I spent a month mapping one Israeli influence campaign through the FARA database. Then I went back in and asked a different question: what else is in here? One evening later, I had three answers: the arms maker buying a door to the Trump-Vance administration, the debt office hiring two communications giants in a single month, and a federal watchtower that has been scanning an empty horizon for years.
Regular readers know I have spent the last month inside the Foreign Agents Registration Act (“FARA”) database, mapping Project 545, Israel’s roughly $145 million campaign to shape American opinion, eight registered companies deep, summarized at project545.org.
Here is the thing about spending a month in a database. You start to see the edges of what you have been looking at, and you start to wonder what is past them.
So I went back in with a different question. Not “how does the opinion campaign work.” Instead: what else does the Israeli state buy in America, on paper, under oath?
Turns out the database answers that one too. It answers everything, if you sift through it long enough. Three findings from one evening of digging, and I want to be upfront before we start: most of what follows is legal, disclosed, and in a couple of cases genuinely, refreshingly transparent. Almost too transparent.
The arms maker buys a door
Israel Aerospace Industries is a weapons manufacturer owned by the State of Israel. Its own FARA paperwork says so in one clean sentence: its US subsidiary, Stark Aerospace of Columbus, Mississippi (Marvel may have an issue with that, just saying…), is described in the filing as a wholly owned subsidiary of IAI, “a state owned enterprise of the Government of Israel.”
In November 2025, Stark signed a contract with a Virginia firm called GlobalPoint International. The contract is attached to the filing, in full, and its first paragraph does not make you guess. GlobalPoint’s job is to build and strengthen IAI and Stark’s relationship, quote, “with the Trump-Vance Administration, Congress and across the US government.”
The scope of work reads like a map of official Washington. The White House and National Security Council. The Departments of Defense, State, Commerce, Treasury, and Justice. The Armed Services, Appropriations, Intelligence, and Foreign Affairs committees. The Missile Defense Agency, by name.
The price: $45,000 a month for six months, plus up to $100,000 in expenses.
And one line in the scope of work that keen eyes will recognize immediately: GlobalPoint will place op-eds authored by IAI executives and by “influential third-party voices.”
Borrowed mouths.
The same technique the Esther Project bought for influencers, here in a blazer, aimed at the defense press. Every one of those op-eds is supposed to be filed with the Justice Department and labeled, and I will be checking the bylines against the filings.
To be fair, foreign state-owned defense companies hiring Washington firms is one of the most routine transactions in that city. Airbus does it. Half the world’s arms industry does it. And this filing is a model citizen, the whole contract attached, the targets named, the fees visible.
The debt office builds a megaphone
Israel borrows a lot of money in American markets. The office that manages that borrowing is the Accountant General’s office inside the Ministry of Finance, working through the Israel Economic Mission on Second Avenue in New York.
Around New Year’s, that office went shopping.
On December 31, 2025, it signed Weber Shandwick, one of the largest PR firms on the planet, through its Interpublic parent entity. The sworn task: “institutional investor relations services related to the issuance of international debt offerings.”
Translation: managing how the people who buy Israel’s bonds feel about buying Israel’s bonds. The contract includes full paid-media machinery, an authorization-to-buy framework for purchasing advertising space, for a finance ministry.
Three weeks later, on January 20, 2026, the same office signed PLUS Communications, a major Arlington public affairs firm.
That task list: audience mapping, narrative and messaging strategy, crisis and issues communications planning, media relations, media train
ing.
Same ministry. Same New York address. And the same named official on both engagement lines: Gil Cohen, Senior Deputy Accountant General.
In one month, the office that sells Israel’s debt to Americans stood up a complete communications apparatus.
One firm for the investors. One firm for everybody else.
Crisis plans on one contract, ad-buying capability on the other.
Also noteworthy from Appendix I above: PLUS disclosed its rates at $830 an hour for senior staff, $550 mid, $300 junior. Weber’s rates were delivered “under separate cover” and made contractually confidential, so half of this apparatus has a public price tag and half does not.
PLUS checked yes on FARA’s political activities question. Weber checked no. The same ministry’s two agents, hired three weeks apart by the same man, answered the law’s central question in opposite directions.
And both contracts contain the same very 2026 clause: neither firm may feed the ministry’s information into any AI tool without written permission.
Israel’s sovereign credit ratings took downgrades during the war, and the state has continued borrowing heavily in US markets.
Sovereign governments hiring IR firms is routine; many do it. What the paper documents is the scale, the speed, the pairing, and the asymmetries. The rest is waiting on a comment request, which I sent out August 1; answers due August 7.
The watchtower that watches nothing
While digging, I noticed that the Justice Department’s legally required semiannual FARA reports to Congress are only posted through 2024. Looking for the missing ones, I found an FCC report instead: the Commission’s Sixteenth Semi-Annual Report to Congress on United States-Based Foreign Media Outlets, covering October 12, 2025 through April 11, 2026.
October 12, 2025 happens to be the exact day one of Project 545’s legs, Davis Media, registered under FARA. And the FCC report says no foreign media outlets filed during the period. For about an hour I thought I had something.
I did not.
