Narativ with Zev Shalev (Audio)
Oct 6, 2026 · 46 min · 11 segments
Simon Andriesz brought concerns about Howard Lutnick to the FBI. Years later, the Justice Department released an interview record with most identifying information blacked out—and a version of his…
So AdFin at first sounded kind of boring, right? Like it sounds kind of like, oh, we're collecting data around, um, advertising and, you know, we're putting all of this data together, and they were planning to sell it as like an index of information to other companies to use and so on and so forth.
And I'm like, "Why would anybody-- Like who cares? Like why do we want this?" And so as my research has gone on, I've learned that AdFin was in conjunction with many other companies.
They all kind of were created to gather different information, and the idea is that they would use this information together to-- for various things.
So like with AdFin, the idea was to gather, you know, like I imagine it was presented as like we're going to help price, um, you know, placements, ad placements and things like that based on this data and behavior from people.
How many people clicked here, and did they respond to this, and did they buy, and blah, blah, blah.
And so- You know, they had worked together to create this, and, you know, I'm like, "Why does this matter?" But it, it ties in with, um, Epstein also had another company, I think it was, like, Financial Informatics-
So there was lots of data-gathering companies that all kind of worked together.
And from what we can see now, as far as the AI stuff goes, this is all things that Epstein and the Epstein class were talking about in, as early as, you know, 2012, um, as AI and how to, um, make it, you know, something that we are completely dependent on, and how to integrate it, and how the AI aspect, what, what the benefit of that is when you have all this data.
So all this data is great, but it's only so useful until you have things like AI that can do things that-
And we know that Epstein was pitching Vladimir Putin about a whole, um, range of, uh, new banking systems, sort of a new cryptocurrency world-
So someone like Howard Lutnick, who's a very powerful Cantor Fitzgerald CEO, has a lot of information already about the markets, but also needs new information-
So AdFin at first sounded kind of boring, right? Like it sounds kind of like, oh, we're collecting data around, um, advertising and, you know, we're putting all of this data together, and they were planning to sell it as like an index of information to other companies to use and so on and so forth.
And I'm like, "Why would anybody-- Like who cares? Like why do we want this?" And so as my research has gone on, I've learned that AdFin was in conjunction with many other companies.
They all kind of were created to gather different information, and the idea is that they would use this information together to-- for various things.
So like with AdFin, the idea was to gather, you know, like I imagine it was presented as like we're going to help price, um, you know, placements, ad placements and things like that based on this data and behavior from people.
How many people clicked here, and did they respond to this, and did they buy, and blah, blah, blah.
And so- You know, they had worked together to create this, and, you know, I'm like, "Why does this matter?" But it, it ties in with, um, Epstein also had another company, I think it was, like, Financial Informatics-
So there was lots of data-gathering companies that all kind of worked together.
And from what we can see now, as far as the AI stuff goes, this is all things that Epstein and the Epstein class were talking about in, as early as, you know, 2012, um, as AI and how to, um, make it, you know, something that we are completely dependent on, and how to integrate it, and how the AI aspect, what, what the benefit of that is when you have all this data.
So all this data is great, but it's only so useful until you have things like AI that can do things that-
And we know that Epstein was pitching Vladimir Putin about a whole, um, range of, uh, new banking systems, sort of a new cryptocurrency world-
So someone like Howard Lutnick, who's a very powerful Cantor Fitzgerald CEO, has a lot of information already about the markets, but also needs new information-
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