Publisher & Editor, America 2.0; tech pioneer; investor. Columnist, Washington Spectator. Speaker. Curator @TEDxMidAtlantic. @davetroy@toad.social
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Jan 5 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
I regret to inform that this is all very simple, and dumb: since 2017, Putin has been trying to goad Trump into seizing Venezuela and Greenland. Putin thinks this will cement the “Monroe Doctrine” as US policy, which he thinks will drive US disengagement from Ukraine.
This effort failed in 2019 because it was blocked by John Bolton, Fiona Hill, Rex Tillerson, and other cabinet officials who considered these proposals but found them unwise.
Putin’s efforts to goad Trump resumed in 2025, first with renewed interest in Greenland, second with Venezuela. The Venezuela dangle worked, and there were no adults to stop it, and plenty of profiteers eager to help.
Now he’s after Cuba and Greenland, which Putin thinks (again) will catalyze US disengagement in Ukraine, which he hopes will give him a freer hand there, as well as reorient US power in the Western Hemisphere and away from Europe.
That’s it. That’s what’s going on. Oil, minerals, peace prizes are all part of the dangle. But this is the whole ballgame.
Receipts, part 1.
🚨 Important context here: not only did Russia try to goad Trump into moving on Venezuela in 2019 to force US disengagement in Ukraine, Russia also drove the idea of the “US buying Greenland” by forging a letter to US Senator Tom Cotton, who brought the idea to Trump.
Been pulling together details on this all day for a more detailed story and... a retrospective review shows the full arc.
Not only did Putin float this deal in May 2019, he backstopped it by deploying nuclear bombers to Venezuela in December 2018 and then sending hundreds of troops to gin up the threat and provoke Trump into taking action.
Per John Bolton's memoir, Putin even compared Juan Guaidó to Hillary Clinton in a phone call, thinking that would push him over the edge — a move Bolton described as a masterstroke of psychological manipulation.
More on this soon, but there is more than enough documentation to suggest that not only was this the Kremlin's design, but that the current operation is a continuation of a strategy well underway in 2019.
To help increase the value of a Venezuela-Ukraine swap, Putin sent two Tu-160 long-range strategic bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons to Caracas in December 2018. This was meant to piss Trump off and prompt a deal. bbc.com/news/world-lat…
Jan 4 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
1/Folks really need to understand that Russia and China are completely inseparable at this point, and that they have thrown their lot into the shared project of countering the West through containment of US interests via the Monroe Doctrine.
2/The idea of some kind of US-Russia alliance to counter China is beyond idiotic and a lingering fantasy of a handful of analysts.
The grand vision is one of three strong powers, each controlling its own geography, and backing regional strongmen oligarchs to ensure “peace.”
Jan 3 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
In 2019, Fiona Hill testified that the Russian government was “signaling very strongly that they wanted to somehow make some very strange swap agreement between Venezuela and Ukraine.” (Search: Venezuela) i.e. we get Venezuela, they get Ukraine.
s3.documentcloud.org/documents/6543…
“As the US was so concerned about the Monroe Doctrine and its own backyard, perhaps the US might also be concerned about developments in Russia’s backyard, as in Ukraine, making it very obvious that they were trying to set ip some kind of let’s just say: You stay out of Ukraine or you move out of Ukraine, and, you know, we’ll rethink where we are with Venezuela.” - Fiona Hill to Congress, October 14, 2019
If this was operational intel then, you can damn well bet this is a part of Kremlin-Trump policy now. The idea this is some new sui generis Trump adventurism is unsupported by evidence.
Nov 23, 2025 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
1/Vladimir Kryuchkov was literally Putin’s boss, and he recruited Donald Trump, Robert Maxwell, and Jeffrey Epstein. His goal was to export Communist Party funds to Western banks. Why? Because the USSR was crumbling and they had no private banks in Russia.
2/Mikhail Gorbachev served a purpose here: open up channels to the West and make Russia approachable. ‘Glasnost’ and ‘Perestroika’ lured gullible Americans to Genrikh Borovik, Kryuchkov’s brother in law, a KGB agent who ran the Soviet Peace Committee.
Nov 21, 2025 • 25 tweets • 7 min read
Jeffrey Epstein was a cutout who replaced Nikolai Kruchina, Robert Maxwell, and Leonid Veselovsky in Kryuchkov's $50bn+ KGB money laundering operation.
Kruchina got pushed out a window, Maxwell fell off his yacht, and Veselovsky went on to help Trump finance building projects.
This is, it seems, where Epstein got his money.
Oct 26, 2025 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
It should be noted that Mike Johnson has no reported bank accounts and was funded by a co-author of Project Russia. Johnson’s job is to terminate the House, and he’s done it, for now.
Very long story short, what we are finding is that both Trump and Epstein were products of a large scale subversion campaign designed by Vladimir Kryuchkov to topple the West, with Trump as a political front and Maxwells/Epstein tasked with allocating ~$50 billion in KGB funds.
