NYC Taxpayers Spending Millions on Cyber Center with Controversial Ties to
Israeli Intelligence
New York City taxpayers are on the hook for a multi-million dollar cyber
center in the heart of Manhattan with deep ties to Israel's high-tech
intelligence apparatus.
by Whitney Webb
February 14th, 2020
By Whitney Webb Whitney Webb
Early last week, the city of New York launched - with little media scrutiny
- one of two new massive cybersecurity centers that will be run by private
Israeli firms with close ties to Israel's government, the so-called "Mega
Group" tied to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and prominent pro-Israel lobby
organizations operating in the United States. The centers were first
announced in 2018 as was the identity of the firms who would run them:
Israel-based Jerusalem Venture Partners and SOSA.
As MintPress has reported on several occasions, all three of these entities
have a history of aggressively spying on the U.S. federal government and/or
blackmailing top American politicians, raising concerns regarding why these
companies were chosen to run the new centers in the heart of Manhattan. The
news also comes as Israeli cybersecurity companies tied to Israeli military
intelligence Unit 8200 were revealed to have access to the U.S. government's
most classified systems and simulating the cancellation of the upcoming 2020
presidential election.
Why a Shadowy Tech Firm With Ties to Israeli Intelligence Is Running
Doomsday Election Simulations
Cybereason, a tech firm with ties to Israeli intelligence is partnering with
Lockheed Martin to gain unprecedented access to US elections.
MintPress News | Whitney Webb | Jan 14
The new cybersecurity centers are part of a new New York City public-private
partnership called "CyberNYC" that is valued at over $100 million and
officially aims to "spur the creation of 10,000 cybersecurity jobs and make
New York City a global leader in cyber innovation." CyberNYC is an
initiative of New York City's Economic Development Corporation.
However, the companies that will be responsible for creating those
cybersecurity jobs will benefit foreign companies, namely Israeli and most
of the jobs to be created will go to foreigners as well, as media reports on
the partnership have quietly noted. Those reports also stated that, while
the stated purpose of the centers is to create new jobs, the Israeli firms
chosen to run them - Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP) and SOSA - view it as
an opportunity to provide Israeli cybersecurity companies with a foothold
into the American market and to see Israeli cybersecurity products adopted
by both small and medium-sized American businesses, not just large
corporations and government agencies.
For example, the founder of JVP and former Knesset member, Erel Margalit,
told the Jerusalem Post that "the center we are setting up [in New York]
will assist Israeli hi-tech companies in collaborating with customers and
companies in the US and around the world." More recently, ahead of the
opening of the cybersecurity center that Margalit's firm will manage, he
told the Times of Israel that "New York is about something else, it's about
the drama of taking investors from Israel and Spain or Paris and other
places and taking them to the next business level." In other words, the
companies set to benefit from these new centers will be foreign and mainly
Israeli, as JVP invests the vast majority of its funds in Israeli start-ups.
Given that Wilson Lin, the head of CyberNYC, explained the reason behind the
initiative as the fact that "there are not enough well-trained people in
cyber security to fill the jobs that are required for a safer, more thriving
commercial sector," the statements of JVP's founder strongly suggests that
those "well-trained people" will not be Americans in New York, but will be
brought in from abroad, namely Israel's cybersecurity sector.
Of the companies chosen by CyberNYC to run its new cybersecurity centers,
both have clear and demonstrable ties to Israel's government and military
intelligence as well as controversial groups of pro-Israel donors with
considerable political clout in the United States.
For instance, Jerusalem Venture Partners was founded by Erel Margalit in
1993, with funding from the Yozma Program, an Israeli government program to
"incentivize venture capital investment" in Israel. Since then, it has been
a driving force in the development of Israel's hi-tech sector and regularly
collaborates with the Israeli Ministry of Economy and Industry and the EISP
(Entrepreneurship and Innovation Support Program) alumni organization of
Unit 8200. Today, it is the second largest venture capital fund in Israel.
JVP was also the sole venture capital fund chosen to partner with Israel's
government and military to establish the public-private "cyber hub" in
Beersheba. This "hub" not only houses the IDF's technology campus, but also
the Israel National Cyber Directorate, which reports directly to Israel's
Prime Minister, as well as a high-tech corporate park that mostly houses
tech companies with ties to Israel's military intelligence apparatus. The
area has been cited in several media reports as a visible indicator of the
public-private merger between Israeli technology companies, many of them
started by Unit 8200 alumni, and the Israeli government and its intelligence
services.
A composite image of the future JVP-funded New York City cyber center
A composite image of the future JVP-funded New York City cyber center. Photo
| JVP Press Release
In addition to JVP's close ties to Israel's government and its key role in
the merging of Israel's private cybersecurity sector with Israeli military
intelligence, JVP also has close ties to the Bronfman family through its
Chief Operating Officer and general partner, Fiona Darmon. Prior to working
with JVP, Darmon worked for Claridge Israel, the investment arm of the
Bronfman family that was founded by Charles Bronfman in 1987.
Charles Bronfman was a one-time business partner of Mossad agent Robert
Maxwell, father of Jeffrey Epstein's alleged madam Ghislaine Maxwell, and
co-founded the "Mega Group", a group of pro-Israel oligarchs with clear and
direct ties to organized crime, alongside Leslie Wexner, the main financier
of Jeffrey Epstein's operation that involved the sex trafficking of minors
on behalf of Israeli military intelligence.
