Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/02/01/devos-adjascent-genocide.html
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Sounds like aiding and abetting to me.
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Couldn’t someone just pay some mercenaries to take out Eric Prince?
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Can anyone name two siblings who are as horrible as Erik Prince and Betsy DeVos are, who are horrible in such distinct fields?
Corroding public education in the the US and running mercenary death squads around the world is a hell of a swath to cover between a brother and sister, no?
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Sounds like a good case for expanding the terms for losing of US citizenship to me - how many countries military’s has he been the equivalent of a general for?
" Although a person’s enlistment in the armed forces of a foreign country may not constitute a violation of U.S. law, it could subject him or her to the provisions of Section 349(a)(3) of the INA [8 U.S.C. 1481(a)(3)] which provides for loss of U.S. nationality if a U.S national voluntarily and with the intention of relinquishing U.S. nationality enters or serves in the armed forces of a foreign state engaged in hostilities against the United States or serves in the armed forces of any foreign country as a commissioned or non-commissioned officer."
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There is synergy, though. To take an utterly cynical view, corroding public education fills the pipeline for both prison and the military. And the military fills the pipeline for mercenary companies.
It’s odd to me that China would allow foreign mercenaries on its soil. China is the most populous country in the world, with the largest military in the world, and it has no aversion to doing its own dirty work. What value can foreign mercenaries provide?
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Also, I remember the Behind the Bastards podcast arguing that the main reason for using Blackwater back in the day was to reduce the numbers of dead soldiers etc that the politicians had to answer for. As in, dead mercenaries not showing up in statistics the same way US soldiers would.
I can’t see the Chinese authorities needing Eric Prince to help them on the PR front?
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That’s the sticking point. 
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They’re doing what they’ve been doing in business and technology for years. Pay the foreigners to show them how, or steal the handbook, whatever works. Then copy the methods, get rid of the foreigners now that they don’t need them anymore, and put those methods into practice for their own gain. I would bet Blackwater won’t be needed anymore after the Chinese know everything they want to.
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"(3) entering, or serving in, the armed forces of a foreign state if
(A) such armed forces are engaged in hostilities against the United States, or
(B) such persons serve as a commissioned or non-commissioned officer;"
He looks like a general to me. But - let’s have him arrested and let the courts decide.
https://www.uscis.gov/ilink/docView/SLB/HTML/SLB/0-0-0-1/0-0-0-29/0-0-0-10446.html
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I was going to compare this to the British East India Company, but I see Prince already has:
Prince, likening his prospective force to the British East India Company, which in effect ruled parts of India in the 18th and 19th centuries, argued in May:
An East India Company approach would use cheaper private solutions to fill the gaps that plague the Afghan security forces, including reliable logistics and aviation support. The U.S. military should maintain a small special-operations command presence in the country to enable it to carry out targeted strikes, with the crucial difference that the viceroy would have complete decision-making authority in the country so no time is wasted waiting for Washington to send instructions. A nimbler special-ops and contracted force like this would cost less than $10 billion per year, as opposed to the $45 billion we expect to spend in Afghanistan in 2017.
I’m old enough to remember when the phrase “American Imperialists” was hurled as an insult and indignantly denied.
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I’m not sure what the British East India Company did, although probably a lot of terrible things. But I was educated in the Dutch one, the infamous VOC, and let me tell you it was a veritable smorgasbord of awful shit. Wars, genocide, you name it, they did it all in the name of profit. Why you would want to compare yourself to such organizations, I don’t know, but it says a lot.
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The Hudson’s Bay Company was nothing like that, according to the HBC website:
http://www.hbcheritage.ca/history/company-stories/a-brief-history-of-hbc
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I think the people Prince is bringing to the table have all been trained by the most elite special forces in the US and have serious combat experience all over the world, which would seem to be a pretty valuable commodity. My understanding is that the mercenaries working with Prince are not everyday grunts you stick behind a rifle, but all have some pretty high level experience on how to train as well.
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It’s a growth business.
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In addition to the other points outlined by other posts, foreign mercenaries don’t go home to a domestic Chinese audience and possibly say something. In addition the use of US mercenaries provides a global media shield if they are caught doing something particularly wicked. It wasn’t our good and wholesome people who committed genocide, it was Americans. We hired them for some basic guard duty and look what they did.
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That is a great podcast, and the episodes on Erik Prince were particularly noteworthy in describing the incredible Level of Sucky Evil that Prince has demonstrated his entire life.
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Interesting… Behind the Bastards covered the Dutch East India Company, too. It was appalling.
Were I a time-traveler, I think I’d skip the usual candidates for assassination (Hitler, Stalin, etc) and go straight to the masterminds behind the Dutch East India Co instead.
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Which was a lot of people, it being the first publicly traded company. Thousands of shareholders, tens of thousands of employees. Not only did they kill the populations of whole islands to get access to spices, they also were the prototype for the multinational mega corporation. Evil in more than one way, and yet the wealth of my country is based in a not insignificant part on it. Some legacy.
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Thanks for the clarification, I mis-read the original. (Probably why I’m not in the legal profession! 
)
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