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In many ways, the case that sent Daniel Elie Bouaziz to prison in 2023 for money laundering felt like just another chapter in Ronnie Walkers storied career. Over the course of his nearly 30 years working as an undercover agent with the FBI, Walker had taken part in countless stings like this: posing as a buyer or dealer, meeting suspects in art-scented lounges or dusty storage units, working to earn their trust. He caught Warhol counterfeiters slapping fake signatures over bogus canvases. He helped recover stolen Rembrandt paintings from a Seattle-area art thief. He spent months earning the trust of Earl MarshawnWashington, the now-infamous printmaker and forger who created and sold thousands of knockoffs. The Bouaziz case stood out only for how little effort it seemed to require. His Palm Beach gallery peddled fakesGeorgia O’Keeffe, Keith Haring, and Banksy among themmarketing inexpensive reproductions as originals, aided by bogus provenance documents and falsified signatures. His con worked well, for a while at least: Pieces could fetch prices into the tens or even hundreds of thousands. Walker knew how that line worked. As a founding member of the FBIs Art Crime Team, hed gone undercover in dozens of operations. Formed in 2004 in response to the looting of Iraqi museums and growing international art trafficking, the Art Crime Team was designed as a specialized unit of agents trained in cultural property law, art history, and international smuggling. It began with just a handful of agentsincluding Walkerand over time helped shape how law enforcement handled everything from Nazi-looted artworks to modern-day forgery rings. Collectively, the team has aided in the recovery of 20,000 pieces, worth in sum about $1 billion. Weve done a lot with a little, says David Bass, a longtime FBI agent who helped launch the Art Crime Team alongside Walker in 2004. Twenty agents may sound like a lot, but its not; its a very, very tiny team. For Walker, sometimes undercover work meant dressing like a disheveled billionaire with too much money to care; other times, it meant channeling a gallery hipster in thick glasses and a fedora. It really comes down to the expectations of the subject on who you are; you feed their expectation to make them feel comfortable, Walker, now 53, tells me on a Zoom call in May from his home office in the Pacific Northwest. (He keeps the location vague, explaining: I have a few people who arent happy with me putting them in prison.) But the sheer volume of fakes in the Bouaziz case was staggering, and reinforced a growing feeling Walker had been carrying for years: that deception had become startlingly easy. It no longer required sophisticated training or access to museum archives. A motivated actor with the right gear could fabricate something convincing enough to fool collectorsor worse, enter the secondary market unchallenged. Walker came to view Bouaziz as a sort of cautionary tale, evidence that barring some kind of drastic action the art world would remain exposed to hucksters and swindlers. As it happens, Walkers retirement was already on the horizon. After nearly three decades in federal law enforcement, he was nearing the end. But something kept tugging at him: a notion that maybe his next act should look less like enforcement and more like protection. I had this realization that this is a very fixable problem, he says. Part of the problem is technology advancements, but the solution is also technological advancement. And so Walker began laying the groundwork for what would become, in some sense, one of the bigger leaps in a life built on calculated setups and risky encounters: He established a nonprofit, called the Art Legacy Institute (ALI), where he now serves as president, to try to get a step ahead of the forgers. (And he wasnt doing it alone: Bass, Walkers former FBI colleague, retired from the bureau last month and immediately joined ALI as vice president of operations.) The idea behind the organization is disarmingly simple: to protect artists before their work gets forged or stolen, rather than after. At the center of ALIs tech-forward push is a partnership with the company Alitheon, whose authentication tool uses optical scanning to create a forgery-proof, touchless fingerprint for each work of art. ALI’s artist-friendly iteration of the platform will be released by the end of the year. Another major initiative is a mobile app and websitedeveloped in partnership with the nonprofit division of Amazon Web Services and expected to be launched later this yearthat will allow artists to document their work at the moment of creation. The tool will also offer support for copyright registration and include basic scanning to help detect possible infringements online. To a casual observer, something like a catalog might seem like a trivial indulgence. But as Walker points out, building one at that level historically has been reserved for the smallest percentage of artists. They’re going after living artists While billions of dollars pass through the legitimate art world each year, a parallel economy hums beneath the surface. According to various estimates, art crime is among the highest-grossing criminal enterprises globally, trailing only