
Langley AFB Swarming Incidents
In December 2023, Langley Air Force Base experienced waves of unauthorized drone swarms throughout the month, with several drones penetrating the secure airspace above Langley simultaneously. The incidents are still mostly shrouded in mystery.
Take a look at this article from The Warzone on the story:
The article states:
‘The installation first observed UAS [uncrewed aerial systems] activities the evening of December 6 [2023] and experienced multiple incursions throughout the month of December. The number of UASs fluctuated and they ranged in size/configuration,’ a spokesperson for Langley Air Force Base told The War Zone in a statement earlier today. ‘None of the incursions appeared to exhibit hostile intent but anything flying in our restricted airspace can pose a threat to flight safety. The FAA was made aware of the UAS incursions.’
Langley Air Force Base is formally part of Joint Base Langley-Eustis, an amalgamation that also includes the U.S. Army's Fort Eustis. Both facilities are situated around Newport News and Hampton Roads in southeastern Virginia. Langley, one of a select few bases hosting F-22 Raptor stealth fighters, is particularly important for supporting NORAD and NORTHCOM's missions to defend the U.S. homeland, including protecting the nation's capital in Washington, D.C.
There are a few perplexing aspects of the Langley drone swarms. For one, authorities were never able to identify the operators behind the drones. This is strange to me, because current drone technology requires operators to remain within a certain proximity of the crafts to maintain control of them, meaning they had to be relatively close to the base during the incursions. Yet, despite this proximity, they were able to evade detection and continue their operations, conducting multiple incursions over the span of a month without being apprehended.
Arguably more perplexing is the fact that the Air Force not only had zero control over their own air space, but that Langley had to call in other assets from around the government, including a NASA WB-57 high-altitude jet, to try and find the culprits….and still didn’t.
An unnamed witness to one of the drone swarms at Langley managed to record a video of the incident. Here’s a brief clip of the video (apologies for the low quality of the .gif; the full video below is HD quality and longer though):
Here is the full video for those of you interested in watching the whole thing. The footage from the Langley incident starts at 6:00:
The Langley AFB is far from the only swarming incident that has happened in recent years, and it isn’t only military bases that are experiencing them. Aircraft carriers, navy destroyers, and cutting edge nuclear submarines - even the manufacturing plants that produce them - have also been visited by drones in recent years.
For the sake of time, I’m just going to list off a few additional drone cases here that I find to be interesting and relevant to the “bigger picture” aspect of this story. The purpose in doing so is to really drive the point home that the “Homeland under threat” idea is not hypothetical….it’s happening right now, and the changes to mitigate these threats are as well, across both the civilian and military domains (which are increasingly blurring together as a direct result of these new mitigation tactics):
USS Russell
In July of 2019, the USS Russell became the target of drone swarms while off the coast of San Diego. The footage was first revealed by UFO researcher and documentarian Jeremy Corbell. A brief clip of the footage is attached below:
Here is a clip from the mainstream media’s coverage on the incident as well.
A lot of people looked at the above clip released by a UFO investigator, saw the blinking and quite-obvious manmade craft in the video, and became frustrated that the clip was not depicting the UFOs we tend to talk about. It’s probably manmade, therefore the fun is gone to a lot of people. Unfortunately, when they disregarded this clip, they missed the mysterious aspects of the event even if it has manmade origins. There’s a reason we know very little about these events. It’s because it’s serious business right now. We are so vulnerable that it’s scary.
USS Omaha
The USS Omaha also experienced a strange drone incursion, although this one is typically considered to be more closely aligned with classical UAP phenomenon than the more conventional drones seen in the other cases. The main reason for that is the fact that the UAS in the Omaha incident appeared to have trans-medium capabilities, meaning it has the ability to operate in the air, and under the water. In other words, the freakin’ thing dove into the water and disappeared, and the vessel captured it on camera.
The first video of the Omaha incident is of the radar screen itself, confirming the presence of these objects around the ship:
And here’s the main footage, which shows the actual UAS itself flying just above the water just before apparently diving into it:
USS Zumwalt
In 2019, another swarming incident occurred, this time involving the Navy’s most advanced destroyer, the USS Zumwalt. Below is a slide from the unclassified presentation of the incident which shows the UAS’ movement in relation to the Zumwalt, and beneath that is the full 30 second video of the drone recorded by one of the guys from the SNOOPY team:
Colorado/Nebraska Mystery Drones
Just one year after unidentified drones shut down Gatwick Airport (the second busiest airport in the U.K) and the same year as the above USS Zumwalt incident, more mystery drones were being seen throughout Colorado and Nebraska.
From December 2019 to January 2020, multiple witnesses reported observing drones flying in grid patterns, often in groups of up to 19, during the evening hours between 6 and 10 p.m. Despite investigations by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the FBI, and local law enforcement, the source and operator of these drones remain unidentified.
Here’s a clip from CBS’ coverage on the drones at the time:
The alarming increase in drone incursions over U.S. military bases, strategically important military vessels and facilities, and even the U.S. mainland in general has exposed a critical vulnerability within our defense infrastructure. The incidents are a perfect example of our weaknesses and inadequacies in the current security environment, and the swarms also reflect the growing capability of our adversaries…whoever they may be.
One of the DoD’s Top Military Threats: Encroachment
The last and perhaps most relevant national security threat the DoD has been wrestling with and is still wrestling with is probably the most mundane-sounding of them all: encroachment.
Encroachment is a term used by the U.S. Department of Defense to refer to incompatible uses of land, air, water and other resources, usually brought on by the development of civilian infrastructure in close proximity to military installations, which end up negatively impacting the bases ability to train, mobilize, and operate.
In a report entitled “Strengthening National Defense: Countering Encroachment through Military-Community Collaboration”, it states:
As population growth and development have accelerated around America’s military bases, the interests of these installations and the communities adjacent to them have continued to collide. Clearly, there is a legitimate need for the military to train personnel and to test weapons systems to ensure readiness. At the same time, safety and quality of life in proximate civilian communities must be protected.
After extensive interviews with military and civilian officials, visits to six defense communities and a comprehensive review of relevant DOD documents and studies, the National Academy Panel concluded that despite efforts by the DOD, the challenges to military readiness created by nearby civilian communities are significant and growing. The Panel’s recommendations are straightforward and specific. Among them is the recommendation for increased collaboration among key stakeholders—local and state governments, non-profit organizations, the Military Services and installations, and other federal agencies—in order to creatively and effectively address these complex and critical issues.
According to the reports on encroachment and the threats it poses, the only resolutions that have been developed is to find creative new ways to collaborate with the civilian sector, who will likely continue to encroach upon military bases regardless of the threat it poses. The type of collaboration proposed is collaborating with key stakeholders, non-profit organizations, and local governments to creatively address the encroachment.
