TechCrunch

The reporting we cite

12 stories, each opening at its source.

• Bancor Network — Guy Benartzi and Galia Benartzi as co-founders (Bancor corporate history and TechCrunch coverage)
• Joey Krug at Founders Fund (April 2023) and lead role on Polymarket $45M round (2024) — TechCrunch / Founders Fund public portfolio
• Flock Safety Series F at $7.5B valuation (March 13, 2025) — TechCrunch
• TechCrunch · 19 founders and VCs working with Elon Musk’s DOGE (March 26, 2025)
• TechCrunch — Praxis co-founder Dryden Brown: 'I went to Greenland to try to buy it'
• Keith Rabois resigns from Square (2013) — TechCrunch
• 'FBI is buying location data to track US citizens, director confirms' (TechCrunch, Mar. 18, 2026) — Patel confirms purchases and declines Wyden's request to stop, at the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing
• TechCrunch — Meta whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams' Senate testimony (April 2025)
• TechCrunch — 'Anthropic endorses California's AI safety bill, SB 53' (a rare industry endorsement, against CTA/Chamber of Progress lobbying)
• TechCrunch — Anduril raises $5B, doubles valuation to $61B (round led by Andreessen Horowitz and Thrive Capital)
• TechCrunch — 'Congress might block state AI laws for 10 years — here's what it means' (the moratorium proposal)
• TechCrunch · A16z-backed Toka wants to help US agencies hack into security cameras and other IoT devices (December 6, 2024)

Where their work appears on this site

• Don't Name the Funders →
• Polymarket: Cantor, Palantir, and the PROMIS lineage →
• Sovereignty for Sale →
• The Engagement Machine →
• The National Design Studio →
• The Section 230 Playbook →
• The Shopping Cart →
• Military Grift →
• Self-Dealing & Crony Capitalism →
• Surveillance State(s) and the Criminalization of Dissent →
• The Outrage & Apathy Economy →
• The Tech Right →
• Who Controls What You Get to Know →

How we graded the claims built on their work

11 FACT · 2 PROBABLY TRUE. A grade is our reading of the public record on one claim, not a verdict on the person.

1. 4. The Scrubbed Prehistory — TokenUnion, Bancor, Founders Fund

   PROBABLY TRUE
   Polymarket: Cantor, Palantir, and the PROMIS lineage →

2. Flock Safety — the private ALPR layer under the public one

   FACT
   Surveillance States →

3. From Airbnb to DOGE to NDS

   FACT
   The National Design Studio →

4. It's not only Lauder: the same Thiel-funded 'network state' crowd behind Próspera is pushing to turn Greenland into a 'freedom city.'

   FACT
   Sovereignty for Sale →

5. Keith Rabois — 1992 Stanford slur and $9.3 million in GOP donations since 2022

   FACT
   Surveillance States →

6. Marc Andreessen’s parallel DOGE role

   FACT
   The National Design Studio →

7. March 18, 2026: the FBI director confirmed it under oath — and would not stop.

   FACT
   The Shopping Cart →

8. Meta flagged teens' emotional states to advertisers — including after a girl deleted a selfie.

   FACT
   The Engagement Machine →

9. The honest complication: the industry is not monolithic — and our own maker is the counterexample.

   FACT
   The Section 230 Playbook →

10. Those companies are backed by the exact investors the guest says she was told not to name: Andreessen Horowitz and Peter Thiel's Founders Fund.

    FACT
    Don't Name the Funders →

11. Today's ask #2: the moratorium — Congress twice tried to freeze all state AI regulation, and the Senate stripped a ten-year version 99–1.

    FACT
    The Section 230 Playbook →

12. Toka’s product line, per its own pitch documents: “Discover, Hack, Alter”

    FACT
    The National Design Studio →

13. Where the lineage lands in 2026: Polymarket

    PROBABLY TRUE
    Military Grift →