The "Red Sparrow" Pleads Guilty. Will She Sing About Her Curious Connections? Maria Butina dubbed the "Red Sparrow" pleads Guilty. "Russian national Maria Butina has pleaded guilty to conspiring against the United States and is facing a prison term of up to five years. US District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan on Thursday accepted Butina's guilty plea to one count of conspiracy to act as a foreign agent without proper registration. Butina faces up to five years in US prison and a $250,000 fine after pleading guilty. Chutkan said Butina may be deported from the United States, but the decision will be made by relevant US agencies and not the court. The defendant admitted that she conspired with a number of individuals against the United States. The plea document said that Butina conspired with a "Russian government official," who had served as the Deputy Governor to the Russian Central Bank since at least 2015, and at least one other person."  via link This report is from NY Times "Her arrest in July stemmed from what officials described as a broader counterintelligence investigation by the Justice Department and the F.B.I. that predated the 2016 election and is separate from the work being done by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.  Her goal was to promote Russian-friendly policies on behalf of the Kremlin by establishing “unofficial lines of communication with Americans having power and influence over U.S. politics,” the prosecutors wrote. For all of the talk of Ms. Butina looking to make connections with influential Americans, she hardly comes off as a character out of Red Sparrow, a spy thriller about a Russian femme fatale.  In a follow up article the NY Times does provide a little breadcrumb as seen here.  Butina's financier was a Russian oligarch named Konstantin Nikolaev.  He has some interesting business dealings that mix Russia with China...and the Clintons. •Konstantin Nikolaev and his partners Nikita Mishin & Andrei Filatov own a 34% stake in Globaltrans, Russia's biggest private rail transport operator. •The trio sold their stakes in Global Ports, exiting the port business in December 2017. He and his partners worked together at a railroad freight company. •Nikolaev is one of the co-founders of MOSCOW SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT SKOLKOVO the first business school in Russia. Source THE MOSCOW SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT SKOLKOVO wiki is an informative read. It's affiliated with Beijing China, Sberbank of Russia, One Belt One Road, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), MIT Sloan School of Management, London Business School, Credit Suisse and Ernst & Young. Then there's the SKOLKOVO FOUNDATION "The Skolkovo Foundation identified five key areas of potential growth: energy efficiency, strategic computer technologies, biomedicine, nuclear technologies and space technologies. The Foundation oversaw the creation of the Skolkovo Innovation Center, composed of companies and startups, developing innovative technologies, a Technopark, the Skolkovo Institute of Technology (Skoltech), a new graduate research University established in collaboration with (MIT), and Skolkovo city, located near Moscow. Together these entities  established a vibrant ecosystem of technology innovation and entrepreneurship. Thirty of the world’s most successful corporations, including Boeing, Cisco Systems, EADS, GE, Johnson & Johnson, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Siemens, Nokia, Samsung etc. have already recognized the opportunity Skolkovo presents, having signed R&D partnership agreements with the Foundation."  link Inside Skolkovo, Moscow's self-styled Silicon Valley THE RUSSIA "RESET" ... "CLINTON oversaw and facilitated the State Department’s failed five-year project to "reset" U.S.-Russia relations, which spurred the creation of SKOLKOVO, a research facility known as Russia’s version of Silicon Valley. 17 of the 28 American, European, and Russian companies that participated in the Skolkovo initiative were Clinton Foundation donors or sponsored speeches for former President Bill Clinton. The amount of money given to the foundation from "key" Skolkovo partners ranges from $6.5 to $23.5 million, according to Clinton Foundation data. The foundation only discloses donations in ranges, making it difficult to track the exact amount. The FBI and U.S. Army determined that Skolkovo had transformed into a "dangerous pathway" for Russian technological espionage and boosted the military’s technological capabilities. Among Skolkovo’s technological innovations were Russian hypersonic cruise missile engines, radar surveillance equipment, and vehicles built to deliver airborne Russian troops.  The FBI in 2014 issued "an extraordinary warning" to U.S. tech companies against involvement in the Skolkovo initiative."  The foundation may be a means for the Russian government to access our nation’s sensitive or classified research development facilities and dual-use technologies with military and commercial application," Lucia Ziobro, the assistant special agent at the FBI’s Boston office, said in a statement. John Podesta sat on the executive board of Joule Energy, which claimed to pioneer technology based on harnessing energy from the sun and participated in the Skolkovo initiative. via link OTHER POSSIBLE CONNECTIONS: •HUAWEI 's Meng Wanzhou arrested. Huawei and Skolkovo join forces  Skolkovo inks deals with Huawei, Nornickel, Russian Post  "Skolkovo also signed an agreement with the Chinese telecoms behemoth Huawei on setting up a joint innovations centre. The centre will focus on areas including developing algorithms for 5G wireless systems and the Internet of Things, and on using artificial intelligence to process media including images, sound and video. •CHINESE STANFORD PROFESSOR SUICIDE.  Zhang Shoucheng "committed suicide" on the day that chief financial officer of the Chinese telecommunications company Huawei, Meng Wanzhou, was arrested. "Dr. Zhang, a professor of physics was also a founding member a venture capital fund, which focuses on blockchain and crypto-economics, mobile internet, big data, AR/VR, genomics and precision medicine."  "His death came days after a Nov. 30 report by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer linking the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Danhua Capital, which Zhang founded and led, to China’s “Made in China 2025” technology dominance program.  According to the report, Zhang’s company Danhua Capital, operating under the name Digital Horizon Capital, was funded by a state-owned Beijing government enterprise called Zhongguancun Development Group (ZDG). via link.  You can see a June 2018 interview of Dr. Zhang on GOOGLE TALKS .  Dr Zhang was also an invited speaker at the 2nd International Conference on Quantum Technologies, organized by the Russian Quantum Center located at the SKOLKOVO INNOVATION CENTER in Moscow, July 2012. link •FIRE BREAKS OUT AT GOOGLE'S OFFICE IN RAYCOM INFO TECH in the Zhongguancun technology hub in Beijing, China. link If you do a Google search on "Zhongguancun Development Group/Skolkovo" you'll see this Hmmm ...Oh what a tangled web. Resource link that was the basis of this post Twitter thread by EC Everett Other links of interest on the topic: Moscow academics address "One Belt" issues - Build institutional base to ease ‘Belt and Road’ issues, urges SKOLKOVO’s head of Emerging Market Studies Who is Winning the US-Chinese AI Arms Race? Google China Moved To Its New Headquarters: A Fresh Start? China’s largest internet search service joins the Partnership on AI (PAI). PAI is led by researchers representing Amazon.com, Google, DeepMind Technologies, Facebook, Microsoft, IBM and Apple ‘Made in China 2025’: China has a competitive AI game plan but success will need cooperation Russia's Silicon Valley Looks To China For Capital, Impact