In fact, you can look at the California Forever city proposal as being a quintessential example of encroachment….which is why, once again, it’s so absurd to imagine them doing this without anybody knowing. Unless, of course, they did know, and the city is the product of a secretive partnership between Silicon Valley and the DoD to bolster defense in some way….
I hope I am getting across to you how interconnected these various pieces of seemingly unrelated geopolitical issues are, and how the interplay between them relates to not just the broader changing national security paradigm, but how it relates to Sramek’s proposed California Forever sustainable city. Or, more specifically, how California Forever is the literal embodiment of these circumstances; the proposed resolutions to all the different homeland threats physically manifested.
Emerging Technologies & the Rapidly Changing Threat Landscape
Geopolitically, the United States is currently trying to navigate the rapidly evolving national security landscape, which is characterized by an increasingly diverse array of threats. This dynamic environment is driven by multiple factors, most notably the rapid advancements in technology that have allowed previously restricted capabilities to become accessible to a broader range of actors, including hostile states and non-state entities. For instance, near-peer adversaries like China and Russia have made significant strides in developing sophisticated weaponry capable of striking the U.S. from afar, eroding the traditional geographic buffer that once provided a sense of security.
Moreover, the post-9/11 era's intense focus on the Middle East, fueled by the vision outlined by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), has led to a relative neglect of domestic security concerns. This has resulted in glaring vulnerabilities within the United States, particularly concerning critical infrastructure in both the civilian and military domains, which are now more exposed to potential threats than ever before.
In the 2018 National Defense Strategy, they refer to these circumstances as “strategic atrophy”:
Today, we are emerging from a period of strategic atrophy, aware that our competitive military advantage has been eroding. We are facing increased global disorder, characterized by decline in the long-standing rules-based international order—creating a security environment more complex and volatile than any we have experienced in recent memory. Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in U.S. national security.
The document continues:
This increasingly complex security environment is defined by rapid technological change, challenges from adversaries in every operating domain, and the impact on current readiness from the longest continuous stretch of armed conflict in our Nation’s history.
On the topic of new technologies, how they will come from the commercial sector, and how this tech will play a role in shaping this turbulent environment:
New commercial technology will change society and, ultimately, the character of war. The fact that many technological developments will come from the commercial sector means that state competitors and non-state actors will also have access to them, a fact that risks eroding the conventional overmatch to which our Nation has grown accustomed. Maintaining the Department’s technological advantage will require changes to industry culture, investment sources, and protection across the National Security Innovation Base.
The most important part of the above excerpt, at least as it relates to the California Forever story, is the acknowledgment that the military will have to require changes to industry culture, investment sources, and protection across the National Security Innovation base if we stand any chance at maintaining our technological advantage (which is achieved by out-pacing China in the modernization race, space race, and so on).
As I said earlier, the key to Homeland defense (according to these reports) is quickening the pace of our innovation pipeline, which has been rendered inadequate and obsolete in the face of rapidly advancing technologies and China’s ability to very quickly integrate them into their society.
This problem is outlined again in this excerpt of NDS 2018 below:
Streamline rapid, iterative approaches from development to fielding: A rapid, iterative approach to capability development will reduce costs, technological obsolescence, and acquisition risk. The Department will realign incentive and reporting structures to increase speed of delivery, enable design tradeoffs in the requirements process, expand the role of warfighters and intelligence analysis throughout the acquisitions process, and utilize non-traditional suppliers. Prototyping and experimentation should be used prior to defining requirements and commercial-off-the-shelf systems. Platform electronics and software must be designed for routine replacement instead of static configurations that last more than a decade. This approach, a major departure from previous practices and culture, will allow the Department to more quickly respond to changes in the security environment and make it harder for competitors to offset our systems.
Harness and protect the National Security Innovation Base: The Department’s technological advantage depends on a healthy and secure national security innovation base that includes both traditional and non-traditional defense partners. The Department, with the support of Congress, will provide the defense industry with sufficient predictability to inform their long-term investments in critical skills, infrastructure, and research and development. We will continue to streamline processes so that new entrants and small-scale vendors can provide cutting-edge technologies. We will also cultivate international partnerships to leverage and protect partner investments in military capabilities.
In this Air Force Times article entitled “‘The Homeland is no longer a sanctuary’ amid rising near-peer threats, NORTHCOM commander says”, the 2018 National Defense Strategy is discussed, along with the solidification of the new doctrine it lays out:
This Breaking Defense article builds on the importance of NDS 2018, and provides important details about this shift in thinking:
That specific detail in that last image regarding the increasing threat of nonkinetic attacks fueled by technological revolutions and emerging technologies, I think, is a crucial component to the larger story here. Remember who the CF investors are, and the industry they come from.
If you refer to the Homeland Security Digital Library, they describe NDS 2018 as follows:
“….the document emphasizes a focus on “restoring America’s competitive military advantage to deter Russia and China from challenging the United States, its allies or seeking to overturn the international order that has served so well since the end of World War II.”
There’s also this bit from the Joint Staff’s report entitled “Description of the National Military Strategy - 2018”
As these articles and reports make clear, it isn’t a threat of kinetic attacks that we’re facing. To me, from what I’ve read, it appears that our security apparatus is primarily concerned about unconventional attacks that originate from the civilian space; activities that disrupt our military’s capabilities to deploy, to maneuver, to train, etc. This is why encroachment by civilian urban sprawl poses such a threat.
When civilian developments are built near these strategic sites, they can limit the military's use of land, airspace, and other resources, thereby hindering their capacity to prepare for various defense scenarios. Moreover, encroachment can complicate the security measures around these facilities, as the proximity of civilian populations increases the risk of espionage, sabotage, or even unintentional interference with military operations.
Additionally, the presence of civilian infrastructure near military bases can lead to conflicts over land use, noise complaints, and other environmental concerns, further eroding the effectiveness of these installations. The proximity of non-military activities to sensitive areas may also expose critical military and communication networks to potential cyber-attacks or physical breaches, especially as urban development brings with it increased connectivity and technology. This intersection between civilian and military domains underscores the urgent need for policies that manage growth and protect the integrity of national defense assets. Without proper regulation and strategic planning, encroachment could significantly undermine the United States' ability to respond to emerging threats and maintain a robust defense posture.
Perhaps this is why Sramek is so focused on “protecting Travis” and “making Travis stronger”. Actually, come to think of it, Sramek appears to have taken these national security threats into consideration when drafting his city vision because as it turns out, he literally included a “Travis Air Force Base security zone/buffer area” into his city.
