In my last article, we walked through the three passivity commitments stapled to the back of the OCC’s approval of the Trump family’s new bank. Eric Trump signed one, a World Liberty co-founder signed another…
This article is about the other guy.
And you might want to actually sit down for this one, because my last piece was about a conflict of interest - this is about to make that look like a parking ticket.
This is going to be about national security, and the federal agency that claimed a national security review wasn’t their department.
(FYI - a passivity commitment is a promise not to go all “I am king” when you’re granted the right to create a bank.)
The other guy
One of the passivity commitments comes from a company called StringZ Holding RSC (DE) LLC. Normally I’d hyperlink the registration paperwork here or some kind of article about who they are, but this is a company seemingly no one has ever written a word about. I can’t find it listed in a single news story, corporate database, or filing anywhere except in this one letter - which is a hell of a finding (or lack thereof) for a shareholder in an American bank holding company.
It’s signed by Hamad Khlfan Ali Matar Alshamsi, Manager. (His last name is often spelled Al-Shamsi.)
In 2020, Citizen Lab researcher Bill Marczak went through the public register of the Abu Dhabi Global Market and published what he found. “Mr. Hamad Khlfan Ali Matar Alshamsi” was listed as the sole director of a company called Group 42 (G42), right there in a government database.
That’s a big fucking problem when you consider the fact that the register also included dude’s day job, which was noted as “Public Relations Manager at the Office of H.H. Sheikh Tahnoun Bin Zayed Al Nahyan.” That’s the UAE’s National Security Adviser.
The guy who runs the UAE’s intelligence services and his PR guy were running G42 together.
For good measure: The Associated Press confirmed it separately, reporting that G42’s sole director listed in Abu Dhabi Global Market filings is Hamad Khalfan al-Shamsi, identified by Marczak as the public relations manager of Sheikh Tahnoun’s office.
And for the record - Tahnoun is the brother of Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the whole ass President of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Why do we care about Group 42 (G42)?
In 2019 a messaging app called ToTok became wildly popular in the Middle East. It offered free video calls in a country where WhatsApp and Skype calling are banned, which honestly should’ve been the first red flag. It was promoted by both Emirati state-linked media and Huawei, a Chinese telecommunications company.
As more and more users in the eastern hemisphere started downloading the app, the US followed suit, and it quickly became one of the most downloaded social apps in the country…at least for a moment.
Something wasn’t right and the American media clocked it fast.
On December 22, 2019, the New York Times published an investigative report, thanks in part to American officials familiar with a classified intelligence assessment. The report stated that ToTok was a mass surveillance tool of the UAE. The Times noting:
“It has access to users’ microphones, cameras, calendar and other phone data.”
That’s a real concern when you consider the Times also reminded the class that the UAE has:
“been at the forefront of using surveillance technology to crack down on internal dissent — including hacking Western journalists, emptying the banking accounts of critics, and holding human rights activists in prolonged solitary confinement over Facebook posts.”
(Pretty shitty resume for the country whose spy chief’s press officer just signed onto a banking charter tied to the US President.)
Obviously Google pulled it from the Play Store within days and Apple removed it shortly thereafter. American embassy staff were ordered to scrub it from every government device - which goes to show just how seriously they were taking this…after the media made it public.
What does any of this have to do with G42?
Well, according to Abu Dhabi business filings reviewed by the Associated Press, ToTok’s sole registered shareholder was Group 42 (G42). Who was listed as running it? None other than Director, Hamad Khalfan Al-Shamsi. (Tahnoun would later tell the SEC he owns it, holding sole voting and decision-making control. We’ll get there.)
(To be clear, Al-Shamsi is not listed as a director of ToTok itself. He is listed as sole director of the company that owned it. Businessmen love to muddy the waters.)
