In 2014, as Silicon Valley’s elite were beginning to build the next generation of war tech, Jeffrey Epstein was trying to introduce them to Israel’s political class. 

“I have peter thiel on the 19th in ny, if you like,” the disgraced financier, who was facing (opens in new tab) renewed allegations that he sexually abused minors, emailed former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in April 2014. 

Barak was intrigued. “Peter Thiell could be very interesting,” he wrote back, misspelling the name of the famed venture capitalist and cofounder of Palantir.  

The same year, Ron Prosor, then Israel’s U.N. ambassador, emailed Thiel at least six times in an effort to get face time with the tech titan — and a job, apparently angling for a lucrative adviser position at the secretive data analytics company Thiel cofounded.

“Lets [sic] have lunch away from the office,” Prosor emailed Thiel in May 2014. “So we can have some quality time together without interruption.”

Leaked emails from Israeli officials — obtained by the Iran-linked hacking group Handala, uploaded by the nonprofit Distributed Denial of Secrets, and reviewed by The Standard — show that years before Palantir’s rise, Israeli officials were jockeying for Thiel’s attention and access to his company. 

The cache, which includes correspondence between Barak, Prosor, former Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz, and other senior Israeli figures, offers a rare peek behind the curtain of defense-tech diplomacy — a revolving door of sorts in which national security officials, venture capitalists, and other geopolitical titans work to influence one another.

It also shows how Silicon Valley and Israel’s political establishment have been intertwined for far longer and more intimately than many realize. 

Prosor, Thiel, and Barak did not respond to requests for comment. 

The hacked emails, which date from the early 2000s to 2018, read like an A-list Silicon Valley Rolodex: Thiel, Palantir CEO Alex Karp, Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison, Oracle Executive Vice Chair Safra Catz, and Jeff Bezos all make appearances, mostly on the receiving end of Israeli officials’ entreaties to Silicon Valley. Some of the emails are reported here for the first time. 

The emails were posted with metadata or cryptographic signatures that are usually used to verify such hacks, and The Standard has verified details from public sources as well as interviews with former Palantir employees, defense-tech analysts, and corporate watchdogs. Some of the contents have also been confirmed by the Epstein files released by Congress.

Ben Freeman, director of the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a foreign-policy think tank, said the level of contact between Silicon Valley and top Israeli figures is “not surprising at all.” 

“Israel lives in a very tough neighborhood, right?” he said. “So Israel has always been seeking the next great technological advantage to help them win on the battlefield.”  

In the years since the emails were sent, Palantir and other Silicon Valley giants have deepened their relationships with Israel, particularly after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack, when tech companies became some of Israel’s most vocal corporate allies. The week after the attack, Palantir bought a full-page ad in The New York Times declaring: “Palantir stands with Israel.”

“It’s not just about Israel,” Karp told CNBC last year (opens in new tab). “It’s like, ‘Do you believe in the West? Do you believe the West has created a superior way of living?’”

In the emails, no tech company surfaces more often — or draws more interest from Israeli figures — than Palantir. 

At the time, Palantir was a Silicon Valley star, valued at $15 billion by the end of 2014 but small compared with Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics, whose market caps were $60 billion and $46 billion, respectively. Led then and now by CEO Karp, Palantir was just establishing its Israel team, packing the office with former Israeli intelligence operatives and pitching its software to the country’s government.

By 2014, Epstein had a relationship with Thiel. The two had at least three meetings scheduled in September of that year alone, according to copies of Epstein’s calendar obtained by The New York Times (opens in new tab). 

In hindsight, they were getting into business together: In the year or so after these meetings, Epstein put $40 million into Valar Ventures, a firm Thiel cofounded, according to The New York Times (opens in new tab). Thiel has not been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with his relationship with Epstein.

Meanwhile, Epstein had forged a close friendship with Barak. An investigation by Drop Site (opens in new tab) found that Epstein, through networking and social dinners, appeared to help Barak broker surveillance deals with the government of Côte d’Ivoire in 2012. Since then, one of Epstein’s sex trafficking victims accused Barak (opens in new tab) of raping her. Barak has denied the allegation. 

