Silk Road

I saw the documentary film last night on A&E in my hotel room. It was really well done. They interviewed the IRS agent who outed Ross, the prosecutor who prosecuted him, the gf who knew him before he crossed the line, a writer who interviewed him online, a drug dealer selling on the site, his roommate and the victim of his murder to hire plot. Good stuff.

I recommend the film to anyone who has not seen it.

My two biggest takeaways:

1. No matter how clever you are, someone out there is always slightly more clever.

Take the "outing." The agent went back in time, before Silk Road came to be, and dug up some old posts Ross made under his real name. The old posts left just enough scent for the agent to uncover the trail. Watching it unfold was, for me, the best part.

2. No matter how clean you think you are, once you lay with pigs, you gonna get dirty.

Silk road was an aggregate drug purchasing site. As a result, it "partnered" with real drug dealers. It was rather fascinating watching someone who touted idealist, passive principles morph into some guy willing to order an execution. Stunning actually.

I thought "Silk Road" was some highway thing China was involved in........?

Rexedgar said:

I thought "Silk Road" was some highway thing China was involved in........?

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No. The Silk Road was actually began during the height of the Mongol Empire - it was said that a young virgin girl could walk alone for the thousand or so miles from one end to the other without even a hair on her head being threatened by bandits.

Today, it's the "One Belt, One Road" initiative that China is building, which is a plan for infrastructure and trade routes on a truly grand scale ("China-sized" is btw MUCH bigger than "Texas-sized"), and will spread from China to North Africa to Europe to most of Asia...and now will include a route across the Arctic which - thanks to global warming - will at some point (sooner rather than later) become navigable to container ships. The OBOR initiative will by all objective appearances cement China's place as the world's preeminent economic power. America - which stood a chance to stay in the game with the Trans-Pacific Partnership which would have ensured our dominant influence in the Pacific Basin - is now effectively out of the running, thanks to Trump's "America First"...which is quickly becoming "America Alone".

Rexedgar said:

I thought "Silk Road" was some highway thing China was involved in........?

Click to expand...

Back in the day, yes. Here lately, it was a dark web site for buying drugs.

Glen Contrarian said:

No. The Silk Road was actually began during the height of the Mongol Empire - it was said that a young virgin girl could walk alone for the thousand or so miles from one end to the other without even a hair on her head being threatened by bandits.

Today, it's the "One Belt, One Road" initiative that China is building, which is a plan for infrastructure and trade routes on a truly grand scale ("China-sized" is btw MUCH bigger than "Texas-sized"), and will spread from China to North Africa to Europe to most of Asia...and now will include a route across the Arctic which - thanks to global warming - will at some point (sooner rather than later) become navigable to container ships. The OBOR initiative will by all objective appearances cement China's place as the world's preeminent economic power. America - which stood a chance to stay in the game with the Trans-Pacific Partnership which would have ensured our dominant influence in the Pacific Basin - is now effectively out of the running, thanks to Trump's "America First"...which is quickly becoming "America Alone".

Click to expand...

Wow, that is great info. Thanks.