They put the spy-shit in writing
ToTok’s people didn’t even bother trying to hide exactly what it was they were building. Two months before the Times published their findings, ToTok Technology Ltd filed a trademark application in Singapore. It’s public and anyone can read exactly what it was they were selling:
(Facial recognition software. Voice recognition software. Gesture recognition software. Biometric security systems. Electronic surveillance apparatus and instruments. Machine learning software for surveillance and security.)
A free messaging app claimed trademark protection over electronic surveillance apparatus and machine learning software for surveillance, in a public government filing, and not one person in a position to do anything about it seems to have been inclined to care. The address listed was Floor 23 of the Al Khatem Tower in Abu Dhabi Global Market Square, which will matter in about ninety seconds, give-or-take how fast you read.
Tahnoun told the US Government he owns G42
(This is about to get wordy and I apologize, but these guys make it complicated and boring on purpose so I need you to stay with me.)
In June 2022, G42 bought a stake in a North Carolina pharmaceutical company. Because of course they did. When you buy more than 5% of a public American company, you’re required to tell the government who you are. The form you have to fill out is called a Schedule 13D, and the one filed that June names two parties behind the purchase: G42 Investments AI Holding RSC Ltd, and HH Sheikh Tahnoon Bin Zayed S. Al-Nahyan.
The paperwork then explains the entire obnoxiously intricate corporate web:
Cliff-notes: The man who runs the UAE intelligence services told American securities regulators, in a signed federal filing, that he owns Group 42. (The company Hamad Khalfan Al-Shamsi is listed as the Director of.)
To boot, that same document places Group 42 on Floor 8 of the Al Khatem Tower in ADGM Square, which is fifteen floors below the company that had registered that ToTok trademark over surveillance.
Congress gave Commerce a deadline to act or explain themselves
On January 3, 2024, Republican Mike Gallagher (then chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party) wrote to (then Commerce Secretary) Gina Raimondo regarding:
“An Emirati artificial intelligence company that works extensively with the People’s Republic of China (PRC)’s military, intelligence services, and state-owned entities.”
The company he was talking about was Group 42.
His letter says DarkMatter, which it calls “a corporate affiliate of G42,” builds:
“Spyware and surveillance tools that can be used to spy on dissidents, journalists, politicians, and U.S. companies.”
The New York Times described DarkMatter as:
“an Abu Dhabi-based cyberintelligence [sic] and hacking firm where Emirati intelligence officials, former National Security Agency employees and former Israeli military intelligence operatives work.”
Gallagher’s letter noted the State Department had already fined former American employees of DarkMatter under the Arms Export Control Act (“The basic U.S. law providing the authority and general rules for the conduct of Foreign Military Sales and commercial sales of defense articles, defense services, and training.”) while Commerce “has failed to place any restrictions on DarkMatter, G42, or their affiliated companies.” It then names thirteen entities, five of them DarkMatter companies registered inside China, and demanded that Commerce determine whether any of them belong on the Entity List - which isn’t as ambiguous as it sounds. The Entity List “identifies persons or addresses of persons reasonably believed to be involved, or to pose a significant risk of being or becoming involved, in activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.”
This wasn’t some performative congressman filing paperwork in an attempt to make it look like he was doing something. He provided his concerns, listed examples and gave a deadline of when he expected a response. If Commerce decided the companies didn’t belong on the Entity List, the letter says, it needed to “provide a detailed explanation as to why as soon as possible but no later than February 2nd, 2024.”
And unfortunately…I can find no public record of Commerce ever responding at all. What happened instead, is that nine days after that deadline, G42 announced it had sold off its stakes in Chinese companies. Gallagher noted it as a welcome first step.
Two months after that, Microsoft put $1.5 billion into G42 and Raimondo publicly praised the deal as a way of keeping the company out of China’s camp.
G42 was never placed on the Entity List.
Two years later, Commerce cleared it for American AI chips.
It gets worse. So much worse.
On July 10, 2026, Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security moved the UAE into Country Group A:5, which is the most privileged export tier the US has. With their new distinction, Reuters reported that G42 was among the companies that would no longer need a license to get American AI chips and servers.
