Even though this site screams “wordpress blogspam” – no editors listed, all the “authors” are listed as three letters without bios, and those authors cover the Everything beat (or close to it) – they are owned by Wirtualna Polska. According to their Wikipedia page:
Wirtualna Polska (WP [vuˈpɛ]) is a group of companies operating in the media and e-commerce sectors.
The WP Group owns the Wirtualna Polska horizontal portal founded in 1995 and known for being the first internet portal in Poland. It is currently the second largest online news source and one of the most quoted news media in the country. According to the Gemius/PBI surveys around 21 million Poles use WP’s internet products every month.
That’s a lot of Poles! So the parent company at least is big in Poland, apparently. But, not listing the source, authors, or editors is sketch no matter how many Poles use your internet products.
This exact story was published nearly simultaneously on DailyWrap.ca. There it’s credited to “ed. Tomasz Waleński.” Hey, that’s two of the three letters in “TWA,” the “author” of this story! Though it appears he’s the editor not the author. Tomasz Waleński is a real guy who works for WP. Here’s an interview he did with Steve Horrell who is also a real guy. DailyWrap.ca looks identical to EssaNews and is also owned by WP. DailyWrap.uk is another lookalike. They seem to own a few low-quality click harvesters. They don’t mention any of them on their brand page.
The earliest reporting of this story I could find is from WaPo. They mention 8VC but not a connection to Russia. This specific angle looks to be reported exclusively by a number of no-reputation sources possibly because it’s a pretty tenuous connection. Musk probably would’ve been aware of Joe Lonsdale but not individual investors or employees at 8VC. The Forbes article mentioned (but not linked! Dicks.) is an interesting read though.
