this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2026
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The prospect of chaos and war excited Jeffrey Epstein. The late New York financier and child abuser kept a keen eye on news about foreign conflicts that could be exploited for commercial gain. On February 21, 2014, Epstein sent an e-mail to Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister, with whom he would partner the following year as investors in a security tech firm Reporty Homeland Security (later renamed Carbyne). Epstein wrote, “with civil unrest exploding in ukraine syria, somolia [sic], libya, and the desperation of those in power, isn’t this perfect for you.” Barak tried to tamp down his friend’s enthusiasm, noting, “You’re right [in] a way. But not simple to transform it into a cash flow.”

This exchange, which was reported by Drop Site News, gets at the heart of one of the more hidden aspects of the Epstein scandal. Epstein’s name is inextricably linked with sexual predation, as it should be. But it should just as readily be linked to global militarism and authoritarianism. Epstein trafficked not just in the bodies of the children he abused but also in social connections that could bring elites together. He well understood that the “desperation of those in power” could make them eager to buy what he was selling: connections with other powerful figures and security systems to clamp down on dissent.

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[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

Thanks to diligent reporting from two independent outlets, Drop Site and Reason, we now have a much better sense of Epstein’s relationship with the foreign policy elite of the US and Israel. It seems that Epstein was not a CIA or Mossad asset—not because he didn’t have it in him, but because that was too lowly a role. Rather, he was a power broker, an American oligarch, who played a major role in shaping Western policy, which brought him in contact with spy agencies and diplomats.

It's a pretty interesting claim that Epstein was too big to be a spy. This article references two main other articles to support this idea. That makes it seem strange to me that he got caught at all.