I think this underscores the need for a comprehensive and independent assessment of all of SBF’s contacts with EA-affiliated people. (I recognize the various challenges to doing that.)
We aren’t told whether the unnamed FTX Foundation official was merely the recipient of this memo or whether they had more involvement.
Any evidence of an EA leader’s actual openness to this idea would likely be extremely troubling in my book. Of the narratives that may be factually defensible, I think the least damning is something like “A number of EA leaders knew he was somewhat shady, but we had no reason to think he’d steal from depositors so we thought it OK to take his money.” Everyone would have to decide for themselves how acceptable that narrative is, but it has some precedent—EA orgs wouldn’t be the first charities to take money from known-to-be-shady characters.
Evidence that someone was open to supporting SBF and allies “purchas[ing]” a country would be inconsistent with that mitigating narrative. As the quoted material in the complaint hints at, purchasing a sovereign country (if such a thing were possible) would put the relevant individuals basically above the law. “I knew he was kinda shady, but I thought he was trustworthy enough to support him buying his own country where he could control the law” would be a much harder position to defend.
I think this underscores the need for a comprehensive and independent assessment of all of SBF’s contacts with EA-affiliated people. (I recognize the various challenges to doing that.)
We aren’t told whether the unnamed FTX Foundation official was merely the recipient of this memo or whether they had more involvement.
Any evidence of an EA leader’s actual openness to this idea would likely be extremely troubling in my book. Of the narratives that may be factually defensible, I think the least damning is something like “A number of EA leaders knew he was somewhat shady, but we had no reason to think he’d steal from depositors so we thought it OK to take his money.” Everyone would have to decide for themselves how acceptable that narrative is, but it has some precedent—EA orgs wouldn’t be the first charities to take money from known-to-be-shady characters.
Evidence that someone was open to supporting SBF and allies “purchas[ing]” a country would be inconsistent with that mitigating narrative. As the quoted material in the complaint hints at, purchasing a sovereign country (if such a thing were possible) would put the relevant individuals basically above the law. “I knew he was kinda shady, but I thought he was trustworthy enough to support him buying his own country where he could control the law” would be a much harder position to defend.