In 2014, Epstein was eager to connect his two contacts, urging Barak over email to have dinner with Thiel. Barak eventually agreed to Epstein’s overture, and, according to emails he sent to friends, had dinner with the Palantir cofounder in June 2014. 

The day before the dinner, Barak confessed to Gary Fegel, a billionaire who was an executive at commodity trading firm Glencore, that he had crossed paths with Thiel a few years prior at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “He was, I guess, under some drug impact,” he wrote. “Probably he doesn’t even recall it.” 

Barak told Fegel the dinner would be spent “talking just geopolitics.” 

“I think [Thiel is] of huge potential to accelerate things by the sheer reputation [he’s] got,” Barak told Fegel. “No way it’s a waist [sic] of time.”  

In 2016, Barak would go on to meet with senior partners at “a new Investment Fund owned by Peter Thiel and JE” — presumably Valar Ventures — to speak about Reporty, an emergency notification startup backed by Barak. By 2018, Founders Fund, cofounded by Thiel, invested as (opens in new tab) part of Reporty’s $15 million Series B. 

Barak wasn’t alone in trying to court Thiel — other Israeli officials saw value in the connection. Prosor emailed Thiel and met him for lunch in May 2014 in New York City. In a thank-you email to Thiel, Prosor described the conversation as “truthful, analytical and interesting.” 

Prosor even strategized with his son Lior Prosor, then a partner at Tel Aviv-based venture firm Elevator, on how to court Thiel. “Talk about your new role in the arab world,” Lior wrote. “It will fascinate him.” 

Twelve hours later, Israel’s U.N. ambassador took the advice. “It has not been publicized yet, but I will be heading the negotiations between Israel and the Arab World as a special envoy,” Prosor wrote to Thiel in September 2015. “My biggest focus area is countries whose (newly found) strategic interests coincide with Israel — mostly Saudis, ‘Gulfis,’ and others best spoken in person.” 

The pitch worked. According to the emails, Prosor and Thiel met in October 2015 at Thiel’s Manhattan party pad, which reportedly cost $25,000 (opens in new tab) a month. 

Around the same time, Zivan Benisty — a longtime intelligence officer who’d met up with Karp in Israel — emailed Prosor and Karp suggesting the two connect. It’s unclear if Prosor and Karp met in person, but they spoke.  

“I enjoyed the conversation with Alex because it was both strategic and operational,” Prosor wrote to Gavin Hood, Karp’s then-chief of staff, in September 2015. “I am officially finishing on the 14th of October, so would be great to chat about the advisory position, and its details before then.”

Hood cautioned that they shouldn’t make any formal arrangements while Prosor was still at the U.N. “It is probably advisable to separate the advisory position discussion from your current appointment,” he wrote back. “We can move very quickly after Oct 14th.” 

Hood did not respond to a request for comment. 

There is no record online that shows Prosor landed the Palantir gig. But Benisty’s transition to the Thiel-verse went better: He’s listed as (opens in new tab) an adviser on the website of 8VC, Lonsdale’s venture firm.

Taken together, the exchanges between Hood, Prosor, Barak, and Thiel form a vivid portrait of a parallel diplomatic circuit — one where former generals, sitting ambassadors, intelligence officers, and tech billionaires exist in the same talent pool, recruiting one another for roles that blur the line between national service and private enrichment.

“In defense contracting space, relationships are everything. If you know the right person, that can make the difference between you landing a contract and not landing a contract,” Freeman said.

“It’s especially true with foreign governments and with the Israeli government,” he added, noting that Israel is among the largest foreign recipients of U.S. arms and that Washington has pledged to ensure the country has a “qualitative edge” over its neighbors. 

It’s unclear whether these emails led to any contracts. But Palantir and Israel’s relationship only strengthened in the intervening years as the company became one of the country’s loudest allies.

In the months after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, Karp held the company’s board meeting in Tel Aviv and signed a “strategic partnership” between Palantir and the Israeli Ministry of Defense, allowing Palantir’s technology for use in “war-related missions,” executive Josh Harris told Bloomberg. (opens in new tab)

“Our work in the region has never been more vital,” the company tweeted (opens in new tab). “And it will continue.”

