Emails from the Jeffrey Epstein files show the late pedophile trying to connect far-right tech mogul Peter Thiel and former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak on at least six separate occasions.
At the close of February 2016, Jeffrey Epstein was, as was often the case, trying to find a way to get together with his good friend, Silicon Valley venture capitalist Peter Thiel. He would be in Europe the following month, he emailed him, then on his private island in the Caribbean, and if neither of those worked, he would be in Saudi Arabia at the end of the month.
“Certainly not in Saudi — just think I will avoid the Middle East for the next decade or so,” Thiel emailed back.
A decade later, Thiel is more entwined in the Middle East than he is in most other regions of the world. Thiel’s firm, Palantir, has a strategic partnership with the Israel Ministry of Defense to supply its artificial intelligence tools and other technology to the Israeli military, used throughout the Gaza genocide for its indiscriminate bombing campaign. Thiel has personally dismissed ethical concerns about the partnership, saying that his “bias is to defer to Israel” and that its military is “broadly in the right.” As the United States and Israel wage war on Iran, Palantir is now providing one of the AI tools being used by the Pentagon for the war effort, which kicked off with the mass slaughter of Iranian schoolchildren.
The germ of Palantir’s involvement in the region may well have had its origins with Epstein, according to documents released earlier this year by the Department of Justice. Emails show Epstein connected Thiel with another friend, former Israeli defense minister and prime minister Ehud Barak, on account of their mutual interest in leveraging the tech sector for national security.
That Epstein was the point of connection between the two men, both friends of the convicted sex offender, was suggested by a February 2013 audio recording unearthed last month. In the recording, Epstein advises Barak, then preparing to leave his post as Israel’s defense minister and embark on a career in the private sector, to look into Thiel and Palantir as a future business opportunity and suggesting that Thiel, whom Epstein had at that point never met, might appoint him to the firm’s board.
But emails show that Epstein’s efforts to connect the two went much further than this conversation, including arranging multiple meetings between them across several years and ensuring that one of Thiel’s investment vehicles financed one of Barak’s security-related ventures.
“You Both Will Enjoy Each Others’ Interests”
Epstein really, really wanted Thiel and Barak to meet. While the late sex offender tried to connect Thiel to numerous prominent figures over the years, he seemed particularly set on introducing him to the former Israeli official. Previous reporting shows that Epstein had an unusually close friendship with Barak, starting from when he was still Israeli defense minister, that he worked with Barak to broker arms deals and security agreements on Israel’s behalf, and that he even claimed to have been involved in Barak’s 2019 attempted political comeback.
Emails show Epstein trying to connect the two on at least six separate occasions, often unsuccessfully thanks to Thiel’s hectic work and travel schedule.
“Sorry you missed the day of Ehud and [Noam] Chomsky, great moments,” Epstein emailed Thiel in September 2015, after one of these attempts didn’t work out.
But there appear to have been at least two times that Epstein succeeded in getting the pair in the same room. The first was at a June 2014 dinner in the sex trafficker’s Manhattan apartment, where the trio apparently discussed topics ranging from Israeli national security policy to dessert. A trail of emails starting from that May show Epstein trying to make a meeting happen, in spite of the two men’s busy schedules.
“I thjnk [sic] you should spend real time with Peter Thiel,” Epstein had told Barak, who agreed, as he tried to set up the meeting. “I think you both will enjoy each others’ interests,” he told Thiel.
Several different schedules and a Google Calendar reminder indicate the dinner took place on June 9. The next morning, Epstein emailed Thiel about what they had discussed, which appeared to have included Israel’s notorious targeted killing operations — the kind that, years later, Thiel’s AI software would be helping the country carry out.
“Fun again. ….I find him unusual. Kant Spinoza, strategy, operations. Assinaton [sic] squad. Ice cream.,” Epstein wrote.
“Agreed — very Israeli and very stimulating. Thanks for including me!” Thiel wrote back.
The second meeting took place three years later, this time without Epstein present. When Thiel mentioned he would be in Israel in mid-June, Epstein suggested he “might want to see Ehud Barak,” whom he called the “smartest person in the country in my opinion.”
Despite not being part of the meeting, emails show an unusual amount of effort on Epstein’s part to make sure the men connected: checking if Barak was in Israel on the dates Thiel would be there, introducing the two to “coordinate directly,” and then repeatedly following up with and liaising between both men when they failed to reply or send each other the necessary details.
“Glad to e-meet you again,” Barak emailed Thiel upon their reintroduction. “I’m involved in the Israeli Hi tech scene and sure we will find a lot of areas of common interest.”
According to a Haaretz report at the time, Thiel was visiting the country to check in on companies he owned and had invested in. At the time, Barak was involved in several cybersecurity ventures.
“Did you enjoy Ehud?” Epstein emailed Thiel after the meeting took place.
“Was good to meet him…,” Thiel replied.
A different document suggests the pair may have met at least one other time. A list of calendar items from Epstein’s computer features one labeled “barrack, barak thiel” for October 6, 2016. “Barrack” almost certainly refers to Donald Trump friend and fundraiser Tom Barrack, who earlier emails show Epstein had urged Thiel to meet.
Introduction to Israel
But Thiel and Barak didn’t just have a couple of meetings that Epstein arranged based on their mutual interest in leveraging the tech industry for national security ends. As Epstein quietly advised Barak on his private sector ventures, many of which involved Israeli tech firms, emails show that both he and Barak leaned on Thiel for his expertise.