I checked: that October 12 window is a fixed statutory cycle that has repeated every six months since Congress created this reporting regime in 2018. Pure calendar coincidence. And the regime could never have captured Davis Media anyway, for two independent reasons. First, the law only covers television-style programming carried by cable and satellite distributors. Second, it only covers outlets claiming FARA’s news-media exemption, and Davis Media registered under FARA instead of claiming any exemption.
So the suspicion died. What survived the check is better.
Congress built its foreign-media transparency watchtower in 2018, aimed at the RT America model: a foreign state channel likely on your cable lineup.
The FCC dutifully staffs that tower. It sent a reminder notice this March directing any covered outlets to report. And then it filed its sixteenth report, which says, in total, that nobody filed. Again.
Meanwhile, the actual foreign government media operation of this decade, the one documented across eight sworn registrations at project545.org, runs on branded websites, YouTube and Rumble channels, purchased influencers, and geofenced phone ads. Not one of those channels is visible to the statute. The watchtower faces an empty landscape. The campaign runs on the internet underneath it.
And the Justice Department’s own semiannual FARA reports? Still nothing posted past 2024 as of August 1, 2026.
The FCC report even contains a small confession of its own: its previous edition went to Congress late because of the government shutdown. The transparency system’s paperwork is behind on its paperwork. I wonder what the excuse will be this time.
Where the claims stand
I am not saying GlobalPoint, Stark, IAI, Weber Shandwick, or PLUS Communications broke any law; every filing described here appears prompt, written, and complete, and that assessment is stated in their favor on purpose.
I am not saying defense lobbying or sovereign investor relations are scandals; they are a typical Tuesday in Washington, for dozens of countries.
I am not connecting any of this to Project 545’s opinion campaign beyond the fact that the same state funds both; different ministries, different money, different purposes, and my Project 545 tracker deliberately does not count these.
Here is what I am saying: watch how the transparency changes with the audience.
When the Israeli state wants access to officials, the contract is written, filed, itemized, and named. When it wants the confidence of bond investors, the paperwork is prompt and professional, even if one rate card stays sealed.
However, when the target audience is you, the general American public, the paper turns to oral agreements, Frankfurt intermediaries, Wyoming mailboxes, and registrations later called errors.
The cleanliness of the disclosure tracks the power of the audience. Officials and investors get the courtesy of clean paper.
You get the faceless company buried under four shells.
Same government. Same database. The variable is who is being persuaded.
Questions with a stated deadline of August 7, 2026 went to GlobalPoint, PLUS Communications, and Weber Shandwick on August 1, and this piece will be updated with their responses or documented non-responses.
It is a public database. The filings are there to read.
If you don’t have the time to do that, at a minimum, share this article with someone who might. Share it with someone who wonders why the United States sends more money to Israel than any other country. Share it with someone who is concerned about foreign interference in the 2026 midterm elections. Call your representatives and demand they look into Project 545, they can start at Project545.org.
Stay feral, America.
Receipts
GlobalPoint International, Exhibit A/B and full contract for Stark Aerospace Inc., FARA #7518, filed December 12, 2025 (IAI ownership language; Trump-Vance Administration objective; scope of work; fees): https://efile.fara.gov/docs/7518-Exhibit-AB-20251212-5.pdf
IPG DXTRA, Inc. d/b/a Weber Shandwick, Exhibit A/B and Master Services Agreement for the Ministry of Finance of the State of Israel, FARA #7394, filed January 9, 2026 (investor relations for debt offerings; media-buy framework; confidential rates; political activities answered no): https://efile.fara.gov/docs/7394-Exhibit-AB-20260109-3.pdf
PLUS Communications, LLC, Exhibit A/B and Master Services Agreement for the Ministry of Finance of the State of Israel, FARA #7107, filed January 29, 2026 (audience mapping; crisis planning; disclosed hourly rates; political activities answered yes; Gil Cohen and Elinor Azani named): https://efile.fara.gov/docs/7107-Exhibit-AB-20260129-5.pdf
Federal Communications Commission, Sixteenth Semi-Annual Report to Congress on United States-Based Foreign Media Outlets, DA-26-481 (zero filings for the period; statutory definitions; the late-report footnote): https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-26-481A1.pdf
DOJ FARA Unit, semiannual reports to Congress page (nothing posted past 2024 as of July 30, 2026, an absence finding with a date): https://www.justice.gov/nsd-fara
The Project 545 Tracker (the opinion campaign these findings are deliberately fenced from): https://project545.org
Sourcing notes, per Feral America methodology. Items 1 through 4 are sworn federal filings and an official Commission report, read in full; every quotation above comes from the documents themselves, and archived copies are on file. The credit-ratings and borrowing context is stated generally and flagged for reader verification; specific ratings actions are not asserted here.
The FCC coincidence is described as a coincidence because I checked, and the mistake is left in the piece on purpose, as part of using discernment with the investigative process.
Not asserted, because not documented: any unlawful conduct by any entity named; any connection between these engagements and Project 545 beyond common state funding; any characterization of routine defense or sovereign IR work as improper.
Comment status: detailed questions were sent to GlobalPoint International, PLUS Communications, and Weber Shandwick on August 1, 2026, to the contact addresses each firm listed in its own filed contract, with a stated response deadline of August 7, 2026; responses will be added in full, and non-responses will be dated.