From California Forever’s website:
Now, to prove to you that Sramek initiated this plan with Defense Initiatives in mind, let’s revisit the report on encroachment cited earlier, and compare it to Sramek’s vision of a Travis Security Zone:
The REPI legislation authorizes DoD to partner with states, local governments, and non-governmental organizations to cost-share the acquisition of conservation/restructure-use easements and other interests in land from willing sellers to create conservation buffers around military installations and ranges to protect the training and testing mission and simultaneously to support environmental preservation.
The California Forever city is the physical manifestation of the proposed resolutions to the various national security threats we’ve covered here in this essay, but especially encroachment. When viewed through this lens, the CF city isn’t a perfect example of encroachment, but rather the answer to it (in their minds, I guess).
Just as the encroachment report suggested increasing the partnerships between military and civilian entities to create buffer zones around bases and more tactfully manage the encroachment so everybody benefits, all while boosting security, here we have Sramek and his city plan just coincidentally matching up perfectly with the proposed resolutions to national security threats and defense issues.
At this point, I think it’s pretty clear how CF closely aligns with defense initiatives. With this in mind, let’s revisit the CF investors and take a look at the overlap - if there is any - between them and the defense industry.
California Forever and the investor’s ties to the Military Industrial Complex
Not every CF investor has direct ties to the defense industry, but a few of them do. One of those investors is Michael Moritz, who I briefly touched on earlier and promised I’d circle back to.
First off, I mentioned his connections to Sequoia Capital, and how Sequoia has long been tight with the Israeli tech ecosystem. That right there will bring about some defense-related tech endeavors on its own. However, I found something else.
Just last year, the firm made their first ever investment in a hardware defense technology company, making the decision to partner with Mach Industries, a company that, according to their website, is…”…a manufacturing company that deploys products to ensure American dominance.” They are working on developing hydrogen-powered platforms for the military, including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), munitions and hydrogen generation systems. It was founded by MIT dropout and Thiel Fellow Ethan Thornton in 2022.
This is significant. Despite Sequoia's long history of investing in a wide range of tech companies, including those that support national security interests, this marks the firm's initial foray into directly investing in a company that specifically focuses on defense technology, rather than developing software or cyber infrastructure, which is far more indirect than what Mach is trying to do. Sequoia’s investment in Mach perfectly aligns with the broader shift in focus back to homeland defense that’s occurring as I type this - the shift that California Forever falls smack in the middle of.
It appears that Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia, has been one of the most vocal proponents of Mach and the potential of their technology. Maguire expressed his enthusiasm for Mach's groundbreaking technology and its potential to solve the challenging problem of hypersonic defense, saying:
‘Since witnessing the test flight of hypersonic vehicle 2 in 2011 while at DARPA, I've been enamored with hypersonic defense technology. Historically, this has been a hard problem to solve due to the extreme velocities and nonlinearities involved, yet Mach is paving the first legitimate technical pathway to overcome these challenges.’
Ah, there we go - a DARPA tie-in. I can’t recall if I mentioned it already, but one of the tips I received from a source that lives in Solano County involved DARPA. I was told that CF had dispatched somebody to Washington D.C. in a lobbying capacity to speak with DARPA.
Now, that’s incredibly strange, but only if you believe that this city is a conventional city, and not a military platform. By the time I received that tip, I had already formulated the theory I’m laying out for you here regarding the strategic significance of the base, so to hear that they possibly tried to lobby DARPA did not come as a surprise to me.
If you read the several articles that pop up about Ethan Thornton and Mach Industries such as this Reuters article on them, you’ll see repeated references to the overarching themes that are driving all of this:
Sequoia's funding of a technology that aims to use hydrogen creation on the battlefield signals the latest interest from Silicon Valley investors in backing technologies that bolster U.S. national security and working with the Department of Defense."
"There is a technology transition happening, and recent events like the war in Ukraine have highlighted the gap in current defense systems," Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia who co-led the deal with partner Stephanie Zhan, told Reuters via email.
"There is a major modernization effort underway to advance the U.S. defense technology and build a new generation of military systems."
"Founded by MIT dropout and Thiel Fellow Ethan Thornton in 2022," Mach Industries focuses on building a..
Another overarching theme we’re beginning to see as well is former military officials dipping their toes into Venture Capitalism. There’s a surge of military interest in SV tech in recent years, and it makes sense when you consider all of the above. Again, we are watching the barrier between the military and civilian domains dissolve in front of our eyes:
Moving on - if you were reading carefully, you would have noticed that Ethan Thornton, the founder of Mach, was also a Thiel Fellow, meaning that he was chosen for Peter Thiel’s fellowship program, which essentially gives the candidate a ton of cash flow, access to resources, equipment, and the brightest minds in the industry, to solely work on the innovative technology that caught their attention to begin with.
I don’t have time to dive into it extensively here, but the name ‘Peter Thiel’ should be jumping off the page at you right now. Thiel was the co-founder of Paypal as well as the infamous Palantir, which was created in 2003 and is a software company that specializes in big data analytics and allows organizations to integrate, manage, and analyze vast amounts of data from disparate sources.
These tools are widely used by government agencies, particularly in intelligence, defense, and law enforcement, as well as by private sector companies for purposes such as risk management, fraud detection, and decision-making. Palantir's technology is known for its ability to uncover hidden patterns and insights within complex data sets.
If you finished that last sentence and had the words “predictive capabilities” come to mind, you would be on the right track. Just a few years ago, it was revealed that Palantir had been secretly using predictive technologies for policing:
That isn’t the tech’s only application, though - far from it. If you take a look at their report entitled “Predictive Maintenance and Prognostics”, you’d find that the technology Palantir is working on is actually far more relevant, and perhaps far better suited, for smart cities. Trigyn.com, the website for the technology company by the same name that provides top-tier digital transformation services, referred to predictive analytics as “the crystal ball of smart cities”.
Predictive analytics technology like Palantir is particularly well-suited for smart cities because it can process vast amounts of data from interconnected IoT devices to anticipate and address urban challenges in real time. Some of its most popular applications would be forecasting traffic congestion, energy usage, crime hotspots, and waste management needs by using the city’s predictive capabilities to optimize resources, reduce costs, and hopefully improve residents' quality of life without obliterating their personal privacy and freedom of movement (fat chance).
What's particularly intriguing about the California Forever narrative is how it not only sits squarely at the crossroads of the overarching agenda I’ve been discussing—characterized by a renewed and intense focus on the U.S. Homeland, coupled with a sweeping transformation of our defense technology innovation pipeline to stay competitive with China, the dissolving of the barrier between the military and civilian domain in the name of defense, the overhaul of domestic U.S. military bases and the plan to transform them into “smart bases” modeled after the private sector’s Smart City initiatives (under initiatives like “Installation of the Future”)—but because it’s all happening alongside a massive split that’s forming in SV over political ideologies.