drugs and weapons trafficking. Though its difficult to pin down the true scope of art forgeriesdue in part to the opacity of private sales and lack of universal documentation standardsexperts estimate that as much as half of the artwork in circulation may be forged or misattributed. (Theft figures are more concrete: The FBI reckons that between $4 billion and $6 billion worth of art is stolen each year, coming from private homes, galleries, religious institutions, and museums; research suggests that as little as 1.5% of that stolen work is ever recovered.) And the forgery problem is only accelerating. Easily accessible AI models can now produce deceptively convincing works in minutes, often indistinguishable from originals to casual observers. Cheap, high-definition photography and printing allows criminals to scrupulously capture and replicate textures. Walker has also seen a shift in those who are targeted. Increasingly, forgers arent focused solely on long-dead masters like Rembrandt or Rothko; theyre going after living artists, people who are still around to defend their work. On its face, that seems like a riskier move. But with tech speeding up production and distribution, fakes can hit the market faster than experts can intervene. Meanwhile, the collectors of ultracontemporary art tend to flip pieces quickly. They live with a piece for a brief period of time and then put it on the secondary market, often at a profit, Walker says. That churn signals demand, and fraud tends to follow. Consider, for instance, a hypothetical forged painting in the style of a buzzy young artistsay, someone recently featured at Frieze or Art Basel. A scammer could generate the fake using AI, print it onto canvas with a textured varnish, and list it for sale through a small online gallery or private dealer. Given the byzantine nature of the art market, its entirely plausible the piece changes hands twice before anyone considers verification. By that point the original seller has long vanished, and the fake has made its way into an investment portfolio or a museums storage unit. Compounding the problem, many of these transactions happen at lower price points, where scrutiny is minimal and provenance often skipped entirely. People are even gaming the legal system itself. Counterfeiters are preemptively filing fraudulent copyrights and trademarks for items that they didnt create, says Daniel Lachman, founder of Justice for Artists, a digital rights group focused on intellectual property. And a lot of times those get granted. Longtime Seattle gallery owner John Braseth has seen this evolution play out firsthand. Everything is sold at auction now, primarily on the secondary market. Its very hard to track that way, he says. (In the past, most sales happened through galleries, where dealers often kept closer tabs on provenance and collectors.) Online platforms make it easier than ever to sidestep scrutiny. You can actually put anything you want up for sale and you can still have it at your house,” Braseth says. “They auction it off, and they guarantee that itll be delivered, what have you, and they get a nice percentage of the funds. It does not fit the FBI TV profile Its exactly that confluence of speed, scope, and vulnerability that Walkers organization, ALI, was built to confront. ALI operates as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, backed by private fundraising. Walker says the organization has already reached about 60% of its inaugural funding goal, with the first-year target set at $500,000. The money supports everything from artist outreach to registry development and pilot programs. The nonprofit structure was intentional, Walker notes, because it helps ensure that every decision has to be made about whats best for the artist, not whats best for the bottom line, not whats best for me exiting and buying a Lamborghini. The scale of the challenge is daunting. But Walker, for his part, seems unfazed. When we talk over Zoom, hes sporting a red University of Oklahoma cap and a black hoodie, silver hair peeking out from beneath the brim. (An Oklahoma native, he still carries the faint trace of an accent.) His dog dozes contentedly on the couch behind him. Those who have spent time with Walker confirm that even in person he doesnt exactly project federal-agent energy. He came to visit me one day . . . hoodie on, backpack, recalls Braseth, who collaborated with Walker a few times in the FBI days. He looked just like a techie. It does not fit the FBI TV profile. That understated presence, Braseth adds, is part of what makes Walker so effective: Hes disarmingly charming and very handsome, and he is a kind person. These days, it helps that hes got some cutting-edge tech on his side. You’re not changing the artwork Key to ALIs enterprise is its partnership with Alitheon, a Bellevue, Washington-based tech company that specializes in high-fidelity optical scanning. The companys flagship product, FeaturePrint, uses off-the-shelf cameras (including smartphone cameras) to capture the microscopic surface traits of an object and turn them into a unique numerical code. Unlike other serialization or tracking systems, its touchless, meaning theres no need for barcodes, etching, or chemical markers. For the art world, thats essential: