A convicted sex offender played matchmaker between Israeli intelligence and Silicon Valley
Emails hacked from the inbox of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak show Jeffrey Epstein playing matchmaker between Israeli intelligence and Silicon Valley royalty. The emails – stolen by Handala, a hacking group with suspected ties to Iranian intelligence, and published by DDoSecrets in August 2025 – reveal Epstein arranging meetings between Barak and Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and the surveillance contractor Palantir.
In May 2014, Epstein invited Barak to meet Thiel, insisting that Barak “spend real time with peter thiel” and offering to set up dinner. Barak noted he’d met Thiel once before at Davos but speculated Thiel “probably doesn’t even recall it.” Epstein was fixing that.
These weren’t social introductions. In 2015, Epstein loaned Barak $1 million to invest in an Israeli startup called Reporty Homeland Security – now known as Carbyne. The company was co-founded by Pinhas Buchris, former commander of both Israel’s Unit 8200 military intelligence unit and Unit 81, a high-tech intelligence unit. Carbyne’s software lets emergency dispatchers retrieve precise location data and live video and audio feeds from callers’ phones. When you dial 911 in certain American cities, Carbyne captures everything. Civil liberties groups have raised concerns about whether American citizens’ emergency calls might be swept into international intelligence pipelines.
In February 2016, Epstein pitched Reporty directly to Valar Ventures, a fund co-founded by Thiel. “We’d love to hear more about Reporty,” Valar’s Andrew McCormack wrote back. “Thanks for thinking of us Jeffrey.” That pitch was rejected as premature. But in 2018, Thiel’s Founders Fund joined a $15 million Series B round for the company – now renamed Carbyne.
The same year Founders Fund invested in Carbyne, Epstein was still emailing Thiel invitations to his Caribbean island. House Oversight documents show Epstein writing “Dec visit me Caribbean” to Thiel in November 2018. A Thiel representative told Politico he never visited the island.
The financial relationship went deeper than Carbyne. Between 2015 and 2016, Epstein’s Southern Trust company invested $40 million in Thiel’s Valar Ventures fund. By 2025, that investment had grown to approximately $170 million – the largest remaining asset in Epstein’s estate. A Valar spokesperson confirmed the investment and said the firm “hopes proceeds will go toward victim compensation.”
Here’s the chain. Epstein invested $40 million with Thiel. Epstein arranged meetings between Thiel and the former head of Israeli military intelligence. Thiel’s fund then invested $15 million in a surveillance company staffed by Israeli intelligence veterans – one that Epstein had seeded through Barak. And Thiel went on to donate $15 million to JD Vance’s 2022 Senate campaign, the largest amount ever donated to a single Senate candidate. Vance is now Vice President.
The hacked emails show Epstein wasn’t just collecting blackmail material in his camera-filled Manhattan townhouse. He was building networks. One email to Barak highlights “potential for profit amidst global unrest in Ukraine, Syria, Somalia, and Libya.” Another mentions starting “a personal protection company in Beijing” because “kidnapping has begun” – a tip Epstein says came from Prince Andrew.
Epstein’s mansion was already a surveillance bunker with cameras in every room. Add the guy who monetized turning data into power – the co-founder of Palantir, the company helping the US government track its own citizens – and you start to see why Epstein was valuable to elites. He wasn’t just offering money and influence. He was offering leverage.
Even after his 2008 conviction, Epstein was still using his powerful friends to pour money into surveillance companies. By the time he died in 2019, his network included the former Prime Minister of Israel, the Vice President’s biggest donor, and investment positions that would generate nine-figure returns for his estate.
The question isn’t whether these people knew who Epstein was. They knew. The question is what they got out of the arrangement – and what he got out of them.
SOURCES
https://reason.com/2025/08/27/inside-jeffrey-epsteins-spy-industry-connections/
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/jeffrey-epstein-ehud-barak-leaked-emails-mongolia-security-deal
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jd-vance-trump-vp-peter-thiel-billionaire/