A massive gulf is forming between the two separate contingents of big tech/Silicon Valley: the Democrat Techies, and the Republican Techies. Both contingents have been heavily mobilized in recent months, with each side dumping money into the campaigns of their preferred candidate, and vocally sharing their support for them throughout the summer. To anybody paying attention, it should be obvious that conservative political beliefs have gained a lot of ground in the tech world in recent years; a surge no doubt egged on by the likes of Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Joe Rogan (even if inadvertently). Their recent endeavors - especially Musk buying Twitter and creating ‘X’; it gained the conservatives major ground, especially when it comes to narrative control, for better or for worse.
As Business Insider put it in their August 9th article:
Some of Silicon Valley's biggest names are now waging partisan battles for all the internet to see.
This, to me, is a very intriguing development, because historically, Silicon Valley and Big Tech in general have always been a heavily left-leaning industry, and I’m not entirely sure that the people in our community are fully aware that this gulf has formed in the former monolith at all. Maybe that’s not entirely accurate though - I guess the type of thinking we’re up against now, and have been for the past 20 or so years, maybe more, is the leftist contingent of the tech world.
While on this topic, it’d probably be wise of me to mention how, historically, Silicon Valley has been intimately intertwined with national defense. Let’s pin that for just a second though and continue on for a bit before circling back around to it.
And, of course, California Forever is a perfect representation not only of the current divide in Silicon Valley, but the existence of the two separate ideological contingents that have formed, and their willingness to work together despite their differences.
As it turns out, the list of investors backing California Forever comprise both contingents that have formed around partisan lines in Silicon Valley. The investor list comprises both pro-Trump tech investors, and pro-Kamala tech investors.
For example, I mentioned earlier that CF investors Michael Moritz (Sequoia) donated millions to prominent Democratic Super PAC American Bridge, and that the Epstein-connected Reid Hoffman also donated millions to Kamala Harris’ campaign, and has been very vocal about his support for her in the last month or two. I also mentioned Laurene Powell Jobs and how she has also thrown her support behind Harris, which is unsurprising given Jobs’ long history of supporting Harris’ campaigns throughout her political career.
Speaking of which, I almost forgot - in this New York Times article entitled "How Kamala Harris Forged Close Ties with Big Tech", Harris’s long history with Silicon Valley and Laurene Powell Jobs is laid out:
Silicon Valley’s Democratic power brokers have been enthusiastic backers of Ms. Harris. In her first statewide campaign, she raised 36 percent more money than her Republican opponent with the help of large donations from prominent tech investors like the billionaire John Doerr, who was an early investor in Google, and Ron Conway, a venture capitalist who is active in Democratic politics.
In her re-election bid, donations poured in from big players in tech, like Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer; Jony Ive, Apple’s former top design executive; and Marc Benioff, chief executive of Salesforce.
She also hobnobbed with Silicon Valley heavyweights. Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs and an influential philanthropist, hosted a fund-raiser for Ms. Harris in the backyard of her Palo Alto home in 2013.
I haven’t mentioned John Doerr yet, but in case you weren’t aware, Doerr is also an investor of California Forever. Doerr is an investor and venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins.
Then, on the other side of the spectrum, we have other CF investors like Marc Andreesen of Andreesen-Horowitz that have come out publicly to support former President Trump’s campaign. Also, let’s not forget that Trump’s chosen running mate, Senator J.D. Vance, literally comes from the world of venture capital and tech; he started his career in Silicon Valley with a two year stint with none other than Peter Thiel and his company Mithril Capital.
Before I forget, I should mention that Peter Thiel also appears to have been associated with Jeffrey Epstein. According to documents released in the last few years, Thiel was scheduled to meet with Epstein on at least three different occasions in September of 2014, although it’s unclear how many of those meetings actually went down.
An article from the New York Times comments on Epstein’s interest in technology, and how prominent figures in the tech sector became “targets” of his. The article mentions an instance where Epstein was able to meet with multiple high profile industry leaders in a single meeting once in 2015.
It states:
Mr. Epstein was fascinated with the technology industry, attending conferences with high-profile industry executives. In 2015, for example, the LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman invited him to a dinner attended by, among others, the Tesla chief executive, Elon Musk; the Facebook chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg; and Mr. Thiel.
Andreesen-Horowitz
Marc Andreesen of Andreesen-Horowitz, part of the “pro-trump contingent” of Silicon Valley, is a CF investor who probably has the most visible ties to the defense industry. In his case, the national defense tech undercurrent that runs through this entire story is plainly seen bubbling up to the surface.
Andreessen is a pivotal figure in the tech industry, and one of the most well known names in Silicon Valley. He is widely recognized as one of the co-founders of Netscape, and also a major force behind the venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz (shortened to a16z).
Over the years, Andreessen has become a powerful advocate for leveraging technology in ways that extend far beyond the commercial sphere, notably into sectors with critical national security implications. His firm, Andreessen Horowitz, has increasingly focused on investments that sit at the intersection of technology and defense, recognizing that advancements in areas like artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and autonomous systems will play a crucial role in maintaining the United States' strategic edge in an era of intensifying global competition.
Now, think back to what I said earlier about the threat of dual-use technologies and sciences and its role in the changing national security landscape. The general idea of dual-use tech is that they perfectly represent the dissolving of the military and civilian barrier; the threats we’re facing today can be facilitated or acted upon through the use of technologies that are ubiquitous among the civilian populace. Thus, neutrality disappears, everywhere is a potential battle zone, everything a potential weapon of war, and before we know it, rights are given away in the name of securing ourselves from the ever-changing but ever-present threats. A cynical take, but have we not been on a certain trajectory in recent years?
Andreessen Horowitz has strategically positioned itself as a key player in the defense technology space by investing in companies that develop cutting-edge solutions with clear military and national security applications. For instance, the firm has backed Anduril Industries, a company founded by Palmer Luckey, which specializes in autonomous defense capabilities such as AI-driven surveillance systems and counter-drone technology.
Anduril's products have already been adopted by U.S. military and border security forces, exemplifying how Andreessen Horowitz's investments are directly contributing to the modernization of America's defense infrastructure. This alignment with the defense sector is part of a broader trend in Silicon Valley, where tech startups increasingly see the Department of Defense as a significant customer and partner in innovation due to the advancements being made across all these sectors.
Making the ties even more blatant, take a look at this article put out by Marc Andreesen on the Andreesen-Horowitz A16z website - it nearly mirrors every single detail I am discussing here in this paper, which reads:
As Steve Blank has documented in his “Secret History of Silicon Valley”, the origin of the American high-technology industry traces back nearly a century to the creation of such critical defense technologies as radar, electronic navigation, and satellites. Continuing that heritage, many major Valley companies over the last 50 years have played critical roles in supporting our government’s defense and intelligence missions. That the United States has historically been the world leader in technology has reinforced our national security, and our national security has made our country and our industry peaceful and prosperous.
