"Strictly Need To Know"
Webworm looks into the mysterious James Sved.
The Saga So Far:
Part 1: The Beginning
Part 2: Wilding vs The World
Part 3: Wilding v Wikipedia
Part 4: The Mysterious Matt Obolensky
Part 5: The End of the Saga?
Part 6: 25 Years of Making Shit Up
Part 7: The Kiwi Running for US Congress
Part 8: "Strictly Need To Know"
Part 9: Webworm Is Being Taken To Court (Again)
Part 10: Anna Wilding's Racist Ramblings
Hi,
Last week, I brought you the story of New Zealander Anna Wilding running for congress. The piece also documented a number of dubious claims Wilding has made over the years.
Two hours after I asked Wilding for comment on that story, I received a legal threat. Wilding alleged defamation, warning me that “US law strictly limits foreign involvement in US elections under the Federal Election Campaign Act.”
I guess in this case, I’m the “foreign involvement”.
But there was something else curious in Wilding's correspondence - a paragraph about her husband. I hadn’t asked about her husband. This came completely out of left field:
“My husband is a private individual who served as a civilian in the United States Navy’s nuclear program and is also an award-winning restoration architect in the United States whose work has received national recognition, including professional awards and appearances on commemorative postage stamps. He has never sought public attention or involvement in public life.”
“Huh,” I thought.
Who is this private individual involved in the US Navy’s nuclear programme, who is also an award winner, featured on a commemorative stamp, and has never sought public attention?
Turns out it doesn’t take much time to find Anna Wilding’s husband, who very much appears to have sought public attention.
James Sved: Visionary
“Rising Stars: Meet James Sved of Malibu” announces a January 2026 headline on VoyageLA, a website boasting “LA’s most inspiring stories”.
The profile - in the form of a written Q&A - is found here. “I have read all the classics of literature,” he claims. Earlier, he says he’s been “called a visionary by my peers”.
There are other news stories about the visionary peppered across the internet, like this one from 2018, when he ran for local council.
It appears Anna Wilding is not the only one with political aspirations.
Claims, Claims, and More Claims
It turns out that looking into James Sved is possibly even more confusing than looking into Anna Wilding. I began on his website svedrestoration.com, the “About Us” page listing a series of awards, accomplishments and jobs, including:
"His role as a principal at a leading Naval Defense Contractor since 2021 exemplifies his versatility, managing regulatory frameworks and guiding significant projects with a clear vision and innovative approach. In 2023 James was the recipient of a four-star Admiral’s coin for his efforts benefitting the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program. In 2024 he received a “Game Changer” award from the Naval Reactors Facility."
Webworm has started a document listing all of Sved's claims, and I’ve begun the process of trying to validate them - including his alleged work with the Navy. This work is ongoing.
The first claim I looked into was simple, about an award he’d won:
"In 2004, James received the prestigious National Preservation Honor Award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation for his remarkable work on the Main Street Station in Richmond, Virginia."
I reached out to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, who told me:
“I've checked our records from 2003-2005 and see no Honor Award given to James Sved or to any project involving Main Street Station in Richmond. Is it possible he is mistaking our Honor Awards with another program?”
This seemed like a simple piece of reality to check, so I emailed Sved asking for clarification. I received no response, but noticed there was a new addition at the bottom of his “About Me” page:
* One such award was previously reported to us by a third party as having been from The National Trust for Historic Preservation. It turned out to be from another National preservation organization.
He fails to say what "National preservation organization" it was.
This pattern has kept on going over the last week: I would email Sved asking for clarity and confirmation, and his website would shift and change again. As of today, his "About Me" page has been entirely rewritten (an archive of the old version exists is archived here for comparison).
Things got even more vague with his last rewrite, his details about his work for the Navy shifting completely:
“I had the great opportunity to go work at the Naval Nuclear Laboratory, for one of their prime contractors. I held security clearance and my work there is strictly Need To Know.”
This whole time, he never emailed me back. But his website kept changing.
