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'Mystery company' buys $800M worth of land near Travis AFB, raising concerns about national security (abc7news.com)

submitted 11 months ago by PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee to c/world@lemmy.world

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Foreign LLC continues to acquire land in California critical to energy and national defense.

FAIRFIELD, Calif. (KGO) -- The United States Air Force is investigating a company that's purchased $800 million of land near Travis Air Force Base, one of the most critical military bases in the U.S. But after eight months of investigation, government officials have been unable to identify who's behind it nor rule out any threat to national security.

Flannery LLC was founded 4 and 1/2 years ago and was registered to a Washington DC-based law firm.

There is no information about the actual ownership of this LLC. The previous Reddit thread from 4 years ago has some interesting tidbits of information that you may be interested in reading in addition to the new article.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Sacramento/comments/c96bkb/a_mysterious_corporation_has_quietly_bought/

What's additionally interesting is that the land that they acquired around Travis Air Force Base will be bayfront property with future sea level increases of between 3 to 5 ft. NOAA has predicted the sea level increase will blow by that with a 7.2 ft average global sea level rise by 2100.

So either we have a secretive Chinese back shell company acquiring critical infrastructure and land for spying on American military assets, or a very optimistic wealthy investor with way too much money and is getting creative in what kind of investment schemes they park their money in.

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[-] Chetzemoka@kbin.social 62 points 11 months ago

Oh, so NOW the feds have a problem with secret corporate ownership.

Maybe let's do something to limit the onshore tax havens in Delaware, Wyoming, Nevada....

[-] Xanthobilly@lemmy.world 11 points 11 months ago

When you own a piece of land, the feds own you, when you own all the land, you own the feds.

[-] Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever@lemmy.world 37 points 11 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

[removed by mod]

[-] PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee 13 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I used to work near the Davis-Montham Air Force Base down in Tucson. Worked with a couple of guys who were Air Force maintenance tax during the weekends and they worked with me during the weekdays. I used to drive right through the boneyard on my way to work.

Anyways, they used to black out the Air Base on a regular basis when they were landing various top secret or black project aircraft. These included drones as well as maybe stealth aircraft. So, even though this was visible from the highway they were still operating secretive aircraft into and out of that base.

My favorite aircraft that they landed that I saw while driving by one day was watching an x-47 Pegasus land. That was a surreal experience and I only figured out what aircraft it was a few months ago! I saw one of those land back in 2002.

As far as intelligence being gathered, their number of interesting drone encounters that have been published on the war zone over the last 10 years, including one instance at an airbase and the Phoenix nuclear power reactor where drones outran helicopters that were sent to investigate. Some shady stuff going on.

Edit - also, they spent about a billion dollars on the land around the Travis Air Force Base. That's a lot of money!

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 11 points 11 months ago

an x-47 Pegasus

For those curious like me, it was an unmanned attack plane that never saw service but looks cool.

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[-] wanderingmagus@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago

Just because someone who isn't cleared can see it, doesn't mean it's not classified, and doesn't mean it's declassified. They really emphasized that after the minecraft server leak.

[-] Mic_Check_One_Two@reddthat.com 29 points 11 months ago

If Travis AFB is truly that concerned about it, why haven’t they simply bought the land instead? It’s the military; We all know they have literal billions of dollars to waste. Instead of complaining about some mystery investor purchasing the land, why not purchase it yourselves and incorporate it into the AFB?

[-] PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee 37 points 11 months ago

The military isn't just allowed to buy up land willy nilly without oversight and direction from civilian officials. Do you remember when Clinton closed hundreds and thousands of military sites back in the '90s?

So they don't really get to decide on basic expansions solely within the military. And generally speaking, the military doesn't spend unnecessary money to expand military bases and provide a buffer zone around land that isn't used for bombing ranges and whatnot. Travis appears to be just a typical Air Force air base with a couple of runways.

However, these articles point toward other very shady acts going on including the proposed 400 ft tall observation Tower to oversee the airbase. Why would a farming operation or a land investor want an observation tower to overlook an Air Force Base?