Take a look at this excerpt as well. In two short paragraphs, it touches on several of the overarching themes I have been highlighting in this write-up. It reads:
Will the U.S. continue to lead the technological way in defense? This incredibly important question has repercussions for our society along many dimensions. Will we be able to defend our people, and our allies, against new forms of attack? Will we be able to prevent harm to the brave men and women who serve in our defense and intelligence agencies? Will we be able to protect and defend our national infrastructure, including our cities, our hospitals, our power grid, and the Internet itself? And will we be able to lead the way globally in setting norms for acceptable use of new and powerful technologies such as artificial intelligence?
Just as the software revolution has completely changed the structure of the computer industry, from mainframes to smartphones and from punch cards to the cloud, I believe we are now seeing the creation of a new generation of Silicon Valley-style defense vendors that can move faster and smarter, and specialize in applying the leading edge of modern technology in original ways. We at Andreessen Horowitz have already been proudly funding companies in this space, such as Shield AI, an AI company co-founded by a former Navy SEAL, which today makes artificially intelligent, autonomous drones that see, reason about, search, and clear spaces to protect military service members in the field
Also, note the significance of the timing around the article’s publishing date. The identities of the investors behind Flannery Associates were not known until 2023, meaning that when this article was posted in 2019, Andreessen and others were at the peak of their land acquisition efforts and fully aware of the security implications they were causing, yet continued their secretive land-grab despite that, resulting in the launching of several separate federal investigations into the group’s activities and purchases.
Anyway, here’s the announcement of the Andruil partnership. It reads:
And today, we are proud to announce our newest defense investment, Anduril Industries. Anduril is a defense product company that builds creative, cost-effective technology to aid those who serve on the front lines defending our nation and its interests. Anduril’s core technologies include artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, sensor fusion, and their uses on the front lines of operations. They focus on applying their technology to defense, law enforcement, and securing critical infrastructure.
In a more recent article put out by A16z in April of 2023 (4 months before they’d be revealed as an investor of California Forever), they elaborate on all of this:
The article is “How the U.S. Can Rewire the Pentagon for a New Era”, and highlights the various reasons our military needs to keep our technological edge, and how to do it. It continues:
We are in the early stages of a generational defense cycle that requires unconventional thinking and tools. The invasion of Ukraine highlights this evolution: comparatively low-cost weapons, from drones to precision artillery, are leveraging cutting-edge networks, like SpaceX’s Starlink, to redefine battlefields. Meanwhile, a new variable — attritable tech — is emerging. The implications are upending how militaries fight.
Defense innovation has always sparked a helix of action and reaction, where faster evolution means greater success. In World War II, Turing’s codebreakers at Bletchley Park reacted to Nazi cryptographic improvements in a running duel that spanned years. The naval Enigma wasn’t broken once, but dozens of times.
We are in a similar moment today, although the rate and scale of change is accelerated. Consider the lightning speed at which today’s most advanced general computing projects evolve. OpenAI’s GPT-4, which was released a little more than two years after its predecessor, can now ace bar exams and convert sketches to functioning websites — all in a compressed upgrade window that overtook competitors seemingly overnight.
As general computing platforms become applicable to a host of defense applications, from programming autonomous behavior to conducting live targeting analysis, sweeping advances in software and other technologies not originally designed for defense have unintentionally compounded computing’s impact on war
This next bit mentions this massive military shift as a paradigm shift too. It states:
Responding to the paradigm shift requires reengineering the Pentagon’s DNA for a new era. Given that the winner of the next big war will more closely resemble a distributed computer operating at scale — programmatically collecting, sharing, and acting upon data from relatively inexpensive and configurable endpoints, like drones — computing design and organizational principles honed in the tech industry can help provide guidance to meet the challenge.
If I understand correctly, all of these national defense initiatives undertaken by Andreesen-Horowitz is part of the firm’s broader focus on what they call "American Dynamism," a term coined by a16z partner Katherine Boyle and used to describe the strategy of investing in defense, aerospace, national security, and public safety sectors, all of which have direct implications for national security. It is through the investments made in pursuit of the American Dynamism vision that not only shape the future of technology, but will likely end up playing a critical role in national defense.
Katherine Boyle is the same person who appears in this Breaking Defense article, calling out the Department of Defense for not awarding contracts to these big tech VC firms:
“Time is running out with Silicon Valley,” said Katherine Boyle, a partner with venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, in a series of tweets published the day before the event. “We have, at most, two years before founders walk away and private capital dries up. And many, many startups will go out of business waiting for DOD to award real production contracts.”
The article provides some enlightening contextual information further down though. Check this out:
For the past six years, the Defense Department has raced to pull talent and technology from Silicon Valley into the Pentagon.
Efforts to court tech startups started at the tail end of the Obama administration, spearheaded by then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter, who founded organizations like the Defense Innovation Unit and the Defense Digital Service. The Trump administration doubled down on those initiatives and also created new technology hubs meant to bring in ground-breaking wares or novel ways of development, such as the Air Force’s AFWERX organization.
It’s kind of difficult to explain, but the best way to describe it is that it’s an umbrella organization that includes various programs and initiatives underneath it, all focused on fostering collaboration between the military, academia, and industry to rapidly develop and integrate cutting-edge technologies. It operates as a catalyst for innovation across the Air Force, and aims to accelerate technology adoption and cultivate a culture of innovation within the force.
The programs that fall underneath the AFWERX umbrella are programs and initiatives called “Spark Cells”, which are grassroots innovation hubs located at Air Force bases worldwide. Each Spark Cell operates independently but under the broader guidance and support of AFWERX.
This is all coming together nicely, no? All of these themes about emerging technologies, the threats to bases, the role Smart Cities plays in all of it with the Installation of the Future concept, the modernization race with China…it appears everywhere throughout this story, because ultimately, that is what this story is about - not resolving the housing crisis, but energizing our military to maintain our technological edge before we get outpaced by China. Reinvigorating and securing our innovation and defense base through the revitalization of that entire region of California, starting with Solano County and one of the most critical bases on the west coast.
Anyway, you’re going to love this next part. Want to take a guess where the very first Spark Cell under AFWERX was created?
Travis Air Force Base.
Don’t take my word for it, simply read the AFWERX Program Overview to see for yourself. On page 34, it states:
Tactical Innovation Cells (“Spark Cells”) are a decentralized network of innovation cells at Air and Space Force bases around the world that enable Airmen and Guardians to execute locally generated ideas and projects. The first Spark Cell began at Travis Air Force Base in California in 2016, and there are now 108 worldwide. Operational Innovation Cells operate at the MAJCOM, NGB, and Center levels; these cells focus on DAF operational priorities and identifying cross-cutting initiatives, applying their deep knowledge of DAF corporate processes to scale more and better grassroots solutions to the field.
