this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2023
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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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[–] PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee 27 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year 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.