Katie Zacharia is now White House Press Secretary. Her husband, Tyler Zacharia, previously helped build Schulze Global Investments’ operation in North Korea, financing state-owned companies and mining expansion inside a country the U.S. government was already describing as a growing military threat. This happened while the U.S. intelligence community was sounding alarms. In February 2010, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told Congress that North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs posed a “serious threat” to security in East Asia, while also pointing to Pyongyang’s export of ballistic-missile technology and its assistance to Syria’s nuclear program. By early 2011, the U.S. assessment had become even more explicit. The State Department said President Obama had warned China that North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs were “increasingly a direct threat to the security of the United States and our allies.” North Korea itself was hardly hiding its hostility. In 2010, Pyongyang threatened “unprecedented nuclear strikes”against those it accused of trying to overthrow the regime, and later threatened a “sacred war” based on its nuclear deterrent. Yet during this same period, Schulze Global was putting capital into North Korean state-owned enterprises. Its loans financed mining equipment and expansion, and the successful deals helped “open the doors” to officials in Taepung, an investment organization connected to the National Defense Commission and the United Front Department. That connection matters because U.N. experts examining North Korea’s centralized state-owned economy warned in 2011 that the prospect of investment revenue being diverted to illicit purposes was “extremely likely.” The National Defense Commission, meanwhile, sat at the center of North Korea’s military establishment. So this was not simply an American investor taking a risk in an unusual emerging market. It was investment activity inside a state-controlled economy whose leadership was threatening nuclear confrontation, whose military trained for conflict with U.S. forces, and whose nuclear and missile programs the American government was already calling an increasingly direct threat to the United States. Now Tyler Zacharia’s wife speaks for the White House. Why was investing in North Korean state-owned enterprises considered acceptable while U.S. intelligence community was warning that the regime posed a growing threat to Americans? How did Schulze Global assess the risk that money entering North Korea’s state controlled economy could strengthen the same government the United States was trying to contain? #NorthKorea #WhiteHouse