Little Tech and the Israel Lobby
The Tale of a Circulation of Elites
Introduction
Anyone paying careful and honest attention to politics in America, especially, since July, will have detected a clear sea change—a ‘vibe shift’, if you will. While the 7/13 attempt on President Donald Trump’s life—seen by millions on national television—certainly did not precipitate this development, it presented a perfect opportunity for thitherto (relatively) covert machinations and goings-on to coalesce and begin taking place more overtly. The result has been a limited ‘circulation of elites’. In this article, I will attempt to characterize this circulation by highlighting some of the important players and describing the salient dynamics behind it. Finally, I will offer limited speculation about where these new elites may be looking to take us.
Facts on the Ground: The Money and Influence Behind the ‘Circulation of Elites’
Within hours of the failed attempt on the President’s life, which produced what is, undoubtedly, one of the most iconic and ‘aura-full’ photographs in American history, Elon Musk formally endorsed Trump and promised hundreds of millions of dollars to his campaign effort. Two days later, Trump tapped Ohio Senator and bona fide member of the Peter Thiel Network, J.D. Vance, to be his running mate (Thiel bankrolled Vance’s 2022 Senate campaign with $15,000,000).1 The day after that, Nikki Haley endorsed Trump after months of silence following her bitter exit from the race in March 2024. Around the same time (likely in late June or early July), Trump’s eldest son—and key advisor—began secretly seeing a strange, though undoubtedly well-connected, woman: Bettina Anderson—a reputed “socialite”,2 founder of a venture capital firm, and daughter of a Palm Beach banking mogul who personally received multiple awards for his “service to Israel”.3
The month before, Trump made an appearance on the All-In Podcast, which is co-hosted by David Sacks. Sacks is one member of the so-called ‘PayPal Mafia’, a group of tech entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, of which Elon Musk is a key member, and Peter Thiel, the ‘Don’. It was on this show that Trump first floated the now-infamous proposal to “staple green cards to diplomas”—a policy sure to flood the country with the sorts of high-skill Chinese and Indian immigrants of which tech elites are desirous. According to the New York Times, Sacks made a start-up investment in Bari Weiss’ publication, The Free Press, after her departure from the country’s paper of record in July 2020.4 Weiss, a Jewish, anti-woke, lesbian, Zionist, made a spectacle of her leaving the Times with a public letter of resignation in which claimed she had been called a Nazi by coworkers (presumably, for her firm support of Israel).
Another of Weiss’ financial backers is co-head of the Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm, Marc Andreessen.5 The firm contributed $7,010,602 to Trump’s campaign Super PAC during the 2024 election cycle.6 Sacks, Andreessen, and Thiel have each appeared on Weiss’ podcast at least once, and she apparently regards them highly as outsider ‘counter-elites’. Just a week-and-a-half after the election in November, Weiss released an interview with Thiel: ‘Peter Thiel on the Triumph of the Counter-Elites’ (clearly, in reference to the tech-backed Trump takeover).’
Today, at The Free Press, you can read writings on ‘peace through strength’ and the ‘global vibe shift’ following the Trump victory, anti-Assad and pro-Kurdish pieces on the Syrian conflict, an article on “the deep roots of Irish antisemitism”, and a plea to Republican lawmakers to “abolish race”.7 Importantly, I do not dwell on Bari Weiss and The Free Press because I think that either had any significant causal impact on the outcome of the election or in precipitating the circulation of elites which we are discussing. The relationship is actually the other way around: the circulation of elites is the driving force behind Wiess and others like her. Thus, support for Weiss’ project by people like Sacks, Andreessen, and Thiel signals something important about how these elites are operating and may even cue us in to their objectives.
The PayPal Mafia is not the only interest that has coalesced around The Free Press, however: Weiss has also been promoted by the staunchly pro-Israel personalities at Daily Wire—especially, Ben Shapiro—since she left the Times in 2020. Weiss also secured an interview with Bibi Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, in 2022. It is worth mentioning here that her father, Lou Weiss, is “a pro-Israel activist affiliated with AIPAC”.8 There appear to be two counts on which this crowd judges her to be worthy of support: (i) her flatly hawkish stance on foreign policy, especially vis-à-vis Israel and the Middle East, and (ii) her anti-woke, 1990s-era liberalism (pro-gay, anti-trans, anti-white-identity). Weiss’ inoffensive liberalism, combined with her JINSA-brand, pro-Israel, pro-interventionist foreign policy, make her acceptable to all of the broadly Israel-aligned parties, from ‘conservative’ Ben Shapiro to the liberal Sam Harris or unapologetically neoconservative Bret Stephens (Weiss’ mentor and boss of many years).
