TITLE: Workers allege ‘nightmare’ conditions at Kentucky startup JD Vance helped fund
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/13/politics/kentucky-startup-appharvest-jd-vance/index.html
EXCERPT: As a venture capitalist, JD Vance repeatedly touted his guiding principles for investing in a company: A business should not only turn a profit, it should also help American communities.
That’s why, he said, he invested in AppHarvest, a startup that promised a high-tech future for farming and for the workers of Eastern Kentucky. Over a four-year span, Vance was an early investor, board member and public pitchman for the indoor-agriculture company.
“It’s not just a good investment opportunity, it’s a great business that’s making a big difference in the world,” Vance proclaimed in a Fox Business interview on the day the company went public in February 2021.
Last year, facing hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, AppHarvest declared bankruptcy.
The rise and fall of the company, and Vance’s role in it, cuts against his image as a champion for the working class — an image that helped catapult him to the top of the Republican ticket as Donald Trump’s running mate.
A CNN review of public documents, and interviews with a dozen former workers, shows that AppHarvest not only failed as a business after pursuing rapid growth, but also provided a grim job experience for many of the working-class Kentuckians Vance has vowed to help.
AppHarvest employees said they were forced to work in grueling conditions inside the company’s greenhouse, where temperatures often soared into the triple digits. Complaints filed with the US Department of Labor and a Kentucky regulator between 2020 and 2023 show that workers alleged they were given insufficient water breaks and weren’t provided adequate safety gear. Some workers said they suffered heat exhaustion or injuries, though state inspectors did not find violations.
Despite promising local jobs, the company eventually began contracting migrant workers from Mexico, Guatemala and other countries, numerous former employees told CNN.
While Vance stepped down from AppHarvest’s board and launched his political career in 2021, he remained an investor and supporter of the company. By the time he was sworn in to office last year, the company he’d hailed as a great opportunity was mired in lawsuits filed by shareholders angry over its plummeting stock price and allegations of fraud.
Several former employees told CNN they thought Vance and other board members should have recognized and responded to warning signs that company officials were misleading the public and their own investors.
To some, Vance’s enthusiastic promotion of the company followed an all-too-familiar story line in the region.
“Eastern Kentucky is well-known for people coming and going. They start up companies, then they disappear,” said former AppHarvest worker Anthony Morgan. “They didn’t care about us.”
A spokesperson for Vance, Luke Schroeder, said in a statement that the Ohio senator “was not aware of the operational decisions regarding hiring, employee benefits, or other workplace policies which were made after he departed AppHarvest’s board. Like all early supporters, JD believed in AppHarvest’s mission and wishes the company would have succeeded.”
TITLE: JD Vance: US vice presidential candidate in triangle of billionaires, conservatives, intel agencies
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/jd-vance-us-vice-presidential-candidate-in-triangle-of-billionaires-conservatives-intel-agencies/3299204
EXCERPTS: During his university years, [Vance] met Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal. Vance described this meeting as "one of the most significant moments of my time at Yale Law School."
Vance’s 2016 book Hillbilly Elegy became a bestseller. During this time, he became a director at Thiel’s investment firm in San Francisco and then worked at Revolution, a venture firm founded by America Online (AOL) co-founder Steve Case. In 2020, with financial backing from Thiel, he founded the venture firm Narya Capital.
Following his Narya Capital venture, Vance helped establish the Rockbridge Network in 2021, a large network of tech leaders and conservative donors.
Rockbridge, which channels millions of dollars to "conservative" causes and campaigns, was linked to a group of Republican donors and politicians allied with Donald Trump, who remained in the spotlight due to the Capitol riot following the 2020 presidential election.
During the period leading up to the Ohio Senate elections, Vance announced his candidacy, and as always, Thiel was among his first supporters and the person who introduced Vance to Trump.
Despite Thiel's endorsement, Vance described himself as "anti-Trump" during the 2016 presidential election and during Trump's presidency. He even suggested that Trump "could be America’s Hitler.”