Three months after their first June 2014 meeting, Epstein emailed Thiel to request that “one of your people” meet with the individuals behind a start-up that “Ehud’s involved [in]. Not me at all.” Named Guardicore, the Tel Aviv–based firm — whose founders came out of Israeli military intelligence, including its infamous Unit 8200 cyberwarfare division, and based the product on the Israel Defense Force’s own systems — developed technology to guard against and repel cyberattacks on virtual data centers, and was looking for “relevant major US-based players” to “become design partners.” Thiel told Epstein to make an email introduction.
That introduction had been made specifically at Barak’s request, who a month earlier had sent Epstein the “one pager” on Guardicore, as well as its CEO’s contact details, and asked him to “try to pass it to PayPal,” which Thiel had cofounded. At the time, the former Israeli prime minister was in Hong Kong in the middle of a trip through Asia. “Great place,” Barak told Epstein. “You don’t hear on [sic] neither Gaza nor Ferguson Missouri,” an apparent reference to the protests happening in the Midwestern city at the time in the wake of Michael Brown.
Epstein also involved Thiel in a different Barak tech venture: Reporty, later renamed Carbyne, another cybersecurity firm founded and led by members of Unit 8200 and Israeli military intelligence more broadly. Its CEO, Amir Elichai, was a former Israeli special forces and intelligence officer, while its cofounder Pinhas Buchris was the former director of Unit 8200. These backgrounds and Carbyne’s business pitch raised surveillance concerns, revolving around accessing the geolocation data and video feed of anyone making a call to emergency services, the idea being to help emergency responders — or, as Epstein put it, “a video version of 911.”
The start-up would become the first investment in Israel for Thiel’s flagship venture capital firm, Founders Fund. Emails show that Epstein, who secretly bankrolled Barak’s involvement in the company, consulted Thiel about the start-up and ultimately arranged financing for it from the firm.
“Seems ripe. But not my skill set. Thoughts?” Epstein emailed Thiel in December 2014, attaching a primer for the start-up that Barak had sent him. Epstein continued to prod Thiel about the firm two years later, sending him two emails in the space of four days asking him for feedback on what he called “Ehud Barak’s co.” from his “valor guys,” Epstein’s typical misspelling of Valar Ventures, another Thiel VC firm.
Though other emails show that Valar declined in 2016 to invest in Carbyne, Epstein’s persistence eventually paid off. In August 2018, the firm announced that Thiel’s Founders Fund had helped lead $15 million in financing secured by the firm, with its CEO declaring its role “extremely significant,” given that it had “helped build some of Silicon Valley’s legendary companies.” The firm has continued to draw financing from the VC firm since then, including just last year.
Emails show that that financing was secured directly thanks to Epstein. In May 2018, three months before that announcement, Chris Hopkins of NJF Capital — a VC firm whose founder was close to Epstein and ended up investing in Carbyne — introduced Elichai to Trae Stephens, a partner at Founders Fund and a former Palantir employee. (Stephens has since cofounded and now leads the outwardly pro-war military tech contractor Anduril.)
Stephens urged Elichai to discuss “the challenges that you face in building a business that is primarily focussed on governments and the wider public sector. Given Trae’s background at Palantir, we figured there would be a fair amount of serendipity.” Someone whose identity is redacted then forwarded the exchange to Epstein and Barak, noting that “we made the connection to Founders Forum [sic] from Peter Thiel.”
“J, If you want to put in a word with Peter maybe :),” he added.
“FYI Trae is meeting Carbyne Ehud Barak co,” Epstein emailed Thiel an hour later.
But Barak’s ambitions for working with Thiel went well beyond cybersecurity and 911 calls. A month after getting Founders Fund on board with Carbyne, Barak excitedly sent Epstein a New York Times report on the dangers of artificial intelligence, including its budding convergence with the world of warfare — a convergence that would soon become a core part of Israeli military operations.
“This seems to be THE most fascinating subject on the table right now … Could you think of using your connections to establish a 2 days seminar on this issue with some of the top players?” Barak emailed Epstein. “Probably Peter Thiel or Yuri Milner could either be the hosts, or help us to reach/ convince several more top thinkers to join.”
“Goid [sic] idea,” Epstein replied.
“God is dead? Or, good idea? LOL” Barak wrote back.
“Both,” Epstein replied.
One More Legacy
Jacobin has previously reported on the way Epstein used his wealth to help former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon build his international far-right project, and on the billionaire pedophile’s pro-war proclivities, particularly when it came to Israel’s traditional adversaries like Iran. Epstein’s efforts to link Thiel to Barak are another lesser-known part of that story.
Thiel, a Big Tech oligarch who in 2016 became one of Trump’s most high-profile early backers, preempted the broader shift among Silicon Valley executives to the far right. Today many of the tech billionaires close to Thiel, like Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen, have become open Trump supporters and view themselves as waging a patriotic crusade against “wokeness,” a crusade that involves becoming part of the American war machine. Running alongside this has been a deepening alignment with the State of Israel by Thiel himself and the companies he cofounded and invests in.
Many Americans are rightly appalled and frightened by the indiscriminate murder and destruction the Israeli military has carried out in Gaza and across the Middle East, and is now busy jointly inflicting on Iran with the Trump administration. That murder and destruction is being carried out hand in hand with the technology and resources that Thiel has helped develop — one more of the many dark legacies left by Jeffrey Epstein.