Altering a work, even microscopically, is taboo. “You’re not changing the artwork, Walker says. That is off-limits. (ALI isnt paying Alitheon standard enterprise rates and is essentially getting a nonprofit discount.) Walker met Alitheon CEO Roei Ganzarski in late 2023 while still working for the FBIs Art Crime Team. Hed heard about Alitheons optical authentication technology and reached out, curious but skeptical. You’re talking to someone with trust issues, Walker says. I’ve seen countless gadgets offering to be these magic bullet solutions. After a demo from Ganzarski, Walker did what any good investigator would: He tried to break it. He checked all the patents and ran Alitheons software on every piece of art in his house. He even forged his own work to test its limits. Each time he came away satisfied and sold on the tech. Founded in 2017, Alitheon now has 24 employees and backing from investors including BMWs venture arm and IPD Capital. (Ganzarski declined to give revenue figures but said the company has been growing between 25% and 100% per year since around 2022.) The company holds 57 issued patents and works across five high-stakes sectors: art and collectibles, luxury goods, healthcare, transportation, and defense. Ganzarski says that right away he was drawn to Walkers mission. Heres a guy whos been doing this for 30 years, who could have gone and worked for a gallery or created some profitable consulting company, he says. Instead, he’s taking his well-earned experience and expertiseat high risk many timesand putting it to real purpose. What sealed it for him, though, wasnt just the missionit was the man. Hes humble, deeply knowledgeable, and honestly one of the most compelling people, Ganzarski says, noting that theyve had lunches that stretch on for hours, and I dont even notice the time passing. That impression tracks with those whove known Walker outside the job. You dont realize how interesting he is right away, says artist Eric Jacobsen, who met him years ago at a painting event in Oregon. Hes wicked funny, just very dry, and genuinely curious. Hell sit for hours watching artists worknot saying much, just soaking it all in. That quiet curiosity now powers Walker’s next mission: stopping the forgeries before they even begin. Hes also working on his own budding art collection, which he proudly displays on our Zoom call, running me through a list of names like fdot, Dennis Beall, and Shepard Fairey. “Great art is timeless,” he says. “It speaks to every generation.”
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E-Commerce
When Mark Zuckerberg recently announced his grand plans to build enormous data centers in Ohio and Louisiana, two things stood out. First was the scale of the centers set to power Metas AI ambitions. Zuckerberg said that just one of these covers a significant part of the footprint of Manhattan. While both will cost hundreds of billions. The other was their names: Prometheus will soon pop up in New Albany, Ohio, and will be joined by Hyperion in Louisiana in 2030. Where do these weird names come from? Typically, the process is generally for most naming projects to go through a companys brand team, though that doesnt always happen, says Dalton Runberg, a naming expert who has previously worked for big tech companies. It could depend on the size of the companyat some smaller places, it might just be a function of other marketing people, but any big company is going to have a dedicated brand team, and may even have a dedicated naming person or team. Or they could work with a naming agency, especially for very high-profile brands. One of those agencies that big tech companies bring in to advise on this is Lexicon Branding, whose president and founder, David Placek, says: These are relatively nerdy names, or geek names that geeksand I dont mean that in a derogatory wayare very comfortable with. The question is whether they are for non-geeks. Theyre going to be, for the general public, hard to spell, and the awareness of them will be very, very low. Some nameslike Grok, the AI model developed by Elon Musks xAItap into sci-fi. (The reference is to Robert A. Heinleins 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land, where its used to describe deeply knowing something). Others, like Prometheus, rely on mythology. (Prometheus is the Greek god of fire, known for stealing the resource from the gods and giving it to humans.) I think Prometheus was a very deliberate decision on their part, says Placek. The metaphor of bringing the fire of AI to the world and to people, I think, was appropriate. The more inscrutable names are also chosen because they can feel a bit insider-y, says Runberg. Silicon Valley likes to think of itself as separate toand smarter thanthe average person, and so the names technology companies choose often reflect that perspective. If you know the deeper meaning of the word, or which Greek god was the god of whichever thing your product is related to, or whatever other fun fact might end up in a Jeopardy! clue someday, it can feel like it has an added layer of, If you know, you know exclusivity and inspeak, explains Runberg. They feel familiar yet a bit mysterious. But the danger is that those types of names can feel smart, though theyre not always as clever as