I had a few GS15s sit down with me in 2019 and explain to me directionally the vibe on Israel. Changed my viewpoint forever.
For ~50 years America has subcontracted to Israel a portion of its intelligence operations and sometimes largely for plausible deniability, other times because we cannot spy on our own citizens - the last part wasn't said explicitly - but what I could grok.
IMHO, the Israeli apparatus has gone far off the reservation in their operations and have lost favor in the past 5 years, especially in DC.
Israel's intelligence apparatus has historically participated in cleaning dirty narco cash via affiliates to finance intelligence operations back home (mostly thorugh hapoalim, safra, leumi, and signature bank), sold hacking tools to narcos, running guns, cleaning blood diamonds, and running kompromat where they deemed it is needed.
Rwandan and Guatemalan genocides probably wouldn't have happened to the stunning degree if the Israelis weren't illegally selling munitions into both. Also hard to get clarity if they were doing this as our subcontractors or going off the reservation.
Signature Bank's collapse was a sign that your local Israeli-intelligence agency linkedin money laundering apparatus was going to have volatility that there would be volatiliy in the middle east.
2023:
500k Israelis protesting against Netanyahu, blood diamonds going down in value b/c of lab grown diamonds, and the implosion of their money laundering apparatus cornerstone (Signature bank) probably was a positive signal for disruption in the Israeli way of life in mid 2023.
The large question at play amongst the GS15s that I've heard murmured in DC is if America should subcontract security operations to a non-AUKUS passport holders, and Israel is the vendor in question.
A lot of CIA seems bifurcated on their viewpoint of Israel. No idea when that happened.
Our relationship with Israel costs us $10-$20/barrel in increased fees and 50B-100B/yr to have our military in the region.
One thing that is fascinating - the Israelis are getting blamed for Iran right now - but the Hormuz volatility greatly increases their cost of living - and we are the greatest beneficiary.
We are the largest producer of nat gas, helium, methanol, LNG, and Oil.
I think the "hormuz volatility" has a terminating condition - APAC buying these US products in larger sizes. As it was explained to me, the reason the prices aren't 150 is because while maritime stuff is problematic - the surrounding 5 countries to Iran have ways to get the energy via pipeline and power line.
World is a complex place, they're our subcontractor for now....no clue if they will be in the future but the trend is no.
Nope. It's particularly Israel that's a problem. They mismanaged their security apparatus on October 7th, if they can't defend their own, why should they be part of our security apparatus?
Does IDF service mean their position is immune to valid criticism of the job?
How do we know as Americans that it's secure when the individual who is senior and leading connectivity has likely served a foreign intelligence agency/millitary?
Is this not alarming as videos weren't encrypted and public?
I thought Altman's worldcoin was angling for this when they had people take photos of their eyeballs.... getting into the gov't contracting side of things.... surprises me some no-name company got it.
I was floating near some ex agency and GS15 folks yesterday in Houston, they explained to me that the Israeli cybersecurity apparatus has had everyone's voicemails for the last 20 years because they inserted themselves into the supply chain of voicemails somehow or another.
Kind of nuts all the ways audio data can be used now.
Former NSA Director and retired U.S. Army General Paul Nakasone joined the Board of Directors at OpenAI in June 2024.
OpenAI announced in October 2025 that it would begin allowing the generation of "erotica" and other mature, sexually explicit, or suggestive content for verified adult users on ChatGPT.
I was so confused, I thought vercel had an outage.
This makes more sense now.
I got 3 different calls from some people today about Vercel and switching off of it, couldn't figure out why - they were spending upwards of 5k-10k/mo.
HVAC distro is a racket that was mobbed up along with the financing.
There seems to be no marketing distribution conspiracy to find the 2M of 120M homes per year that need to be replaced.
Massive problem for cos like watsco.
The marketing costs for installers are insane and finding the 2M homes is a needle in a haystack biz.
Heat pumps are only kosher for mild winters.
Demographics shifting stateside might make this a bad business as people are depopulating everything west of San Antonio b/c of aquifer shortages etc... on a 20 year basis.
San Francisco is rekt on so many levels and irrecoverable.
Pensiontracker.org
This is why I left:
I’m bullish on the W2-pocalypse and bought Facebook, did you? Facebook twisted its earnings with W2pocalypse.
Silently through the night W2’s are being slashed, this is front running the onerous taxes, fees, and small scale apocalypse that has been accumulating in California.
Let me walk you through some metrics on California.
Min. wage $12/hr
40% of California’s income tax revenue is generated by .5% of the state’s population. (the wealthy)
California’s new tax bill targets the wealthy more on top of what they’re already charged.
1% for $1M-$2M
3% for $2M-$5M
3.5% for $5M+
The worst part is that these taxes are possible for the 2020 year retroactively, meaning if you decided to stay in California under the existing tax regime, they can come after you for the new rate hike. (assuming you’re wealthy)
California’s congress is single party and this bill will likely pass according to some friends of mine who sit in legal and policy spheres.
California is aggressive in collecting taxes from moving residents in all other 49 states.
$50,000/yr or less is 60 percent of California tax filings but ~2 percent of its income tax revenue.
SFBA makes up 40% of the state’s income tax revenue but makes up only 20% of the state population California has the highest average impact fees for construction of a single-family home, at $23,455. (up to 3 times higher than other states)
25-34 year olds can’t easily own homes in the state of California. ~500k+ is the minimum to purchase a home, at least 5-10 times a yearly salary.
The bottom 20% pay 7% of their <23k/yr incomes on sales tax.
The state’s pension unfunded liabilities are estimated to total $93.1 billion ($59.7 billion at CalPERS for state employee pensions and $33.4 billion at CalSTRS for teachers’ pensions) California has some of the highest electricity costs, it will go green and the price will go to $0.25-$0.40/kwh in the next 2-4 years likely.
In some cases, your electricity rate can be $0.54/kwh. CA taxes will be almost double the 2nd highest state. Free healthcare for everyone, including illegal alien immigrant violent criminals.
Gov. releasing inmates, defunding / slashing police forces, 3x the per capita welfare spending of the nation, sanctuary for illegal immigrant violent criminals, reparation bills coming, business-crushing regulations, huge secular departure of companies and individuals, and traffic/smog.
According to some of my legal friends and people who talk to city controllers, the forces that be will torch Prop. 13, double property taxes, and crush real estate values.
California has a 10% sales tax in many situations.
“California’s top rate is 13.3%, astronomical for a state…
In 2016, the top 1% paid 45.8% of the state income tax revenue while accounting for 23.1% of the personal income.