The support for Weiss and The Free Press from the tech/venture capital elites and the neoconservative and/or Likud-aligned foreign policy intelligentsia serves as one example of the perhaps temporary confluence of these two separate, though not necessarily opposed, interests. Furthermore, it suggests one of the chief ways in which these interests are working to achieve their objectives: alternative media. Daily Wire is, of course, another relevant example. We should also consider the Manhattan Institute, professional home of Christopher Rufo, the famed anti-woke activist who played a key role in the ‘scalping’ of Harvard President Claudine Gay over allegations of plagiarism and academic impropriety. The think tank’s stated objective is to “to overcome America's cultural divides by offering constructive alternatives to identity politics”.9
Manhattan Institute was founded and funded to the tune of over $10,000,000 by pro-Israel, pro-LGBT activist billionaire Paul Singer.10 Singer appears to have spent time on the board of directors Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA)—which lobbied for the 2003 Iraq War—around 2015; according to the New York Times, in 2007, he characterized the US vis-à-vis the Middle East as “a drawn-out, existential struggle with radical strains of pan-national Islamists”.11 Past and present members of the organization’s board of directors include both Bill Kristol (son of neoconservative ‘godfather’, Irving Kristol, and a key neoconservative thinker, in his own right) and his son Joseph. Broadly speaking, these two examples are representative of the board’s composition.
Singer has contributed millions of dollars to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a popular organization among major Jewish donors like Sheldon Adelson, originally incorporated—prior to the 11 September attacks—with a mission “to provide education to enhance Israel’s image in North America and the public’s understanding of issues affecting Israeli-Arab relations”.12 FDD pushes a strongly pro-Israel and anti-Iran foreign policy and has been credited by some with helping to overthrow the Iran Nuclear Deal in 2018.13 The organization also provided political support to “secular, liberal” groups in the broad anti-Assad coalition following the eruption of Arab Spring protests in Syria in the early 2010s.14 Singer, the man behind the Rufo and the Manhattan Institute, also contributed $5,011,970 to the Trump’s 2024 presidential bid through his company, Elliot Management.15
However, likely more significant than any of the aforementioned was Elon Musk’s acquisition of X (formerly, ‘Twitter’) for $44,000,000,000 in late 2022. Musk’s intent to utilize the social media platform to exert influence over the political process should have been immediately clear when he helped Florida Governor Ron DeSantis—Musk’s initial pick in the 2024 Republican primary—launch his presidential campaign virtually on X. When, to their disappointment, DeSantis’ bid for the presidency flopped, Musk and Sacks (as well as Shapiro) lent their support to Donald Trump.
Following the 7/13 assassination attempt, the support of Musk and others for Trump intensified. I cannot help but suspect that the entrepreneur in Musk immediately recognized the potential in the iconic image of the bloodied President Trump standing defiantly with his fist raised: ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’ He then determined to bet over $200,000,000 on the steed of Mar-a-Lago.16 But intelligent people like Musk don’t make such outsized bets without taking special care to ensure their security. This is where owning a social media platform with close to 600,000,000 users and a reputation as the ‘technological town square’ would be particularly useful, since control over the algorithm affords him significant influence over the ‘information diet’ of millions, allowing him to manipulate public opinion and become a ‘consent manufacturing’ mogul. Ultimately, Elon and Sacks both appear to have successfully parlayed their loyalty to the president for influential positions in, or adjacent to, the incoming Trump cabinet—Musk will work with Vivek Ramaswamy directing the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) ; Sacks will serve as Trump’s AI and cryptocurrency ‘czar’.
The Circulation of Elites and Attendant ‘Vibe Shift’
If what I’ve just described appears as a sprawling array of somehow-related but difficult-to-interpret facts, it’s because that’s exactly what it is. What is necessary to interpret the situation—which may at first appear chaotic—is to comprehend the dynamics behind it. In my view, there are two key factions, each with their own interest. First, there are the tech and venture capital elites; we’ll call them ‘Little Tech’. Second, there is the ‘Israel Lobby’.
Admittedly, Little Tech presents a somewhat enigmatic case. Publicly, the important figures in this faction talk about support for Trump in terms of their desire for an ‘innovation-friendly’ US—hence, the thrust for ambitious deregulation behind DOGE. Thiel, for his part, seems to regard combatting China in the race dominance in the AI sector as important, and such an objective would be well-served by a major deregulation campaign. This is, I’m sure, at least partially a matter of what is good for the bottom lines of Thiel, Musk, Andreessen, and others. However, given that many of their firms contract for military and intelligence in the US and Israel, I suspect there is also a security dimension at play. Thiel estimates the odds of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan within five years at fifty-fifty and regards such an outcome as undesirable. However, he also has expressed interest in averting World War III over Taiwan. A strategy that would synthesize each of these values of Thiel’s would, thus, look something like decoupling economically from China and removing any handicaps from American (and, likely, Israeli) AI development.