[-] stinky613 11 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

The 400ft tall silo was near Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota and was known to be owned by a company from China

None of that has any tie to the company that bought land near Travis AFB

Land purchased by a Chinese company near one US AFB doesn't logically imply that any purchased land near a US AFB is a Chinese spy operation

[-] Entropywins@kbin.social 5 points 11 months ago

Yeah I'd be a bit concerned of something around minot afb myself... used to be stationed there back in the early 2000's

[-] stinky613 5 points 11 months ago

Yeah a 400ft tall silo overlooking Minot AFB is concerning. It also has nothing to do with OPs article about Travis AFB

China does enough shady shit that we don't need baseless accusations being thrown around

[-] PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee 4 points 11 months ago

I see, thank you for correcting me. It does look like these two entities purchasing land are separate, although it is not impossible for them to both be funded by China.

[-] overzeetop@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

I suppose the best option would be to decide to expand the fan, condemn the land, and take it over using eminent domain for assessed value on the tax records.

[-] Can_you_change_your_username@kbin.social 28 points 11 months ago

Quick somebody find a way to link this to China so we can get the GOP to start yelling about limiting foreign investment in US real estate. With a little luck we might can wrangle this into something that will lower the cost of housing.

[-] afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 8 points 11 months ago

Have we tried building more housing? I know radical idea.

[-] Can_you_change_your_username@kbin.social 7 points 11 months ago

Yeah, it keeps getting bought up and turned into airbnbs.

[-] agitatedpotato@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

If you allow land to be turned into an investment opportunity why would anyone whos got that kind of money put a regular house there and sell it when they could just make it a permanent investment at the cost of other people not being able to buy houses to live in.

[-] KaiReeve@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

This is the real issue right here. It's more than just Airbnb's, though, it's all 'investment real estate'.

The solution would be to exponentially increase taxes for those who own multiple properties, but property tax is typically handled on the county level, so this would be tricky. Also, the people who could implement such a tax all own multiple properties, so there's a conflict of interest there.

[-] OminousOrange@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 months ago

Canada is struggling with this at the moment. It's a great idea on paper, but our development style is unsustainable and we simply can't keep up with demand. Not to mention that build costs are up 50% since 2020.

Affordable, efficient housing that is close to amenities is what is needed, but supplying that is quite unlikely given build costs and North America's infatuation with the suburb.

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[-] PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee 3 points 11 months ago

There's a good chance that China was a one harassing US Navy warships a few years ago.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/drone-swarms-that-harassed-navy-ships-demystified-in-new-documents

Not definitive however.

[-] SCB@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

Lowering retail investment will not lower the cost of housing - quite the opposite.

[-] LordOfTheChia@lemmy.world 25 points 11 months ago

Others have pointed out that the purchased land is predicted to remain farmable when other regions in California become too dry to farm.

However, them suing landowners for not selling points to either extreme greed or a project that may necessitate having a contiguous portion of land.

[-] PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Really? Most of this land looks like it is marginal land that is not very productive for anything. It's very low lying, around 0 to 1 ft above sea level and much of that area is actually tidal flats protected by dikes from the bay.

I've driven around the bay before, and there's a lot of shitty land around it that's basically not used for anything. I wouldn't even want to own a house along that area because it will be underwater within 20 or 30 years anyways.

[-] reddig33@lemmy.world 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

This has been posted multiple times and it has been pointed out each time that the company isn’t really a mystery.

For example:

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/california-landowners-are-sued-510-million-over-inflated-real-estate-prices-2023-05-19/

[-] LordOfTheChia@lemmy.world 24 points 11 months ago

The company isn't a mystery, however the ownership, leadership, and investors of the company are unknown.

Only the lawyers are known so far.

[-] dogslayeggs@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

OK, so if the company isn't a mystery, then who are their owners or directors? Where did they get $800 million?

[-] chaogomu@kbin.social 4 points 11 months ago

Travis isn't even the best base in California to spy on. Beale AFB is just up the road and has more interesting shit.

[-] skepticalifornia@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

I live up the road from Beale and there is always weird shit going on there.

[-] Duder167@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago

I always hear the old lady from Beavis and butthead do America when I hear the name Travis

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[-] LexiconDexicon@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

What if it's a wealthy Native American just buying their land back? Probably not, but it would be peak irony

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this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2023

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