Palantir wasn’t the only company to catch Israel’s attention a decade ago. In the same leaked emails, a constellation of names — Oracle, Microsoft, Amazon — appear repeatedly as Israeli political figures sought audiences with the people shaping the world’s digital infrastructure. 

The emails showed how Silicon Valley and Israel worked in tandem, helping each other get access to various nexuses of power. For example, in 2015, after Ellison spoke with then-Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Prosor wanted a full debriefing. “How was the conversation with Mario [sic] Rubio,” he wrote. “Did he pass your scrutiny? Did you have a chance to talk about Israel?” 

Ellison, a vocal Zionist (opens in new tab), reassured Prosor. “Great meeting with Marco Rubio. I set him up to meet with Tony Blair,” he said, referring to the former British prime minister. “Marco will be a great friend for Israel.” 

Meanwhile, Oracle’s then-CEO, Catz, wanted to convert her political connections into cultural cachet. In 2015, she sent Barak a pitch: he should be a consulting producer on a reality show produced by her sister, Sarit Catz, called “Women of the IDF.” 

She said she was “horrified” by the boycott, divest, and sanction movement against Israel that was gaining steam on U.S. college campuses. “We have to fight this battle before the kids even get to college,” she wrote. “We believe that we have to embed the love and respect for Israel in the American culture.” 

Since 2015, Ellison and Catz have made it clear that Oracle is a pro-Israel company. “Women of the IDF” was released on streaming this year. According to the show’s website, it follows five female soldiers who “go clubbing” and “meet guys” on the weekend, while they “arrest terrorists” and “fire M16s” during the week. “They’re just like us, only slightly more awesome,” it says.

According to the hacked emails, Barak’s inbox was filled with people pitching pro-Israel projects, trips, and talking points — like when Sam Lessin, a venture capitalist and former Facebook executive, wrote to him in 2014.

“It was nice to sit at dinner with you last night. I hope our paths cross again soon,” Lessin wrote, adding that he and his wife, The Information CEO Jessica Lessin, were leading an excursion to the country in March of that year. 

“It will be a very interesting group of Jewish technology entrepreneurs from San Fran looking to understand and connect with Israel more deeply,” he said, adding, “it would be wonderful to see you over there.” Although Lessin did not respond to a request for comment, posts from his Instagram account show that he did, in fact, go to Israel that March. 

The leak also demonstrates the network effects of Silicon Valley itself: how a single tweet could pull investors, founders, and diplomats into the same orbit. That was the case when Paul Graham, the Y Combinator cofounder, weighed in on Israel in 2014.

That year, Graham tweeted (opens in new tab) articles about human rights abuses committed by the Israel Defense Forces. One said, “Amnesty International: Stop arms transfers to Israel amid growing evidence of war crimes in Gaza.”

Investor Mark Suster of Upfront Ventures shot back on Facebook: (opens in new tab) “To see people like Paul Graham so manipulated by this media and become a tool of the terrorists makes it that much more disappointing and inspires me to speak up more loudly.” 

Prosor was impressed by Suster’s outspokenness and reached out to someone with whom he had been building a relationship all year: Thiel. “I really love the way Suster defended Israel,” he wrote. “Do you have his contact number so I can call him and commend him for standing up for Israel??” 

Thiel’s assistant sent Prosor the contact info, and the ambassador and Suster spoke on the phone. Ten months later, Prosor hosted Suster and his Upfront Ventures partner, Stuart Lander, at the United Nations. Suster and Lander did not respond to requests for comment, although Suster posted (opens in new tab) a photo of the pair at the U.N. around the time of the emails.  

“It was an honor to get your perspective on the organization and understand its intricate workings,” Lander wrote to Prosor, adding, “if you thought it would be a worthwhile undertaking we would happily look into organizing a group of senior technology leaders to meet with you either in New York or San Francisco later in the year.” 

Prosor also had his own pitch for the investors: Would Suster talk to his son? “Lior runs a leading fintech and digital media early-stage fund in Israel,” he wrote. “I believe he could benefit from your insights and experience.”  

And just like that, the revolving door started spinning again.