Here’s the website for Phoenix Spark, the name of Travis AFB Spark Cell:
And here’s an article from Travis AFB’ website about their Phoenix Spark program, released not too long after it first began which provides a good overview of their plans and goals. Once again, keep your eye out for any of the overarching themes I’ve been laying out for you in this essay:
As the Air Force looks towards the future, it must navigate an ever-evolving technological landscape that gives opportunity to Airmen from all ranks to contribute to the cutting edge of American power.
According to Capt. Ryan McGuire, 9th Air Refueling Squadron Phoenix Spark director, AFWERX is meant to provide Airmen the means to do just that.
“AFWERX is changing the construct of how the Air Force approaches innovation,” said McGuire. “Instead of top-down programs, AFWERX fosters grassroots innovation, creating tools for the warfighter, designed by the warfighter. The users' needs and wants are placed first. The focus of the program in the AFWERX model is to solve the warfighter's pain points, and AFWERX supports those efforts from the highest levels of leadership.”
This is a really important detail here, and if you recall, I mentioned exactly this earlier in this essay when touching on China’s approach to Smart City development. If you remember, I mentioned how China is able to advance and modernize their forces far quicker than America due to their top-down system of government, and the minimal barriers between the civilian and military domains in the country. In Democratic America, our freedom and privacy and autonomy comes from the very mechanisms of government that also holds us back from rapidly developing and integrating new technologies into our society.
This is why we have to achieve the same degree of rapid advancement and modernization that China is trying to achieve, but through a system of grass-roots efforts that are legal and Democratic, rather than top-down systems like China.
There’s more, though. The article continues:
“All of us know the pace of change is accelerating and the Air Force has to engage the next generation of innovators, young scientists, engineers and smart businesses to take us into the future,” said Wilson. “The Air Force has to engage with those innovators who want to help the warfighter defend our vital national interests around the world.”
The branch of AFWERX created at Travis AFB is called Spark which has gone on to be implemented by the headquarter level of the Air Force. Spark is split into different teams, or cells, all of which are designed to assist wing-level innovation, said McGuire.
The best part:
“On the [Air Mobility Command] level, there’s Phoenix Spark, a Spark cell,” said McGuire. “Due to its geographical proximity to tech hubs like Silicon Valley and San Francisco, the 60th Air Mobility Wing has the distinct advantage of bringing new tech to the Air Force.”
The current Spark model that Travis implements has been so successful, in fact, that it’s been used and duplicated by other wings in AMC and in the Air Force, said McGuire.
And there it is.
After taking all of this in, I’ll say it again: it becomes very difficult for me to imagine that nobody knew about any of this for years. Also, I want you to also keep in mind that despite all of this, none of the defense-related tie-ins were every plainly stated. The city plan was always about the housing crisis in California, sustainability, etc…if you go to CF’s website, there isn’t any mention of defense related motivations aside from “protecting Travis”.
By the way, the only reason I began looking into this national defense angle of California Forever (aside from what I cited earlier) is that very noticeable changes were made within Travis AFB along the same timeline the land was being purchased by Flannery. In 2020, Travis was the first installation to launch an automated drone-based perimeter security system for the Air Force.
In an article on their website entitled “Travis AFB launches small unarmed aircraft initiative, first on Air Force installation” published in 2020, it states:
The 60th Security Forces Squadron, in collaboration with Easy Aerial, a leading provider of autonomous drone-based monitoring solutions, launched the first automated drone-based perimeter security system for the Air Force, Dec. 11.
The automated drone-based security system was a direct product of the modernization and innovation initiatives launched by the Air Force and Travis AFB between 2016-2017:
The small unarmed aircraft initiative is part of the Small Business Innovation Research Phase II program, which adheres to Air Force perimeter security and situational awareness operational requirements.
“This was a joint effort as we worked closely together from start to finish, resulting in a customized solution for the Air Force that meets all of their operational desires and requirements,” said Ivan Stamatovski, Easy Aerial chief technology officer.
The drone program is a perfect example of the military’s partnership with small tech start-ups in the name of maintaining base security, and thus a perfect example of the type of partnerships we will be seeing more often….all stemming from the unfolding paradigm shift I’m writing about here.
Reid Hoffman
The other CF investor to have blatant ties to the defense industry is also one of the Eptein-investors: Reid Hoffman.
Hoffman is tied in with national defense technologies in a number of different ways, but the one I want to focus on right now is through Greylock, which he joined in 2009. According to Wikipedia, Greylock Partners LLC was founded in 1965, making it one of the oldest venture capital firms around. Its focus is on early-stage companies in consumer enterprise software.
If you take a look at Greylock’s portfolio and the companies they are invested in, it’s clear that the firm is heavily focused on investing in technology-driven industries, particularly those that are at the forefront of innovation in areas such as enterprise software, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing.
I did some digging into their tech-related endeavors, and came up with some interesting information. The first bit of information is Greylock’s tie-ins to, once again, the Israeli tech ecosystem. In this article entitled “Greylock and Sequoia to Strengthen Israel Operations”, it covers how the two firms will be filling the void left by other prominent VC firms that had pulled out of Israel in recent years.
I then found another article entitled “Greylock Leads $36 Million Financing for Cybersecurity Startup Seven AI”, announcing a partnership between the firm and the AI start-up company. It states:
Venture firm Greylock Partners has led a $36 million financing for a startup that uses artificial intelligence to help enterprises boost their defenses against cyberattacks.
Greylock in September provided pre-seed financing for Seven AI, a Boston-based startup that has operated quietly until now. Seven AI co-founders Lior Div and Yonatan Striem Amit previously co-founded high-profile cybersecurity company Cybereason.
Seven AI is developing AI-based software that hunts for cyber threats autonomously and conducts investigations, reducing the burden on enterprise security-operations teams, said Div.
I’ve read this story before if ya get what I’m saying, so I immediately began looking into the backgrounds of Seven A.I’s co-founders for military experience. If they were Israeli, they would have had to serve at one point.
I ended up finding this now-deleted bio page for Lior Div from Cybereason’s website, the high-profile cybersecurity company they had founded before and mentioned in that last article It states that Lior Div didn’t just serve in the Israeli Military, but was Commander in the famed Unit 8200:
His bio states:
His team conducted nation-state offensive operations with a 100% success rate for penetration of targets. He is a renowned expert in hacking operations, forensics, reverse engineering, malware analysis, cryptography and evasion. Lior has a very unique perspective on the most advanced attack techniques and how to leverage that knowledge to gain an advantage over the adversary. This perspective was key to developing an operation-centric approach to defending against the most advanced attacks and represents the direction security operations must take to ensure a future-ready defense posture.
Sounds like serious (and incredibly relevant) business if you ask me.