SOSA was founded much more recently than JVP, yet also has close ties to
Israel's government and military. Created in 2014, SOSA has grown rapidly by
connecting mostly Israeli start-ups with investors and through its
partnerships with the IDF. This partnership first became clear in 2018, when
SOSA created the Homeland Security (HLST) Innovation Hub, which the Times of
Israel described as "a first of its kind program that aims to create a
defense and security innovation community that will match homeland security
and defense industry firms with startups, to help industry giants maintain
their leading edge."
Last year, SOSA became one of two companies to manage the Israeli Ministry
of Defense's program INNOFENSE, an innovation program for civilian tech
start-ups in the country's defense industry. SOSA's collaboration with the
IDF also involves the creation of "joint business activities between
international companies, [government] security organizations, investors and
startups," making SOSA a key player in the blurring of the line between
Israeli military intelligence and its private tech sector.
SOSA is also directly partnered with two of Israel's top weapons
manufacturers, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, as well as defense
electronics companies ELTA Systems and Elron Electronics, the former parent
company of another Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems. It is also
partnered with the Unit 8200 alumni-founded tech company CheckPoint Systems
and Leumi Tech, the hi-tech subsidiary of one of Israel's largest banks,
Leumi. Leumi Tech exists only in the U.S. and specifically aims to "provide
a comprehensive suite of products and services to Israeli high-tech
companies operating in the US." The bank was recently forced to pay $400
million to the U.S. government for assisting U.S. citizens, most of them
dual U.S.-Israeli citizens, in preparing false tax returns and hiding their
assets in offshore accounts.
SOSA's General Manager Guy Franklin is of particular interest, due to his
close ties to the Israeli American Council (IAC), a pro-Israel lobby group
created by convicted felon and ultra-Zionist millionaire Adam Milstein and
largely funded by Sheldon and Miriam Adelson. The Adelsons are also the
largest donors to both President Trump and the Republican Party in the
United States.
SOSA Israel
In this photo posted on SOSA's Facebook page, SOSA execs Uzi Scheffer and
Guy Franklin pose in New York's Time Square
Of the $100 million in funding for the CyberNYC initiative, $30 million
comes from New York taxpayers and the remaining funds coming from the
program's partners, which includes Goldman Sachs and the Israeli military
intelligence Unit 8200 incubator Team8, a start-up accelerator which has
been discussed at length in several past MintPress News reports, including
the recent MintPress investigation into the Israeli company Cybereason - a
partner of Team8.
Team8, particularly its presence in New York, has long been associated with
the push by pro-Israel political donor and American hedge fund manager Paul
Singer and Israel's government to make Israel the global cybersecurity
leader as a means of preventing countries from boycotting Israel over human
rights violations and war crimes. Team8's role in CyberNYC will see them not
only finance part of the initiative but also training cybersecurity workers
who will be hired as part of the partnership.
Singer, who is based in Manhattan, created Start Up Nation Central in 2012
to specifically outsource American tech jobs to Israel in collaboration with
top AIPAC officials and Israel's government. Meanwhile, in parallel,
Israel's government and intelligence apparatus began a policy that same year
that involved outsourcing intelligence and military intelligence operations
to private companies created for that very purpose, particularly in the
field of cybersecurity.
How Neocon Billionaire Paul Singer Is Driving the Outsourcing of US Tech
Jobs to Israel
Several U.S. tech giants including Google, Microsoft and Intel Corporation
have filled top positions with former members of Israeli military
intelligence and are heavily investing in their Israeli branches while
laying off thousands of American employees, all while receiving millions of
dollars in U.S.
MintPress News | Whitney Webb | Jan 28
Thus, much as Israel's cybersecurity industry has long been fused to
Israel's military and intelligence apparati, the Paul Singer-funded and
Israel-backed policy has openly sought to bring American companies and
government agencies into the fold in order to prevent boycotts of Israel.
Though the so-called "anti-BDS laws" that have been passed in several U.S.
states are one facet of this push, the use of Israeli tech, namely
cybersecurity, sector to pursue this same end has received decidedly less
coverage.
New York City has long been a major focus on this policy, with the growth of
Israel hi-tech start-ups present in New York and run by former members of
Unit 8200 exploding since this policy officially began in 2012. Indeed,
Haaretz noted that, between 2013 and 2017 alone, the number of Israeli tech
start-ups in New York City grew by fivefold and the number of Unit 8200
alumni working in NYC tech start-ups has also spiked in that same time
frame.
The number of Unit 8200 alumni working in NYC's tech sector has grown so
much that they host an annual gala closed to the press where the goal, per
Haaretz, is "to try to connect startups and early stage entrepreneurs from
8200 EISP (the Israeli accelerator for Unit 8200 alumni) with clients and
venture capital funds in the United States." One of the main players at that
gala is Guy Franklin, the CEO of SOSA, which was chosen to run the other NYC
cybersecurity sector.
The decision to create expensive, new cybersecurity centers run by JVP and
SOSA, two Israeli firms with clear ties to controversial pro-Israel lobby
organization and donors as well as Israel's government and intelligence
apparatus, reveals that not only is this Singer and Israel-backed policy
continuing to develop and expand at a rapid pace, but now the money of New
York City taxpayers is now being used to propel it to new heights even
though that very policy benefits Israel's economy at the U.S.' expense.
