As more details come to light about Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire sex trafficker is increasingly suspected of having used his wealth, influence, and connections to shape the way political power is used, particularly when it comes to foreign policy. If true, what kind of foreign policy did he favor and what goals did he hope to achieve? Over the years, Epstein exchanged emails with former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak opposing the Iran nuclear deal and favoring military action against Syria; expressed concern about Israel's intensifying turn away from the two-state solution; and counseled Donald Trump adviser ... Steve Bannon on how the Trump administration could best take on this leading global rival of the United States. The country that featured most heavily in Epstein's private discussions contained in the files wasn't Israel; it was China. It was in his private chats with the virulently anti-China Bannon that the country most often came up, with Epstein often framing China as a serious threat that had to be defeated. Epstein bounced between certainty that China was falling apart and warnings that it was a formidable foe. China is "a unified nationalist economic country" whose forty-year-long strategy is "right on track," Epstein told Bannon in July 2018. "My meeting the other day was around how these peasants looked into their own systems, found the NSA cybertools that we had inserted and then used them against us interests," Epstein wrote [in another exchange].