2. Brenda Shaffer, “Russia’s Next Land Grab,” New York Times, September 9, 2014.

3. Brenda Shaffer, “Stopping Russia from Cornering Europe’s Energy Market,” Washington Post, November 3, 2014.

4. Casey Michel, “This Professor Refuses to Disclose Her Work for an Autocratic Regime. Here’s What Happened When I Confronted Her,” New Republic, January 22, 2015.

5. Robert Coalson, “Azerbaijan’s Opinion-Shaping Campaign Reaches ‘The New York Times,’” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, September 18, 2014.

6. Carl Schreck, “Sparks Fly over Scholar’s Azerbaijani Ties at Columbia University Event,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, October 24, 2014.

7. Till Bruckner, “How to Build Yourself a Stealth Lobbyist, Azerbaijani Style,” Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, June 22, 2015.

8. Collin Binkley, “Feds Say US Colleges ‘Massively’ Underreport Foreign Funding,” Associated Press, October 20, 2020.

9. U.S. Department of Education, “Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965,” last modified July 19, 2022.

10. Alexander Cooley, Tena Prelec, John Heathershaw, and Tom Mayne, “Paying for a World-Class Affiliation: Reputation Laundering in the University Sector of Open Societies,” working paper, National Endowment for Democracy, May 2021.

11. Brendan O’Brien, “Harvard and Yale Universities Investigated for Possible Non-Disclosure of Foreign Money,” Reuters, February 12, 2020.

12. Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, U.S. Senate, “China’s Impact on the US Education System,” February 27, 2019.

13. Office of the General Council, U.S. Department of Education, “Institutional Compliance with Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965,” October 2020.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid.

17. Phillip Martin, “MIT Abandons Russian High-Tech Campus Partnership in Light of Ukraine Invasion,” All Things Considered, WGBH, February 25, 2022.

18. Jessica Shi, “MIT Removed Russian Oligarch Viktor Vekselberg from Corporation in April 2018,” The Tech, January 18, 2019.

19. Cooley et al., “Paying for a World-Class Affiliation.”

20. The database can be found at https://sites.ed.gov/foreigngifts/. There remains ample room to improve the database, such as adding contracts, detailing which entities formalized the donations, and noting any additional requests or meetings that accompanied the donations.

21. Office of the General Council, “Institutional Compliance with Section 117.”

22. Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, “China’s Impact on the US Education System.”

23. Linda Yeung and Ng Kang-chung, “Harvard University Receives Largest Ever Donation from Hong Kong Foundation,” South China Morning Post, September 8, 2014.

24. Ben Rooney, “Harvard Gets Record $350 Million Donation,” CNN Money, September 8, 2014.

25. Cooley et al. “Paying for a World-Class Affiliation.”

26. Guillermo S. Hava, “The Other Chan: Donation Sanitization at the School of Public Health,” Harvard Crimson, October 19, 2020.

27. Jonathan L. Katzman, “Distasteful Donations,” Harvard Crimson, September 6, 2019.

28. “Ronnie & Gerald Chan,” Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/profile/ronnie-gerald-chan/?sh=4704cc285948, accessed 3 March 2023.

29. Author interview.

30. Austin Ramzy, “Asia Society Blames Staff for Barring Hong Kong Activist’s Speech,” New York Times, July 7, 2017.

31. “Statement on PEN Hong Kong Event, Joshua Wong,” Asia Society, July 6, 2017.

32. “Asia Society Staff Survey 2019,” uploaded by Casey Michel, https://www.scribd.com/document/495683135/Asia-Society-Staff-Survey-2019.

33. Author interview.

34. Casey Michel and David Szakonyi, “America’s Cultural Institutions Are Quietly Fueled by Russian Corruption,” Foreign Policy, October 30, 2020.

35. John de Boer, “What Are Think Tanks Good For?,” Centre for Policy Research, United Nations University, March 17, 2015.

36. Ben Freeman, “Foreign Funding of Think Tanks in America,” Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative, Center for International Policy, Washington, DC, January 2020.

37. “Our Mission,” Aspen Institute, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/what-we-do/#:~:text=The%20Aspen%20Institute%20is%20a,United%20States%20and%20the%20world, accessed 3 March 2023.

38. Freeman, “Foreign Funding of Think Tanks in America.”

39. “About the Atlantic Council,” Atlantic Council, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/about/, accessed 3 March 2023.

40. Freeman, “Foreign Funding of Think Tanks in America.”

41. Author interview.

42. “International Advisory Board,” Atlantic Council, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/about/international-advisory-board/, accessed 3 March 2023. As mentioned earlier, Pinchuk denies any financial links to Manafort’s network.

43. Ryan Grim and Clio Chang, “Amid Internal Investigation over Leaks to Media, the Center for American Progress Fires Two Staffers,” The Intercept, January 16, 2019.

44. Eric Lipton, Brooke Williams, and Nicholas Confessore, “Foreign Powers Buy Influence at Think Tanks,” New York Times, September 6, 2014.

45. Ibid.

46. Ibid.

47. Casey Michel, “Congress Takes Aim at Think Tanks and Their Corrupt Money,” New Republic, June 27, 2022.

48. Kjølv Egeland and Benoît Pelopidas, “No such thing as a free donation? Research funding and conflicts of interest in nuclear weapons policy analysis,” International Relations, December 22, 2022.

49. In the Matter of the Search of Information Stored Within the iCloud Account Associated with DSID/Apple Account Number 1338547227, Application for a Warrant by Telephone or Other Reliable Electronic Means, U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Case No. 2:22-MJ-1530, April 15, 2022, https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22062338-allen-search-warrant?responsive=1&title=1.

50. Alan Suderman and Jim Mustian, “FBI Seizes Retired General’s Data Related to Qatar Lobbying,” Associated Press, June 7, 2022.

51. In the Matter of the Search of Information…, Application for a Warrant.

52. Michel, “Congress Takes Aim at Think Tanks.”

53. Associated Press, “FBI Seizes Retired General’s Data Related to Qatar Lobbying,” Politico, June 7, 2022.

54. Lipton, Williams, and Confessore, “Foreign Powers Buy Influence at Think Tanks.”

55. Ibid.

56. Nahal Toosi, “Trump Administration Demands Think Tanks Disclose Foreign Funding,” Politico, October 13, 2020.

57. Michael R. Pompeo, “On Transparency and the Foreign Funding of U.S. Think Tanks,” press statement, U.S. Department of State, October 13, 2020.

58. Secretary Pompeo (@secpompeo), “The @StateDept will henceforth request think tanks that accept money from foreign governments disclose this information to the public. The purpose is simple: to promote free and open dialogue, untainted by the machinations of authoritarian regimes,” Twitter, 11:47 a.m. October 13, 2020, https://twitter.com/secpompeo/status/1316042794411196417.

15. YOU’RE FUCKED

1. “Bloomberg: Would Be Godsend if More Billionaires Moved to NYC,” NBC 4 New York, September 20, 2013.

2. Paul Manafort, Political Prisoner: Persecuted, Prosecuted, but Not Silenced (New York: Skyhorse, 2022).

3. Ibid.

4. U.S. Department of Justice, “Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election” (Mueller Report), March 2019.

5. Another vector of Russian meddling that the Mueller Report overlooked