they think they are. For instance, data centers wont want to catch on fire, particularly when they cost billions of dollars. Still, fire and storms are in vogue among tech. Just look at Anduril, Palmer Luckeys defense companyand also the name of the sword wielded by Lord of the Rings character Aragornor Palantir, the Peter Thiel-founded tech firm that takes its name from surveillance orbs popular in the same Tolkien lore. The naming starts to get meta when you look at Palantirs product names, like Gotham, its intelligence product designed for the Department of Defense, U.S. intelligence agencies and other allied military forces, which also happens to be the name of the city Batman inhabits. But the reason that those mythological figures appear more often is because they offer the products linked to them a credibility that theyd otherwise not get. Classical, mythological, or historical names tend to sound and feel powerfuloften being associated with mighty empires or omnipotent gods, says Runberg. Also importantly for a young, disruptive industry like tech, theyre old, adds Runberg. They have a feeling of legacy, which can give your brand a sense of authority or reliability, as if it has been around for a long time. Its sort of borrowing the credibility from a word or name that has existed for hundreds or thousands of years. However, just because theyre old doesnt mean theyre good for tech today. Theyre not great names, admits Placek. Good names help process fluency for the reader, the branding expert says, or has things in it that are familiar to you. One of Placeks best-known non-tech names is Febreze, a new coinage that evokes a little bit of fabric and the breeziness of hanging your laundry out to dry within it. Yet Placek also dabbles with tech names. One of his most recent jobs was to help come up with a new name for an AI product previously called Codeium. His solution? Windsurf, the firm initially due to be bought by OpenAI, whose CEO was then acquired by Google when that deal fell through, with the rest of the company heading to competitors Cognition.
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E-Commerce
President Donald Trump’s modus operandi is to keep the news cycle moving, fast. For even avid consumers of news, that can make it hard to keep up. But one public art project is doing its best to slow things down by retelling stories in new ways, the latest shining light on the people behind the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Phil Buehlers Wall of Shame, 2025, is currently on view in Brooklyn. [Photo: courtesy of the artist] Wall of Shame is artist Phil Buehler’s 50-foot-long, 10-foot-tall mural put up in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn in partnership with Radio Free Brooklyn; it takes a data viz approach to very recent history. Subtitled Visualizing the J6 Insurrection, it’s made up of more than 1,500 color-coded waterproof vinyl panels that display a headshot, name, age, and hometown of rioters who invaded the Capitol on January 6, along with details of their actions on that day, including their charges and sentencingall information that is publicly available. Phil Buehler, Wall of Shame, 2025 [Photo: courtesy of the artist] The U.S. flag-inspired colors used for the mural are designed to turn right-wing positioning of rioters as patriots on its head. Red panels indicate violent rioters, while blue panels indicate those who damaged property. The rest are white, according to Radio Free Brooklyn, a local New York station. “A red hat, white skin, and blue jeans dont make you a patriot. But storming the Capitol makes you a traitor,” Buehler told the station. Phil Buehler, Wall of Shame, 2025 [Photo: courtesy of the artist] Buehler’s approach makes the attack more personal. This isn’t another photo or footage of the faceless mob of flag-waving rioters storming the Capitol in an attempt to overturn an election; it’s a look at individual people from the crowd. The artist fact-checked everything written on the panels with reporting from NPR. Phil Buehler collaborated with Radio Free Brooklyn on Wall of Lies back in 2020. It showed 20,000 false statements Donald Trump made during his first term as president. [Photo: courtesy of the artist] The artist has made two previous murals with Radio Free Brooklyn. Wall of Lies in 2020 was made up of 20,000 false statements Trump made during his first term as president. Wall of Liars and Deniers in 2022 showed Republican candidates running for office that year who denied the results of the 2020 election. Wall of Shame was unveiled on Independence Day. Phil Buehler, Wall of Shame, 2025 [Photo: courtesy of the artist] A February Washington Post/Ipsos poll found that 83% of Americans opposed Trump offering clemency for violent criminal offenders connected to the attack, and 55% opposed him offering clemency for nonviolent crimes. But in today’s fast-paced political news cycle, January 2021 can feel like ancient history. By turning the backstories of those who attaced the Capitol into public art, Buehler and Radio Free Brooklyn found a new way to visualize the story, and from hundreds of different points of view.
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E-Commerce
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