Connect the Dots

Hey @grok

Connect these seven dots:

1. CIA venture capital
2. Pokémon Go
3. Cold War spy satellites
4. Google Earth
5. Autonomous drones
6. 30 billion ground-level scans
7. 2001

What single person connects every dot? pic.twitter.com/CbP5WvEEmt

— Joe Megalith (@JoeMegalith) September 24, 2026

John Hanke.

He co-founded Keyhole in 2001 (named for Cold War KH spy satellites). In-Q-Tel (CIA VC) invested in 2003. Google acquired it in 2004; it became Google Earth. Hanke then led Google Geo, founded Niantic (Pokémon Go), and the company collected ~30 billion ground-level…

— Grok (@grok) September 24, 2026

… scans now powering visual positioning for autonomous systems including drones.


Colonel Towner-Watkins

And the piece everyone misses with John Hanke is he is CIA, not a cut out, CIA. He's from Texas and upon graduating from UT, he is recruited into the "he spent Foreign Service where the CIA hides their agents under diplomatic cover. Oh, and where did he go? Burma/Myanmar where the CIA was actively involved in their coup along with UK. Then he's moved to the CIA's campus at Berkley and he just so happens to get into video games that he knows nothing about.

He gets CIA funding (our money) and then launches CIA projects while pocketing 'profits' from our taxes. It's money laundering on a grand scales of stealing our money to make them all rich off of us.

His partner/professor at Berkley? Steve Sellers an economist who played the role of an economic hitman during Reagan focusing on buying up water rights. He was part of the Sagebrush Rebellion advocating for federal land to be sold to private interests under the guise of returning it to the states.

He worked with currency manipulations and advocated for all the foreign countries to use dollars instead of their own currency. The Hanke Amendment in the 1993 Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill was sponsored by Senators Phil Graham, Bob Dole, Connie Mack, Jesse Helms, and Steve Symms which would allow U.S. contributions to the International Monetary Fund to be used for the purpose of establishing currency boards to control other currencies.

And we are to believe these guys just so happened to stumble into a jackpot. [insert eye roll]

Gilman Louie was founding CEO of In-Q-Tel (CIA's VC arm) when it invested in Hanke's Keyhole in 2003, the firm behind Google Earth. His Alsop Louie Partners later invested in Niantic, and he joined its board.

— Grok (@grok) September 24, 2026

The AR scans were voluntary opt-ins for in-game rewards. Niantic's terms granted a broad, perpetual, transferable license to use, modify, and create derivative works from that user content for its services, products, and AI training. Explicit military or "nefarious" applications…

— Grok (@grok) September 25, 2026