And if you ask Wikipedia what Unit 8200 is, it states:
Unit 8200 (Hebrew: יחידה 8200, Yehida shmone matayim "Unit eight two-hundred") is an Israeli Intelligence Corps unit of the Israel Defense Forces responsible for clandestine operation, collecting signal intelligence (SIGINT) and code decryption, counterintelligence, cyberwarfare, military intelligence, and surveillance. Military publications include references to Unit 8200 as the Central Collection Unit of the Intelligence Corps, and it is sometimes referred to as Israeli SIGINT National Unit (ISNU). It is subordinate to Aman, the military intelligence directorate.
Damn. That’s really serious business.
Now, to be clear, this company isn’t directly involved with California Forever or anything. However, it’s one of the many similar companies that Greylock Partners is investing in, and one of the CF investors - Reid Hoffman - is a partner at Greylock, and heavily involved in national defense tech. That fact becomes even more clear with this next part.
As it turns out, Reid Hoffman actually sits on the board of the Defense Innovation Unit. I’m not kidding, he’s got a bio on their website and everything:
And what exactly is the Defense Innovation Unit? Well, the basic Wiki description describes it as…:
…a United States Department of Defense (DoD) organization founded to help the U.S. military make faster use of emerging commercial technologies. Launched in 2015, the organization has been called "the Pentagon's Innovation Experiment". DIU is staffed by civilian and both active duty and reserve military personnel. The organization is headquartered in Mountain View, California — Silicon Valley — with offices in Austin, Boston, Chicago, and the Pentagon just outside Washington, D.C.
On the DIU’s website, they describe themselves as…:
…harnessing the experiences and ideas of its members to provide independent advice to the Secretary of Defense and other senior leaders on catalyzing innovation in DoD. Recruited specifically for their expertise outside the Department, DIB members are uniquely positioned to propose creative solutions to the structural, technological, and workforce challenges DoD faces - and provide U.S. warfighters and civilians with the solutions they need to achieve the mission.
Sramek Talks Defense
When I was uncovering all of this information on the current status of national defense and the innovative changes being made to secure the Homeland, there was no overt statements made by Sramek or others that indicated there was any defense-related motives with their city plan at all. Other than mentioning how “protecting Travis” was imperative, Sramek never brought the issue up in any extensive detail.
That seems to have changed by March of 2024, though. Between August 2023 (when I first began researching this story) and March of 2024, I had already developed the military/civilian partnership theory after having done the research laid out above. However, I missed the following article when it was released apparently, because out of the many articles I’ve read on Sramek and parsed through looking to find any instance of him really going deep into the national defense implications of his vision, I was never able to find much more than “we’re gonna protect Travis” and information on the “Travis Security Zone” he has planned.
In the article, General Partner Kathleen Boyle (the same Kathleen Boyle mentioned earlier) interviews Jan Sramek and asks him about the proximity to Travis AFB and how he envisions his community interacting with the veteran population in the area, he answers:
Katherine: ….But another unique facet of this project, actually, that I think a lot of people in this room will be very interested in is that it’s located very close to Travis Air Force Base. And the area is home to many veterans. So, how do you envision the interaction between this new city and the veteran community that’s populous there?
Jan: We think that Solano County has the opportunity to become…go to the roots of what Silicon Valley used to be. And so, Silicon Valley started with defense, we all know this. I learned the other day that between 1950 and 1980, the largest employer in Silicon Valley was Lockheed Martin.
And so, that’s not that far back. But then we lost the defense business because land cost became too high, there wasn’t enough land for manufacturing, and it became too expensive to do, and then there were cultural issues with the fights between the tech sector and the defense industry. And we think that, particularly with American Dynamism and this revival in interest in investing in defense innovation, there’s a real opportunity to bring some of that back to Northern California.
Boom. There it is.
The detail that started my interest in this story and the theory I ended up formulating after a few months - the secretive tech elite city and its super close proximity to Travis AFB being some type of informal or clandestine partnership between DoD and Silicon Valley tech companies - was confirmed and verified. Aspects of it were, at least.
As soon as I heard about this city proposal, I immediately recognized the strategic significance of what he was doing, due to the very important context I've meticulously laid out above regarding the changing security landscape and the military paradigm shift. While the very first iteration of my theory was that the city was going to be a covert partnership between the city and Travis AFB itself, it appears that the city is actually more of an attempt to reinvigorate the entire region and transform it into a tech innovation engine in the name of national defense.
Jan continues:
…in Solano County, there’s an opportunity where there is an existing large labor force. Travis is there, Mare Island used to be there, which was a naval base. And so, there’s a lot of cultural heritage and history of that.
And so, we think that Solano County can become the foundry of American defense innovation for the next 50 years.
What I find so interesting about this goal is that it is so ambitious and so intertwined with national security and defense entities that I simply do not understand why this aspect of it isn’t more discussed by anybody. I mean, the military dimension of his goals sound like the primary ones just given the gigantic scope of the project, and how closely the entire city vision aligns with pressing defense initiatives.
What’s more, he even touches on the innovation pipeline issues I mentioned earlier, and how our current system doesn’t let us innovate at the pace we need to be innovating if we want to stay top dawg. He also mentions the other major dimension to all of this, which is the failure to blend the military-civilian domains effectively to facilitate that innovation:
And I think that, there was a lot of talk today about our adversaries and some of the challenges with that, and I think… There were two things that I think would have given our adversaries hope over the last 15 years, if you want, in what’s going to slow down the pace of innovation in America.
Number one, it was the fact that we were strangling the Bay Area innovation ecosystem by just not providing enough housing, so we couldn’t create a critical mass. We couldn’t innovate as quickly as we could otherwise.
And then the second was this period of, I would say, limited engagement between the defense community and at least some of the venture firms in the Valley and how that worked.
And I think our project has an opportunity to be a nightmare for our enemies where, it is an opportunity for the leading venture capital investment funds and individuals in the valley to come together with the military in a location that can accommodate growth for the next 30 years.
And so, I think when people look back in 2050, they might say that this was one of the most interesting and lasting and impactful partnerships between the government and the military and Silicon Valley in the country.
[Conclusion]
This narrative is steeped in themes of transformation, the forging of a new American society, the evolution of thought processes, and the relentless push to innovate in order to stay ahead. The rapid advancements in technology and the subsequent disruptive changes it brings to every aspect of life, along with the growing vulnerabilities of America, are recurring motifs that emerge when examining any facet of this story. These are not mere background elements but are central to the narrative, threading through every development and decision.