Strictly Need To Know
James Sved is also involved in a number of other projects besides his restoration work, including being CEO of “Subsea Solutions” - an organization whose purpose is somewhat vague:
“We have been creating sustainable, biodiverse, and healthy solutions for more than three decades.”
Like his historic restoration business, this one also seems to exist in part to boast about his various accomplishments:
Elsewhere, Sved is involved in Citadel Air Defense Systems LLC, whose mission is “to engage with government, military & industry partners to create the best solutions to the increasingly vital job of improving our defensive capabilities.”
Sved is a member of their board - along with a familiar face: Anna Wilding, who is apparently in charge of "Global Operations, Research, Strategy and Communications" for the missile defence company.
Webworm has reached out to Citadel Air Defense Systems for comment, to both seek clarity on what the company does, and how James Sved and Anna Wilding are involved.
Webworm is yet to hear back.
All of this is just so deeply unusual.
Sved definitely has some of the background he claims. He did work on the station restoration, and he did have a city role with Petersburg. There is a 2025 reference from former Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin applauding some of Sved’s preservation work (however Webworm is struggling to find out what Sven’s exact level of involvement in those various projects was).
Many of his claims seem to be exaggerated in some way, while some are not based in reality at all. He and Wilding founded an online news site called Herald De Paris years ago - the claims on its website certainly difficult to believe:
"The Herald de Paris is an award-winning, all-digital publication, founded in 2008 by San Francisco Chronicle columnist James Sved, and was the biggest, baddest, most innovative digital newspaper on the planet. We don't like to brag, but we were compared to The New Yorker for the high level of our impeccably written articles. High praise for a daily. We won awards, and some of the big names in the print media called us on the sly, to find out how we did it."
And in the VoyageLA interview, Sved claims that, “I was almost named the 14th Architect of the US Capitol”.
Webworm understands the current holder of the office is the 13th, so the number seems wrong to begin with.
Birds of a Feather
Learning about James Sved somehow makes Anna Wilding make more sense. It certainly offers a clue as to how Anna Wilding ended up in the USA running for Congress.
Both people exist in a world that we’re becoming increasingly used to - a world where an individual can bend reality around them.
It’s something we’ve seen more and more of since Donald Trump gained power in 2016, cries of “fake news” weaponised to distort our understanding of what’s real and what’s not. Trump has proven that the truth no longer matters: If you scream anything loudly enough, it becomes real.
I clearly have a level of fascination with these kinds of individuals. My weird 2022 documentary Mister Organ may have just seemed like a whacky character study, but that was a film about a man who continuously lied, bending reality to his will. Successfully.
After a time, all these people start to blur into one - because they’re all doing the same bit. And in freakishly specific ways: David D’Amato, Michael Organ and Anna Wilding all jump to legal threats almost immediately. All of them are partial to CAPSLOCK, unusual spacing, and bad grammar. All three very quickly raised my visa status as a reason I would get sued, or lose a legal case. Wilding is just the latest to do all these things.
While stories like the Anna Wilding saga may seem fickle on some level - I also think they’re important. They’re a reflection of this increasingly distorted world we live in. And if we don’t see that for what it is, we risk getting lost in the muck ourselves.
Whatever the truth, Wilding and Sved are quite the power couple - moving through life in a way I can only dream of. I can’t help but think of Kate and Hal Wyler from The Diplomat: A husband-and-wife team filled with political aspirations, a penchant for wearing sunglasses, and enabling their best - and worst - selves.
David.
PS: Webworm has become aware of a new email circulating from Anna Wilding in her race for Congress. I should note:
- I do not have “trackers” on Webworm
- I have not hired tech people to blackmail anyone
- I have not bullied anyone to suicide
- I have not been arrested for theft - or anything else for that matter - in New Zealand (I imagine she is referring to the Michael Organ v Sean Plunket saga)
- I do not harass or intimidate people
- I do not have a Substack. Webworm left Substack in August last year.
Oh, and I am not – to my knowledge – an incel.
David.