I struggle to believe that the motivations of the interested parties behind the 2024 ‘Little Tech putsch’ are limited to economic or financial objectives. These men already have more money than most could even dream of, and people like Thiel and Musk are clearly visionaries. The former fancies himself a philosopher, and his essay, ‘The Straussian Moment’, suggests a kind of millenarian vision of a postmodern world enjoying “the peace of the kingdom of God”.17 The latter is a self-described ‘transhumanist’ with an aim to chart a path to an integration between human and artificial intelligence. However, given the influence of Strauss and Girard on Thiel, I think it is reasonable to suspect a hidden, esoteric dimension to the machinations of the Little Tech crowd. There is almost certainly more than they let on publicly, and I’m in no position to speculate about it… I’ll leave that to the schitzoids.
The riddle of the Israel Lobby is much easier to solve: they just really love Israel. Moreover, they favor bringing American power to bear to secure Israel’s interests through military aid, maximum-pressure sanctions campaigns against Israel’s geopolitical rivals, diplomatic protection from punitive measures attempted by international organizations, and even US military intervention. The Israel Lobby is far from a monolith, even on questions of foreign policy. There are those who favor a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, and those who prefer a one-state solution. Some favor continuing the conflict with Russia in Ukraine while others prefer ceasefire and detente. The group is theologically diverse: there are Orthodox Jews, secular Jews, and even Christians. Nevertheless, all of these are united by their shared concern for Israel’s interests.
Since 2015, there has been a severe tension between MAGA and the Israel Lobby. Indeed, Trump was opposed in his first bid for president by the classical-variety neoconservatives (e.g. Bill Kristol, Bret Stephens and protege Bari Weiss, Jonah Goldberg), which constitutes a key subgroup within the Israel Lobby. Paul Singer opposed Trump in 2016,18 and even Sheldon Adelson withheld his support until September 2016.19 In the run-up to the election in 2016, Noam Neusner, a Jewish Republican staffer to the Bushes, told Politico that he didn’t believe “the opportunity [for American Jews to join the Republican Party] exists anymore, largely because Trump is just anathema to many Jews, including Jewish conservatives”.20 Even Ben Shapiro, who became a major supporter of Trump in 2024, refused to vote for him the first time around. Bret Stephens thus characterized the sensibility driving this opposition:
“[Never-Trumpers thought] Trump represented a form of illiberalism that was antithetical to our ‘free people, free markets, free world’ brand of conservatism and that was bound to take the Republican Party down a dark road”.21
In spite of this, the past eight years—2024, in particular—has seen a warming of pro-Israel American Jews to Trump and MAGA. Singer apparently threw his hat behind the President at some point in 2018, and Ben Shapiro has had an on-again-off-again relationship with him since his 2016 victory. Tearing up the Iran Nuclear Deal and brokering the (I think) unduly-lauded Abraham Accords through his well-connected Jewish son-in-law, Jared Kushner, undoubtedly scored him points with the donors behind organizations like FDD. Though the dark, Hitlerian specter perceived by the likes of Kristol, Stephens, Weiss, and Goldberg from joining their more intrepid counterparts in full-throated endorsement of Trump, the icy relationship seems to be thawing and giving way to benign ambivalence. Stephens recent opinion piece for the New York Times—entitled ‘Done With Never Trump’—offers an important insight into this warming:
“There’s plenty to dislike and fear about Trump from a traditionally conservative standpoint. But Never Trumpers also overstated our case and, in doing so, defeated our purpose. How so? We warned that Trump would be a reckless president who might stumble into World War III. If anything, his foreign policy in his first term was, in practice, often cautious to a fault. […]
We predicted that Trump’s rhetoric would wreck the Republican Party’s chances to win over the constituencies the party had identified, after 2012, as key to its future. But we missed that his working-class appeal would also reach working-class minorities. […]
We also talked a lot about democracy. That’s important: The memory of Jan. 6 and Trump’s 2020 election lies were the main reasons I voted for Kamala Harris. But if democracy means anything, it’s that ordinary people, not elites, get to decide how important an event like Jan. 6 is to them. Turns out, not so much. […]
[A]s bigoted as elements of the MAGA world can be, there is plenty of bigotry to go around—not least in the torrent of Israel-bashing and antisemitism that emerged from the cultural left after Oct. 7. That, as much as we fear Trump could wreck some of our institutions, whether it’s higher education or the F.B.I., many of those institutions are already broken”.22