The overarching agenda at play here is one that compels a fundamental rethinking of defense strategies to align with an unprecedented, constantly evolving global landscape, one that is increasingly shaped by technological and scientific advancements. The traditional comfort that geography once provided—the idea that oceans and friendly borders could protect us—has been upended by a world where technology has bridged these distances, allowing non-state actors to reach out and touch us in ways previously unimaginable. The implications of this shift are profound, as it redefines what it means to defend the homeland in an era where the tools of warfare are no longer confined to conventional battlefields.
The 2018 National Defense Strategy is a pivotal document in this context, as it codifies this new reality into official policy. It marks a decisive shift away from the focus on insurgent forces that dominated the Counterterrorism paradigm of the preceding decades, and redirects attention towards the challenges posed by near-peer adversaries such as China and Russia. This strategy acknowledges the changing nature of global power dynamics and the need for the United States to adapt its defense posture to address these emerging threats, signaling a significant transformation in how national security is approached in the 21st century.
Perhaps most dramatic is how all of this revolves around the Homeland. We are no longer immune. In actuality, we are wide open and vulnerable to attacks across the board. The reports I keep mentioning? They’re grim. I know they’re published to deal with potential threats and are cynical by nature because of that, but I have to be honest with you when I tell you that I came away from those reports wondering how we can come out of it all with our privacy and freedoms intact.
The battle is coming home, and it’s happening not in the streets, but in our minds. The war is the chaos and conflict that gradually begins to occur more and more over time as society begins to fragment and split off into perceptual slivers occupied by people with a common perception of reality and shared set of beliefs, and created by technology, the Internet, and social media. Created by the cognitive artillery barrage that hit us with carefully crafted narratives, twisting and bending reality to the point of madness. It fuels the division, which grows more and more as general happiness rates plummet. Protests and riots become more frequent. The price of food, gas, and just about everything in between rises significantly. Depression rates continue to spike. People are whipping up modified viruses and synthetic aerosolized nightmares at relatively low costs. We can get hit by missiles anywhere in the United States now. Our domestic military bases can’t defend themselves against swarms of unidentified drones. The pentagon confirmed the existence of UFOs, and there was a Congressional hearing on UAPs, Special Access Programs, and top secret crash recovery programs. Things are getting seriously crazy, and more bizarre as the minutes pass.
It is in this vein that I personally believe that the California Forever (CF) project, ostensibly a sustainable city development near Travis Air Force Base (AFB), is more plausibly and accurately viewed as a covert military defensive platform, born from a clandestine agreement between the biggest figures in Silicon Valley and entities within the military-industrial complex and DoD that are truly concerned about our nation’s security and vulnerabilities, and recognize the important role technology will play in the coming decades.
This theory gains significant traction when we consider the backgrounds of CF’s investors, who are intricately tied to the defense industry, particularly in the realm of tech startups. These investors, who frequently discuss the need for a more agile and condensed innovation pipeline to keep pace with the rapid advancements in technology, appear to be in perfect alignment with the strategic goals outlined in the 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS). This alignment is far from coincidental; it suggests a deliberate effort to integrate cutting-edge technology with national defense, leveraging the private sector’s innovation capabilities in a manner that traditional military infrastructure simply cannot match…all while simultaneously resolving problems currently facing the civilian domain, such as housing.
The NDS 2018 explicitly calls for a stronger partnership between the Department of Defense (DoD) and Silicon Valley, urging the need to streamline the innovation pipeline to respond swiftly to emerging threats. In this light, the CF project appears less like an independent venture and more like a strategic initiative, designed to serve as a cutting-edge hub for defense innovation.
The fact that the project remained shrouded in secrecy for years, even as it expanded its landholdings around a critical military installation, only underscores the likelihood that it is part of a broader, undisclosed defense strategy. The timing of CF’s land acquisitions, which peaked during a period of escalating tensions between the U.S. and near-peer adversaries like China, further supports the notion that this project is not merely about building a sustainable city, but about constructing a sophisticated defensive network under the guise of urban development. I think all the officials were nervous - and likely still are - about coming right out and saying that. It’s a difficult thing to explain to the masses without scaring them by outright saying “we’re building a military city for you to live in.”
The relationship between Silicon Valley and the military has long been characterized by a shared interest in advancing technology for national security purposes. CF’s investors, many of whom are veterans of tech startups with direct ties to defense contracts, embody this relationship. They are well-versed in the demands of the defense industry and understand the imperative of maintaining technological superiority in an increasingly competitive global landscape. Their involvement in the CF project suggests that it is intended to be more than just a model for sustainable living—it is a critical node in the U.S.’s defense infrastructure, designed to integrate emerging technologies into military applications with unprecedented speed and efficiency.
Moreover, the 2018 NDS places a strong emphasis on the importance of technological innovation in maintaining U.S. military dominance. It advocates for reducing the time it takes to move new technologies from development to deployment, recognizing that the traditional defense procurement process is too slow to keep up with the pace of global technological change. The CF project, with its deep ties to Silicon Valley and its investors’ focus on accelerating the innovation pipeline, appears to be a direct response to this mandate.
It is, in essence, a testbed for the rapid integration of new technologies into the U.S. defense apparatus, positioned strategically near a key military base to facilitate seamless collaboration between the private sector and the military.
The location of the CF project near Travis AFB is particularly telling. Travis AFB is a vital logistics hub for the U.S. military, and its proximity to the CF project suggests that the base could play a pivotal role in the integration of new technologies developed within the CF framework. The secrecy surrounding the project, even as it encircled the base, indicates that its true purpose may be classified, hidden from public scrutiny under the pretext of sustainable urban development. This secrecy is consistent with the DoD’s need to protect sensitive national security projects, particularly those that involve cutting-edge technologies with potential military applications.
In addition, the broader geopolitical context in which the CF project has unfolded further supports the theory that it is part of a covert military initiative. The period from 2018 to 2023 has been marked by increasing tensions between the U.S. and China, with several high-profile incidents underscoring the vulnerability of U.S. military installations to foreign interference. The CF project’s timing, coinciding with these rising tensions, suggests that it is a proactive measure designed to bolster U.S. homeland defense capabilities in an era where traditional sanctuaries are no longer assured. The strange, pervasive secrecy surrounding the project and the unexplained uniformity of ignorance amongst the officials who ordinarily would be aware of such developments and plans are best explained by my theory - not by the public definition of CF and its plans.
The CF project’s alignment with the 2018 NDS’s goals, its investors’ deep ties to the defense industry, and its strategic location near a key military base all point to the conclusion that it is not merely a sustainable city, but a sophisticated defensive platform. It represents a new paradigm in the relationship between Silicon Valley and the military, one where technological innovation is rapidly integrated into national defense strategies to counter emerging threats, and the boundary between the military and civilian sector is non-existent. The project’s secrecy, far from being an anomaly, is likely a deliberate aspect of its design, intended to shield its true purpose from public view while enabling the U.S. to maintain its technological and military edge in an increasingly unstable world.