The reason these 'files' will never be disclosed is that no one can deal with the reality of what's actually happened. The sexual stuff is a sideshow compared to this broader story arc, and rooted mostly in Epstein's own deviancy. But it's very noisy and creates leverage.
Sep 3, 2025 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
1/Russia and Thiel are done with Trump: Khanna, Massie, Greene, Boebert, Mace, Sherman, McGovern sign discharge petition to force release of Epstein files; will create significant public pressure for dirt on Trump, which will likely be difficult to fulfill.
2/Meanwhile Johnson, who is backed by authors of Project Russia, is running his own parallel game w/House Oversight, promising to release even more. But neither camp is talking about Sen. Wyden’s investigation into Epstein’s $1bn+ money flows that would reveal the full scope…
Aug 16, 2025 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
1/Increasingly bothered by the argument that the path to “intelligence” requires the theft of all known intellectual property. That’s not anything but theft, and if you were actually building “intelligence” it theoretically requires near zero training data.
2/If, as proponents argue, we are simulating human intelligence “in silico” then we should be able to build what amounts to a 12 year old’s mind. A 12 year old can be extremely “intelligent” (genius level in fact) but has necessarily trained on very little data.
Aug 15, 2025 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
The funniest part about Zuck throwing billions into AI is his naming of the effort as “superintelligence,” as if that alone will manifest the gods. The second funniest part is he desperately tried to manifest the metaverse just 3 years ago — and failed at that, too.
What this tells us is that the core FB properties are aging cash cows and Zuck is desperate to invest billions in anything that will ensure his personal relevance as a tech titan 10-20 years from now. Good luck, but throwing money at things is no guarantee of success.
Aug 8, 2025 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
1/Yesterday, OpenAI demonstrated that even after spending untold billions on scaling AI models, LLM’s alone aren’t the ticket to achieving superintelligence. This is linear growth, not an exponential leap, and that has several implications…
2/First, it vindicates people like @GaryMarcus who have correctly argued that language-only architectures lack capacity for reason and actual world modeling, and that neuro-symbolic architectures are needed. I agree, and while we can say “I told you so,” that’s not important…
Aug 1, 2025 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
As the Epstein blackmail/espionage story continues to fall apart, bookmark this for future reference. At some point people will figure this out. gameb.wiki/index.php?titl…
And then, the New Mexico ranch will finally make sense. nytimes.com/2019/07/31/bus…
Jul 29, 2025 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
This aligns with the data-driven analysis we performed. What Acosta may have been indicating is that Epstein was involved as a confidential informant on a case; but there is little else to indicate ongoing large-scale involvement or a sprawling blackmail ring.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t stuff we don’t know and that some of it is material. But it may mean that the government doesn’t have details on it, and that it’s incumbent on journalists to find out more. Our analysis here. america2.news/we-mapped-jeff…
Jul 27, 2025 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
1/🚨 BREAKING: A State Department unit closed effective July 11 is now amplifying corporate messaging on behalf of X. The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor posted this message yesterday. But the agency's website no longer exists.
2/The New York Times reported on July 11 that the bureau was closed. So why is it tweeting X corporate propaganda out to its 59.3K followers, which was also amplified by Elon Musk personally? nytimes.com/2025/07/11/us/…
Jul 22, 2025 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
People across the spectrum have departed from reality, preferring the comforting embrace of 'vibes'. The level of fan fiction and unmoored speculation is unmatched. I've seen some things, and this is next level.
There is reality; there is what the government knows; there is what others know; and then there's "what the public believes." These are not the same, and the latter is completely unconstrained from fact — simply because it can be.
Jul 12, 2025 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Anybody who expected there to be a lot of juicy dirt in FBI files has clearly never done a FOIA request. I’m up to about 1,300 now and I can say with some authority that the FBI has been mostly comatose on counterintelligence matters for ~50 years.
Idiots like Patel, Bongino, Bondi, Flynn et al spent years convincing the public that there were binders chock full of perp dirt. Instead it’s just binders full of women victims. I can only imagine the surprise neanderthal Patel experienced when he reviewed the documents…
Jun 5, 2025 • 7 tweets • 1 min read
Elon is the least important thing happening right now. Watch carefully as Russia shifts support away from Trump. His entire coalition is built on a foundation of RU astroturfing and information ops. Trump can not and will not survive that.
Put another way: if you believe Trump has benefited from Russian support, then it is only logical to consider the possibility that he will be greatly harmed by having them turn against him. And that’s happened.
Jun 3, 2025 • 7 tweets • 1 min read
Putin, Musk, and Vance are coming for Trump.
Russia is backing Thomas Massie and Rand Paul in the next round.
Apr 5, 2025 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
A thing I don't think people think about enough is that if the ROI on AI is less than 1:1, it won't be viable. Right now assumptions are being made based on the largess of VC investment. Will people be willing to pay what it actually costs, plus operating margin? Unclear.
This also elides the rights of creators; right now content is being stolen and repurposed wholesale and at scale. That cat may be out of the bag, but the 'industry' may not survive the resulting legal conflicts.