Nevertheless, Trump endorsed Vance in the Ohio Republican Senate primary, saying: "Like others, JD Vance may not have said very nice things about me in the past, but now he gets it, and I've seen it in spades."
With Trump’s endorsement and support, Vance won the 2022 Senate election in the Midwestern state.
The New York Times reported that Thiel had reached out to influential figures to recommend Vance as the vice-presidential candidate and had sent congratulatory messages to close friends when Trump announced Vance as his pick.
Thiel, seen as the key figure behind Vance’s rise, has notable connections with US intelligence agencies, including the CIA.
Thiel first gained prominence in 1998 as a co-founder of PayPal and, in 2004, received an investment for his company Palantir Technologies from In-Q-Tel, an organization investing in high-tech companies to support the CIA and other intelligence agencies.
In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Thiel developed Palantir’s data analysis system, combining artificial intelligence with human skills, aiming to sell it to national security agencies. According to Vox, Palantir was initially set up to compete with defense sector companies rather than Silicon Valley firms.
Palantir’s origins trace back to the payment system PayPal, established in 1998. The software created for detecting suspicious transactions at PayPal was developed into Palantir, a data mining tool.
According to a 2011 Bloomberg report, the software was used by institutions like the Pentagon, the CIA, the FBI, police departments and financial institutions, facilitating their interactions in counterterrorism efforts.
TITLE: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, And Northrop Grumman Rival Anduril, Led By Peter Thiel's Venture Capital, Raises $1.5B At $14B Valuation To Accelerate Autonomous Weapons Production
https://www.benzinga.com/news/24/08/40280155/lockheed-martin-boeing-and-northrop-grumman-rival-anduril-led-by-peter-thiels-venture-capital-raises
EXCERPTS: Anduril Industries, a U.S. defense technology startup, has successfully secured $1.5 billion in funding. The investment, co-led by Peter Thiel‘s venture capital firm, is aimed at bolstering the production of autonomous weapons for the U.S. military and its allies.
The seven-year-old company plans to use the funds to establish new manufacturing facilities capable of mass-producing “tens of thousands of autonomous weapons systems addressing the urgent needs of the United States and our allies.”
The global defense landscape is being reshaped by the increasing integration of AI and other advanced technologies. The U.S. military, for instance, has been using AI to identify targets in recent air strikes across the Middle East, underscoring the pivotal role of machine learning algorithms in combat operations.
TITLE: US defence tech start-up Anduril raises $1.5bn at $14bn valuation
https://www.ft.com/content/0288e293-84a1-4098-b860-43888d673084
EXCERPTS: Anduril’s rapid growth is a sign of shifting sentiment among venture capitalists, many of whom have reversed their opposition to investing in defence technology since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Venture investment into defence tech doubled to $33bn between 2019 and 2023 amid a broader downturn in venture funding.
Anduril is the most prominent of a group of defence start-ups aiming to break into a sector where a handful of “primes” — large defence contractors including Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics and Boeing — have a stranglehold on lucrative government contracts.
The start-up, headquartered in Orange County, California, and led by virtual reality pioneer Palmer Luckey, has made inroads with the US and UK military, winning contracts to supply both with advanced weapons systems.
In 2022, it was awarded a $1bn contract by US Special Operations Command to provide anti-drone technology. Earlier this year, it beat Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Boeing to win a large US Air Force contract to provide collaborative combat aircraft.
Luckey co-founded Anduril in 2017 after he left Facebook, which had bought his virtual reality headset business, Oculus, for $2bn three years earlier.
SEE ALSO:
These Silicon Valley power players are backing Trump. Here’s how their political giving has evolved
https://www.sfchronicle.com/california/article/silicon-valley-trump-donations-19621024.php
Mark Cuban — 'the Left's favorite billionaire' — says some in Silicon Valley want Trump as America's CEO
https://qz.com/mark-cuban-silicon-valley-president-trump-ceo-elon-musk-1851620665