What becomes clear in the case of Stephens and Weiss—who beat her mentor to the punch, dubbing the election a ‘triumph’ of counter-elites within weeks of the election—is that the 7 October assault on Israel and all that followed triggered a shift in Jewish consciousness.23 This shift in consciousness has driven a change in strategy: instead of decrying Trump and MAGA as the second coming of Hitler and the NSDAP, seeking friendly relations in order to curry favor and influence over the direction the administration takes over the next four years. Of course, these neoconservative holdouts are late to the party—as the Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, Paul Singer, and others have been pursuing this strategy for years. Shapiro provided a succinct practical summary of the strategy in his October 2024 debate with Sam Harris on whether Trump or Harris was the better candidate:
“You're going to see Howard Lutnick doing much of the staffing up of this administration, as opposed to Trump himself. […] I know precisely the people talking to [Trump.] So I'm not speculating about [who will be in the administration]”.24
While it turned out that Shapiro was, in fact, speculating about who would staff the administration (he incorrectly predicted the return of Mike Pompeo and David Friedman), he was absolutely correct when he said he knows “precisely the people talking to Trump”. In fact, Trump made a widely-publicized appearance at the tomb of the Chabad-Lubavitch ‘Rebbe’ Menachem Mendel Schneerson alongside Lutnick and Shapiro. This, in conjunction with Trump’s frequent courting of the Jewish electorate by speaking at fundraising events about ‘making Israel great again’ and how ‘Israel won’t exist in two years’ if he lost the election, illustrates perfectly the reason for Shapiro’s confidence: he and his political allies have the future president’s ear.
So, the circulation of elites pulled off in the 2024 electoral victory of Donald Trump was largely driven by the ambitions of two primary factions of elites: Little Tech and the Israel Lobby. Given the general principle of ‘to the victor, the spoils’, we should expect an administration geared largely to accomplishing the objectives of these two groups. This means government deregulation geared mostly towards freeing up Little Tech to expand and dominate the market. Relatedly, Little Tech firms will undoubtedly secure additional government contracts in the military and intelligence sectors. Congress will probably re-up on the deep, fourteen-percent slash to the corporate tax rate initially passed in 2017, and I seriously doubt we’ll see any substantial reduction in government spending, since Musk and Ramaswamy can’t touch defense spending or entitlements. In other words, the deficit will continue to grow, worsening our situation vis-à-vis the national debt.
On the other hand, the Israel Lobby very well may accomplish its long-desired Iranian regime change, possibly through direct intervention by the US military—this seems to become more likely by the day. The ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza will continue apace, Israel may formally annex the occupied Palestinian territories, and the portion of Lebanon south of the Litani River (Hezbollah’s primary zone of operation) may be occupied once again. Furthermore, we’ll probably continue to see a government crackdown on speech criticizing Israel and its influential lobby in the US wherever public dollars can be leveraged. Of course, each of these outcomes is contingent upon a multitude of geopolitical factors, so it is dangerous to make concrete predictions. While we cannot account for every event that may positively or negatively effect these outcomes, we can clearly identify the strategic imperatives and dynamics that will drive the policies of Israel, the Israel Lobby, and, by extension, the Trump Administration.
But what about immigration? The national debt? How about ‘woke’? As I’ve said before, I believe immigration to the US will simply feature more high-skill representation from China and India. The national debt will continue to expand. As far as ‘woke’ is concerned, the writing was on the wall before the election—‘woke’ was past its expiration date. After all, transgenders aren’t going to win the war with Iran!
Remember: Christ is King, America First. Always.
Klaidman, Daniel. ‘The billionaire who fueled JD Vance's rapid rise to the Trump VP spot.’ CBS News.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jd-vance-trump-vp-peter-thiel-billionaire/
Flegenheimer, Matt. ‘Bari Weiss, Founder of The Free Press, Is Building a New Media Empire.’ The New York Times. See also: Weiss, Philip. ‘For Bari Weiss, Israel advocacy was both ideology and good career move,’ Mondoweiss for background on Bari Wiess’ storied career as a paid Israeli activist.
Thiel, Peter. ‘The Straussian Moment.’ 2007.
A HUGE thanks for the restack. Much appreciated. God bless.
I do not have the proper words to convey just how excellent this piece is. However, what I can say is: imagine yourself delivering this article in speech form at a well attended conference. I’d be the first to stand and applaud you. Kudos.