Senator Elizabeth Warren did what she does best - she paid attention and (like my favorite menace always does) called the Trump administration out on their bullshit, saying:
“We already know that the UAE royal behind G42 and MGX secretly bought a 49% stake in the Trump crypto company, World Liberty Financial… Now, Trump’s Commerce Department is giving G42 license-free access to advanced AI chips and promising favorable treatment for MGX, despite reported concerns about the diversion of sensitive technology to China and other national security risks.”
A Republican House chairman had given Commerce a hard deadline to justify why it was or wasn’t blacklisting this company, and two and a half years later - Commerce handed it license-free access to the most sensitive technology America has to offer.
And make no mistake about it - this wasn’t some compromise, partial approval, or carefully crafted bureaucratic negotiation. It was the exact opposite of what a member of Trump’s own party demanded, delivered to a company owned by a foreign intelligence chief, by an administration whose President’s family had just taken half a billion dollars from the same man’s orbit.
And yes, you read that right.
On January 16, 2025, four days before Trump’s inauguration (and one day before Trump dropped his $TRUMP memecoin), lieutenants to Sheikh Tahnoun quietly signed a deal to buy 49% of World Liberty Financial for half a billion dollars. The Wall Street Journal broke the story a year later in a piece titled “‘Spy Sheikh’ Bought Secret Stake in Trump Company.”
Eric Trump signed the deal, just like he signed the passivity commitment promising to behave when it comes to his orange-daddy’s new bank.
The buyers paid half up front, sending $187 million to Trump family entities and at least $31 million to entities tied to the family of Steve Witkoff. Steve Witkoff had been named US envoy to the Middle East weeks earlier - and according to fucking maps, the UAE is in the Middle East.
None of this was disclosed. At the time it was being signed, Tahnoun just so happened to be pushing the US for access to the exact AI chips he would eventually get - license free.
World Liberty’s spokesman denied the deal had anything to do with the chips. Trump reigns king of coincidence.
And then came August 14
Thirty-five days after getting fast-tracked access to America’s most sensitive technology, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency approved a national trust charter for a bank the President’s family owns a piece of.
Stapled to the back of it is a signed pledge from the man Abu Dhabi’s own register listed as sole director of Group 42 - the man in charge of Tahnoun’s public image, Hamad Khalfan Al-Shamsi.
(/s/ means signed)
On another page of that same letter, the OCC wrote that CFIUS review - the process that exists for the sole purpose of screening foreign investments for national security concerns - falls outside the scope of its review. Then a few pages after that, the same agency mentions almost in passing that it had collected passivity commitments from certain US and non-US investors in World Liberty Financial.
Foreign ownership was somehow outside of their job description, but somebody had walked down the hall to collect some signatures about it. The government rarely collects a written promise from a person they don’t foresee being a problem. So, they acknowledged foreign investors needed to put a promise in writing - but denied that any national security review was any of their business?
That makes no sense - because it doesn’t make sense.
TLDR…
Nobody named here has been charged with a crime. And isn’t that a fucking sentence.
The man who signed a pledge to a United States banking regulator sits in Abu Dhabi’s public register as sole Director of Group 42 and as press officer to the man who runs Emirati intelligence.
Group 42 was the registered shareholder of the messaging app ToTok, an app American intelligence assessed as a foreign surveillance tool - which was backed up by the company’s own trademark filing.
The National Security Adviser of the UAE told the SEC - under his own name - that he owns Group 42.
A Republican House committee chairman gave Commerce a deadline to explain why that company would or wouldn’t be blacklisted, but Commerce gave it American AI chips instead. Thirty-five days later, the OCC accepted the signature of that same company’s listed director on a charter for the President’s family’s bank.
Every single one of those facts was sitting in a government file, out in the wild for anyone to find - but it didn’t matter. A federal agency filed his signature away as some kind of written pinky-promise of good intentions - and said foreign ownership and national security were somebody else’s problem.
And now it feels like everyone’s problem.
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